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mu I I01N ARY OK 
AMERICAN BIOGRAP 


UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 

American Council of Learned Societies 


EDITED BY 

DUMAS MALONE 



Hibhen — Jarvis 

VOLUME IX 


LONDON 

HUMPHREY MILFORD * OXFORD UNIVERSIT 



DICTIONARY OF 
AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 


UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 

American Council of Lkarnei> Societies 


EDITED BY 

DUMAS MALONE 



Hibben — Jarvis 

VOLUME IX 


LONDON 

HUMPHREY MILFORD * OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

NEW YORK * CHARLES SCRIBNER*® SONS 



Prompted solely by a desire for public service the New York Times Company and its 
President, Mr. Adolph S. Ochs, have made possible the preparation of the munuwnpt 
of the Dictionary of American Biography through a subvention of more than # ? o 
and with the understanding that the entire responsibility for the contents of the vol¬ 
umes rests with the American Council of Learned Societies. 


COPYRIGHT, BY 

AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES 
IN THE UNITED STATES, GREAT BRITAIN AND CANADA 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
AT THE SCRIBNER PRESS, NEW YORK 



I hr lVtiujurv of Amrriran Btoi.' r r;t|»hy is published under the auspices of the American 
*'t 1 r„;n:r.l -Wit-tir. and under the direction of a Committee of Management 
" ' 4 1 ' " ! J- I'iiasM.iK Jam. son, Ch.iirmtin, John II. b'tvu.v, Di-mas Maujnk, 

l-iii an I,. Pax-,un, Irmoi.NK Ochs Cari. Van 1 )<uu n, Charm:* \Y.\kki:n. 

I hr r,s:iitn.il -.Tati mn-.isti ot Di mas Mauihk, Editor; I [arms K. Si-arr, Jssothite Editor; 
t.t.41.4 H. til N.-su It, l-.u AN-..U K. Dobson, M».wuh> 15. I'ai.mi:r, 

dssimmi Editors, 


I lir American Omni it of Ltsimtd Societies consists of the following societies: 


American Phih*<ophn «d Sik iety 

hinnw in Awulrtnv of Ann ami Sciences 
AmnliMi Anm-purlin Shitty 
Amrtkafi Oriental Society 
American Philological Avatchuton 

At. fumO-to 4! In* mum »»f America 

S*-virty of IkOua! litriaturr ami Exegesis 

Modern I.anguagr Av^uUdon of America 
Atnnnan A^wciatton 


American Economic Association 
American Philosophical Association 
American Anthropological Association 
American Political Science AMociation 
Bibliographical Society of America 
American Sociological Society 
History of Science Society 
linguistic Society of America 
Mediaeval Academy of .America 



CONTRIBUTORS TO VOLUME IX 


TiimiAS V . Aiikkxkthy * . . 

. T. P. A. 

Adeline Adams. 

. A. A. 

James Tri slow Adams . . 

. J. T. A. 

Daniel Du any Addison , 

. D. D. A. 

Nelson F. Adkins , . , , 

. X. F. A. 

Cyrus Adler . 

C. A. 

Robert Gkeknhaic.ii Albion 

K. (i. A. 

Edmund Kimball Alden . 

K. K. A. 

Fdmyrd K. Alien .... 

K. K. A. 

Gardner W. Allen , . . . 

(i. W. A. 

.Mary Bernard Alien . . . 

M. B. A. 

William H. Alhson , . 

W. H. A. 

Charles li, Ambier , . . 

C. H. A. 

Katharine H. Amend , , . 

K. H. A. 

I.ewis Flint Anderson . . 

h . F. A. 

John ('lark Ari her . . , 

j, C. A. 

Pe rcy M. A.miiiurn .... 

P. M. A. 

S, G. Ayres 

S. G, A. 

Thomas S. Her* lay .... 

T. S. B. 

Viola F. Barnes . 

V. F. B. 

(Yaren* r. Bartlett , . . 

C. B. 

George: A, Barton , , . 

U. A, li—n. 

KkNEST SUTlIKkl AND B.UUS. 

¥.. S. B - -s. 

Carl l.. Be* ke r. 

C. t.. B. 

Klbert J, HENToN .... 

K, j. B. 

Ruhard L . Beyer , , , 

R. t.. B. 

Per*y W. Bidweil , , 

. P. W. B. 

FintH K. Bt ANUIARU . , 

, K. R. H. 

Arthur K Blessing 

. A. R. B. 

li. Alder Bi t uer . 

. G. A. B—r. 

Charles K, Button . , . 

. C. K. B. 

Arthur K. Bustwjuk 

. A. K. B. 

Aruhinaid t„ Bouton , . . 

. A. 1 . B. 

Win Bowden. 

. W, B. 

Sarah G. Boweruan . . 

, S, G. B. 

Pkruy H, Boynton .... 

. P. H. B-n. 

Fdward S* it.ley Bradley . 

. K. S, B-y. 

Benjamin Hrawiky ... 

. B. B. 

Agnes B, Brett . 

. A. B. It. 

John F„ Briggs . 

. J. K. B. 

Klsik M. S. Bronson . , . 

. K. M. S. B. 

Robert Prestun Brooks . 

, R. P. B. 

Ernest W. Brown .... 

. K. W. B. 

Harper Brown. 

H. B. 

William Adams Brown . . 

. W. A. B. 

Oscar M. Buck.. 

. 0. M. B. 

Paul It, Buck. 

. P. H. B-k. 

Solon J. Buck . 

. S. J. B. 

Charles T, Burnett . 

. C. T. B, 

Huntington Cairns . . . 

, H. C 

William B. Cairns .... 

. W. B. C. 

Robert G. Caldwell . , . 

. R. G. C. 


James M. Callahan .... J. M. C. 
Robert C. Canby ...... R. C. C—y. 

Harry J. Carman.H. J. C. 

Zeckariah Chakee, Jr. ... Z. C., Jr. 

George H. Chase .G. II. C. 

Lew Allen Chase.L. A. C. 

Russell H. Chittenden . . . R. H. C. 
Francis A. Christie .... F. A. C. 

Dora Mae Clark.D. AI. C. 

Hubert Lyman Clark . . . H. L. C. 

R. C. Clark .R. C. C-k. 

Rudolf A. Clemen.R. A. C. 

Oral Sumner Coad .t). S. C. 

Frederick W. Coburn . . . F. VV. C. 
Fannie L, Gwinner Cole . , F. L. G. C. 
William E. Connellky . . . W. E. C. 

R. D. W. Connor.R. 1). W. C. 

Royal Cortissoz.R, C. 

E. Merton Coulter . . . . E. M. C. 
Katharine Elizabeth Crane K. E. C. 

Vkrnbr W. Crane.V. W. C. 

Walter H. Crockett . . . . W. 21. C. 
William J. Cunningham . . . W. j. C. 
Robert K. Cushman . . . . R. E. C. 
Stuart Daggett ...... S. D. 

Harrison C. Dale.II. C. I). 

Chalmers G. Davidson . . . C. G. D. 
Richard E. Day ...... R, K. D. 

Ernest E. De Turk . . . . E. E. DcT. 

Everett N. Dick.25. N. D. 

Charles A. Djnsmorf. .... C. A. D. 
Robert Joseph Divkn . . , R. J. D. 
Eleanor Robinette Dobson . K. R, D, 
Dorothy Anne Dondore , . D. A. D. 

Elizabeth Donnan.E, D. 

William Kavanaucii Doty , . W. K. D. 
William Howe Downes . . . W. H. D. 

Stella M. Dkumu.S. M, D. 

Edward A. Duddy.E. A. D. 

Raymond S. Dugan.R. S. D. 

Andrew G. Du Mez ..... A. G. D-M. 
William B. Dunning , . . . W. B. D. 

Lionel C Durel.L. C. D. 

Harrison G. Dwight .... II. G. D. 
Edward Dwight Eaton . . . E. D. E. 
Walter Prichard Eaton . . W. P. E. 
Edwin Francis Edcett . . . E. F. E. 
Joseph D. Eggleston . . . . J. D. E. 

William G. Elliott.W. G. E. 

Henry Pratt Fairchild . . . H. P. F. 

Charles Fairman ..C. F. 

Haluk Farmer.H, F. 

m * 

VII 


















Contributors to Volume IX 


Albert M. Farr . . . 


A. M. F. 

Arthur W. Hummel . . . 

A. W. 11. 

Harold U. Faulkner . 


H. U. F. 

Louis C. Hunter . 

L. C. H. 

Albert B. Faust . . . 


A. B. F. 

Asher Isaacs. 

A. I. 

George Haws Feltus . 


G. H. F. 

Theodore H.Jack .... 

T, H. J. 

William W. Fenn . . 


W. W. F. 

Joseph Jackson . 

J* h 

Gustav J. Fiebeger . . 


G. J. F. 

Russell Leigh Jackson . . 

R. 1.. J. 

Oscar W. Firkins . . 


0. W. F. 

J. Franklin Jameson . . . 

J. F. J- 

John C. Fitzpatrick . 


J. C. F. 

Walter Louis Jennings . . 

W. !.. J - s. 

Percy Scott Flippin . 


P. S. F. 

Willis L. Jepson . 

W. L. J ». 

John E. Flitcroft . . 


J. E. F. 

W. L. G. Joerg . 

w. l j. 

George T. Flom . . . 


G. T. F. 

Allen S. Johnson .... 

A. S. j. 

Blanton Fortson . . 


B. F. 

Edgar H. Johnson .... 

K. H. J. 

George Henry Fox . . 


G. H. F—x. 

Rupus M.Jones. 

R. M. J. 

John H. Frederick . . 


J. H. f. 

Willard Leonard Jones . 

W. I.. Jo. 

Douglas S. Freeman . 


D. S. F. 

H. Donaldson Jordan . . 

II. 11. j. 

William L. Frierson , 


W. L. F. 

Charles H. Judd. 

V . H. J. 

Claude M. Fuess . . . 


C. M. F. 

Louise Phelps Kellogg . . 

L, I*. K. 

John F. Fulton . . . 


J. F. F. 

John Kieran. 

J. K. 

Ralph H. Gabriel . . 


R. H. G. 

Fiske Kimball. 

F. K. 

Francis P. Gaines . . 


F. P. G. 

Edward Chase Kirkland . 

K. t\ K. 

Herbert P. Gambrell 


H. P. G. 

Charles M. Knapp .... 

t\ M. K. 

Dorothy Ganfield . . 


D. G. 

James 0. Knauss. 

J.O. K. 

William A. Ganoe . . 


W. A. G. 

Rhea Mansfield Knittlk . 

R. M. K. 

Curtis W. Garrison , 


C. W. G, 

H. W. Howard Knott . . . 

II. W, II. K. 

George Harvey Genzmer . . 

G. H. G. 

Daniel C. Knowlton . . . 

I). V , K. 

Margarita S. Gerry . 

• * . 

M. S. G. 

J. H. A. Lacker. 

J. II. A, I., 

W. J. Ghent. 


W. J. G. 

Suzanne LaFollette . . . 

S, LaF. 

Lawrence H. Gipson . 


L. H. G. 

William 0, Land ..... 

W. ti, L, 

George W. Goble . . 
Armistead Churchill 

Gor- 

G. W. G. 

William Chauncy Langdon 
Conrad H. Lanza . 

W. (\ L. 

. (Mi.!,. 

don, Jr . 


A. C. G„ Jr. 

Barnes F. Lathrop .... 

. H. F, L. 

Henry S. Graves . . . 


H. S. G. 

Kenneth S. Latourktte . 

. K. S, !., 

Evarts B. Greene „ . 


E. B. G. 

Henry Leppert . 

. If. L 

Anne King Gregorie . 


A. K. G. 

William R. Leonard . . . 

W. R. I.. 

Gurney C. Gue . . . 


G. C. G. 

Arnold J. Lien. 

. A. J. L 

Le Roy R. Hapen . . . 


L. R. H. 

William E. Lingelbach . . 

W, K. I.. 

Philip M. Hamer . . . 


P. M. H, 

George W. Littlxiialxs . . 

(J. W. I.. 

J. G. deR. Hamilton . 


J. G. deR. H. 

John Uri Lloyd ..... 

. J. V . I.. 

Walton H. Hamilton . 


W. H. H. 

Charles Sumner Lobincier 

, V . S. L. 

Alvin F. Harlow . . . 


A. F. H. 

Ella Lonn. 

. K.L. 

Mary Bronson Hartt 


M. B. H. 

Louise R. Loomis. 

. L. R. I.. 

George E. Hastings . 


G. E. H. 

William 0. Lynch .... 

. W. O. L. 

George H. Haynes . . 


G. H. H. 

Thomas B, Macartney . . 

. T. B. M. 

Earl L. W. Heck . . . 


E. L. W. H. 

Thomas McCrae. 

. T. M, 

Daniel Heefner . . . 


D. H. 

R. P. McCutcheon .... 

. R. P. M. 

William J. Henderson 


W. T. H. 

Philip B. McDonald . . . 

. P. B. M. 

Stella Herron .... 


S. H. 

Walter M. McFarland . , 

. W, M. M. 

Edwin B. Hewes . . . 


E. B. H. 

Reginald C. McGrane . . 

. R. V . Mcti. 

Frederick C. Hicks . 


F. C. H. 

Anne Bush MacLear . . . 

. A. H. .M«L. 

John Donald Hicks . 


J. D. H. 

W. C. Mallaueu . 

. W. C. M. 

Homer Carey Hockett 


H. C. H. 

Dumas Malone ..... 

. D M, 

John Haynes Holmes . 


J. H. H. 

Louis L. Mann . 

. L. L. M. 

Lucius H. Holt . . . 


L. H. H. 

Lionel S. Marks ..... 

. L, S. M—s. 

Henry D. Hooker , . 


H. D. H-k-r. 

Frederick H. Martens . . 

. F. H. M. 

Harvey D. Hoover . . 


H. D. H—v—r. 

Alpheus T. Mason .... 

. A. T. M. 

Leland Ossian Howard 


L. 0. H. 

Albert P. Mathews . . . 

. A. P. M. 

F. W. Howay ..... 


F. W. H. 

Bernard Mayo ...... 

. B. M—o. 

M. A. DeWolje Howe 

. . * 

M. A. DeW. H. 

Lawrence S. Mayo .... 

. L. S. M—o. 


viii 






















|)i»N*,\n> H, Mkn/h, . , 

Contributors to Volume IX 

. I). H. M. Charles Dudley Rhodes . 

. C.D.R. 

M wiMN I). Mf ktskss . . 

. N. 1). M. 

Irving B. Richman .... 

. I. B. R. 

Rtmnu 1.. nt> k . . 

■ K. L. M— r . 

Robert K. Riegel . . . . 

. R. E. R. 

(*K.»»ki;v !\ Mi kkiu , . , 

. i\ M. 

Burr A. Robinson .... 

. B. A. R. 

I'K\VK J. Mm vj v . , , 

• F.J.M. 

William A. Robinson . . . 

. W. A. R. 

RWMmxD t . MlLlF.K . , 

. R.C.1I. 

J. Magnus Roh.ne .... 

. J. M. R. 

Wiijj.w >N*m Millfk . , 

. W. S. M. 

Edward \V. Root. 

. E. W. R. 

iMtwis Mims, Jk. , , 

■ K. M., Jr. 

Robert K. Root. 

, R. K. R. 

Broadi s Minum . , 

B. M !. 

Earle Dudley Ross . . . 

. E. D. R. 

Saw rt Turn s Mm m u 

S. i \ M* 

Frank Edward Ross . . , 

. F. E. R. 

Cam \\ , Mu max 

t\ W. M. 

John K. Rothknstbiner . . 

. J. E. R. 

li. \. Mn»r»-rr 

!■:. V. M, 

Ralph L. Rusk. 

. R. L. R. 

juii.v I Him kt» k Moiiim 

J. F. ,M. 

A. M. Sakolski. 

. A. M. S. 

l H\SU M-«S WHAN 

F. M -n. 

Carlton Savage. 

. C.S. 

VrtMtu . 

. i\ M -4. 

Joseph Schafer. 

. J. s. 

k, M‘Hiv , . . 

. H. K. M. 

Israel Schapiro. 

. I.S. 

Aim *r H M*«m#»* 

A. B. M -e. 

Ferdinand Schevill . . . 

. F. S. 

Suu * i !m i* • t M*’vis >v 

S. !■:. M. 

Lawrence H. Schmehl . . 

. L. H. S. 

Khtiakd H. M-khi ■ 

r. a. m. 

llKKHKRT \\\ ScTIXKIDKK . . 

. II. W. S—d—r. 

Richard J„ Monti's 

R. f.. M~n. 

11. W. Schoknberger . , . 

. H.W.S-g-r. 

Kl NMtH H, Mt lih’H k 

K. Jt. M. 

Carl F. Sohrkibek .... 

. C. F. S. 

H, Eduard Nnnh 

It. K. X. 

Eldor Paul .Schulze , . . 

. E. P. S. 

Art a\ XruNn 

. A. N. 

M. G. Sekug. 

. M.G.S. 

ItYUAN l\ X»:«>-» 1 

L V. N. 

ttEoKGE Dudley Seymour . 

. (5.1). S. 

K^uHit Haxiim.s Nu jtujs 

R. it. X. 

Wilfred B. Shaw. 

. W-tl. B. s. 

Mi nits Not am» 

S, X. 

William Bristol Shaw . . 

. W-m. B. S. 

JmIIX K-UIUmM UftW# 

J, R. 0. 

Guv Emery Simpler . . . 

. G. 1C. S. 

i kAVA Utt su v 

F, t.. O. 

Fred W. Shipman. 

. F.W.S. 

WAttFfc PACH 

W. I*. 

Joseph F. Siler . 

. J. F. S. 

Mhdk»d H. t'Ai ut» 

m, a. p. 

Theodore Sizer. 

. T. S. 

Vlfti'k |{. 1‘Attsttx 

V. It. I*. 

William Roy Smith .... 

. W. R. S. 

Siam > v M, Pasi.i uts 

s. M. J’. 

J. Duncan Spaeth .... 
Frank K. Spaulding . . , 

. J. D. S. 

Ftot AkDs A Park 

!•:. A. f*. 

. F.K.S. 

i RKDIRP' t.ow\N 1'AKsnN 

. i .L. P. 

Charles Worthen Spencer 

. C.W.S. 

HaYUooD J l’»:AR> 1, Jr, 

II. j. R'—c.. Jr. 

Harris Ki.wooh Starr . . 

. ii.E.S. 

r. c*. p*Akv>*• 

t\ C. t*. 

Bertha Monica Stearns . 

. B. M. S. 

T»0>ii*‘k>. I'rAxr 

r. r. i* 

ft. ft. Sudds . .. 

. R.H.S. 

James H. Pikling 

J It. P. 

William A. Sumner .... 

. W. A. S. 

KaU'H !Ukj'<S l‘».kkV 

R.H.P. 

William W, Sweet .... 

. W. W. S. 

Charm * F I'kkSMSs 

C, K. i*. 

Thomas K. Tallmadgk . . 

. T. e. t. 

Frederick T. Persons 

F.T.I*. 

Charles C. Tansill . . . 

. c. e. t. 

A F.verett 1‘eiirsox 

A. K. I*. 

Frank A. Taylor. 

. F. a. t. 

Henry J I'ktkksu.s 

H. J. f-n. 

David Y. Thomas. 

. D. V. T. 

James M. Phaien 

J. M. I*. 

Frederic L. Thompson . . 

. F.L.T. 

Franci* S. Putt tikti k 

F. S. 1*. 

Holland Thompson .... 

. H.T-n. 

I'AI I. l ltkVH.»MuU PHILLIPS 

. IV C. I’. 

Herbert Thoms . 

. II. T— -s. 

Nellie B, I’ll*** 

n. a. i*. 

Charles J. Tilden .... 

. C.J.T. 

David UK Sot 4 I'uuL 

. II. dcS, i*. 

Oliver S. Tones . 

. 0. S. T. 

CHARLES SlHRLKY I'um 

, C. $. v. 

Harrison A. Trexler . . . 

. H.A.T. 

LoCJHK Pol'KB . 

. h, P. 

Edward Tuthill . 

. E.T. 

JULIUS W, PRATT 
fcpWARD PREBLE ... 

J. W. P-t. 

Henry H. Tweedy .... 

. H.H.T. 

K. P. 

William T. Utter .... 

. W. T. U. 

HERBERT !. PRIESTLEY . . 

It. t. P. 

John G. Van Deusen . . . 

. J. G. V-D. 

KtriiAkD J. Purcell . . 

. R. J. P. 

Carl Van Doren. 

. C. V-D. 

ARTHUR fluRftuN QrtXM . . 

A. H. Q. 

Arnold J. F. van Laer . . 

. A. J. F. v-L. 

Bruk Rankin . 

. B. R. 

John V. Van Pelt .... 

. J. V. V-P. 

Htuit M Raup 

H. M. R. 

Deforest Van Slyck . . , 

. DeF.V-S. 

William G. Kkkokx ... 

. W. G. R. 

Van Vkchten Vxeder . , . 

. V. V. V. 


m 


IX 




















Contributors to Volume IX 


Henry R. Viets . 

H. R. V. 

Haroud G. Villard .... 

H. G. V. 

John Martin Vincent . . 

J. M. V. 

Michael Z. Vinokouroff . 

M. Z. V. 

John D. Wade. 

J. D. W. 

J. Herbert Waite .... 

J. H. W. 

Campbell Easter Waters . 

C.E. W. 

Royal B. Way. 

. R. B. W. 

Robert H. Webb. 

. R. H. W. 

Mabel L. Webber .... 

. M.L.W. 

Hutton Webster. 

. H. W— r. 

Allan Westcott . 

. A.W. 

Arthur P. Whitaker . . . 

. A. P. W. 

Melvin J. White. 

. M. J. W. 


Emily Stone Whiteley . . 

E. 

s. 

w. 

W. L. Whittlesey .... 

W 

I. 

w 

Edward Wiest . 

K. 

w 

-t. 

Robert Wild. 

K. 

w 


Harry Emerson Wildes . . 

H. 

K. 

w. 

Mary Wh.uei.mine Williams 

M 

.w 

. w. 

Samuel C. Williams . . . 

S. 

V . 

w. 

Stanley T. Williams . . . 

s. 

T, 

w. 

Tyrrell Williams .... 

T. 

w 


Eola Willis . 

K. 

w 

'"'S. 

Helen Wriokt . 

H. 

w 

t. 

John W. Wright . 

J- 

w. 

w. 

Walter L. Wright. Jr. . . 

W 

. i.. 

w 













DICTIONARY OF 

AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY 


Hibbcn —Jarvis 


HIBBEN, PAXTON PATTISON (Dec. s. 

tXSo-Dre. hji.'Si, diplomat, Miitlicr, journalist, 
vv.ts }m ittt in Indianapolis lud., the eldest child 
uf Thuma<. Fiitirkiu ;nii| Jeanuic Merrill (Ket- 
di.iiu) Hil-tx n, lit- was graduated mini Prince¬ 
ton in iijn.i, 11*4 his iiuistcr’s iIcrht at Harvard 
in t'K»j, and ln;m the study uf law. In ups; 
President Ku. i vrlt c.uisnl him t<> 1«* appointed 
third secretary »f the embassy at St. Petersburg. 
There he billowed the Ru-i.in Revolution of 
with the ahsoihrd interest of a mind upon 
which was imjiressed, for the first time, the ex* 
I'tCfHT of SI* I II injustice. He Illixeil with till* 
revolutioitaiy crowds; he saw them shut down by 
the Kossacl' This e\|«rriencc, more than any¬ 
thing else, delriiuiiied the dilection of his men¬ 
tal tiereliijuiirnt, and it sowed the seed of his 
sympathy with the n iolutionary cause in Rus¬ 
sia after the aUihtinit of the C/arist government. 

During the latter part of the Russo-Japanese 
War he had charge of the interests of Japanese 
prisoners in Russia, On July 18, t»jo6, he went 
to Mexico as second secretary. In this year he 
was admittrd to practice at the bar of the su¬ 
preme court of Indiana. In June jtjoH he was 
appuintrd secretary of the United States lega¬ 
tion at Bogota. Eighteen months later he was 
made secretary of the legation to the Netherlands 
ami Luxntil*mrg, While at The I {ague, he acted 
on liehalf of the United States as secretary of the 
international tribunal in the Yenemrlan arbitra¬ 
tion, Sept, aK-Oct. 25, iQto, In September 1911 
he was honorary delegate to the adjourned meet¬ 
ing of the tnteniatiunal Congress for the purpose 
of promoting uniform legislation concerning let¬ 
ters of exchange. On Felt, I, 1912, he was ap¬ 
pointed secretary of the legation in Chile, In the 
same year he resigned his diplomatic post in or¬ 


der to return to America and ait! in Theodore 
Roosevelt's campaign for the presidency. 

Two years later, at the suggestion of Albert J. 
Beveridge l</.r. |, who was himself running for 
senator, llilihen ran for Congress on the Pro¬ 
gressive ticket, hut was defeated. The war in 
Europe having begun, lie went with Beveridge 
to (iermany, where he wrote unsigned articles 
fur Collier's It'eekly. Early in 1915 he became 
a staff correspondent for the Associated Press, 
and shortly thereafter was sent to Greece, King 
Constantine, he discovered, was unwilling to join 
the Allies without guarantees of territorial in¬ 
tegrity which they, enmeshed in secret treaties, 
were unable to give, 11 iblx*n told the truth about 
the situation until, as tire Allied hold on Greece 
tightened, his dispatches were intercepted and 
the Associated Press recalled him. After his re¬ 
turn he wrote ami lectured on Greece, and pre¬ 
pared his book, Constantine l and the Greek 
People, for publication in the summer of 1917. 
At that time, however, the Allies were about to 
depose Constantine, and Iwausc of official inti¬ 
mations that the book would be untimely, it was 
postponed. It appeared in 1920—a vigorous in¬ 
dictment of Allied Balkan policy, 

Hibtien joined the army in 1917, was sent to 
Camp Grant, ami, in 191ft, to France, His most 
important service there was in the Historical 
Section, where he helped to compile a history of 
American participation in the War; and later, in 
the office of the inspector general, where he as¬ 
sisted Gen, John J, Bradley in an investigation 
of the Welfare Societies. He was discharged in 
August iqiq, with the rank of captain, and was 
sent on a special military mission to Armenia, 
He returned to America in April 1920, 

In July 1921 he went to Russia for the Near 


1 



Hibben 


Hibbins — Hichborn 


East Relief. His report of the effects of the 
famine and the inefficiency of the relief organi¬ 
zations was submitted to a Senate investigating 
committee and printed as a government docu¬ 
ment, but for some reason was almost immedi¬ 
ately destroyed. It was republished in pamphlet 
form by the Nation (An American Report on the 
Russian Famine: Findings of the Russian Com¬ 
mission of the Near East Relief ). Later, as sec¬ 
retary of the American Committee for the Relief 
of Russian Children, he did a valuable humani¬ 
tarian work. 

Of his sympathy with the Russian Revolution 
Hibben made no secret He believed in the idea 
which animated the Revolution—the idea of 
abolishing privilege and founding a government 
based on social justice. Although during his 
last years he was affiliated with radical organiza¬ 
tions in the United States, he was no doctrinaire 
communist. He was too much of an individualist, 
indeed, ever to have worked successfully with 
any organization exacting unquestioning obedi¬ 
ence of its members. It was his misfortune to be 
misunderstood and distrusted alike by conserva¬ 
tives and radicals. His activities occasioned, in 
1923, a military inquiry in which he was defend¬ 
ed by General Bradley. The charges were nebu¬ 
lous ; none the less, two members of the Board 
reported against him. The third member, how¬ 
ever, submitted such a strong report in his favor 
that the War Department disregarded the find¬ 
ings of the majority and renewed his commis¬ 
sion, which he retained in spite of a second in¬ 
vestigation in September 2924. After his death 
his services to Russia were recognized; his ashes 
were sent to Moscow, received with distin¬ 
guished honor by the Russian government, and 
interred with public ceremony in the Novo-De- 
vichy Monastery. 

The last three years of his life were devoted to 
literary work. His Henry Ward Beecher; an 
American Portrait , a brilliantly written but hos¬ 
tile biography, appeared in 1927. At the time 
of his death he had written twenty-one chapters 
of a life of William Jennings Bryan, which was 
completed by C. Hartley Grattan and published 
in 1929. 

On Oct 17, 1916, Hibben was married, in 
Athens, to Cecile Craik of Montgomery, Ala. 
They had one child, Jean Constantine, bom in 
1921, for whom King Constantine stood god¬ 
father. Hibben was a fellow of the Royal Geo¬ 
graphic Society (1909), member of the Japanese 
Order of the Sacred Treasure, chevalier of the 
Czarist Order of St Stanislas, and officer of the 
Greek Order of the Redeemer. 

[Information has been supplied by Mrs. Hibben, Bib- 


ben’s brother, Thomas Hiiihcn, his life-long friem! 
Claude Bowers, anti his friend General Hradlry His 
diplomatic record was furnished by the State i>rpi. A 
biographical note is to he found in H it I! h in 
America, ig-iS-jij. American newspapers gave wide 
publicity to the military "investigations" (see ,Y. }‘ 
Times, csp. September I ; ami carried aci-c.ii.is of 
his career at the time «t his death t - re r-.p obituaries 
in Princeton Alumni Weekly, Dec. 11. :n- 

apolis News and N, Y. Times, Dec. (>, ig.-Sl. The ac ¬ 
count of the public funeral in Mrc-emv is from Dr, 
David li. Dubrovvsky of the Russian Rest Cross J 

S. UV. 


HIBBINS, ANN (<i. June to, ifi.sf*}, alleged 
witch, the widow of an Englishman named 
Moore, became the wife of William Hibbins. a 
wealthy and prominent merchant of Huston, 
Mass., and with him she was admitted as a mem¬ 
ber of the Boston Church, July »*S, liib- 
bins was classed as a "gentleman," was an as 


sistant in the? General Court from 11143 to his 
death in 1654. and also served as colonial agent 
in England. Before his death he lost much of 
his money, and these losses, together with his 
death, were said to have “increased the natural 
crabbedness of his wife's temper’* t Hutchinson, 
post, I, 187). She became unpopular with her 
neighbors and fell under church censure, in 
1655 she was accused of being a witch and was 
brought to trial. The jury found her guilty but 
the magistrates refused to accept the verdict and 
the case went to the General Court. One of her 


English sons hastened to Massachusetts to help 
her but arrived too late, Hubbard says that “to.r 
populi went sore against her, and was 1 bo chiefest 
part of the evidence against her, as some thought" 
(Hubbard, post, p. 574). In spite of the fact 
that an examination of her papers and the usual 
humiliating examination of her body revealed 
no guilt, she was condemned and sentenced to lie 
hanged on June 19, 1656. Gov. John Endecott 
pronounced the death sentence. Her will, made 
on May 27? was a calm and sensible document 
and was executed by influential friends. The 
Rev, John Norton said that she was executed be¬ 
cause she had “more wit than her neighbors." 

[See Th°». Hutchinson, The Hist, of the Colour of 
V ,°'J : , Wm ' H ubtM rd, A Gen. Hist. 
ofNevtbMgland (1815) ; Justin Winsor, The Memorial 
tzfft- of Boston, vol 1 (1880) j S, G, Drakf Aw wai t &i 
Witchcraft in flew England ( 1869} j J. B. Moore IhJt 
£<>" Govs, of New Plymouth, oid Moss, /VoTo*. 
Proe. Mass. Nut . See ., a ser„ vols, I ( 1885, «nd !V 
(1889) : «nd Records of the Gov, and Company of the 
k. a *f: * n New England, vol, IV, pt, 1 ( Ann 

H-bbrn*'name is often silled Hibbens. In thVreiard 
a wilJ, New*Bug, Hist, a%d GtHtoi. Rta lul* 
t8sa, it appears as it is given here,] I T* JL 

HICHBORN, PHILIP (Mar. 4,1839-M'ay i, 
1910), naval officer, advanced by his own talents 
from the place of shipwright apprentice to the 
grade of chief constructor with the rank of rear 

admiral According to tradition, he was descend- 



Ilichborn 

vt\ on tin* paternal Mth* from Paul Revere, His 
parent* \\% iv Philip and Martha t Gould) Hkh- 
burn. Horn at Uh;irk>im\n, Mass., he gradu¬ 
ated at the age of sixteen from the high school 
in Ho-ton and was indentured to the United 
States government as a shipwright apprentice at 
the Hiarh-’town navy yard. His work was of 
such merit that the Secretary of the Xavy or¬ 
dered that he he given a special course of theoret¬ 
ical training in naval construction. Near the 
outbreak of the Uivil War, he went to the Pacific 
< Vust as ship carpenter on the clipper ship Dash¬ 
ing U\i>* v, Upon his arrival, he again entered 
government employ at the navy yard, Mare Isl¬ 
and, Uahtoruia. Here likewise hU work was of 
such quality that he rapidly advanced through 
the various civilian poshinns and on June 2i\ 
tSfn ua> appointed a^i taut naval constructor, 
with a commpMon in the United States navy. 

The following year, he was detached from 
Mare Uland and ordered to the navy yard at 
Portsmouth, X. II, In 1875 he took a competi¬ 
tive examination and after passing number one, 
was commissioned mo a! constructor on Mar, 12, 
1875. In the same year he was transferred to 
League Islam! navy yard* Philadelphia. From 
*88$ to 1X80 he was a member of the Board of 
Inspection ami Survey, and in June 1884, he wan 
detached o that he might visit various shipyards 
in KurnjH*, make a thorough survey, and report 
the results the following Oetutar, This task he 
performed with his usual perspicacity, producing 
a m>trworthy document of nearly one hundred 
pages, tilled with plans am! charts [Report on 
iiuropeon ihwk'Vttni$ t * 885 ), This report wan 
of such importance that it was used as a text¬ 
book hy naval men, Xovem!»er 188 j found Ilich¬ 
born assistant to the chief of the Bureau of Con- 
Ntruction and Repair in tfu* Xavy Department at 
Washington, Several years in this position fit¬ 
ted him to take over the duties of head of the bu¬ 
reau, ami on Sept, 7, iKoj* he was commissioned 
chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair, 
and chief constructor with the rank of commo¬ 
dore* later rear admiral* This position he held 
until he retired* on Mar, 4, iqoi . 

After his retirement* Uirhbarn kept actively 
in touch with naval construction ami was called 
upon frequently hy the Xavy Department to act 
in an advisory capacity. He was thus able to 
give much valuable aid in building the latest type 
of dreadnought* During Ids career he made two 
notable inventions: the Franklin life buoy and 
the Hichbom balanced turrets for battleships. 
The latter was of the utmost importance in naval 
construction. Before Hichbom perfected his in¬ 
vention, the position of the heavy guns caused 


Hickenl coper 

the battleship to roll sideways when all the turret 
guns were trained to one side. By shifting the 
weight of the gun mounts and recoil apparatus, 
Ilichborn was able to turn the guns in any direc¬ 
tion and still preserve an even keel. In 1900 he 
published Standard Designs for Boats of the 
United States Navy ; he was the author of a num¬ 
ber of other professional papers and was a mem¬ 
ber of various professional and patriotic socie¬ 
ties. He was married in November 1875 to Jen¬ 
nie M, Franklin, of which marriage a son and a 
daughter were born. He died in Washington, 
D. G 

[L. R, Hamersly, The Records of Living Officers of 
the U. $. Navy and Marine Corps (5th ed., 1894); 
Who's IVhn in America * 1910*11; R A. Gould, The 
Family of Zarc he us Could of Tops field ( 1895); Seien- 
tifk American Supp.> Mar. 4, 1901 ; Army and Navy 
May 7, 19m; Washington Tost, livening Star 
(Washington), May a, 1910.] A.R.B. 

HJCKENLOOPER, ANDREW (Aug, 10, 
1837-May 12, 1904), engineer, Union soldier, 
was a descendant of Andrew Hickcnlooper, of 
Dutch stock, who in 1693 settled in York County, 
Pa, In 1836 a grandson, Andrew the third, re¬ 
moved with his wife, Abigail (Cox), of Irish 
blood, from the neighborhood of Grccnsburg, 
Pa., to Hudson, Ohio. Here Andrew the fourth 
was horn. Later changes in his parents’ resi¬ 
dence account for his attendance first at the pub¬ 
lic schools of Circlevillc and then at St. Xavier 
and Woodward colleges, Cincinnati. In this city, 
in 1836, he entered the office of the city engineer; 
in 1859 he was ntadc city surveyor. When the 
Civil War began he recruited the 5th Ohio Inde¬ 
pendent Pottery and saw service under Fremont 
at Jefferson City, Mo., in the autumn of 1861. 
The following March he was transferred to 
Grant’s army. He distinguished himself in the 
campaign in western Tennessee and was rapidly 
advanced to the rank of chief engineer of the 
XVII Army Corps, Having won Grant's ad¬ 
miration at Shiloh, he was placed in charge of 
engineering operations in the siege of Vicksburg, 
and after the city fell the board of honor of the 
XVII Corps awarded him a gold medal. He ac¬ 
companied Sherman on the Atlanta campaign 
and during the final march through the Caro- 
linas, was present at the surrender of Johnston, 
and, on recommendation of Generals Howard, 
Sherman, and Grant, was brevetted brigadier- 
general on May 20,1865. 

In July 1866, Hickcnlooper was appointed 
United States marshal for the Southern District 
of Ohio, but quitted this post in 1871 to become 
city engineer of Cincinnati. The next year the 
president of the Cincinnati Gas Light & Coke 
Company selected him as vice-president With- 

3 



Hickok 

in six months, according to his superior, he knew 
more about the company’s affairs than the presi¬ 
dent himself. From this office he advanced to 
the presidency in 1877, and although he allowed 
himself to become lieutenant-governor of the 
state in 1879, he refused reelection, declaring 
that he would rather conduct the affairs of his 
company successfully than become president of 
the United States. This devotion to business, 
which turned him from politics, deprived him of 
vacations and perhaps shortened his life* He 
fought business rivals as he had fought the Con¬ 
federates, with all his might. He found time, 
however, to engage in civic affairs. In politics 
a Republican, he was for years a power in the 
political life of Cincinnati. On Feb. 13, 1867, 
he had married Maria L. Smith, daughter of 
Adolphus H. and Sarah (Bates) Smith, and 
their home became a notable gathering place, 
where the old soldier loved to recount war-time 
experiences. He published several papers and 
other writings, chief among which are The Hat¬ 
tie of Shiloh (1903) and books dealing with 
phases of the industry in which he was engaged, 
notably Street Lighting (1899), Fnol-gas for 
Cincinnati (1893, 1896); and Fairy Talcs, or 
Romance of an Arc Electric Light (1901), In 
January 1903, he made a visit to Mexico in quest 
of health. At that time he was already suffering 
from cystitis, a disease which caused his death 
in his sixty-seventh year. 

[C T. Greve, Centennial Hist, of Cincinnati and Rep¬ 
resentative Citizens, vol. II (1904); Whitelaw Kcid, 
Ohio in the War, vol. I <1868); The Biog, Cyc, and 
Portrait Gallery . % . of Ohio, vol. I (1883); War of 
the Rebellion; Official Records (Army), see Index; Re- 
port of the Proe of the Soc, of the Army of the Term. 

• : *9°J (1900): Cincinnati Enquirer, and Commer¬ 
cial Tribune, May 13, 1904.3 ^ jj 

HICKOK, JAMES BUTLER (May 27,1837- 
Aug. 2, 1876), soldier, scoot, and United States 
marshal of border posts, commonly known as 
Wild Bill, was bora at Troy Grove, La Salle 
County, Ill. He was the grandson of Otis Hick¬ 
ok, an emigrant from Ireland who fought at 
Plattsburg in the War of 1812, and the fourth 
son of William Alonzo and Polly (Butler) Hick¬ 
ok, both of Grand Isle County, Vt. As a youth 
he was a hunter and the best shot in his part of 
Illinois. In 1855 he made his way to Leaven¬ 
worth, Kan., where he was industrious, peaceably 
inclined, and willing to work at any honest task. 
He became an active free-state man and was one 
of Gen. Jim Lane’s force. In 1856 he was elect¬ 
ed constable of Monticello Township, Johnson 
County, Kan., where he had taken a preemption 
claim, and proved himself an efficient and faith¬ 
ful officer. He then became a driver for a stage 


Hickok 

company operating over the old Santa Fc Trail. 
In this service, in the Katun Pass, he wa- at¬ 
tacked by a cinnamon hear, which he killed with 
his bowie-knife. He was so terribly injured that 
it was not believed be could live; but lie recov¬ 
ered and was transferred to the Ovt-rland Stage, 
on the Oregon Trail. Here at Kock Creek Sta¬ 
tion, Jefferson County, Xebr., July i„\ tStu, he 
had his famous battle with the notorious Me- 
Canles Gang, in which he killed MeCanlcs and 
two of his men. 

During the Civil War he served as a Union 
scont and spy, attached to headijuarters at 
Springfield, Mo. More than once lie was cap¬ 
tured and sentenced to be shot as a spy. I lis ser¬ 
vices were invaluable and his adventures and 
escapes were marvelous. In 1805, in the public 
square at Springfield, he killed Dave Tutt, a Fed - 
era! soldier associated with Wild Bill a* scout, 
who had turned traitor and joined the Confed¬ 
erate army. 

In 1866 lie was appointed deputy United States 
marshal at Fort Riley, Kan. His territory was 
a wild country, four hundred miles wide and 
five hundred long. He killed many thieves and 
outlaws and recovered hundreds of stolen horses 
and mules. On this fnattier he served also as 
scout under Generals Hancock, Sheridan, anti 
Custer, and took part in the battles with In¬ 
dians fought by tiiese officers. From this service 
he resigned in 1867 and in tWkj lieeame marshal 
of Hays City, then the roughest town cm the 
border. Here he killetl several and was once at¬ 
tacked by three men, all of whom he killed. In 
1871 (Apr. 15-Dec. 13) he was marshal of Abi¬ 
lene, Kan., then the great shipping-point for 
Texas cattle. It was a raw and turbulent town 
but he ruled it with an iron hand, presenting the 
unique spectacle of one man, by his courage and 
skill, holding at bay all the lawless element of 
one of the wildest towns on the bonier. He 
killed a number of men at Abilene, his most fa¬ 
mous victim being Phil Coe, a leader of the 
Texans during the cattle days, who kept a saloon 
and gambling-house and who had attempted to 
kill him. 

Wild Bill was an exceptionally handsome and 
fascinating man, quiet in manner, with nothing 
to suggest the border bully. He never killed a 
man except in self-defense or in the line of offi- 
cial duty. His friends and admirers included the 
most conspicuous soldiers and frontiersmen of 
his day. In March 1876, he was married at 
Cheyenne, Wyo., to Mrs. Agnes lake, who sur¬ 
vived him. Wild Bill toured the East with Buf- 
falo Bill in 1872-73, afterward going to Dead- 
wood, Dakota Territory, where he was murdered 



Hickok 

by Jack McCall. He is buried in Mount Moriah 
Cemetery, Deadwood. 

. [Material in private collection of author is the prin- 
Cipai source. G. A. Custer, Wild Life on the Plains 
(1874), E. B. Custer, Tenting on the Plains (1887) and 
Following the Guidon (1890) are reliable, but J W 
Buel, Heroes of the Plains (1882), and Frank J. Wil- 
stach, Wild Bill Hickok (1926) contain errors. G. W. 
Nichols’ article in Harpers' New Monthly Mag., Feb! 
1867, is good except for the account of the fight at Rock 
Creek Station, which Hickok repudiated as soon as he 
read it, saying he never told Nichols that story. See 
also Kan. State Hist Soc. Colls., vol. XVII (1928); 
Stuart Henry, Conquering our Great Am. Plains 
(1930); and W. E. Eisele, The Real te Wild Bill" Hickok 
(1931), an impressionistic account which states that he 
married Mrs. Agnes Lake Thatcher.] ■^7 ^ £ 

HICKOK, LAURENS PERSEUS (Dec. 29, 
1798-May 6, 1888), clergyman, philosopher, was 
born in Bethel, Conn., the son of Ebenezer 
and Polly (Benedict) Hickok. He graduated at 
Union College in 1820; studied theology under 
Rev. William Andrews of Danbury and Rev. 
Bennet Tyler [ q.v .]; was married on Oct. 9, 
1822, to Elizabeth Benedict Taylor of Kent, 
Conn.; and was ordained and installed as pastor 
at Kent on Dec. 10,1823. There he remained for 
six years. At one time during his pastorate for¬ 
mal charges were brought of “unministerial con¬ 
duct, such as whistling, vaulting fences, running 
on the streets, and driving a fast horse” (Francis 
Atwater, History of Kent, Conn., 1897, p. 52), 
but the case against him was dismissed by the 
Consociation. On July 15, 1829, he became pas¬ 
tor of the church at Litchfield, Conn., where he 
remained until 1836. He was professor of Chris¬ 
tian theology in Western Reserve College, 1836— 
44, and in Auburn Theological Seminary, 1844- 
52. In the latter year he went to Union College 
as vice-president and professor of mental and 
moral philosophy. In 1856 he acted as moderator 
in the new-school Presbyterian General Assem¬ 
bly, During the declining years of President 
Nott of Union, Hickok carried most of the actual 
duties of the presidency, succeeding to the office 
in 1866. He resigned in 1868 to devote himself 
to his literary labors and passed the rest of his 
life in retirement at Amherst, Mass. He was a 
man of stalwart frame, massive head, robust 
health, and indomitable energy. Besides pub¬ 
lished sermons and addresses, he was the author 
of Rational Psychology (1849), A System of 
Moral Science (1853), Empirical Psychology 
(1854; rev. ed. 1882), Creator and Creation 
(1872), Rational Cosmology (1858), Humanity 
Immortal (1872), The Logic of Reason (1875). 

As a philosopher Hickok was unquestionably 
the ablest American dialectician of his day. Com¬ 
mitted by his training to a defense of the Chris¬ 
tian theology, he undertook this in no parochial 
spirit but was determined to base his theology 


Hickok 

on the firmest and broadest of rational founda¬ 
tions. “How much more rapidly,” he wrote, 
“may the knowledge and worship of the true God 
spread, when philosophy herself shall become 
converted to, and baptized in, a Gospel theism!” 
{Rational Cosmology, p. 53). To the task of con¬ 
verting modern philosophy to theism he brought 
a keen and subtle intellect, scornful of any aid 
from mysticism, confident in the power of rea¬ 
son to advance by serried arguments to the con¬ 
quest of absolute knowledge. The terms of his 
problem were set for him by Kant’s Critique of 
Pure Reason , whose significance he understood 
better than did his theological contemporaries. 
He saw the folly of reverting, like McCosh, Por¬ 
ter, and Hopkins, to the pre-Kantian position of 
naive realism; advance along the lines of the 
German idealists would lead to pantheism; while 
to remain within the negative conclusions of the 
first Critique itself would be to accept a still more 
abhorrent skepticism. In his earliest and most 
important work, Rational Psychology , which was 
the first profound treatment of epistemology that 
had come from any American pen since Jonathan 
Edwards, Hickok analyzed the entire process of 
knowledge, endeavoring to reach a priori prin¬ 
ciples free from the subjectivity of the Kantian 
categories. The resultant philosophy, which he 
called “Constructive Realism,” stressed the “con¬ 
structive” powers of the mind so far that the 
“realism” was seriously endangered. Accepting 
the current distinction between the faculties of 
the sensibility, understanding, and reason, he 
credited the reason with an intuitive insight of 
“comprehension” altogether different from the 
discursive procedure of the understanding. In 
the light of reason thus conceived, he argued for 
the being of God and the individual soul as su¬ 
pernatural forces: the existence of nature as a 
whole could only be explained as the creation of 
a power not itself a part of nature; knowledge 
of phenomena as phenomena could only be valid 
for a knower who is not himself a phenomenon. 
In his System of Moral Science Hickok applied 
the same principles to the field of ethics and ar¬ 
gued that the facts of the moral life require and 
demonstrate the reality of the individual soul as 
a free agent His ethical views were rigoristic 
and largely Kantian. In his Rational Cosmology 
he expounded the a priori principles according to 
which the universe must have been created and 
also showed with much ingenuity that as a mat¬ 
ter of scientific fact it was actually created as it 
must have been. In this excursion into physics 
he came dangerously near to falling into the maw 
of pantheism, always gaping uncomfortably near 
his theism. 



Hickok — Hicks 

Despite the Platonic and Kantian elements in 
his philosophy, Hickok was an original and pow¬ 
erful thinker. His works were widely acclaimed 
at the time of publication. J. H. Seelye [ q.v .] 
wrote of them, “They represent the highest at¬ 
tainments in speculative thought which the 
American mind has yet reached; and if we are 
not mistaken respecting the increasing force of 
their influence, they promise to found a school of 
philosophy with a prominent and permanent 
place in the history of the world's speculation” 
(Bibliotheca Sacra, April 1859, P- 2 53 )- Hickok 
was severely attacked, however, by Edwin Hall, 
his successor in the Auburn Theological Sem¬ 
inary {Princeton Review, October 1861; Ameri¬ 
can Theological Review, October 1862) as be¬ 
ing after all an idealist and pantheist malgre lui 
There was considerable truth in the charge, and 
with the growth of idealistic philosophy in Amer¬ 
ica Hickok’s works came to seem a mere half¬ 
way house toward the later position. They fell 
into undeserved neglect, and by the time of the 
twentieth-century revival of realism they were 
utterly forgotten. 

[For Hickok’s philosophy, in addition to references 
above, see New Englander, Nov. 1882; Am. Theol. 
Rev., Jan., Apr., July 1862; Princeton Rev., July 1862. 
For his life, see The Cong. Yr. Bk. (1889) ; J. M. Bailey 
and S. B. Hill, Hist, of Danbury, Conn. (1896) ; P. K. 
Kilboume, Sketches and Chronicles of the Town of 
Litchfield (1859) ; Cornelius Van Santvoord and Tayler 
Lewis, Memoirs of Eliphalet Nott (1876) ; A Record 
of the Commemoration ... of the One Hundredth An¬ 
niversary of the Pounding of Union Coll. (1897) ; A. V. 
V. Raymond,. Union Univ., vol. I (1907) ; Springfield 
Daily Republican, May 7,1888; The Presbyterian. May 

I2 ’ l888 * ] E. S. B—s. 

HICKOK, WILD BILL [See Hickok, James 
Butler, 1837-1876]. 

HICKS, ELIAS (Mar. 19,1748-Feb. 27,1830), 
Quaker preacher, leader of the separation in the 
Society of Friends, was born in Hempstead 
Township, Long Island, N. Y., fifth in descent 
from John Hicks, who came to America about 
1638. He was the son of John and Martha 
(Smith) Hicks, who shortly before Elias's birth 
had become members of the Society of Friends. 
He received a meager education, and spent much 
time as a boy in fishing and hunting; but he pos¬ 
sessed a natively keen, strong mind and acquired 
the habit of diligent reading. At the age of thir¬ 
teen, his mother having died two years before, 
he went to live with a married brother, and at 
seventeen he apprenticed himself to a carpenter. 
In 1771 he married Jemima Seaman, daughter 
of Jonathan Seaman of Jericho, Long Island, by 
whom he had four sons and seven daughters. 
After his marriage he lived on the Seaman farm, 
which he managed until his death. 


Hicks 

He began to make short “religious visits” t< 
nearby places, but as time went on these visit! 
became more extensive. Walt Whitman, wh< 
frequently heard him and admired him, describe! 
the eloquent manner of public address which h< 
developed. By the time he had reached middh 
life he was recognized as one of the two or thre< 
most effective Quaker preachers of his period 
Immense audiences, both of Quakers and non- 
Quakers, flocked to hear him, especially in th( 
new settlements of the Middle West. His pop¬ 
ularity was perhaps greater in Philadelphic 
than in any other Quaker center. He was a tall 
straight, impressive figure with clean-shaver 
face, expansive forehead, and prominent eye¬ 
brows, and was always dressed in utmost drat 
simplicity. He was unusually sensitive to th« 
movings of conscience and rigidly honest. Pos¬ 
sessing a tender, humane spirit, quickly touchec 
by either human or animal suffering, he was all 
his life a powerful advocate of kindness to ani¬ 
mals and a pleader for enlarged rights and op¬ 
portunities for unprivileged classes of people. 
He was an opponent of slavery and a devoted 
friend of the slave. 

From 1815 onwards, when he was already 
sixty-seven years old, he became recognized as 
the exponent and champion of liberal views, 
which his conservative opponents preferred to 
call radical and dangerous. The ideas which 
formed the content of his sermons and discourses 
are somewhat difficult to formulate. They do not 
come under well-known and easily recognized 
patterns or rubrics. He had a strong bent toward 
an extreme Quietism. Outward authorities, ex¬ 
ternal performances, and historical revelations 
held in his mind a relatively unimportant status. 
He gave the inward aspect and sphere of re¬ 
ligion an unusual emphasis. The inward Light 
became for him the all-important central feature 
of life and religion. He was often called a “Uni¬ 
tarian,” but his interpretation of Christ does 
not correspond to the usual Unitarian types of 
thought. He sharply discriminated between the 
Jesus of history and the eternal spiritual Christ. 
Jesus, according to his conception, was essen¬ 
tially “human,” a perfect man, the completion 
and fulfilment of human life, a “prophet” of the 
highest order. In him, Hicks taught, dwelt in su¬ 
preme measure the eternal Christ who was, for 
him, the spiritual revelation of God and who 
likewise dwells in all men in all ages as the in¬ 
ward Light and spiritual Guide. This inward 
Christ, he held, is the true, only, and all-suffi¬ 
cient Saviour. Hicks strenuously opposed the 
so-called evangelical doctrines of salvation which 
seemed to him man-made “innovations ” He 

6 



Hicks 

himself pushed over to the other extreme and 
held that the entire work and process of salva¬ 
tion is within man and not something historically 
and outwardly accomplished. This emphasis of 
Hicks on the inward aspect of religion and his 
slender interest in the historical aspect, came to 
formulation at a time when there was a strong 
wave of evangelical thought prevailing in many 
sections of the Society of Friends, and the colli¬ 
sion of views was inevitable. Other situations 
existed which were factors in the separation 
which in 1827-28 took place, but the theological 
collision was beyond question the major factor. 
Hicks was not present in person when the first 
Quaker separation occurred in Philadelphia in 
April 1827, but his name was from the first popu¬ 
larly and unofficially attached to the liberal 
Quaker branch that emerged from the contro¬ 
versy; He was present when the separation oc¬ 
curred a year later (May 1828) in New York. 
Separations followed, during the year 1828, in 
Ohio and in Baltimore, and a small division oc¬ 
curred in Indiana. The terms “Hicksite” and 
“Orthodox” which came into wide use to dis¬ 
criminate the two branches of the Society of 
Friends in the sections where separations oc¬ 
curred have never been officially recognized. 
Hicks continued to preach and to expound his 
religious position far on into a virile old age, 
dying from the effect of a paralytic stroke. 

{Jour, of the Life and Religious Labours of Elias 
Hicks (1832); The Quaker (4 vols., 1827-28), con¬ 
taining a series of sermons by Hicks taken in short¬ 
hand by M, T. C. Gould; Walt Whitman. Complete 
Prose Works (1892); J. J. Foster, Report of the Tes¬ 
timony in . . . the Court of Chancery (2 vols., 1831); 
Jour . of Thomas Shillitoe (2 vols., 1839); A Letter 
from Anna Braithwaite to Elias Hicks (1825); S. M. 
Janney, Hist, of the Religious Society of Friends (4 
vols., 1859-67) ; R. M. Jones, The Later Periods of 
Quakerism (2 vols., 1921); H. W. Wilbur, Life and 
Labors of Elias Hicks (1910); Edward Grubb, Separa¬ 
tions (1914); Elbert Russell, The Separation After a 
Century (1928) ; Jour, of the Life and Religious La¬ 
bours of John Comly (1853) ; Miscellaneous Repository 
(4 vols., 1827-32),] R.M.J. 

HICKS, JOHN (Oct. 18, 1823-Oct. 8, 1890), 
portrait painter, born at Newtown, Bucks Coun¬ 
ty, Pa., was the son of Joseph and Jane (Bond) 
Hides and was descended from Robert Hicks 
who arrived at Plymouth in November 1622. At 
fifteen he was employed by his father’s cousin, 
Edward Hicks, to learn the trade of coach paint¬ 
ing. While thus engaged he painted a portrait 
of his employer which so far gained the approval 
of his family that he was permitted to go, the 
following year, to Philadelphia, where he studied 
at the Pennsylvania Academy. He continued his 
studies at the National Academy in New York 
and in 1841 he won public notice with his “Death 
of Abel.” In 1845 he went abroad to study. He 


Hicks 

visited London, Florence, and Rome, then com¬ 
pleted his training in Paris in the atelier of 
Thomas Couture. On his return to New York 
in 1849 he found a ready demand for portraits 
and in 1851 he was elected to the National Acad¬ 
emy. The list of his sitters is a long one, in¬ 
cluding Henry Ward Beecher, Fitz-Greene Hal- 
leck, William Cullen Bryant, T. Addison Rich¬ 
ards, Bayard Taylor, Oliver Wendell Holmes, 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beech¬ 
er Stowe, Daniel Wesley Middleton, General 
Meade, Edwin Booth (in the character of Iago), 
and Abraham Lincoln. A portrait of the artist’s 
wife is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum, 
New York; his portraits of William M. Evarts 
and Hon. Gulian C. Verplanck hang in the Cen¬ 
tury Club, New York; that of Hon. Luther Brad- 
ish is at the New York Historical Society; and 
that of Stephen Foster is in the collection of 
Thomas B. Clarke. In addition to his portraits 
Hicks painted a number of compositions. These 
include “The Harem,” “Shelley’s Grave,” “Ita¬ 
lia,” and “Mount Veusius,” and a large portrait- 
group of American authors. Typical of the por¬ 
trait painting of the nineteenth century, which 
has been so largely superseded by photography, 
his work derives its main interest from the sub¬ 
jects he painted. He died at Thomwood, Tren¬ 
ton Falls, N. Y. 

[H. T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists (1867) ; C. E. 
Clement and Laurence Hutton, Artists of the Nine¬ 
teenth Century (1879) ; G. A. Hicks, “Thos. Hicks, 
Artist, a Native of Newtown,” Bucks County Hist. Soc. 
Colls., IV (1917), 89-92; Evening Post (N. Y.), Oct. 
10,1890.] W.P. 

HICKS, JOHN (Apr. 12,1847-Dec. 20,1917), 
editor, diplomat, was born at Auburn, N. Y., a 
son of John and Maria Hicks. When he was 
four years old his parents moved to Detroit, 
Mich., and later to Wisconsin where they finally 
settled in Waupaca County. The father, a stone 
mason and weaver, enlisted in the 32nd Wiscon¬ 
sin Volunteer Infantry in the third year of the 
Civil War and was killed, February 1865, during 
a skirmish in South Carolina. The boy, who was 
now sixteen, had picked up such schooling as 
could be had in the rural neighborhoods where 
the family lived and was himself employed as a 
district school teacher. A short time spent in 
the preparatory department of Lawrence Col¬ 
lege, Appleton, Wis., supplemented by reading 
of a rather wide range, constituted the only for¬ 
mal education of which he could avail himself. 
After his twentieth year the newspaper office 
was his university. 

Beginning in 1867 as a reporter for the Osh¬ 
kosh Northwestern , then a weekly paper, owned 
by Maj. Charles G. Finney, Jr., a son of the evan- 



Hicks Hicks 


gelist, Hicks fitted himself for the more arduous 
service required when, in the following year, a 
daily was established. While temporarily en¬ 
gaged in editorial work on the Milwaukee Sen¬ 
tinel he was absent from Oshkosh, but returned 
in 1869 as editor of the Daily Northwestern, and 
within a year he was able to form a partnership 
with Gen. T. S. Allen for the purchase of the 
paper. Oshkosh at that time had a population of 
over 12,000. It had emerged from the pioneer 
stage; wood-working industries had been start¬ 
ed; the surrounding country was settled and 
prosperous. The partners gradually added im¬ 
provements to their plant to keep pace with the 
growth of the town, and by 1886 it had become a 
valuable newspaper property. Hicks bought out 
his partner’s interest in 1884 and continued as 
editor for the rest of his life, and sole proprietor 
till 1889 when a stock company was formed. The 
Northwestern was always Republican in politics 
but gained and kept a reputation for fairness in 
news reporting. Citizens were invited to com¬ 
municate their views on matters of public inter¬ 
est and the editor freely gave space for the ex¬ 
pression of sentiments contrary to his own pol¬ 
icy. His chief concern was to make his paper a 
community organ. 

He was absent from the office for long periods. 
From 1889 to 1893 he served as United States 
minister to Peru by President Harrison’s ap¬ 
pointment. In that interval he wrote The Man 
from Oshkosh (1894), an amusing portrayal 
of a Middle Westerner’s contacts with Latin- 
American life. In 1905 President Roosevelt ap¬ 
pointed him minister to Chile, where he served 
four years. At both posts he was keenly inter¬ 
ested in South American history and archeology. 
Travel in Europe, Egypt, and Turkey opened to 
him still other vistas. The Oshkosh public li¬ 
brary, to which Hicks was whole-heartedly de¬ 
voted for many years, was the beneficiary of his 
enthusiasm for art awakened by these excursions 
abroad. Through his efforts also, several worthy 
examples of sculpture were brought to Oshkosh 
—notably the Civil War memorial, with figures 
by the Florentine sculptor Trentanove; the heroic 
figure of the Menominee Chief, Oshkosh, by the 
same artist; the statue of Carl Schurz, and the 
bronze replica of Houdon’s Washington. His 
gifts of statuary and pictures to the public li¬ 
brary and the city schools were many and valu¬ 
able. In 1910 he published Something about 
Singlefoot: Chapters in the Life of an Oshkosh 
Man . He was married in July 1872 to Alice J. 
Hume, and in 1914 to Mary Powers. For some 
time previous to his death, which occurred in 
San Antonio, Tex., he suffered from ill health. 


[R. J. Harvey, Hist, of Winnebago Co., Wis., and 
Early Hist, of the Northwest (1880); Commemorative 
Biog . Record of the Fox River Valley Counties of 
Brown, Outagamie, and Winnebago (1895) ; Bull, of 
the Pan Am. Union, Feb. 1918; Who's Who in Amer¬ 
ica, 1916-17; Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wis.), 
Milwaukee Sentinel, Milwaukee Journal, and San An¬ 
tonio Express, Dec. ax, 1917.] W_raB.S. 

HICKS, THOMAS HOLLIDAY (Sept. 2, 
1798-Feb. 13, 1865), governor of Maryland at 
the outbreak of the Civil War, was born on a 
farm in Dorchester County, Md., the eldest son 
of Henry C. and Mary (Sewell) Hicks. He ac¬ 
quired only the most rudimentary education in 
the local school and assisted his father on the 
farm until he was old enough to claim a career of 
his own. He was made constable at twenty-one, 
elected sheriff when he was twenty-six, and from 
that time on he was almost constantly in office 
until his death. In 1830, while living on a farm 
on the Choptank River, he was sent to the state 
legislature. In 1833 he removed to a village in 
the southern part of the county to engage in 
mercantile business, but it was not long before 
he was made a member of the electoral college. 
In the same year, 1836, he was returned to the 
House of Delegates and was elected by the legis¬ 
lature the next year to the last governor’s coun¬ 
cil. In 1838, when the governor’s council was 
abolished, he was appointed register of wills in 
Dorchester County, in which post he was kept 
on duty, with a brief intermission, for seventeen 
years. He also served as a member of the state 
constitutional convention, 1850-51. 

Although Hicks started his political career as 
a Democrat and served in the General Assembly 
as a Whig, it was as a member of the American 
party that he was elected governor in the fall of 
i 857- On the question of secession, sentiment in 
Maryland was bitterly divided, and after Lin¬ 
coln’s election, tremendous pressure from within 
and without the state was brought to bear on 
Hicks to call a special session of the legislature 
to define the state’s position in the crisis. Mass 
meetings were held from November to March, 
some denouncing, some commending, his inac¬ 
tion. Hicks resisted the demand until the pres¬ 
sure of events in the riot of April 19 brought a 
revolutionary call for the Assembly to convene 
of its own initiative, later justifying his action 
by insisting that the legislature would have led 
Maryland blindly “into the vortex of secession.” 
His conduct throughout the month of April 1861 
is not easy to understand. If we may trust the 
testimony of a close friend, he was stanchly 
Unionist at heart and wavered either because of 
fear—for his life was repeatedly threatened—or 
of duplicity. Possibly he delayed because he be- 

8 



Hiester 

lieved in military force only as a last resort 
Mixed though his motives may have been, how¬ 
ever, he forefended any official steps toward se¬ 
cession until the presence of Union troops ren¬ 
dered the disunionists powerless. 

Shortly after Hicks's gubernatorial term had 
expired, he was selected to fill the vacancy in the 
United States Senate created by the death of 
James Pearce, and in 1864 he was returned by 
election. His senatorial career was not brilliant, 
for he was too ill during the next two years to 
manifest leadership in committee work, and he 
was never an able speaker. During 1863 he suf¬ 
fered an injury to his ankle which necessitated 
the amputation of the foot. He never recovered 
from the shock and quickly succumbed to an 
attack of paralysis in 1865. After a state funeral 
he was temporarily interred in the congressional 
cemetery to be later removed to Cambridge, Md. 
He was married three times: first to Anne 
Thompson, then to Leah Raleigh, and finally to 
Mrs. Jane Wilcox, who survived him. He was 
regarded as having natural sagacity and a steady 
sense of justice. Though slow to reach decisions, 
he adhered to them with tenacity, a trait indi¬ 
cated by his square jaw and firmly closed lips. 

[G. L. P. Radcliffe, Gov. Thos. H. Hicks of Md. and 
the Civil War (1901); H. E. Buchholz, Govs, of Md. 
(1908); J. T. Scharf, Hist, of Md. (1879), vol. HI; L. 
F. Schmeckebier, Hist, of the Know Nothing Party in 
Md. (1899) J Private and Official Correspondence of 
Gen. Benj . P. Butler (1917), vol. I; Elias Jones, Re¬ 
vised Hist, of Dorchester County, Md. (192s); G. W, 
Brown, Baltimore and the Nineteenth of Apr., 1861 
(1887) ; W. L. W. Seabrook, Maryland’s Great Part in 
Saving the Union (1913) ; Correspondence Between S. 
Teakle Wallis . . . and the Hon. John Sherman . . . 
Concerning the Arrest of Members of the Md. Legislar 
Hire (1863) ; Cong. Globc l 38 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 805- 
11; Evening Star (Washington), Feb. 13, 1865; Sun 
(Baltimore), Feb. 14, 1865.] E.L. 

HIESTER, DANIEL (June 25, 1747-Mar. 7, 
1804), farmer, business man, congressman, son 
of Daniel and Catharine (Schuler) Hiester, was 
born in Upper Salford Township, Philadelphia 
(now Montgomery) County, Pa., of German 
and Dutch extraction. Joseph Hiester [q.v .] 
was his cousin. His father, remotely descended 
from Silesian origins, emigrated to Pennsyl¬ 
vania from Elsoff, province of Westphalia, Ger¬ 
many, in 1737, owned a farm and tannery at 
Gosenhoppen, and became an outstanding man in 
his community. Daniel received a good educa¬ 
tion and was trained to succeed his father in the 
management of the farm and tannery. An ambi¬ 
tion to travel prompted him to take a journey to 
the Carolinas which pleased him so well that he 
planned to repeat it and to extend his trip to 
the West Indies. At one time he thought seri¬ 
ously of settling in the South as a merchant, but 
his marriage about 1770 to Rosanna, daughter of 


Hiester 

Jonathan Hager, founder of Hagerstown, and 
Elizabeth (Krischner) Hager, changed any such 
plans. After their marriage they made their 
home at the Hiester homestead. In 1774, upon 
his father's moving to Reading, Daniel acquired 
possession of the farm and tannery. These re¬ 
sponsibilities, added to that of managing the 
large estate of his father-in-law, who was killed 
in an accident in 1775, afforded him abundant 
opportunity to demonstrate his capabilities as a 
business man. 

At first only lukewarm to the Revolution, 
Hiester later (1777) became colonel of the 4th 
Battalion of Philadelphia County militia and on 
May 23,1782, a brigadier-general of militia. His 
unit was called for duty in May and September 
1777, in latter month having rendezvoused at 
Swede's Ford below Norristown. During the 
war he was also engaged in various other duties. 
He was appointed a commissioner for Philadel¬ 
phia County to seize the personal effects of trai¬ 
tors on Oct. 21, 1777; agent of forfeited estates 
on May 6, 1778; and chairman of the committee 
of public accounts of Pennsylvania on Oct 7, 
1779. In 1 77 % h e visited Nova Scotia in an effort 
to obtain the release of his brother-in-law who 
was held prisoner by the British. He was elected 
to the Pennsylvania Assembly annually from 
1778 to 1781; to the Supreme Executive Coun¬ 
cil from the newly created Montgomery County 
in 1784; and a commissioner of the Connecticut 
land claims in 1787. 

In 1788 Hiester was elected to Congress from 
Berks County, where he had moved in the mean¬ 
time, on the Anti-Federalist ticket, though he re¬ 
ceived the support of German Federalists. He 
served continuously until his resignation in De¬ 
cember 1796. He was opposed to Hamilton's 
scheme for the assumption of state debts, but he 
favored the national bank and advocated import 
duties for protective purposes. He also used his 
influence to make Harrisburg on the Susque¬ 
hanna the permanent seat of government. He 
spoke seldom in Congress, but invariably from 
conviction, giving evidence of practicality and 
sound judgment. In 1796 he sold his property 
in Upper Salford and moved to Hagerstown, 
Md., from which state he was elected to Congress 
in 1800. His service on this occasion was ter¬ 
minated by his death in 1804. Hiester was tall, 
of handsome features, and possessed a charming 
personality. Enterprising son of one of the 
wealthiest colonists, he was remarkably success¬ 
ful in his business and real-estate operations, 
and was the owner of gristmills, sawmills, and 
much valuable land in Pennsylvania and Mary¬ 
land. 



Hiester 

, f H. S. Dotterer, “Gen. Daniel Hiester/’ in the Per - 
kiomen Region, Past and Present, Jan.-July 1895 ; H. 
M. M. Richards, “The Hiester Family/’ The Pa.-Ger- 
man Soc ., Proc. and Addresses, vol. XVI (1907); Min¬ 
utes of the Supreme Executive Council of Pa., vols. XI- 
XV (1852-53); Pa . Archives, 1 ser., vols. VIII (1853) 
and XI (1855) J Nat Intelligencer (Washington, D. C.), 
Mar. 9, 1804; Gen. Aurora Advertiser (Philadelphia), 
Mar. 14, 1804.] J H P 

HIESTER, JOSEPH (Nov. 18,1752-June 10, 
1832), merchant, Revolutionary soldier, con¬ 
gressman, governor of Pennsylvania, son of John 
and Mary Barbara (Epler) Hiester, was born 
in Bern Township, Berks County, Pa., of Ger¬ 
man parents. His father emigrated from West¬ 
phalia to Gosenhoppen, Philadelphia County, in 
1732, and later moved to Berks County, where he 
and two brothers had purchased a large tract of 
land. Joseph grew to manhood experiencing the 
hardships of a farmer's son, but his farm labors 
did not prevent his acquiring a good education 
under the minister at Bern Church. Before 
reaching his majority he was a clerk in the gen¬ 
eral store of Adam Witman at Reading. In 1771 
he married his employer's daughter, Elizabeth, 
and thereupon became a partner in the business. 

In the Revolution Hiester was an ardent Whig. 
Though still under twenty-five he was a dele¬ 
gate to the provincial conference at Philadelphia 
in June 1776, and immediately upon its adjourn¬ 
ment he hurried home to assist his county in 
raising its quota for the flying camp. At a meet¬ 
ing on July 10 he exhorted his townsmen to en¬ 
list, offered forty dollars and a sergeancy to the 
first volunteer, and pledged himself to furnish 
equipment and necessary funds for the march to 
join Washington's army. The response was lib¬ 
eral, and in the organization of Berks County 
troops he was chosen captain. His men, refus¬ 
ing at first to leave Pennsylvania, marched to 
Long Island only after Hi ester’s fervent appeals 
to their patriotism. On the night of Aug. 26, 
1776, Hiester was captured by the British. After 
three months' confinement, spent in part on the 
notorious prisonship Jersey, he was paroled and 
later exchanged. He returned to his home weak 
and emaciated but soon regained his health. Pro¬ 
moted lieutenant-colonel in 1777, he next saw 
service at Germantown where he was slightly 
wounded. In 1779 he was a commissioner of ex¬ 
change and a member of a committee delegated 
to seize the personal effects of traitors. Through¬ 
out 1780 he awaited the call to military duty, but 
not being summoned, he returned to his business 
at Reading, shortly thereafter acquiring sole 
possession of it. 

# After 1780 Hiester became more closely iden¬ 
tified with state politics. He was in the Assem¬ 
bly for five terms between 1780 and 1790; a 


Higgi 


;m$ 

member of the state convention convened to rat¬ 
ify the Federal Constitution, being one of the 
minority opposed; a member of the state consti¬ 
tutional convention (1789-90) ; in the state Sen- 
ate (1790-94); and a presidential elector in 
1792 and again in 1796. In 1797 he succeeded 
his cousin, Daniel Hiester [q.z\], in Congress 
and served until 1805. Jefferson regarded him 
as a “disinterested, moderate and conscientious" 
congressman (Pennsylvania Magazine of His¬ 
tory and Biography, April 1910, p. 236). When 
the Pennsylvania Republicans divided in 1805 
Hiester followed the moderate wing. From 1815 
to 1820 he was again in Congress, and a member 
of the committee on public expenditures. In 1817 
he returned to state politics as unsuccessful gu¬ 
bernatorial candidate on the Independent Repub¬ 
lican ticket. Renominated in 1820 on a plat¬ 
form attacking nominations by legislative cau¬ 
cus and advocating other reforms, after a bitter 
campaign, he was elected over William Findlay 
by the narrow margin of 1,605 votes. Honest, 
practical, and a believer in republican simplic¬ 
ity, he advocated appointments according to 
merit, restriction of executive patronage, short¬ 
ening of legislative sessions, lower salaries for 
public officials, encouragement of public im¬ 
provements and domestic manufactures, and a 
liberal system of education. Adhering to his be¬ 
lief in the one-term principle, he refused to stand 
for reelection and in 1823 retired to his home in 
Reading. His success as a business man is 
attested by the fact that he left an estate of 
$460,000. 

[H. M. M. Richards, “Gov. Jos. Hiester” and “The 
Hiester Family” in The Pa.-German Soc., Proc. and 
Addresses, vol. XVI (1907); Pa. Archives, 4 ser., 
vol. V (1900); J. B. McMaster and F. D. Stone, Pa. 
and the Fed. Constitution, 1787-88 (1888); Pa. Mag. 
of Hist and Biog., July 1887; Poulsoris Am. Daily 
Advertiser and the Am. Sentinel (Philadelphia), June 
13, 1832.] J H P 

HIGGINS, FRANK WAYLAND (Aug. 18, 
1856-Feb. 12, 1907), politician, was born in the 
village of Rushford, Allegany County, N. Y. 
He was christened Francis Wayland. His par¬ 
ents, Orrin Thrall Higgins and Lucia Cornelia 
Hapgood, were of English forebears who came 
to New England in the seventeenth century. His 
father, a business man of ability, was the owner 
of extensive tracts in Michigan, Wisconsin, Min¬ 
nesota, Oregon, and Washington, and of iron- 
ore lands in Minnesota. He also built up and 
operated a chain of grocery stores in Olean, 
N. Y., and in the neighboring oil regions of 
Pennsylvania. His mother, a woman of charm 
and culture, died while he was still a child but 
before her death stimulated and developed his 
taste for music and art. He attended Rushford 


10 



Higgins 

Academy, and although he was of quick and 
alert intelligence, he manifested no special talent 
for scholarship. His greatest desire as a youth 
was to become a soldier and accordingly he was 
sent to the Riverview Military Academy, Pough¬ 
keepsie, N. Y., from which he was graduated in 
1873. This experience apparently partly changed 
his mind about a military career, for he next took 
a course in a commercial college. He then turned 
to travel, making extensive trips to various parts 
of the United States. After a brief experience in 
Denver and Chicago as sales’ agent for an oil 
company, he became, at the age of nineteen, a 
partner in the mercantile firm of Wood, Thayer 
& Company at Stanton, Mich, In 1879 he en¬ 
tered into partnership with his father at Olean, 
N. Y. Meanwhile he had made extensive timber 
purchases in the West and it was to the manage¬ 
ment of these properties, together with his pat¬ 
rimony, that his energies as a business man were 
mainly devoted. He kept the grocery business 
which his father had started and introduced into 
it in 1890 a profit-sharing scheme. By his thrift 
and caution, he greatly augmented the estate 
which he had inherited. 

Higgins was a stanch Republican and early 
showed an interest in public affairs. Drafted by 
his party for state senator in 1893, he served 
eight years (1894-1902) in that capacity. In 
1902 he was unanimously nominated to the lieu¬ 
tenant-governorship and was elected. In 1904, 
despite the detractions and misrepresentations of 
a bitter campaign, he was elected governor. Both 
as chairman of the Senate committees on taxa¬ 
tion and retrenchment, and finance, and then as 
governor, he urged rigid economy in public ex¬ 
penditures and resisted in every way wasteful 
and unnecessary outlays. In his thirteen years 
of service to the state he was responsible for tax 
reforms which contributed to a lower tax rate, 
for election reforms, and, above all, for the re¬ 
vision of the state insurance law. “I am not 
afraid of the censure of public opinion , 1 ” he once 
said, “I shall be content if I satisfy my con¬ 
science.” Theodore Roosevelt testified that he 
had “never had the good fortune to be thrown 
with any public servant of higher integrity or of 
greater administrative ability.” In June 1878 
he married Catherine Corrinne Noble of Sparta, 
Wis. He had long been a sufferer from heart 
trouble and died soon after his term of office as 
governor had expired. He had declined a sec¬ 
ond nomination. 

[K. C. Higgins, Richard Higgins . . . and His De¬ 
scendants (1918); memorial address of J. G. Schur- 
man in Proc. of the Legislature of the State of N . Y. 
Commemorative of the Life and Pub. Services of Frank 
Way land Higgins (1909); State of N. Y.: Pub, Papers 


Higginson 

of F . W . Higgins, Gov, (2 vols., 1906-07); C. Z. Lin¬ 
coln, ed., State of N. Y.: Messages from the Govs. 
(1909), X, 718-961; C. E. Fitch, ed., Official N. Y. 
from Cleveland to Hughes (1911), vol. IV; D. S. Alex¬ 
ander, Four Famous New Yorkers ; the Political Ca¬ 
reers of Cleveland, Platt, Hill and Roosevelt (1923); 
Ray B. Smith, ed., Hist, of the State of N, Y. } Political 
and Governmental (1922), vol. IV; H. F. Gosnell, Boss 
Platt and His N. Y . Machine (1924) ; The Autobiog. of 
Thos. Collier Platt (1910), ed. by L. J. Lang; N. Y. 
Times, Sept 2 5, 1906, Feb. 13, 1907.] H.J.C. 

HIGGINSON, FRANCIS (1586-Aug. 6 , 
1630), clergyman, was the second of the nine 
children of the Rev. John Higginson of Clay- 
brooke, Leicestershire, England, and his wife 
Elizabeth. He was probably born in 1586, since 
he was baptized on Aug. 6 of that year (New- 
England Historical and Genealogical Register, 
April 1892, p. 118). In 1610 he received the de¬ 
gree of B.A. from Jesus College, Cambridge, 
and that of M.A. in 1613. He was ordained 
deacon at Cawood Castle, Sept. 26, 1614, by the 
Archbishop of York and by him was admitted 
to the priesthood at Bishopthorpe, Dec. 8. The 
archbishop conferred upon him the rectory of 
Barton-in-Fabis, Nottinghamshire, but though 
instituted, Apr. 20, 1615, he seems never to have 
been inducted (ante, July 1898, p. 348). He set¬ 
tled at Claybrooke, apparently as curate to his 
father, and on Jan. 8, 1616, at St. Peter’s, Not¬ 
tingham, he was married to Anna Herbert 
(Venn, post). In 1617 he became lecturer at St. 
Nicholas, Leicester, where he soon won the high 
esteem of the people. For some time he con¬ 
formed to the practices of the Established 
Church, but through acquaintance with Thomas 
Hooker and other Puritans he was led to study 
the questions which were troubling the Church, 
and as a consequence he became a non-conform¬ 
ist. He was obliged to relinquish his lectureship 
but the people were eager for his ministrations 
and, tolerated by the Bishop of Lincoln, to whose 
diocese Leicester belonged, he continued them 
as opportunities opened. Invited by the pro¬ 
moters of the Massachusetts Bay Company to 
go to New England, he accepted and with his 
wife and eight children, one of whom died of 
smallpox on the voyage, he set sail from Graves¬ 
end, in the Talbot, on Apr. 25, 1629. The cele¬ 
brated Generali Considerations for the Planta¬ 
tion in New England, with an Answer to Several 
Objections, which, on the authority of Thomas 
Hutchinson, Higginson has been credited with 
writing before he left England, seems to have 
been the work of John Winthrop (Higginson, 
post, pp. 38 ff.; Proceedings of the Massachu¬ 
setts Historical Society, 1 ser., VII, 1864, PP- 
340-44). During the voyage he kept a journal, 
to which he wrote a continuation after his ar¬ 
rival in Naumkeag (Salem), which, without the 


II 



Higginson 

account of the voyage, was sent back to England 
and published (1630) under the title, New-Eng - 
lands Plantation, or, A Short and True Descrip¬ 
tion of the Commodities and Discommodities of 
that Countrey. It went through three editions 
within a year. Although when he left England 
Higginson disavowed any intention of separat¬ 
ing from the Established Church, he soon be¬ 
came practically a separatist. The leading men 
of the settlement formally elected him to be their 
teacher and Rev. Samuel Skelton as their pastor, 
and each was ordained by the laying on of hands. 
Higginson drew up a confession of faith and 
covenant for the church which were adopted. 
He was not strong physically and appears to 
have had a tendency to tuberculosis. The ex¬ 
treme hardships of the first winter proved too 
great for him and he died the following summer. 
His wife moved to New Haven, and died there 
in 1640. Although Higginson was only about a 
year in the colony he left a strong impress upon 
its ecclesiastical history. 

[See John Venn and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cant a - 
brigienses, pt I, vol. II (1922) ; J. B. Felt, Memoir of 
the Rev . Francis Higginson (1852); Cotton Mather, 
Magnolia Christi Americana (1702); T. W* Higgin¬ 
son, Life of Francis Higginson (1891), which con¬ 
tains a number of documents and references to much 
source material, and reprints the journal and New - 
Englands Plantation; New-En glands Plantation was 
reprinted also in Mass. Hist Soc. Colls., 1 ser., vol. I 
(1792), and in Peter Force’s Tracts and Other Papers, 
vol. I (1836). Higginson’s agreement with the Mass. 
Bay Co., his journal of his voyage, and the Generali 
Considerations for the Plantation in New England, are 
in Thos. Hutchinson, A Collection of Original Papers 
Relative to the Hist* of the Colony of Mass.-Bay 
(1769).] J.T.A. 

HIGGINSON, HENRY LEE (Nov. 18,1834- 
Nov. 14, 1919), banker. Union soldier, founder 
and patron of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, 
inherited from a Puritan ancestry his vigorous 
physique and a simple, somewhat naive person¬ 
ality. His father, George Higginson, was a 
grandson of Stephen Higginson [ q.v .] and a de¬ 
scendant of Rev. Francis Higginson [q.v.], a 
colonist whom Cotton Mather called “the first 
in a catalogue of heroes”; his mother, Mary 
Cabot Lee, was similarly well born. Henry was 
born, as it chanced, in New York City, where 
George Higginson was for a time a commission 
merchant; but the family returned to Boston af¬ 
ter the panic of 1837. There the father, his re¬ 
sources impaired, took a small office on India 
Wharf and a very small house in Chauncy Place. 
“We lived in the narrowest way,” the son wrote 
afterward, “and got on very well; went into a 
house a little bit larger in Bedford Place; went 
to a good school, then to the Latin school and 
had a pleasant boyhood” (Perry, post, p. 6). 
Like both parents Henry Higginson showed 


Higginson 

sturdiness and steadiness of character rather 
than extraordinary mentality. He was indus¬ 
trious, but his scholarship was only fairly good. 
Summers he earned spending money by picking 
fruit and doing other chores on farms near 
Boston. He was thoughtful, an avid reader, and 
by 1848 he was a convinced abolitionist. In 
1851 he entered Harvard College, in the same 
class with Phillips Brooks, Alexander Agassiz, 
and George Dexter. His eyes, meantime, had 
begun to give trouble, and midway in his fresh¬ 
man year he was withdrawn and sent to Europe 
in charge of a clergyman. The boy kept a diary 
of their extensive walking tours which shows 
that his life-long interest in music began when 
he first went to the opera in London. He at¬ 
tended concerts’ in Munich and Milan, and at 
Dresden, where he paused to study German, he 
heard Tannhduser with delight. He wrote home 
that he might make music his profession. Upon 
his return in September 1853, however, after an 
eighteen-month period of study under Samuel 
Eliot he assumed a clerkship which his father 
had secured for him in the office of Samuel & 
Edward Austin, India merchants. This position 
he held some twenty months. He was not a born 
business man. His youthful interest was in re¬ 
form movements and music. His anti-slavery 
enthusiasm led him to equip “a good-looking 
Irishman with his family to go to Kansas to 
settle,” but the fellow deserted his family and 
disappeared. 

In November 1856, he inherited $13,000 from 
an uncle, gave up his clerkship, and went to 
Europe purposing to make music his life work. 
He took lodgings at Vienna, but unexpected ob¬ 
stacles then, as throughout his life, kept him from 
doing what he really wanted to do. An injury to 
his left arm prevented him from becoming a 
pianoforte virtuoso; studies in harmony and 
composition, faithfully pursued, disclosed, ac¬ 
cording to his instructors, no great creativeness 
or originality. In i860 he returned to Boston, 
still undecided as to his future. He had made a 
little money through sale of German wines, and 
he planned to become a wine merchant The out¬ 
break of the Civil War interfered with that de¬ 
sign. Higginson was among the first to enlist 
and had an honorable military service, but one 
full of the frustrations to which he was liable. 
Commissioned second lieutenant in Col. George 
H. Gordon’s regiment, the 2nd Massachusetts 
Infantry, in May 1861, he was promoted to first 
lieutenant in July. He found conditions at Ha¬ 
gerstown, Md., unfavorable, however, and re¬ 
joiced at securing transfer to the 1st Massachu¬ 
setts Cavalry of which he was commissioned 


12 



Higginson 

captain in October 1861, and major in March 
1862. Typhoid kept him from his command sev¬ 
eral months. At Beaufort Island, S. C., he showed 
marked ability in handling 1 men and horses, yet, 
when the others attacked Charleston, in June 

1862, his company stayed on guard at Beaufort 
—“cussedest luck,” he wrote. Ordered later to 
the northern front, he was severely wounded in 
the indecisive skirmish at Aldie, Va. During a 
long convalescence he married, in December 

1863, Ida, daughter of Prof. Louis Agassiz. He 
rejoined his regiment at City Point, Va., but 
just missing the spectacular battle at Peters¬ 
burg, he was invalided home again, where he 
resigned. From January to July 1865 he was 
employed in the Ohio oil fields. 

With two other Boston men he undertook the 
Utopian experiment of operating a cotton plan¬ 
tation in Georgia in 1866-67. They expected to 
demonstrate that free negro labor could be profit¬ 
ably and pleasantly employed. Their losses from 
two cotton crops were $65,000, and they gladly 
sold for $5,000 land which had cost them $30,000. 
On Jan. 1, 1868, Higginson became, somewhat 
reluctantly, a member of the Boston banking 
firm of Lee, Higginson & Company with which 
his father, an uncle, and a brother were already 
connected. “The Major,” as he was known in 
State Street, never believed himself meant by 
nature to be a banker. Others have said that his 
character rather than his commercial ability 
brought him success. People’s trust in his hon¬ 
esty and judgment was a very valuable asset of 
the house. Attending faithfully to multitudinous 
responsibilities he became a prosperous and mod¬ 
erately wealthy man, and was rated as worth 
$750,000 when he founded the Boston Symphony 
Orchestra. His youthful interest in music was 
renewed when in 1873 he represented Massa¬ 
chusetts as an honorary commissioner at the 
Vienna Exposition. He then resumed acquaint¬ 
ance with former teachers and other musicians 
and began to formulate plans for a Boston or¬ 
chestra of Continental standards. The depres¬ 
sion following the 1873 panic caused postpone¬ 
ment of his design, but in 188x, selecting Georg 
Henschel as its first conductor, he launched the 
Boston Symphony, which under successive con¬ 
ductors, Wilhelm Gericke, Arthur Nikisch, Emil 
Paur, Max Fiedler, and Karl Muck, became the 
leading organization of its kind in America. 
Preferring to be its sole underwriter, he paid 
during his long connection with it, deficits ag¬ 
gregating nearly $1,000,000. Although strongly 
pro-Ally, he endured personal humiliation dur¬ 
ing the World War because of his loyalty to its 
conductor, Dr. Muck. On May 4, 1918, he an- 


Higginson 

nounced from the platform of Symphony Hall 
that others must carry the burden of the concerts. 
Aside from his support of the Orchestra his prin¬ 
cipal benefactions were to educational institu¬ 
tions : to Harvard, to which he conveyed, June 
10, 1890, land for Soldiers’ Field in an address 
that ranks high as an example of oratory, and, in 
1899, $150,000 for a Harvard Union building, 
designed to promote democracy among Harvard 
men; to Radcliffe College, of which he and Mrs. 
Higginson were supporters while it was still 
“the Annex” and which he served for eleven 
years as treasurer; to Princeton, Williams, 
University of Virginia, and several secondary 
schools. For twenty-six years, 1893-1919, he 
was a fellow of the Harvard Corporation, in 
which he had a large influence. He is generally 
credited with having thwarted, in 1909, a plan of 
electing Theodore Roosevelt president of the 
University. His virtues and limitations were 
those of an earnest, confiding man, loyal to his 
friends and distrustful of their critics. He hated 
labor unions and resisted unionization of the 
Boston Symphony Orchestra. He disliked gov¬ 
ernment regulation of railroads and other big 
business. In politics he was a Republican “with 
frequent lapses”; in religion, a Unitarian. 
Friendly as he was toward the Teutonic mu¬ 
sicians in his own orchestra, he believed whole¬ 
heartedly in the atrocity stories of the war era. 
He was an advocate of national preparedness, 
and, after the Armistice, of the League of Na¬ 
tions. His death and interment in Mount Au¬ 
burn Cemetery followed an operation in Novem¬ 
ber 1919. His wife and a son survived him. 

< [Higginson’s Four Addresses (1902) contain auto¬ 
biographical material of interest; Bliss Perry, Life and 
Letters of Henry Lee Higginson (1921), is based on 
diaries, letters and other documents of a personal na¬ 
ture; see also T. W. Higginson, Descendants of the 
Rev, Francis Higginson (1910); M. A. DeW. Howe, 
The Boston Symphony Orchestra (1914; rev. ed., 
1931) and A Great Private Citizen: Henry Lee Hig¬ 
ginson (1920) ; John T. Morse, Jr., “Memoir of Henry 
Lee Higginson,” in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. t vol. LIII 
(1920) ; B. W. Crowninshield, A Hist of the First 
Reg. of Mass. Cavalry Volunteers (1891) ; Sunday 
Herald , Boston, Nov. 16, 1919.] F.W. C. 

HIGGINSON, JOHN (Aug. 6, 1616-Dec. 9, 
1708), clergyman, son of the Rev. Francis Hig¬ 
ginson [#.£\] and Anna (Herbert) Higginson, 
was born at Claybrooke, Leicestershire, Eng¬ 
land. The family soon moved to Leicester where 
John attended the grammar school. He had 
no university training, however, since his father 
took him with the rest of the family to New 
England when he was only thirteen years old, 
settling at Salem. After his father’s death his 
education was looked after by John Winthrop, 
Increase Nowell, John Wilson, John Cotton and 


13 



Higginson 

others, and besides the usual subjects of that 
day he learned something of the French and 
Indian languages. He was admitted as freeman 
May 25, 1636, and in the summer of that year 
was sent to confer with Canonicus about the kill¬ 
ing of John Oldham and was also made chaplain 
at Saybrook Fort, where he continued about four 
years. He attended the Cambridge Synod of 
1637, at which his knowledge of shorthand se¬ 
cured him the position of secretary. In 1639 h e 
was enrolled as one of the proprietors of Hart¬ 
ford, where he taught school for a time, but after 
a few months went to New Haven. Sometime 
between 1641 and 1643, he moved to Guilford, 
where he became assistant to the Rev. Henry 
Whitfield and married his daughter Sarah. On 
the formal organization of the church, June 1643, 
Higginson was elected “teacher” but seems 
never to have been ordained, although he con¬ 
sidered himself as regularly in the ministry. In 
1647 he prepared nearly two hundred of Thomas 
Hooker’s sermons for the press. Soon after the ■ 
establishment of the Commonwealth in England, 
most of the more prominent settlers at Guilford 
returned to that country and the settlement lan¬ 
guished. Whitfield was one of the first to leave 
and three years later, Higginson, who in the 
meantime had continued as “teacher,” was chosen 
pastor in his stead. In October 1654 he con¬ 
templated moving to the West Indies in accord- < 
ance with a plan for New England people sug- ] 
gested by Cromwell, but the defeat of the English 
fleet which sailed against Hispaniola in De¬ 
cember seems to have caused him to give up the 
idea. In the controversy of 1656, which began 
in the church of Rev. Samuel Stone [gw.] of 
Hartford and spread to the other churches, Hig¬ 
ginson strongly opposed Stone, but this fact 
made no change in their personal relations and 
he prepared Stone’s “Body of Divinity” for the j 
press, though it did not find a publisher. In 
1658, because of his knowledge of the Indian 
language, efforts were made to induce him to be¬ 
come a missionary, but he declined. He felt, 
however, that he must leave Guilford since his 
salary was in arrears. 

Early in 1659 he sailed for England with his ; 
family but the ship was driven back by a storm 
to his boyhood home of Salem. There he was ; 
asked to preach and in the following spring, the ; 
pastor having died, he was offered the post at 
double the salary he had received at Guilford. 

He accepted the call Mar. 9, 1660, and was in¬ 
stalled in August. He was soon in trouble with j 
the Quakers and was in part responsible for the 
treatment which they received from the Massa- ] 
chusetts colony. In 1663 he reached the high 1 

H 


Higginson 

point of clerical prominence by being asked to 
preach the annual election sermon before the 
authorities, the first of such sermons to be print¬ 
ed. The same year he was appointed one of the 
thirteen elders to draft a reply to a letter from 
the King, and for forty years thereafter he held 
one of the leading places among the colony’s 
clergy. In April 1668 he was one of the six 
chosen to conduct the public disputation which 
resulted in the conviction of the Anabaptists 
Goole and others. He was among those who 
petitioned for the synod called at Boston by the 
General Court in 1679, an d in 1701, with Rev. 
William Hubbard [gw.], published A Testi¬ 
mony, to the Order of the Gospelin the Churches 
of New England, a summons to return to the old 
ways. He held aloof from the witchcraft trials, 
probably because his own daughter was one of 
the accused. He was opposed to slavery and 
supported Sewall when the latter published his 
anti-slavery tract and incurred a certain amount 
of unpopularity. He wrote prefaces for Cotton 
Mather’s Winter-Meditation (1693) and The 
Everlasting Gospel (1700), and a short “Attes¬ 
tation” which was prefixed to Mather’s Magnalia 
Christi Americana (1702). His printed works, 
about a dozen, are mostly very brief. The preface 
to his Our Dying Saviour's Legacy of Peace to 
His Disciples in a Troublesome World (1686) 
contains autobiographical material. He had much 
learning, although no great ability, and the promi¬ 
nence to which he attained was almost wholly 
due to the office which he held. His first wife 
bore him seven children, of whom Nathaniel 
[gw.] was one; she died in 1675 and he later 
married Mary Blakeman. 

CS. E. Baldwin, in Proc . Mass , Hist. Soc., 2 ser„ 
XVI (1903), has abundant citations of sources, and a 
bibliography of writings; Mass. Hist. Soc. Colts., 3 
ser. VII (1838) contains letters; see also T. W. Hig¬ 
ginson, Descendants of the Rev. Fvancis Higginson 
(191°)-] J.T.A. 

HIGGINSON, NATHANIEL (Oct. ii, 1652- 
Oct. 31, 1708), merchant and governor of Fort 
Saint George, India, was the grandson of Rev. 
Francis Higginson [gw.] who came to Massa¬ 
chusetts in 1629 and was minister of the church 
at Salem, and the son of Rev, John [gw.] and 
Sarah (Whitfield) Higginson. He was bom 
at Guilford, Conn., where his father was assist¬ 
ant to the Rev. Henry Whitfield. In 1659 the 
family moved to Salem. At the age of sixteen 
Nathaniel entered Harvard and graduated in 
1670. For a further period of two years he pur¬ 
sued his studies and took his second degree in 
1672. Finding little use for his talents, in 1674 
he left for England. Here he was employed as 
tutor for the children of Lord Wharton until 



Higginson 

1681, and later his employer secured for him a 
position in the mint in the Tower of London. 
In 1683 he entered the service of the English 
East India Company as a writer, and sailed for 
Fort Saint George, Madras, where he arrived 
on Mar. 19, 1684. From this date till Oct. 23, 
1692, when he became president of Fort Saint 
George, his promotion was rapid. He was ap¬ 
pointed an assistant custom and warehouse agent 
on July 3, 1684; in 1685 he became a factor at 
£15 a year; in February 1686 the president ap¬ 
pointed him to his council at a salary of £40; 
and on' July 10 made him an assistant to Judge 
John Gray of the Admiralty court; to these 
duties, Oct. 11, 1686, Higginson added that of 
one of the three municipal judges. Sir Josiah 
Child, governor of the board of directors of the 
East India Company, advanced Higginson, at 
the age of thirty-five, to second in Elihu Yale’s 
council, and wrote “let none of you think much 
or grudge at the speedy advancement of Mr. 
Higginson” (J. T. Wheeler, Madras in the Olden 
Time, Madras, 1861, I, 195). James II granted 
to the East India Company, Dec. 30, 1687, a 
municipal charter for Madras, and on Sept. 29, 
1688, Higginson was sworn in as first mayor of 
the municipality, an office later held by his son 
Richard. In this year he was not only second 
in the president’s council, mayor, paymaster, 
justice of the peace, chief accountant and book¬ 
keeper, and mint master, but he was also in 
charge of the mayor’s court, and commissioner 
of customs. In 1689 he resigned as mayor, left 
the East India Company’s service, and proceeded 
to Bengal. Three years later he returned to Ma¬ 
dras, was reinstated on the council, and Oct. 23, 
1692, assumed the governorship, in place of 
Elihu Yale who had been removed because of 
disputes with the council. In May of this year, 
he had married Elizabeth Richardson, the orphan 
daughter of John Richardson, chief of the Bal- 
lasow factory in Bengal, who had died in 1681. 
By his wife he had five children, three sons and 
two daughters. 

While president of Fort Saint George, Hig¬ 
ginson sent Dr. Samuel Browne to Gingee, Aug. 
7, 1693, and received from Kasim Khan six vil¬ 
lages, and in 1695, the village of Catawuk, but, 
owing to troubles with the Great Mogul and 
Mahrattas, the new territories were not occupied. 
These troubles led the Company in March 1694 
to appoint Higginson lieutenant-general of India. 
He was able to get confirmed the perwanna 
issued by Kam Baksh, Feb. 25, 1693, ^ or 
villages of Tondiarpelt, Pursewaukum, and Eg- 
more. In spite of the confirmation of the Grand 
Vizier of the Grand Mogul, Asad Khan, Mar. 


Higginson 

19, 1694, the dispute over these and other vil¬ 
lages, tribute, and supplies of powder and shot 
led to further trouble and desultory warfare from 
Oct. 12, 1697, to Feb. 22, 1698. Such disputes, 
controversy with the Catholic bishop of Saint 
Thomas over the appointment of priests to towns 
within the confines of the Company’s territories, 
opposition from his council, and the still un¬ 
settled disagreement over the affairs of Elihu 
Yale who did not leave India until Feb. 22,1699, 
led to Higginson’s being succeeded by Thomas 
Pitt on July 6, 1698. From July 6 to Sept. 12, 
1698, he served in Pitt’s council, but on Feb. 25, 
1700, finally left for England. 

Here Higginson took up his residence in Char¬ 
terhouse yard, London. With nineteen others 
he presented a petition to Queen Anne, June 10, 
1706, for the removal of Gov. Joseph Dudley of 
Massachusetts; and he was a member of the So¬ 
ciety for the Propagation of the Gospel in New 
England. His death, from smallpox, occurred in 
Soper Lane, Pancreas Parish, and he was buried 
in Bow Church, Cheapside. 

[MSS., East India Company, Factory Records, Ma¬ 
dras, in the library of the India office, Whitehall, Lon¬ 
don, and Madras, India; John Bruce, Annals of the 
Hon. East-India Company (3 vols., 1810); John Farm¬ 
er, A Geneal . Reg. of the First Settlers of New Eng. 
(1829); New-Eng. Hist . and Geneal . Reg,, Jan. 1847; 
Henry Yule, The Diary of William Hedges, vol. I 
(1887) J “Higginson Papers,” Hist. Colls, of the Essex 
Inst., vol. VII, no. $ (Oct. 1865); “Higginson Letters,” 
Mass . Hist. Soc. Colls., 3 ser., VII (1838); H. D. 
Love, Vestiges of Old Madras (4 vols., 1913); Mrs. 
Frank Penny, Fort St. George, Madras (1900); Frank 
Penny, The Church in Madras (1904); J. L, Sibley, 
Biog. Sketches Grads. Harvard Univ., vol. II (1881) ; 
B. C. Steiner, “Two New England Rulers of Madras,” 
South Atlantic Quart., July 1902; J. T. Wheeler, Early 
Records of British India (1878).] E.B.H. 

HIGGINSON, STEPHEN (Nov. 28, 1743- 
Nov. 22,1828), merchant, grandfather of Thomas 
Wentworth Higginson [ q.v .], was the son of 
Stephen and Elizabeth (Cabot) Higginson of 
Salem, Mass., and a direct descendant of Fran¬ 
cis and John Higginson [g#.z/,]. He attended 
the Salem schools and then entered the business 
office of Deacon Smith of Boston. In 1764 he 
married his second cousin, Susan Cleveland of 
Connecticut. He then became a supercargo, nav¬ 
igator, and part owner of vessels, sailing to 
various European ports. When in London in 
1773 he was called before a committee of Parlia¬ 
ment and questioned regarding New England 
commerce and resources (Peter Force, American 
Archives, ser. IV, vol. I, 1837, pp. 1645-48). 
He continued his voyages until the beginning 
of the Revolution when he became a priva¬ 
teer. At this pursuit he is said to have made 
$70,000. In 1778 he moved to Boston and formed 
a partnership with Jonathan Jackson. He was a 



Higginson 

member of the Massachusetts legislature in 1782 
and in October of that year was elected a member 
of the Continental Congress. By that time the 
body had dwindled to a mere handful of mem¬ 
bers in attendance but Higginson took his seat 
and the votes show that he served on a number 
of committees and was active in performing his 
duties. In 1786 he was proposed as one of the 
delegates from Massachusetts to the convention 
at Annapolis but the state finally took no part in 
that meeting, and Higginson appears to have 
been an officer in the forces sent to suppress 
Shays's Rebellion instead. The following year, 
in a letter to General Knox, he outlined the meth¬ 
od of adopting a federal constitution which was 
finally applied to the United States Constitution, 
but he himself had no part either in drawing up 
the document or in its adoption. In February 
and March 1789 he published a series of letters, 
signed “Laco,” in the Massachusetts Centinel , 
bitterly attacking the character of John Hancock. 
Although these were at one time condemned as 
rather unfair, they have since been thought to 
contain a truer estimate of the man than earlier 
historians recognized. In 1791 Higginson was 
appointed a member of a committee of twenty- 
one to report on a more efficient method of han¬ 
dling the affairs of the town of Boston. The 
measures suggested by the committee were not 
carried into effect until 1822. In the last decade 
of the eighteenth century, Higginson was recog¬ 
nized as one of the leading merchants, reputed to 
be worth a half-million dollars—a large sum for 
those days. He was a Federalist and his advice 
was frequently sought by the government and 
party leaders but he held no office for many years. 
He acted for a while, however, as agent for the 
federal navy and for a short time, in 1798, when 
there was no secretary of the navy, he practically 
performed the duties of that post. In his later 
years he met with heavy losses, amounting to 
about two-thirds of his fortune. His first wife 
had died in 1788 and in 1789 he married Eliza¬ 
beth Perkins, the daughter of an English mer¬ 
chant living in Boston. She died also and he 
then married her sister, Sarah Perkins, in Sep¬ 
tember 1792. 

[See Life and Times of Stephen Higginson (1907)9 
written by Higginson’s grandson, Thos. W. Higginson, 
and “Letters of Stephen Higginson/* in the Ann. Re - 
port of the Am, Hist, Asso, for the Year 1896 (1897), 
vol. 1.3 J.T.A. 

HIGGINSON, THOMAS WENTWORTH 

(Dec. 22,1823-May 9, 1911), reformer, soldier, 
author, was bom and died in Cambridge, Mass. 
His father, Stephen Higginson, a prosperous 
Boston merchant, steward, or bursar, of Har¬ 
vard College after his impoverishment by the 


Higginson 

Embargo of 1812, was the son of Stephen Hig¬ 
ginson [ q.v .], and was descended from Francis 
Higginson [q.z/.], first minister in the Massa¬ 
chusetts Bay Colony. Louisa Storrow, the sec¬ 
ond wife of Stephen Higginson, Jr., bore him ten 
children, of whom Thomas was the youngest. 
The name with which he began life, Thomas 
Wentworth Storrow Higginson, came direct 
from his maternal ancestry, for his mother was 
the daughter of an English army officer, Capt. 
Thomas Storrow, a prisoner-of-war at Ports¬ 
mouth, N. H., in the Revolution, and Anne Ap¬ 
pleton, a great-grand-daughter of the first royal 
governor of New Hampshire, John Wentworth 
[ q.v .]. Higginson dropped the name of Storrow 
before entering college. At the age of thirteen he 
enrolled at Harvard in the class of 1841. “A 
child of the college," as he called himself in later 
life, he had passed his boyhood in the very 
shadow of it, and was better prepared than his 
years would suggest to profit from its influences. 
Graduated at seventeen, he stood second in his 
class, and was already a voracious reader, with 
a happily retentive memory. The out-door pur¬ 
suits of a lover of nature and of such athletic 
sports as the times afforded—swimming, skating, 
loosely knit football—kept his tall, awkward body 
in good physical condition. While an under¬ 
graduate he could write in his journal, “I am 
getting quite susceptible to female charms" 
(Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson , p. 31), and long afterwards had the 
frankness to recall such tendencies, in their bud, 
by writing, “I don't believe there ever was a 
child in whom the sentimental was earlier de¬ 
veloped than in me” (Ibid,), He found little 
satisfaction in the two years of teaching that 
followed his graduation from college. In 1843 
he returned to Cambridge as a “resident grad¬ 
uate” student, and for three years indulged his 
taste for discursive reading, without a fixed pro¬ 
fessional goal. The divinity school was reported 
to be made up of “mystics, skeptics, and dyspep¬ 
tics,” and did not attract him immediately upon 
his return to Cambridge, or hold him continu¬ 
ously after he had entered it; but in 1846-47 he 
was enrolled in its senior class, with which he 
graduated. 

When only nineteen and still employed in 
teaching, Higginson became engaged to marry 
his second cousin, Mary Elizabeth Channing. 
Slender resources and uncertain prospects led to 
a long engagement, in the course of which the 
young student, charged with the idealism that 
produced many “come-outers” of the time, began 
his devotion to two favorite causes, woman suf¬ 
frage and opposition to slavery. In the second 



Higginson 

of these he was no mere anti-slavery theorist, 
but, at twenty-two, a “disunion abolitionist/’ 
pledged “not only not to vote for any officer who 
must take oath to support the U. S. Constitution, 
but also to use whatever means may lie in my 
power to promote the Dissolution of the Union” 
{Ibid., p. 76). So pronounced a radical was 
fortunate in finding any pulpit of his own, but in 
September 1847 Higginson became pastor of the 
First Religious Society of Newburyport, Mass.; 
in the same month he married Mary Channing. 
In the Unitarian ministry of his time and region 
there was abundant precedent for freedom of 
speech and action, and Higginson followed it 
heartily. Besides taking his place among tem¬ 
perance, suffrage, and anti-slavery reformers, he 
ran—unsuccessfully—for Congress as a Free- 
Soil candidate, and dealt so outspokenly with 
politics in his sermons that, after two years, he 
was found, in his own words, to have “preached 
himself out of his pulpit.” For over two years 
more he remained in the neighborhood of New¬ 
buryport, when, in the spring of 1852, he ac¬ 
cepted a call to the pastorate of a “Free Church” 
in Worcester—one of the precursors of later 
“ethical societies,” and falling, as an organiza¬ 
tion, under a definition of “Jerusalem wildcats,” 
which Higginson evidently relished ( Cheerful 
Yesterdays, 1898, p. 130). In this post he re¬ 
mained till the autumn of 1861, occupied with 
many things besides his preaching—lecturing on 
anti-slavery and other topics, school-committee 
work, temperance and suffrage activities. 

Through this period anti-slavery took more 
and more the right of way over other reforms 
with him. While still at Newburyport he was 
summoned hurriedly to Boston on one occasion 
to join a vigilance committee for the rescue of a 
fugitive slave, and suffered genuine chagrin at 
the government’s thwarting of the rescue plans. 
Three years later, in May 1854, he was similarly 
summoned from Worcester to take part in the 
liberation of another fugitive slave, Anthony 
Burns [g.z\], about to be returned from Boston 
to his owner in the South. In this historic case** 
Higginson bore an important part, helping to 
batter a passage through a door of the court 
house, and receiving a severe cut on the chin 
from his encounter with the police. In such en¬ 
terprises he continued as he began—in sharp 
contrast with the leading anti-slavery reformers 
who refused, on principle, to fight. Twice in 1856 
he supplemented his work in the East for free¬ 
dom in Kansas by going West himself in the in¬ 
terest of organized settlers on debatable ground. 
His first visit took him to Chicago and St. Louis, 
his second into Kansas, on an adventurous, semi- 


Higginson 

military journey, chronicled in letters to the New 
York Tribune, which were published also as an 
anti-slavery tract, A Ride Through Kanzas 
(1856). This experience brought him into re¬ 
lations with John Brown, which later became 
those of close confidence and sympathy. 

Holding no theories against the use of force, 
Higginson found it natural soon after the out¬ 
break of war to stop his preaching and prepare 
for fighting. He was on the point of starting for 
the front in November 1862, as captain of a 
Massachusetts regiment he had helped to raise 
and drill, when the colonelcy of the first negro 
regiment in the Union army was offered to him. 
This he accepted, and held the command of the 
1st South Carolina Volunteers from November 
1862 until May 1864, when the serious effects 
of a slight wound obliged him to leave the army. 
His regiment took part in no important battles, 
but its experiences in camp at Beaufort, S. C., 
and on skirmishing and raiding expeditions up 
the St. Mary’s and South Edisto Rivers afforded 
abundant material for his excellent book, Army 
Life in a Black Regiment (1870), besides placing 
him in physical perils which he appears to have 
met with fine courage. 

When Higginson quitted the army in 1864 his 
wife had moved, because of her delicate health, 
from Worcester to Newport, R. I., the scene of 
his one novel, Malbone (1869), and of his col¬ 
lected sketches, Oldport Days (1873). Here 
also he produced the two volumes of Harvard 
Memorial Biographies (1866), a work of high 
merit, for which he wrote thirteen of the ninety- 
five memoirs of Harvard graduates and students 
who gave their lives for the Northern cause in 
the Civil War. In Newport he and his wife con¬ 
tinued to live until her long invalidism was ended 
by her death in September 1877, soon after which 
he went abroad for some months before settling 
in Cambridge, Mass., in the autumn of 1878, for 
the remainder of his life. In February 1879 he 
married his second wife, Mary Potter Thacher, 
of Newton, Mass., who survived him. From his 
return to Cambridge until his death his life was 
that of a man of letters and a reformer, especially 
in the field of women’s rights. As a writer he was 
primarily a “magazinist.” His gifts of graceful 
and agreeable writing, of broad sympathy, of 
shrewd observation, both of men and of nature, 
joined with the equipment of wide reading well 
remembered, made him a welcome contributor 
to many periodicals, particularly the Atlantic 
Monthly in its earlier years. Through not quali¬ 
fying as a specialist in any one field he felt con¬ 
scious of a certain resemblance to a celebrated 
horse, “which had never won a race, but which 

7 



Higinbotham 

was prized as having gained a second place in 
more races than any other horse in America” 

(Cheerful Yesterdays, p. 183). While still in 
Newport he wrote and published his popular and 
profitable textbook, Young Folks' History of the 
United States (1875), followed ten years later 
by his Larger History of the United States 
(1885). A bibliography of all his writings fills 
twenty-six closely printed pages of the biography 
by his widow. The chief books, not previously 
mentioned in this article, are: Atlantic Essays 
(1871), Life of Francis Higginson, First Min¬ 
ister in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1891); 
Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson .(7 
vols., 1900); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
(1902), in the American Men o£ Letters series; 
John Greenleaf Whittier (1902), in the English 
Men of Letters series; Part of a Man's Life 
(1905), Life and Times of Stephen Higginson 
(1907), Carlyle's Laugh and Other Surprises 
(1909). Magazine articles, many of which were 
reprinted in these volumes, besides addresses and 
pamphlets swell the bibliography to its great size* 

Though Higginson’s tall, slender figure and 
sensitive features conveyed no marked sugges¬ 
tion of the soldier, the title of colonel dung to 
him through life. The uneventful career of a 
writer in Cambridge, a term of service (1880- 
81) in the Massachusetts legislature, a second 
and third journey to Europe, where he met many 
congenial spirits, the discovery and heralding of 
Emily Dickinson and her poetry, a lively interest 
in the past and present of his community, by sum¬ 
mer residence stretched to include Dublin, N. 
H., as well as Cambridge—with such concerns, 
intellectual, social, civic, the years of nearly half 
a century following the Civil War were happily 
and gently filled. Two daughters were born of 
his second marriage. Through the younger of 
these his old age was brightened by grandchil¬ 
dren. He had passed his eighty-seventh birth¬ 
day when the labors of his active, well-stored 
mind and faithful pen came to their end. 

IMary Thacker Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Hig¬ 
ginson: The Story of his Life ( 1914 ), and Letters and 
Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1921) are 
the chief biographical sources. There is, moreover, 
much of autobiographic interest and value in books of 
his own that have been mentioned above.] 

M.A. DeW. H. 

HIGINBOTHAM, HARLOW NILES (Oct. 

10, 1838-Apr. 18, 1919), merchant, philanthro¬ 
pist, was born on a farm near Joliet, Ill., a son of 
Henry Dumont and Rebecca (Wheeler) Higin¬ 
botham. His parents, both of whom were of 
New England descent, had come to Illinois from 
Oneida County, N. Y., in 1834. The elder Higin¬ 
botham bought land from the Government, 

18 


Higinbotham 

farmed, and built lumber and grist mills. The 
son got his schooling at Joliet, and at Lombard 
College, Galesburg, working in the meantime on 
the farm. At eighteen he took a course in a Chi¬ 
cago business school, and later worked as a bank 
clerk in Joliet and at Oconto, Wis. In i860 he 
became assistant bookkeeper in a Chicago dry- 
goods house. When the Civil War began, young 
Higinbotham left his desk and enlisted as a 
private in what was known as the Mercantile 
Battery, but was rejected because of uncertain 
health. From 1862 to December 1864, however, 
he served as chief clerk in the Quartermaster’s 
Corps and came back to Chicago in improved 
health. He entered the house of Field, Palmer 
& Leiter as bookkeeper, and within a few years 
he was in charge of credits for the new firm of 
Field, Leiter & Company. Soon he was known 
throughout the Middle West as a credit expert. 
In the great fire of 1871, Higinbotham’s per¬ 
sonal efforts saved much property for the firm, 
and in 1879 he was made a partner. After the 
house was reorganized in 1881 as Marshall Field 
& Company, he continued for twenty years as 
one of Field’s associates. 

The high rank that he had won among Chi¬ 
cago leaders in both wholesale and retail trade, 
as well as his interest in Chicago’s progress, 
made it natural that Higinbotham should have a 
part in forming and promoting the plans for the 
World’s Columbian Exposition (later known as 
the World’s Fair) of 1893. He was one of the 
directors from the beginning (April 1890), and 
in October 1891 became chairman of the commit¬ 
tee on ways and means. In the interest of the 
fair he visited Europe, enlisting the help of in¬ 
dividual exhibitors and governments. Finally, in 
the most critical period of the enterprise, when 
it faced actual failure, he took the presidency 
and carried the heavy responsibilities of that po¬ 
sition to a successful outcome. 

Higinbotham remained with Marshall Field 
until Dec. 31, 1900. From 1898 to 1909 he was 
the head of the Field Museum of Natural His¬ 
tory; he was also president of the Free Kinder¬ 
garten Association. The institution to which he 
gave most attention in the last decade of his life, 
however, was the Chicago Home for Incurables, 
with which from its foundation he had been of¬ 
ficially connected. He was also an active sup¬ 
porter of the Chicago Newsboys’ and Bootblacks’ 
Association and the Municipal Tuberculosis 
Sanitarium. His personal benefactions were 
many. In 1906 he published The Making of a 
Merchant He was married in December 1865 
to Rachael Davison of Joliet At his death, which 
was the result of a street accident in New York 



Hildreth 

City, he was survived by two sons and two 
daughters. 

[Geneal. and Biog. Record of Will County, III 
(1900) ; The Biog . Diet, and Portrait Gallery of Rep¬ 
resentative Men of Chicago, Wisconsin, and the World's 
Columbian Exposition (1895) ; Chicago Daily Tribune, 
Apr. 19, 1919; Harriet Monroe, Harlow Niles Higin- 
botham: A Memoir with Brief Autobiog., etc. (pri¬ 
vately printed, 1920) ; S. H. Ditchett, Marshall Field 
and Co.: The Life Story of a Great Concern (19 22 ); 
Report of the President to the Board of Directors of 
the World's Columbian Exposition (1898) ; Who's Who 
in America, 1918-19.] W—-mB. S. 

HILDRETH, RICHARD (June 28,1807-July 
11, 1865), writer, editor, lawyer, was born in 
Deerfield, Mass., a descendant of Richard Hil¬ 
dreth who became a freeman of the colony of 
Massachusetts Bay in 1643 and the son of the 
Rev. Hosea and Sarah McLeod Hildreth. His 
father, a graduate of Harvard, became professor 
of mathematics at the Phillips Exeter Academy 
in 1811. Richard entered the Academy in 1816 
and probably graduated in 1822. He graduated 
at Harvard in 1826. Turning to the law, he en¬ 
tered an office in Newburyport and was admitted 
to the bar in Suffolk County in 1830. He prac¬ 
tised in Boston and Newburyport until July 1832, 
when he interested himself in the founding of the 
Boston Daily Atlas, receiving a small annual 
salary for writing its chief editorials. He had 
already been contributing to the Ladies? Maga¬ 
zine and the American Monthly Magazine, and 
his work appeared in the first and later issues of 
the New-England Magazine . In 1834 he be¬ 
came a part owner of the Atlas, but in the sum¬ 
mer Caleb Cushing acquired the paper in order 
to enlist its support for Webster {My Connec¬ 
tion with The Atlas Newspaper, 1839; C. M. 
Fuess, The Life of Caleb Cushing, 1923, 1 ,146- 
48). Hildreth went to Florida for his health, 
returning to Boston in April 1836. He now 
agreed to do two articles each week for the Atlas, 
and early in 1837 began to supply editorials as 
before and also to report the proceedings of the 
law courts. In September he contracted to fur¬ 
nish most of the editorial matter for the paper. 
His articles are said to have “powerfully con¬ 
tributed to excite the strenuous opposition which 
was afterwards manifested ... to the annex¬ 
ation of Texas” (Duyckinck, post, II, 299). He 
was in Washington from September 1837 till the 
next April. In November 1838 he gave up his 
editorial work for the Atlas because its stand on 
the license law disagreed with his. He urged 
supporters of temperance to vote only for men 
who were “inflexible friends” to prohibition (A 
Letter to Emory Washburn , Wm. M. Rogers, 
and Seventy-eight Others, 1840). 

He supported Harrison by printing a cam¬ 
paign biography, The People's Presidential Can - 


Hildreth 

didate (1839), and The Contrast: or William 
Henry Harrison versus Martin Van Buren 
(1840). In the latter year he also brought out 
Banks, Banking, and Paper Currencies, found¬ 
ed on his earlier work, The History of Banks 
(1837). The book was “written principally with 
the design of advocating the system of open com¬ 
petition in banking.” The year 1840 also saw 
the publication of his translation of a work by 
fitienne Dumont on Bentham’s theory of legis¬ 
lation, and of Despotism in America, a discus¬ 
sion of the results of slavery. The latter book 
was reprinted in 1854 with a new chapter on the 
legal basis of slavery drawn from two articles 
written by Hildreth for Theodore Parker’s 
Massachusetts Quarterly Review . He also en¬ 
tered theological controversy by attacking some 
of the views of Andrews Norton [q.vJ] in A 
Letter to Andrews Norton on Miracles as the 
Foundation of Religious Faith (1840). More 
noted was his novel, The Slave: or Memoirs of 
Archy Moore (1836), reissued in a second and 
a third edition in 1840. As The White Slave, an 
enlarged version came out in London and Boston 
in 1852, and in London again the next year. As 
Archy Moore it was published at Auburn, N. Y., 
in 1855, an d m New York in 1857. There were 
also five French editions and probably other 
English issues of this book, the popularity of 
which seems to have been far greater than its 
literary quality justified. He was in British 
Guiana, probably from 1840 to 1843, and Sabin 
ascribes to him a Local Guide of British Guiana 
(1843). He is also said to have edited succes¬ 
sively two Guiana papers supporting the abo¬ 
lition of slavery, and to have edited a compilation 
of the colonial laws. 

After his return to the United States and his 
marriage on June 7,1844, to Caroline Neagus of 
Deerfield, he devoted himself chiefly to his His¬ 
tory of the United States, which he began to plan 
while he was in college. The first volume ap¬ 
peared in 1849; the sixth and last, coming to 
1821, in 1852. A revised version appeared in 
1854 and 1855, and there have been several later 
editions. His fame rests upon his History , The 
earlier volumes are strongly Federalist in point 
of view, and the work as a whole is dry. It is 
valuable chiefly for its accuracy in the matter of 
names and dates. His Theory of Morals (1844) 
and Theory of Politics (1853) are tw0 six 
projected works in which he hoped to treat also 
“wealth,” “taste,” “knowledge,” and “education,” 
in a purely inductive, scientific vein. To quote 
the Athenaeum (Nov. 12,1853), his thought was 
“like his style; solid, level, monotonous. It nei¬ 
ther warms by its vividness nor startles by its 



Hildreth 

boldness. It is pre-eminently respectable. . . . 
Mr. Hildreth is a republican, with a tendency, 
the full strength of which he unconsciously dis¬ 
guises from himself, toward socialism.” In 1855 
he published Japan as it Was and Is 3 which has 
been several times reissued and was, for its day, 
a good compilation of data. From 185s to 1861 
Hildreth was a contributor to the New York 
Tribune. In 1861 he was appointed consul at 
Trieste, where he served till ill health forced him 
to resign in 1864. He died at Florence and was 
buried in the Protestant graveyard, near Theo¬ 
dore Parker. 

In addition to the works already mentioned, 
and a few other books of minor importance, Hil¬ 
dreth wrote numerous controversial pamphlets, 
dealing chiefly with slavery and abolition, tem¬ 
perance, and banking. An estimate of him, ap¬ 
parently written by a friend, says: “He took a 
decisive part in several campaigns, and was al¬ 
ways esteemed a powerful friend and a bitter and 
formidable foe. Very decided in the utterance of 
his opinions, vehement and caustic in contro¬ 
versy ... he was not likely to receive full jus¬ 
tice for the finer qualities of his mind and heart. 
His intimate friends, however, recognized in him 
a certain sweetness of nature that called forth 
sympathy, and often love; . . . and an inability 
to harbor personal malice, that perhaps made 
him unconscious of the force of his denunci¬ 
ations” (New-England Historical and Gene¬ 
alogical Register, January 1866, p. 80). He 
seems to have had too little originality in ideas 
or style to win for himself a great place in his¬ 
tory, and his reputation is likely to remain simply 
that of an active editor and writer whose com¬ 
petence in historical craftsmanship saved him 
from oblivion. 

[The best list of Hildreth's writings is in Joseph 
Sabin, A Diet of Books Relating to America, vol. VIII 
(1877). Brief sketches are in Nouvelle Biographie 
Generate (1862-70) ; S. A. Allibone, A Critical Diet 
of Eng. Lit., vol. I (1858) ; E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, 
Cyc. of Am. Lit., vol. II (rev. ed., 1875)' See also his 
own Origin and Geneal. of the Am. Hildreths, reprint¬ 
ed from New-Eng. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Jan, 1857; 
Vital Records of Deerfield, Mass., to the Year 1850 
(1920) ; Gen. Catalogue of the Officers and Students 
of the Phillips Exeter Acad., 1783-1903 (1903); New- 
Eng. Hist and Geneal , Reg., Jan. 1866; Win. T. Davis, 
Bench and Bar of the Commonwealth of Mass. (1895), 
vol. I; F. L. Mott, A Hist, of Am. Magazines, 1741-1850 
(i 93 o).l K.B.M. 

HILDRETH, SAMUEL CLAY (May 16, 
1866-Sept 24, 1929), turfman, was the son of 
Vincent Hildreth, a roving owner of “quarter- 
horses” who traveled about with his family in a 
covered wagon in Missouri and adjacent states, 
making match races and sometimes wagering al¬ 
most everything he possessed on one of his run- 


Hildreth 

ners. “Sam,” the youngest of ten children, was 
born at Independence, Mo. Acting as rider and 
groom of his father’s horses and living with 
horses as intimately as Arabs do, he learned the 
art and mysteries of horsemanship in the dia¬ 
mond-cut-diamond school of frontier horse rac¬ 
ing, where cunning and strategy usually formed 
the groundwork of success. In 1883 he began to 
train for a Mr. Paris at Parsons, Kan., at the 
same time working at the bar of his employer’s 
hotel. Later in Parsons he turned to blacksmith- 
ing in the belief that he could earn more money 
by shoeing horses than by training and racing 
them. As a blacksmith he went to New York in 
1887, but on seeing the golden opportunities there 
which racing offered, he soon abandoned the 
forge. His knowledge of farriery standing him in 
good stead, he soon had conspicuous success as a 
trainer. Operating chiefly on minor tracks where 
speculation was active, Hildreth’s ability in 1895 
attracted the attention of E. J. Baldwin, who 
engaged him to campaign a stable of superior 
horses on metropolitan tracks. Thereafter, his 
services were utilized by William C. Whitney, 
Elmer E. Smathers, Charles Kohler, Baron 
Maurice de Rothschild, August Belmont, and 
Harry F. Sinclair, all of whom raced on a grand 
scale. When not employed by others Hildreth 
raced in his own colors, and in 1909, 1910, and 
1911 headed the list of winning owners on the 
American turf. Under his management Sin¬ 
clair’s Rancocas Stable repeated this rare 
achievement by leading the list three years in 
succession, ending in 1923. That year its earn¬ 
ings were $438,849, then the largest amount ever 
credited to any American stable in a single cam¬ 
paign. Zev accounted for $272,008 of this 
amount. He was officially chosen as the best 
three-year-old in America to meet the English 
Derby winner Papyrus in an international race 
at Belmont Park, New York, in 1923, for a purse 
of $80,000, which Zev won. Hildreth, however, 
rated Purchase and Grey Lag first and second 
respectively in worth among all the horses he 
had trained. His success in bringing the latter 
back to winning form after he was ten years old 
and had been retired to the stud as a broken- 
down race horse was one of many brilliant feats 
which attested the seeming wizardry of Hil¬ 
dreth’s horsemanship. Another was the trans¬ 
forming of Ocean Bound from a filly thought to 
be hopelessly lame into a winner of the Spina¬ 
way Stakes at Saratoga, within three weeks. 
Knowledge of the horse’s foot and how to shoe 
it accounted for this memorable triumph. Infi¬ 
nite pains on the part of the trainer and his help¬ 
ers in caring for Grey Lag had much to do with 


20 



Hildreth Hildreth 


his return to the turf. Credit for this and for the 
splendid campaigns of Fitz Herbert, McChesney, 
King James, Hourless, Novelty, Stromboli, Mad 
Hatter, Lucullite, Friar Rock, and Dalmatian 
Hildreth always freely shared with his carefully 
chosen and well-paid grooms. His eternal vig¬ 
ilance and his rare ability accurately to appraise 
the racing capacity of his own horses and those 
competing with them were among the secrets of 
his unsurpassed success. Swarthy of complexion, 
and always with the sharp, alert expression of a 
sentry on guard in the enemy’s country, yet ge¬ 
nial and kindly in countenance and manner when 
not aroused, “Sam” Hildreth on the race track 
looked the part of a twentieth-century quarter- 
horse turfman. He was married in 1892 to Mary 
Ellen Cook, of Saratoga Springs, N. Y. He died 
at the Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York after 
a surgical operation. 

[Hildreth’s reminiscences, “Down the Stretch,” in 
Saturday Evening Post , May 30-July 25, 1925 ; files of 
the Racing Calendar and the Am. Racing Manual ; N. 
Y. Times and N. Y. Tribune , Sept. 25, 1929; Thor¬ 
oughbred Record, Sept. 28, 1929.] G. C.G. 

HILDRETH, SAMUEL PRESCOTT (Sept. 
30, 1783-July 24, 1863), physician, naturalist, 
historian, was born in Methuen, Mass., and died 
in Marietta, Ohio. He was the son of a physi¬ 
cian, Dr. Samuel Hildreth, and of Abigail (Bod- 
well) Hildreth, and was sixth in descent from 
Richard Hildreth, an emigrant from England 
who was admitted as a freeman of the colony of 
Massachusetts Bay in 1643. His early life, spent 
on a farm, made him healthy, industrious, and 
self-reliant. After attending Phillips Andover 
and Franklin academies he studied medicine, 
first in his father’s office and later for two years 
with Dr. Thomas Kittredge of Andover. He at¬ 
tended one series of lectures in Harvard College, 
and received his diploma from the Medical Soci¬ 
ety of. Massachusetts in 1805. Beginning the 
practice of medicine in Hampstead, N. H., he 
lived in the family of John True, whose brother, 
Dr. Jabez True, was practising in the Ohio 
Company’s settlement at Marietta, Ohio. Hear¬ 
ing that there was a good opening at that place, 
Hildreth set out on horseback early in Septem¬ 
ber 1806, and arrived in Marietta on Oct. 4. A 
few months later he began practice at Belpre, a 
New England settlement some twelve miles down 
the Ohio; but returned in 1808 to Marietta, 
where he remained in active practice until 1861, 
three years before his death. While in Belpre, 
he was married on Aug. 19,1807, to Rhoda Cook, 
by whom he had three sons and three daughters. 

He was a successful physician, treating his 
patients in the methods of the time by bleeding, 


purging, and sweating, but he recorded also the 
very modern discoveries of the value of yeast and 
charcoal in malignant fevers and the curative 
effect of malaria on epilepsy. He served in the 
state legislature in 1810-11, and secured the 
enactment of a law regulating the practice of 
medicine and providing for medical societies. 
He contributed medical papers descriptive of 
epidemics—including the great fever epidemic 
of 1822-23—their sequelae, and special cases to 
the Medical Repository, New York, 1808 and 
1822; to the Western Medical and Physical Jour - 
ml, Cincinnati, December 1827; and to the Phil- 
adelphia Journal of the Medical and Physical 
Sciences, February 1824. In 1839 be was presi¬ 
dent of the third medical convention of Ohio. 

Hildreth was also a naturalist, constantly col¬ 
lecting insects, shells, fossils, and plants and ob¬ 
serving the geology of the country. He kept an 
accurate record of the flowering of plants, of 
temperature readings, rainfall, and other mete¬ 
orological observations, which were published, 
together with other natural-history and geo¬ 
logical contributions, in Silliman’s American 
Journal of Science from February 1826 on. In 
this journal, in July 1833, he recorded the pres¬ 
ence of petroleum in association with the salt 
springs, one of the earliest of such records. His 
meteorological observations, reduced and dis¬ 
cussed by C. A. Schott, were published in the 
Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. 
XVI (1870). 

Hildreth’s greatest service, however, was 
probably as a historian. He preserved for pos¬ 
terity as much as he could of the early history of 
Ohio, collecting tales of the early pioneers still 
living in his day, and their diaries and letters. 
His historical works include: “A Brief History 
of the Floods of the Ohio River from the Year 
1772 to the Year 1832,” in the Journal of the 
Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, 
vol. I (1838) ; Address of S. P. Hildreth, Presi¬ 
dent of the Third Medical Convention of Ohio 
(1839), a discourse on the climate and diseases 
of the Marietta region; Pioneer History (1848) ; 
“Biographical Sketches of the Early Physicians 
of Marietta, Ohio,” in New-Englmd Historical 
and Genealogical Register, January-April 1849; 
Biographical and Historical Memoirs of the 
Early Pioneer Settlers of Ohio (1852); and 
Contributions to the Early History of the North- 
West (1864), published posthumously. He also 
contributed several articles to The American 
Pioneer (1842-43), wrote “A Brief History of 
the Settlement at Belville, in Western Virginia,” 
which appeared in the Hesperian of Columbus, 
June-November 1839, and compiled Genealog - 



Hilgard 

ical and Biographical Sketches of the Hildreth 
Family (1840). 

[Autobiographical sketch in New-Eng. Hist. and 
Geneal. Reg., Apr. 1849, reprinted in part in Boston 
Medic, and Surgic. Jour., Oct. 24, 1849; autobiograph¬ 
ical material in the Address, etc. (1839), mentioned 
above, and in his Geneal. . .. Sketches of the Hildreth 
Family ; sketch by John Eaton in Memorial Blogs., of 
the New-Eng. Hist. Geneal. Soc., vol. V (1894); Philip 
Reade, Origin and Geneal „ of the Hildreth Family of 
Lowell, Mass . (1892); New-Eng. Hist, and Geneal. 
Reg., Jan. 1864; Am. Jour. Sci., Sept. 1863; Mag., of 
Western Hist., May 1885; P. G. Thomson, A Bibliog. 
of the State of Ohio (1880), pp. 166-70.] a. p. 

HILGARD, EUGENE WOLDEMAR (Jan. 
5, 1833-Jan. 8, 1916), geologist, authority on 
soils, son of Theodor Erasmus Hilgard [ q.v .] 
and Margaretha (Pauli) Hilgard, was bom at 
Zweibriicken, Rhenish Bavaria. His father was 
a lawyer who in 1836, for political reasons, came 
to America and settled on a farm at Belleville, 
Ill. Eugene received his early instruction main¬ 
ly at home and from his father. At the age of 
sixteen, he was sent to Washington, D. C., on a 
visit to his brother, Julius Erasmus Hilgard 
[1 q.v .]. He subsequently attended lectures in 
chemistry at the Homeopathic Medical College 
and the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, later 
becoming lecture assistant at the Medical Col¬ 
lege. In 1849 he went to Germany and entered 
the University of Heidelberg, but later changed 
to Zurich, and then to the royal mining school 
at Freiberg, Saxony. In 1853, he returned to 
Heidelberg and graduated, receiving the degree 
of Ph.D., summa cum laude. On account of poor 
health, he spent the next two years on the coast 
of Spain, devoting his time mainly to geological 
research. In 1855 he returned to Washington 
and became attached as chemist to the Smith¬ 
sonian Institution, but in the same year he was 
appointed assistant on the state geological sur¬ 
vey of Mississippi, under the direction of Lewis 
Harper (see Merrill, Contributions , post). In 
1857, upon the suspension of the survey, he re¬ 
turned to Washington once more, but with its 
revival in 1858 he was appointed director and 
he devoted the next two years to detailed inves¬ 
tigation of the natural resources of the state. 
This work was brought to an end by the outbreak 
of the Civil War and his report, Geology and Ag¬ 
riculture of the State of Mississippi , though 
printed in i860 was not actually issued until 
1866. During the war he was custodian of the 
library and equipment of the University of Mis¬ 
sissippi, and as agent of the Confederate “Nitre 
Bureau” undertook to place calcium lights on 
the Vicksburg bluffs to illuminate the Federal 
fleet in its attempt to pass the city, but the gun¬ 
boats passed before the lights were ready. In 
October 1866 he resigned as state geologist to 


Hilgard 

accept the position of professor of chemistry in 
the university, but in 1870 again assumed the di¬ 
rectorship of the state survey, holding it without 
extra recompense. He early recognized the facts 
that a survey of the state of Mississippi could not 
be sustained on the basis of its mineral resources 
and that the soil is a geological formation enti¬ 
tled to as much, and at times more, consideration 
than the underlying consolidated rocks. Accord¬ 
ingly to the soil together with other of the looser- 
lying sedimentary beds, as the sediments of the 
Mississippi, he directed his studies. He was one 
of the first to recognize the relation of soil-analy¬ 
sis to agriculture. In 1873 he was called to the 
University of Michigan as professor of geology 
and natural history, but early in 1875 he resigned 
to accept the position of professor of agriculture 
and director of the Agricultural Experiment 
Station in Berkeley, Calif. There he remained 
for the rest of his life (barring three visits to 
the eastern states, and in 1893 a trip to Europe), 
pursuing his study of soils and exerting an im¬ 
portant influence in the application of scientific 
knowledge to practical agriculture. In 1879 he 
was asked by General Walker to supervise the in¬ 
vestigations relating to cotton culture for the 
Tenth Census, and to this task he devoted prac¬ 
tically all of his time until 1883. In 1904 he re¬ 
tired from active service and became professor 
emeritus. He died twelve years later, just after 
his eighty-third birthday. 

Hilgard’s Geology of the Mississippi Delta 
(1870) has become a classic, and brought him 
membership in the National Academy of Sci¬ 
ences. His Soils, Their Formation, Properties, 
Composition , and Relations to Climate and Plant 
Growth in the Humid and Arid Regions (1906) 
was of like originality and brought him distinc¬ 
tion both at home and abroad. He was of medium 
height, slender, and throughout the greater part 
of his life of youthful appearance. Alert and 
quick in his movements, cheerful and vivacious, 
he made friends everywhere, but was not lacking 
in fighting qualities when sufficiently aroused. 
For a man of foreign birth, his English speech 
was remarkably free from accent, and he was 
almost equally fluent in French and Spanish, 
with a reading knowledge of Greek, Latin, Ital¬ 
ian, Portuguese, and, it is said, Sanskrit. He re¬ 
ceived a gold medal from the Munich Academy, 
and a semi-centennial diploma from the Univer¬ 
sity of Heidelberg. In August i860 he married 
Lenora J. Alexandrina Bello, daughter of a colo¬ 
nel in the Spanish army, whom he had met on a 
visit to Spain shortly after his graduation. She 
died in 1893. Two children were born to them, 
a son who died quite young, and a daughter. 


22 



Hilgard 

[E. A. Smith, in Bull. Geol. Soc. of America, vol. 
XXVIII (1917); G. P. Merrill, Contributions to a 
Hist, of State Geol. and Nat. Hist. Surveys (1920) ; 
In Memoriam: Eugene Woldemar Hilgard (1916), 
repr. from Univ. of Calif. Chronicle, Apr. 1916; Fred 
Slate, in Nat. Acad. Sci. Biog. Memoirs, vol. IX (1920) ; 
Science, Mar. 31, 1916; N. Y. Times, Los Angeles 
Times, Jan. 9, 1916; Hilgardia (pub. by the Agric. Exp. 
Station at Berkeley), May 1925.] G P M 

HILGARD, JULIUS ERASMUS (Jan. 7, 
1825-May 8, 1891), geodesist, born at Zwei- 
brucken, Bavaria, was a brother of Eugene 
Woldemar Hilgard [ q.v .] and the son of Theo¬ 
dor Erasmus Hilgard [q.v.] and Margaretha 
(Pauli) Hilgard. His father emigrated to the 
United States in 1836 and sought his ideal of so¬ 
cial and political freedom on a farm at Belleville, 
Ill. A man of unusual talents and training, he 
successfully undertook the education of his nine 
children, instructing them in languages and phi¬ 
losophy, but soon yielding the teacher’s place in 
the exact sciences to young Julius, who displayed 
a remarkable aptitude for mathematics. At the 
age of eighteen years, young Hilgard went to 
Philadelphia to study civil engineering, and 
there came under the observation of Alexander 
Dallas Bache [q.v.], superintendent of the 
United States Coast Survey, who found evidence 
of his promising development. Offered a posi¬ 
tion on the Survey in a beginner’s capacity and 
at small pay, he accepted it gladly with the char¬ 
acteristic comment, “I would rather do high 
work at low pay than low work at high pay” 
(Hilgard, post, p. 330). 

For forty years, except for a brief interval in 
1860-62, when he was in business at Paterson, 
N. J., the Survey was the sphere of Hilgard’s 
studious endeavors. His exceptional abilities 
early advanced him to a position in which he 
could impress his character upon the operations; 
and, for some twenty years before he himself be¬ 
came superintendent, he was in a controlling, po¬ 
sition in conducting its destinies. His profes¬ 
sional mind was eminently practical, and greatly 
assisted in the attainment of the high standard 
of execution which has been reached by the Coast 
Survey. While directing large interests on the 
broadest plans, he grasped and gave attention to 
minute and varied details in perfecting methods 
for applying theory to practice. At the interna¬ 
tional convention held in Paris in 1872 for the 
purpose of forming the International Bureau of 
Weights and Measures, he was the delegate of 
the United States. At the Centennial Exposi¬ 
tion in 1876, he acted, in association with the 
ablest scientists of the world, as one of the judges 
on scientific apparatus. He took an active part, 
as director of the Office of Weights and Mea¬ 
sures, in shaping legislation relating to the intro- 


Hilgard 

duction of the metric system, and prepared the 
metric standards which were distributed to the 
several states of the Union. His publications, 
which include lectures and addresses marked by 
lucidity of expression, consist chiefly of re¬ 
searches relating to geodesy and geophysics 
printed in the annual reports of the Coast and 
Geodetic Survey. He was a charter member of 
the National Academy of Sciences and was pres¬ 
ident, in 1875, of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science. In 1881 he was 
appointed superintendent of the Survey, but to¬ 
ward 1885 his super intendency began to be as¬ 
sailed with accusations of maladministration. 
These charges were not justified by the ensuing 
official investigation of the Survey, which left 
Hilgard’s integrity untarnished and his scien¬ 
tific standing undiminished, nevertheless they 
decided him to resign his office in 1885. He died 
at his home in Washington, D. C., on May 8, 
1891, of Bright’s disease, after several years of 
painful illness. 

In August 1848, at the age of twenty-three, 
Hilgard was married to Katherine Clements of 
Washington, D. C. Four children were born to 
them; but none survived their father. 

[E. W. Hilgard, in Nat. Acad . Sci. Biog. Memoirs, 
vol. Ill (1895); O. H. Tittman, in Bull. Phil. Soc. of 
Washington, vol. XII (1892-94) ; Annual Reports of 
the Coast Survey; “President Cleveland's First Annual 
Message to Congress,” House Ex. Doc. No. 1, 49 Cong., 
1 Sess.; Centennial Celebration of the U. S. Coast and 
Geodetic Survey (1916) ; N. Y . Herald, Evening Star 
(Washington), May 9, 1891.] G.W.L. 

HILGARD, THEODOR ERASMUS (July 
7, 1790-Jan. 29, 1873), lawyer, horticulturist, 
writer, was born in Marnheim, Rhenish Palati¬ 
nate, Bavaria, the son of Jakob and Maria Doro¬ 
thea (Engelmann) Hilgard. His father and 
his mother’s father were Protestant ministers. 
Thwarted in his ambition to become an engineer 
by his near-sightedness, the young man turned 
to law and studied at the universities of Gottingen 
and Heidelberg, also at Coblenz and Paris. At 
the age of twenty-two he was an advocate at the 
superior court of Trier, soon afterwards he re¬ 
moved to the seat of the court of appeals at 
Zweibrucken. There he established a large law 
practice, was a member of the Landrat of the 
Rhenish district, and for twelve years beginning 
in 1824 was a justice of the court of appeals. He 
edited the Annalen der Rechtspflege in Bayern, 
often presided at the assizes, and was considered 
one of the foremost lawyers of his state. In 1835 
he resigned, owing to his dissatisfaction with 
certain reactionary and bureaucratic measures 
which were instituted by the Bavarian govern¬ 
ment in the administration of justice in the Pa¬ 
latinate. Hilgard felt a romantic love for coun- 



Hilgard 

try life, for constitutional freedom, and wished 
to provide for his large family a wider scope for 
their activity. Accordingly, having heard from 
friends and relatives accurate accounts of the 
advantages and disadvantages of pioneer life in 
the Missouri and Mississippi country, he made 
his calculation and decided to emigrate. 

By way of Havre and New Orleans he arrived 
in St. Louis in the spring of 1836 with his wife 
(Margaretha Pauli, of Osthofen near Worms) 
and their four sons and five daughters. Their 
destination was Belleville, Ill., on the other side 
of the river, where they were welcomed in the 
German colony of “Latin farmers,” so called 
because most of these pioneers had come over 
with greater knowledge of the classics than of 
farming. They settled on the hills of Richland 
Creek, near Belleville, on a tract containing good 
timber and some rich farm land. The place was 
soon improved with dwellings, orchards, and 
gardens. Hilgard applied himself diligently to 
the task of farming and became noted locally as 
an expert in horticulture and viticulture. Though 
he was a learned jurist, he never practised law 
in his new home nor did he enter politics, except 
as an adviser to his German neighbors, personal¬ 
ly or in articles written for the German language 
press. He continued his favorite studies, how¬ 
ever—mathematics, the classics and modem lan¬ 
guages—and his children reaped the benefit of 
his scholarship. He carefully instructed his own 
sons so that they found no difficulty in matricu¬ 
lating in German universities. The oldest, Ju¬ 
lius Erasmus inheriting his father’s ge¬ 

nius for mathematics, became an engineer and 
chief of the United States Coast Survey; the 
youngest, Eugene Woldemar [q.z/.], was distin¬ 
guished as an authority on soils. Theodor Hil¬ 
gard parcelled out a large part of his land in 
building lots, which he sold profitably, thereby 
gaining a reputation for parsimony. He shrewd¬ 
ly bought tracts in other parts of the state, found¬ 
ing upon one of them the town of Freedom as he 
had previously founded West Belleville, He 
held, however, the original estate long after the 
death of his first wife and after all his children 
had homes of their own. At the age of sixty- 
four he married Maria Theveny and with her re¬ 
turned to Germany in 1854, finally making his 
home at Heidelberg, where he died in 1873. 

Hilgard was the author of a large number of 
essays on social subjects, including: Zwolf Par - 
agraphen fiber Pauperismus und die Mittel ihm 
zu steuern (1847), reviewed in the Westminster 
and Foreign Quarterly Review, July 1848, and 
translated by himself into French; Eine Stimme 
gm 4 werikfy fiber verfassungsmassige Mo - 


Hill 

narchie und Republik (1849); Uber Deutsch - 
lands Nationaleinheit und ihr Verhdltnis zur 
Freiheit (1849). He wrote verse in German for 
private circulation only, but took more pride in 
his translations of King Lear, the Nibelungenlied, 
Tom Moore’s The Fire Worshippers , and Ovid’s 
Metamorphoses . In i860, at Heidelberg, he pub¬ 
lished his autobiography. 

[Hilgard, Meine Erinnerungen (i860) ; Gustav Kor- 
ner, Das deutsche Element in den Vereinigten Staaten 
von Nordamerika 1818-48 (1880); Memoirs of Gus¬ 
tave Koemer, 1809-1896 (2 vols., 1909), ed. by T. J. 
McCormack.] A. B. F. 

HILL, AMBROSE POWELL (Nov. 9,1825- 
Apr. 2, 1865), soldier, son of Maj. Thomas Hill 
(1789-1868) and Fannie Russell Baptist Hill, 
was born in the town of Culpeper, Ya. He was 
given his preliminary education at Simms’s 
Academy, and entered West Point in July 1842, 
but, being deficient in philosophy and chemistry 
at the end of his third year, did not graduate 
until 1847, when he was fifteenth in a class of 
thirty-eight He saw service in Mexico at Hua- 
mantla and Atlixco in October 1847. After the 
war he did garrison duty at Fort McHenry, at 
Key West, and at Barrancas Barracks, Fla., and 
in 1852 was on the Texas frontier, besides partic¬ 
ipating in both the Seminole campaigns (1849- 
50 and 1853-55). Promoted first lieutenant on 
Sept. 4, 1851, he was in the Washington office of 
the superintendent of the coast survey from No¬ 
vember 1855 to October i860, when he procured 
leave of absence. In May 1859, he married Kitty 
Grosh Morgan (1833-1920), sister of John H. 
Morgan, subsequently a renowned Confederate 
leader. 

Hill resigned from the United States army on 
Mar. 1,1861, was named colonel of the 13th Vir¬ 
ginia Infantry, served for a short time in West 
Virginia, and was in reserve with his regiment 
at First Manassas. He spent the winter of 1861- 
62 in northern Virginia, and on Feb. 26, 1862, 
was made brigadier-general. At Williamsburg, 
Va., on May 5, during Johnston’s retreat up the 
Peninsula, Hill met the pursuing Federals and 
lost heavily but won many plaudits. The organi¬ 
zation of his brigade, Longstreet reported, “was 
perfect throughout the battle, and it was marched 
off the field in as good order as it entered it.” 
Hill was named major-general on May 26,1862, 
and held the left of the Confederate lines around 
Richmond until June 26, when, with approxi¬ 
mately 14,000 men, he opened the battle of the 
Seven Days. He bore the brunt of the fight at 
Mechanicsville that evening; on the 27th, he 
was the first to engage the enemy at Gaines’s 
Mill and sustained most pf the $hPP& pf conflict 





Hill 

until late afternoon; on the 29th his division and 
that of Longstreet were marched to meet Mc¬ 
Clellan as he hastened to his new base on the 
James River; the next day, he and Longstreet 
assailed the Federals at Frazier’s Farm. These 
three engagements decimated Hill's command 
but they showed him to be prompt and aggres¬ 
sive. His men became very proud of their title, 
“Hill's Light Division,” bestowed or adopted be¬ 
cause of the speed of their march. 

Following some friction with Longstreet, in 
July 1862, Hill was sent to reenforce Jackson, 
who was facing Pope in northern Virginia. Ef¬ 
fective cooperation was impaired by Jackson's 
reticence, though Hill retrieved disaster to Jack- 
son at Cedar Mountain by his prompt arrival on 
the Confederate left on the afternoon of Aug. 9. 
Hill's command next moved with Jackson to 
Manassas, where he held the left of Jackson's 
line and sustained repeated heavy assaults on 
Aug. 29 and 30. In the Maryland campaign, 
Hill participated with Jackson in the capture of 
Harper's Ferry and was assigned to execute the 
details of the surrender, but he hastened on to 
Sharpsburg (Antietam) and arrived just in 
time to throw his troops on the Federals who 
were breaking the Confederate right. At Fred¬ 
ericksburg, on Dec. 13, 1862, Hill was again on 
the right, where gaps in his line, due to ignorance 
of the ground, offered an opening to the Fed¬ 
erals. The latter broke through and caused heavy 
loss to one of his brigades but were later repulsed. 

Hill shared in Jackson's famous flanking 
movement at Chancellorsville and directed the 
assault, after Jackson was wounded, until himself 
rendered hors de combat . In the reorganization 
that followed the death of Jackson, the army was 
divided into three corps. The third of these was 
entrusted to Hill, who was made lieutenant-gen¬ 
eral on May 23,1863. In the Pennsylvania cam¬ 
paign, his corps found the Federals around Get¬ 
tysburg and, without waiting for orders from 
Lee, moved against them. The battle that fol¬ 
lowed on July 1 was directed by Hill and was 
the only large engagement of the war in which 
the initiative and whole responsibility rested with 
him. During the forenoon his troops were very 
roughly handled and lost heavily, but in the af¬ 
ternoon, having been reenforced, he drove back 
the Federals and ended the day with 5,000 pris¬ 
oners. On July 2, part of his corps took up the 
offensive that spread from the Confederate left, 
but the charge of the various brigades was not 
coordinated, and the assault, which should have 
extended to the flank of Hill’s corps, terminated 
on his front, On the third day, ten of his bri- 


Hill 

gades were placed under Longstreet's direction 
for the final assault on Cemetery Ridge. 

In the Wilderness, Hill’s troops more than 
held their own on May 5, 1864, but two days 
later they were outflanked in part and probably 
would have met disaster but for the arrival of 
Longstreet's men. At this juncture, with Long¬ 
street wounded, Hill was incapacitated by ill¬ 
ness and was absent from May 8 to May 21. He 
was then engaged, though not heavily, in the 
operations from the North Anna to Cold Harbor, 
and when Grant crossed the James and opened 
the siege of Petersburg was moved to the lines 
in front of that city. There he remained for the 
ensuing eight and a half months, sharing in 
most of the battles and raids on the Confederate 
right. Late in March 1865 he procured brief 
sick-leave and left the lines to recuperate at his 
temporary home in Petersburg. On Apr. 2, how¬ 
ever, alarmed at the situation, he returned to 
duty and was killed a few minutes later by the 
fire of two Pennsylvania soldiers, as he rode 
forward to rally his men, who had been driven 
from their lines by the final Federal assault. He 
is buried under a monument erected on the out¬ 
skirts of Richmond, Va., by his former soldiers. 

Hill participated in all the great battles of the 
Army of Northern Virginia from the time Lee 
took command, except for the operations around 
Spotsylvania Court House. Genial, approachable, 
and affectionate in private life, he was restless 
and impetuous in action. He did not hesitate to 
risk heavy losses for substantial gains, but he 
was prompt in moving his troops, maintained 
good discipline, and had the good opinion of his 
subordinates and the unquestioning confidence of 
his soldiers. 

[Scarcely any of Hill’s private papers have been pre¬ 
served. The sketch in Confed. Mil . Hist. (1899), I, 
679-81 is very inadequate. Probably the best critical 
review of his generalship appears incidentally in E. P. 
Alexander, Mil. Memoirs of a Confed. (1907). The 
main sources are his reports and correspondence in War 
of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), 1 ser., vols. 
XI (pt. 1), XI (pt 2), XII (pt. 2)-, XIX (pt. 1), XXI, 
XXV (pt. 1), XXVII (pt. 2). Hill seems to have filed 
no report after that on Gettysburg. Good accounts of 
his death appear in Sou. Hist. Soc. Papers, vols. XI, 
XII, XIX, XX (1883-92). Details of his standing at 
West Point are from the manuscript records of the 
Mil. Acad. G. W. Cullum, Biog. Reg. of the Officers and 
Grads . of the V. S. Mil. Acad., vol. II (1891), gives 
his pre-war assignments to duty. Mrs. Lucy Hill Mac- 
gill, the only survivor of his four children, has supplied 
details of his parentage and marriage, and other per¬ 
sonal information. See also R. T. Green, Geneal. cmd 
Hist. Notes on Culpeper County, Va. (1900).] p g ^ 

HILL, BENJAMIN HARVEY (Sept. 14, 
1823-Aug. 16, 1882), Georgia statesman, son of 
John and Sarah (Parham) Hill, was born in 
Jasper County, Ga., the seventh of nine children. 
His father had gone to Georgia from North 


25 



Hill Hill 


Carolina, and, when the boy was ten years of 
age, the family moved on to Troup County in 
the newly opened Creek lands in the western 
part of the state. Hill engaged in work on the 
farm, and went irregularly to school. Evinc¬ 
ing considerable aptitude for study, he was en¬ 
abled by virtue of some family sacrifice to enter 
the University of Georgia at the age of seven¬ 
teen. He was graduated three years later (1843) 
with first honors. Admitted to the bar in 1844, 
on Nov. 27, 1845, he married Caroline Holt of 
Athens, Ga. Six children were born to them. 
Establishing himself in Lagrange, Troup Coun¬ 
ty, Ga., he immediately achieved marked success 
in the practice of law. In the later years of busy 
political life, he always maintained an extensive 
legal practice, both civil and criminal, from 
which he reaped large financial returns. In the 
opinion of his contemporaries, he had no supe¬ 
rior and few peers at the bar (Pearce, post, p. 
309 n.). 

Hill began political life as a Whig, devoted to 
the Union of the American states and the Consti¬ 
tution of 1787. In 1851 he was elected to the 
lower house of the Georgia Assembly, where he 
promoted acceptance by the Georgia people of 
the compromise measures of 1850. He became 
a member of the executive committee of the Con¬ 
stitutional Union party, a fusion of Georgia 
Whigs and Democrats standing on the compro¬ 
mise measures. At the conclusion of the ses¬ 
sion, thinking the compromise final, Hill retired 
to private life. In 1855, after the reopening of 
sectional strife by the Kansas-Nebraska debates, 
he offered for Congress as an independent 
Unionist, in the 4th Georgia district, and was 
barely defeated by the Democratic candidate, 
Judge Hiram Warner (B. H. Hill, Jr., post, p. 
18). After the Kansas-Nebraska debates killed 
the Whig party in Georgia, Hill cast his lot with 
the American or “Know-Nothing” party, al¬ 
though he reprobated some of its practices. In 
1856 he stumped the state in behalf of the Amer¬ 
ican candidate, Fillmore, and came into collision 
with Robert Toombs and Alexander H. Stephens 
who had left the Whig party for the Democratic. 
During the campaign, Stephens challenged him 
to a duel, which he refused. In 1857 he made 
the gubernatorial race against the Democratic 
candidate, Joseph E. Brown, who was elected. 
In i860 Hill campaigned for Bell and vainly 
endeavored to effect a fusion of the presidential 
candidates opposing Lincoln. He went to the 
Milledgeville convention of January 1861 to fight 
secession, but was overborne, and, accepting the 
mandate of the convention, signed the secession 
ordinance, 


As a member of the Provisional Congress at 
Montgomery, Hill participated in the organiza¬ 
tion of the Confederate government. In Novem¬ 
ber 1861 he was elected Confederate States sena¬ 
tor, a post which he occupied throughout the 
war. At Richmond he soon became recognized 
as the champion and spokesman of President 
Davis. He was called upon to defend such con¬ 
troversial policies as conscription and the sus¬ 
pension of the writ of habeas corpus, which he 
justified as war measures. He also defended the 
Davis administration in Georgia, where formi¬ 
dable opposition was led by Brown, Toombs, 
Linton Stephens, and others. He was arrested 
at the close of the war and detained three months 
in Fort Lafayette, N. Y., when he was paroled 
by President Johnson and returned to his home 
in Lagrange to recoup his fortunes. He took no 
part in public life thereafter until the passage of 
the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 called forth his 
vigorous protest in what is known as the “Davis 
Hall Speech,” delivered in Atlanta, July 16, 
1867. For the next three years he conducted a 
strenuous opposition to the entire program pro¬ 
posed by the radical Congress. His “Bush Ar¬ 
bor Speech” of July 23,1868, in Atlanta, and his 
series of political papers, Notes on the Situation, 
as Published in the Chronicle and Sentinel 
(1867), attracted national attention. 

In December 1870, Hill advised the Georgia 
people to accept the Reconstruction Acts as ac¬ 
complished facts, and to turn to new issues. 
About the same time, he participated in the lease 
of the state railroad in company with Southern 
and Northern Radicals. He was now traduced 
by Georgia Conservatives, and was virtually po¬ 
litically ostracized until 1873, when, against 
strong opposition, he was elected to Congress 
from the 9th district, into which he had moved. 
He became immediately recognized as a South¬ 
ern champion in Congress, and gained wide at¬ 
tention by his reply to Blaine in January 1876, 
when he undertook to defend Davis and the 
Confederate government against charges of in¬ 
humanity. In the House also he rendered valu¬ 
able assistance in connection with the peaceful 
settlement of the Hayes-Tilden electoral dispute 
(Pearce, post, pp. 285-97). Elected to the 
United States Senate on Jan. 26,1877, Hill lived 
to realize but a fraction of his promised useful¬ 
ness. He contracted a cancer of the tongue in 
July 1881, and died, after much suffering, at his 
home in Atlanta on Aug. 16, 1882. 

“Ben” Hill, as he was popularly known in 
Georgia, was a close constitutional thinker and 
a powerful orator. Himself a slave-holder, he 
defended the Southern system before the war as 

26 



Hill 

the humane and natural labor economy. After 
the war, he rejoiced in release from the “Prome¬ 
thean rock” of slavery. Opposed to secession 
before the event, he supported the Davis govern¬ 
ment when original secessionists deserted. He 
was opposed to voluntary acceptance of the Re¬ 
construction Acts, but when these had been exe¬ 
cuted and their principles incorporated into or¬ 
ganic law he advised submission to them and an 
advance to new issues. In regard to slavery, he 
changed his views: in regard to secession and re¬ 
construction, he altered his policies with al¬ 
tered circumstances. 

[B. H. Hill, Jr., Senator Benjamin H. Hill, His Life, 
Speeches and Writings (1891), contains a slender filial 
sketch, but is chiefly valuable for the large collection 
of speeches, letters, and other writings. Haywood J. 
Pearce, Jr., Benjamin H. Hill, Secession and Recon¬ 
struction (1928), is a critical study of the public career 
of Hill, with an extensive bibliography. Uncritical 
sketches of Hill are in W. J. Northen, Men of Mark in 
Ga vol. Ill (1911) ; L. L. Knight, Reminiscences of 
Famous Georgians (1907), vol. I; John C. Reed, “Rem¬ 
iniscences of Ben Hill,” South Atlantic Quart., Apr. 
1906.. House Report No. 22 , pts. 6, 7, 42 Cong., 2 sess., 
contains Hill’s own narrative and estimate of his Civil 
War and Reconstruction career. A long obituary by 
Henry W. Grady is in Atlanta Constitution , Aug. 17, 
i882 * ] H.J.P—e,Jr. 

HILL, DANIEL HARVEY (July 12, 1821- 
Sept. 24, 1889), soldier, educator, was born in 
York District, S. C., the son of Solomon and 
Nancy (Cabeen) Hill. His grandfather, Wil¬ 
liam Hill [q.v.], was a noted ironmaster and 
Revolutionary soldier. His father died in 1825 
and his mother gave to the boy her own strong 
Presbyterian convictions. Ambitious for a mili¬ 
tary career, Hill entered West Point in 1838, 
graduating four years later in a class destined 
to furnish a dozen generals to the Civil War. 
After unimportant experiences on the Maine 
border and in garrisons, he participated in most 
of the significant engagements of the Mexican 
War, being brevetted captain after Churubusco 
and major after Chapultepec, and receiving a 
sword of honor from South Carolina at the close 
of the struggle. Having resigned from the army 
on Feb. 28, 1849, he became professor of mathe¬ 
matics in Washington College (now Washing¬ 
ton and Lee University), Lexington, Va. He 
was married, Nov. 2, 1852, to Isabella Morrison, 
daughter of a former president of Davidson Col¬ 
lege. Partly because of this connection, partly 
because of denominational allegiance, he went in 
1854 to Davidson to serve as professor of math¬ 
ematics. Remaining until 1859, he then accept¬ 
ed appointment as superintendent of the North 
Carolina Military Institute at Charlotte. 

When the Civil War began he organized in 
Raleigh, at the invitation of Gov. John Willis 
Ellis, the state's first instruction camp. He was 


Hill 

then named colonel of the 1st North Carolina, a 
unit which he led at Big Bethel, after which en¬ 
gagement he was promoted, in September 1861, 
brigadier-general; in the following March he 
became a major-general. His division defeated 
Silas Casey's force in the fighting at Seven 
Pines, and won generous praise from Lee for its 
share in the Seven Days' battle. Commanding 
at South Mountain in September 1862, with 
fewer than 5,000 men according to his own state¬ 
ment, he held in check for several hours a much 
larger force of Federals and protected Lee's 
trains. E. A. Pollard ( The Lost Cause, 1867, 
p. 314) brought the charge that Hill through 
carelessness permitted Lee's famous “lost dis¬ 
patch” of the Maryland campaign to fall into the 
hands of McClellan; but Hill made convincing 
denial of this ( The Land We Love, February 
1868; Southern Historical Society Papers, XIII, 
1885, p. 420). After brief service in North Caro¬ 
lina in the spring of 1863, he was recalled to 
defend Richmond while Lee went into Pennsyl¬ 
vania, and in July, named lieutenant-general, 
was sent to aid Braxton Bragg [#.z/.]. After 
Chickamauga, he signed the petition asking the 
removal of Bragg on grounds of incompetence; 
James Longstreet affirms ( From Manassas to 
Appomattox, 1896, p. 465) that Hill composed 
this paper, but there is no further evidence of 
the charge. (See Avery, post, p. 556.) Davis, 
sympathetic with Bragg, refused to send Hill's 
appointment as lieutenant-general to the Senate, 
and relieved him of his command until the battle 
at Bentonville, when a remnant of his old division 
was again given to him. He surrendered with 
Joseph E. Johnston. 

Settling in Charlotte after the war, Hill estab¬ 
lished, in 1866, The Land We Love, a monthly 
magazine, and three years later, The Southern 
Home, a weekly paper. Purposing chiefly the 
“vindication of the truth of Southern history,” 
Hill became interested in the necessity for new 
and broader education in the South, with par¬ 
ticular emphasis upon industrial and agricultural 
training. He accepted in 1877 the presidency of 
the University of Arkansas which he held until 
1884. Then, after a year's rest, he directed the 
Middle Georgia Military and Agricultural Col¬ 
lege (later Georgia Military College) until 1889. 
He died in Charlotte and was buried in the 
cemetery at Davidson College. 

Before the Civil War, Hill did miscellaneous 
writing, including a textbook, Elements of Alge¬ 
bra (1857), and several religious tracts. After 
the war he contributed to his own publications, 
principally material relating to the war, and to 
several historical collections, notably Battles and 


27 



Hill 

Leaders of the Civil War (vols. II, III, 1887), 
for which he prepared four papers. As a soldier, 
Hill was a man of clear judgment, as shown in 
his resolute but unavailing opposition to the plan 
of direct attack upon McClellan at Malvern Hill. 
As an educator he emphasized in his administra¬ 
tions the soldierly qualities of thoroughness and 
discipline. As man he was characterized by 
moral integrity and by religious devotion. 

. best sketch is by A. C. Avery, Hill’s brother- 
m-law, in W. J. Peele, Lives of Distinguished North 
Carolinians (1898); briefer notices are in Cyc. of 
Eminent and Representative Men of the Carolinas 
(1892), vol. II, and John H. Wheeler, Reminiscences 
and Memories of N. C. (1884). C. R. Shaw, Davidson 
College (1923), covers the years of his life at that in- 
sbtution: and J. H. Reynolds and D. Y. Thomas, Hist, 
of the Untv. of Ark. (1910) contains a biography and 
an account of his administration there. Fullest infor- 
mation about his military record may be found in 
Waiter Clark, Histories of the Several Regiments and 
Battahons from N. C. (5 vols., 1901) ; in C. A. Evans, 
H ™ tor y, (1899), vols. I, IV; and in 
U. xiill, Jr., Bethel to Sharpsburg (2 vols., 1926). 
His own articles in Battles and Leaders of the Civil 
R. ar > Y.ok* H> HI (*887) are important for a study of 
his military activity. A warm tribute is Henry E 
Shepherds pamphlet, “Gen. Hill as a Teacher and 
Wnter, N. C. Booklet, April 1917, For obituaries, 
s «® Ne % s and 9 hse ™er (Raleigh, N. C.), Sept. 26 
Twenty-first Am. Reunion Asso . Grads . U. S 
Mil. Acad. (1890).] F pG 

HILL, DAVID BENNETT (Aug. 29, 1843— 
Oct. 20, 1910), lawyer and politician, was bom 
at Havana (now Montour Falls), N. Y. His 
parents, Caleb and Eunice (Durfey) Hill, were 
natives of Windham County, Conn. His father, 
a carpenter of very limited means, was unable to 
give him more than ordinary school advantages. 
Beginning the study of law in Havana, he con¬ 
tinued it in the office of Erastus P. Hart in El¬ 
mira, N. Y., where he was admitted to the bar in 
1864 and soon thereafter was named city at¬ 
torney.. His conduct of that office enhanced his 
reputation and henceforth he became more deep¬ 
ly immersed in political activities. From 1868 
to 1881 he was a delegate to the Democratic state 
conventions, and over two of these, 1877 and 
1881, he presided. In 1871-72 he was a member 
of the New York Assembly, attracting great at¬ 
tention by his keenness of mind and capacity for 
details. Samuel J. Tilden [q.v.], with whom 
Hill served as a minority member of the judici¬ 
ary committee, was especially impressed with his 
ability, and between them a bond of political and 
personal friendship developed. Hill at first was 
inclined to cooperate with Boss Tweed, who had 
helped him to obtain control of the Elmira Ga - 
sette^ but soon joined with Tilden in exposing 
the Tammany leader. In 1872 Hill was re¬ 
elected to the Assembly and chosen speaker. Al¬ 
ways glad to help along a man higher up so as 
to dear the road for himself {New York Times, 

28 


Hill 

Oct. 21, 1910), he assisted Tilden to attain the 
governorship, and did his utmost to bring about 
his election to the presidency in 1876. 

After serving Elmira as alderman in 1880-81, 
Hill was elected mayor of the city in March 1882 
on a reform ticket, but resigned in December, 
following his election to the lieutenant-governor¬ 
ship of New York on the ticket with Grover 
Cleveland. Succeeding to the governorship on 
the inauguration of Cleveland as president in 
1885, he was elected in his own right that year, 
reelected in 1888, and served until the legal end 
of his term, on Dec. 31,1891. Early in that year 
he had been elected to the United States Senate 
for the term beginning in March, but, despite 
considerable criticism, did not take his seat until 
January 1892. Two years later, again a candi¬ 
date for governor, he was defeated by Levi P. 
Morton. 

Though scruples concerning methods never 
daunted Hill so long as partisan advantage was 
the object in view, his governorship was marked 
by superior administrative efficiency {Brooklyn 
Daily Eagle, Oct. 20, 1910). He guarded the 
credit of the state, advocated home rule for cities 
and other subordinate municipalities, opposed 
the multiplication of special laws for particular 
purposes, championed reform of the codes of 
civil and criminal procedure, and strongly fa¬ 
vored the substitution of electrocution for hang¬ 
ing in cases of capital punishment, the abolition 
of contract labor in relation to state prisons, the 
institution of Labor Day and Saturday half-holi¬ 
days, legislation against child labor, and the es¬ 
tablishment of a state forestry preserve. His 
veto of the state census bill of 1885 on the ground 
that it should have provided merely for an 
enumeration of the inhabitants of the state caused 
considerable furor in both Democratic and Re¬ 
publican circles. During his entire career he 
was a party man and a machine politician; and 
long before he left the executive chair at Albany 
he had come to be the recognized leader of the 
Democratic party in the state. With a genius 
for organization and detail, he knew everybody 
and what everybody stood for. His greatest skill 
as a politician was shown in playing off up-state 
New York against New York City and Tam¬ 
many. 

He was elected to the United States Senate 
despite the covert opposition of Cleveland, who 
increasingly disliked his policies and methods. 
The principal feature of his senatorship (1892- 
97 ) was his battle with Cleveland over the New 
York patronage, a struggle which Hill won. He 
afterward defended the policies of Cleveland dur¬ 
ing the latter's friendless second term. That 



Hill 

Hill was ambitious to attain the presidency him¬ 
self is beyond question; all his political plans 
were made with that end in view. As the result 
of the “snap convention” of Feb. 22,1892, he con¬ 
trolled the New York delegation at the National 
Democratic Convention of that year and was 
supported by it for the presidential nomination, 
though his high-handed efforts to block the can¬ 
didacy of Cleveland [ q.v .] served in the end to 
promote it. In 1896 he opposed the free-silver 
movement, and after the nomination of Bryan 
wrote: “I am a Democrat still—very still” 
(Hamilton Ward, Jr., Life and Speeches of 
Hamilton Ward, 1902, p. 399). Four years 
later, at Kansas City, he seconded the nomi¬ 
nation of Bryan, but declined to countenance his 
own candidacy for vice-president. He continued 
active in politics until after the election of 1904. 

At the expiration of his term as senator in 
1897, Hill resumed the practice of law at Al¬ 
bany, N. Y., and enjoyed a lucrative practice up 
to the time of his death. A charter member of 
the New York State Bar Association, he was its 
president from 1885 to 1887, and was recognized 
as a man of high legal ability. His effectiveness 
as a lawyer was perhaps best displayed in the 
noted McGraw-Fiske suit against Cornell Uni¬ 
versity, in which he represented the contestants, 
though he did not appear before the courts ( Pro¬ 
ceedings of the New York State Bar Association, 
1911; Albany Evening Journal, Oct. 21, 1910). 
A decision in their favor was handed down by 
the Supreme Court in 1890 ( Cornell University 
vs. Fiske, 136 17 . S,, 152) • 

As a private citizen Hill was of a simple and 
retiring disposition. He never married. Nerv¬ 
ous in temperament yet cold, silent, and domi¬ 
neering, he tied other people’s interest to his 
own by sheer adroitness, intellectual force, and 
practical talent. Scholarly in taste, he loved 
good literature, particularly biography. A pow¬ 
erful and effective public speaker, he swayed his 
audience by appeal to reason rather than to emo¬ 
tion. Though witty, sarcastic, and shrewd, he 
was lacking in humor. He died at his beautiful 
country home, “Wolfert’s Roost,” near Albany, 
N. Y. 

IProc. N. Y. State Bar Asso., 1911; C. Z. Lincoln, 
ed., State of N . Y. Messages from the Governors 
(1909), vol. VIII; C. E. Fitch, ed., Official N. Y-from 
Cleveland to Hughes (1911) ; R. B, Smith, ed., Hist, of 
the State of N. Y., Pol . and Governmental, vols. Ill, 
IV (19 22) ; D. S. Alexander, Four Famous New York¬ 
ers (1923) ; Forum, Nov. 1894; Rev . of Revs . (N. Y.), 
Feb. 1892; Albany Evening Journal, Oct. 20, 1910; 
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Oct. 20,1910 ; N.Y. Times, Oct. 
21,1910.] H.J.C. 

HILL, FRANK ALPINE (Oct. 12, 1841- 
Sept. 12, 1903), educator, was born in Bidde- 


Hill 

ford, Me., the son of Joseph Stimson and Nancy 
(Hill) Hill He was a lineal descendant of 
Peter Hill who in 1633 came from Plymouth, 
England, and settled on Cape Elizabeth near 
Portland, Me. He entered Bowdoin College at 
sixteen and graduated four years later with hon¬ 
ors. He had paid his way through college by 
teaching during the long winter vacations, and 
on his graduation in 1862 he selected teaching 
as his life work. Both his parents had been 
teachers before him. After having charge of 
Limington Academy, Maine, for one term, he 
became principal of the high school in his native 
town, from which he had graduated four years 
before. In 1865 he left Maine and became head 
of the high school in Milford, Mass. On Feb. 28, 
1866, he was married to Margaretta Sarah 
Brackett of Biddeford. For sixteen years (1870- 
86) he was principal at the Chelsea, Mass., high 
school; and for seven years (1886-93), was 
headmaster of the new English High School at 
Cambridge, Mass. He had been one year at the 
Mechanic Arts School of Boston, when, in 1894, 
he was appointed secretary of the state board of 
education of Massachusetts. He was already 
recognized as an educational leader, having 
served as president of various teachers’ asso¬ 
ciations, and he was also in demand as a lec¬ 
turer. He had edited Holmes Fourth Reader 
(1888) and Holmes Fifth Reader (1889), and 
had cooperated with John Fiske in the prepara¬ 
tion of Civil Government in the United States 
(1890) and History of the United States for 
Schools (1894). He also wrote for the Congre - 
gationalist, Boston, under the heading “For 
Young People of All Ages.” 

As secretary of the state board of education 
he proved himself a worthy successor of Horace 
Mann. In his annual reports he constantly 
pointed out the essential continuity and identity 
of his own ideas and policies with those of his 
predecessors. His aim was to maintain the lead¬ 
ership which the state had already attained in 
public education. To this end he worked early 
and late for a system of expert supervision, for 
a higher order of qualifications for teachers, and 
for a clear-cut and more stringent definition of 
the character of the public high school which 
the towns should maintain. One of his best- 
known addresses is entitled, “How far the Pub¬ 
lic High School is a Just Charge upon the Public 
Treasury” (New England Association of Col¬ 
leges and Preparatory Schools, Oct 15, 1898). 
He sought to preserve local autonomy in school 
matters while insisting that the larger features 
of general school policy should be determined by 
the state. In this spirit he sponsored a law which 


2 9 



Hill 

made it obligatory upon the towns and cities to 
provide a superintendent of schools. He was 
also responsible for a new and improved system 
of collecting school statistics, for higher stand¬ 
ards of admission to the normal schools, for the 
beginnings of state certification of teachers, and 
for a revision and strengthening of school at¬ 
tendance, His reports are models for their clear 
statement of educational policy. As secretary 
of the board he was ex officio a member of the 
Massachusetts School Fund, a trustee of the 
Boston Museum of Fine Arts and of the State 
Agricultural College, and a member of the cor¬ 
poration of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech¬ 
nology. One of the best of the addresses which 
he delivered in his later years, Seven Lamps for 
the Teacher’s Way (1904), was published after 
his death, with a biographical sketch by R. G. 
Huling. 

[In addition to the above mentioned sketch, see Obit. 
Record Grads. Bowdoin Colt. 1904 (1905) ; Jour, of 
Educ., Sept. 17, 1903; School Review, Dec. 1903; 
Who's Who in America, 1901-02; Boston Transcript, 
Sept. 12,1903 ; for his work with the Mass. State Board 
of Educ., see reports for period of his secretaryship.] 

D. C.K. 

HILL, FREDERIC STANHOPE (1805-Apr. 

7,1851), actor, playwright, was born in Boston, 
Mass. At an early age he showed a slight talent 
for versifying, and at twenty-one he published a • 
small volume of verse, The Harvest Festival 
with Other Poems (1826). Undistinguished in ' 
form and content, these poems represent his only 
attempt in the field of verse. At the death of his j 
father in 1827, Hill inherited a small fortune. ! 
He then abandoned the study of law and began 1 
the publication of the Boston Lyceum, a literary \ 
journal. In 1830 he bought the Galaxy, a weekly 
magazine, but in a little more than a year he was , 
forced into chancery, having lost his money in ; 
his publishing ventures. Now, with no previous 
stage experience, he decided to become an actor. 

On Mar. 12, 1832, he made his first appearance 
on the stage, playing Hotspur at the Richmond 
Hill Theatre, New York. On Mar. 22, he acted 
Romeo to the Juliet of Mrs. Duff, and on Mar. 

30 he played Orlando in As You Like It. Hav¬ 
ing won a measure of approbation from the New 
York public, he returned to his native city where, 
on Apr. 22, 1832, he made his debut to Boston 
audiences at the Tremont Theatre, playing Ro¬ 
meo to Mrs. Barrett’s Juliet. He subsequently 
played Charles Surface in The School for Scan¬ 
dal, Frederick in The Poor Gentleman, and 
Charles Austencourt in Man and Wife. In this 
same year William Pelby, a Boston producer, 
secured him as stage-manager for the Warren 
Theatre (renamed the National in 1836). Hill 1 
held this position as actor and stage-manager : 

30 


Hill 

until 1838. In 1834 he wrote two plays which 
won some contemporary praise. Both were 
adaptations from popular French melodrama. 
His first piece was named The Six Degrees of 
Crime; or, Wine, Women, Gambling, Theft, 
Murder, and the Scaffold, a melodrama in six 
parts. It was first played at the Warren Thea¬ 
tre, Boston, in January 1834, then taken to 
Philadelphia, where Hill made his first appear¬ 
ance in that city at the Arch Street Theatre, 
Mar. 6, 1834, and on Mar. 19, it was put on at 
the Bowery in New York. In it Hill was cast 
as the profligate Julio Dormilly. His second 
play was The Shoemaker of Toulouse ; or, the 
Avenger of Humble Life, an adaptation from 
Le Savatier de Toulouse. This four-act drama, 
with all the paraphernalia of melodrama, was 
produced at the Warren in 1834 and revived at 
the Tremont in 1840. For almost a score of 
years these two plays were stock pieces in the 
American theatres. After 1838 Hill had but a 
nominal connection with the theatre. His health 
began to fail and he retired from the stage, mak¬ 
ing brief returns to acting from time to time. 
His last appearance was at the Howard Athe¬ 
naeum (Boston) in the character of Cassio in 
1851. As an actor his happiest parts were in 
light comedy. On June 7, 1828, Hill married 
Mary Welland Blake, and on Aug. 4,1829, Fred¬ 
eric Stanhope, their only child, was bom. 

[An unsigned memoir which prefaces The Six De¬ 
grees of Crime m ( Boston,. 1855) contains some bio¬ 
graphical material and a list of Hill’s plays, hut it is 
vague and not very trustworthy. The Shaw Theatre 
Collection at Harvard University contains a briefer 
though more reliable memoir. Brief references to Hill 
as actor and playwright are found in G. C. D. Odell, 
Annals of the N. Y. Stage, vols. Ill and IV (1928) ; 
W. W. Clapp, A Record of the Boston Stage (1853); 
T. A. Brown, Hist, of the Am. Stage (copyright 1870), 
p. 176; Walter M. Leman, Memories of an Old Actor 
(1886), p. 95; Boston Transcript, Apr. 8, 1851.] 

H. W. S—g—r. 

HILL, FREDERICK TREVOR (May 5, 
1866-Mar. 17, 1930), New York lawyer, his¬ 
torian, writer of fiction, was born in Brooklyn, 
N. Y., the son of Edward and Mary (Johnson) 
Hill. His parents were both natives of England. 
After completing his preparatory studies at the 
Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, he entered Yale 
in the class of 1887 and following his graduation 
studied law at Columbia. He served for two 
years as clerk to Col. Robert Ingersoll and from 
1890 to 1900 was a member of the law firm of 
Wood & Hill. In the latter year he began his 
independent law practice, which, covering a 
period of thirty years, established his reputation 
as an authority in the fields of surrogate’s prac¬ 
tice and estate and business law. His legal ca¬ 
reer was temporarily interrupted by his military 



Hill 

activities during the World War, when as a 
member of General Pershing's staff he served 
with conspicuous distinction, being promoted to 
the rank of lieutenant-colonel and appointed, as 
a special recognition of his merit, Chevalier in 
the Legion of Honor. During the later years of 
his life he was preeminently identified with the 
Boy-Scout movement. 

Hill's legal training and ability are evidenced 
in such technical and professional studies as The 
Care of Estates (1901) and Decisive Battles of 
the Law (1907). To a wider circle of readers 
he is known as the author of various stories and 
novels with a legal background: The Case and 
Exceptions (1900); The Minority (1902); The 
Web (1903); The Accomplice (1905); The 
Thirteenth Juror (1913) ; and Tales out of Court 
(1920). But it is in an extended study of Abra¬ 
ham Lincoln that Hill has made his outstanding 
contribution as an author. Struck by the fact 
that in the vast amount of material dealing with 
Lincoln there was such a small proportion de¬ 
voted to his legal career, Hill undertook an ap¬ 
praisal of Lincoln as a lawyer, with a view to 
showing that this alone, apart from all other 
considerations, would guarantee his permanent 
fame. Lincoln, the Lawyer (1906) interprets 
with sympathy and insight the significant fea¬ 
tures of Lincoln's twenty-three years of law 
practice. This work was followed by a collection 
of essays called Lincoln’s Legacy of Inspiration 
(1909), and a biography, Lincoln, the Emanci¬ 
pator of the Nation (1928). The latter is a good, 
short biography, but it is marred by the some¬ 
what gratuitous expense of energy on the part 
of the author to demonstrate that Lincoln was 
not a consistent Abolitionist. Hill wrote a num¬ 
ber of less significant historical works: On the 
Trail of Washington (1910), Washington, the 
Man of Action (1914), and On the Trail of 
Grant and Lee (1911)—all distinguished for 
clear and easy interpretation rather than for 
original research. The Story of a Street (1908) 
recounts the historical development of Wall 
Street and contains items of interest to the stu¬ 
dent of the history of New York City. On Oct. 
22, 1895. Hill was married to Mabel Wood. 
They were divorced in 1924. 

[For details of Hill's life, see Who’s Who in Amer¬ 
ica, 1928-29; Who’s Who in Jurisprudence (1925); 
Obit. Record of Grads, of Yale Univ. (1930) ; Chas. G. 
Dawes, Jour, of the Great War (1921) ; N. Y . Times, 
Mar. 18, 1930. For reviews of some of his boohs see 
the Am. Hist. Rev., Apr. 1907; Am. Monthly Rev? of 
Revs., Nov. 1906 ; Dial, Jan. r, 1907; North Am. Rev., 
Dec. 21, 1906; Bookman, Mar., Aug. 1902.] 

E.M.,Jr. 

HILL, GEORGE HANDEL (Oct. 8, 1809- 
Sept. 27, 1849), actor, was the son of Ureli K. 


Hill 

Hill, a Boston musician, and his wife, Nancy 
Hull, and a brother of Ureli Corelli Hill [q.vJ\. 
His schooling was obtained principally at Bris¬ 
tol Academy, Taunton, Mass. At the age of fif¬ 
teen he ran off to New York and found employ¬ 
ment in a jeweler's shop. Soon he was serving 
as a super in a nearby theatre, and when in 1825 
he saw Alexander Simpson in a Yankee role, 
his future specialty was determined. He made 
his initial appearance as a “Down-East” in¬ 
terpreter in an entertainment of songs and stories 
at Brooklyn in 1826. Following this he ob¬ 
tained his first regular position, that of low 
comedian with a strolling company, which gave 
him little opportunity to develop his chosen line. 
In 1828, at the cost of a promise to forsake the 
stage, he married Cordelia Thompson of Leroy, 
N. Y., but when he proved a failure as a country 
store-keeper, he was released from his promise 
and returned to his profession at Albany. After 
giving entertainments at Buffalo and New York, 
and playing at Charleston and Savannah, he was 
engaged as a minor actor by the Arch Street 
Theatre, Philadelphia, in 1832. Here he was 
given his first real chance to delineate a Yankee 
character, and he leaped to stardom almost over 
night. Brief runs at Baltimore and Boston pre¬ 
ceded his appearance on Nov. 14, 1832, at the 
Park Theatre, New York, the leading playhouse 
of America. He was now in demand for starring 
engagements all over the United States, and 
“Yankee” Hill soon became one of the most 
popular comedians in the country. Naturally he 
had a host of imitators and was the inspiration 
of numerous Yankee plays. He spent the season 
of 1836-37 in Great Britain, scoring a distinct 
hit at Drury Lane, London, and the other prin¬ 
cipal theatres of the United Kingdom. A year 
later he was again abroad, acting in Great Brit¬ 
ain and giving two Yankee entertainments in 
Paris. 

In 1840 Hill leased the Franklin Theatre, 
New York, and, naming it Hill's Theatre, ex¬ 
ploited himself in his favorite parts for one short 
and unprofitable season. Two years later, when 
he opened Peak's Museum as Hill's New York 
Museum and gave programs of Yankee readings 
and lectures, he met with another failure. About 
1846 he took up the practice of dentistry in New 
York, thus putting to use a course in surgery 
which he had pursued some years before. Hav¬ 
ing purchased a country residence at Batavia, 
N. Y., he lived there from 1847 on, filling such 
engagements as his health, ruined, it is said, by 
dissipation, would permit. On Aug. 20,1849, al¬ 
though seriously ill, he gave an entertainment 
at Saratoga Springs, and there he died a few 



Hill 

weeks later. Hill was a man of few gifts and of 
limited mentality, but in Yankee comedy he has 
never had his equal. 

[Life and Recollections of Yankee Hill (1850), ed. 
by W. K. Northall, contains a biography by the editor. 
Scenes from the Life of an Actor (1853) is a partially 
autobiographical account. See also J. N. Ireland, Rec¬ 
ords of the N . Y . Stage (2 vols., 1866-67); G. C. D. 
Odell, Annals of the N. Y. Stage, vols. Ill and IV 
<1928) ; Evening Post (N. Y.), Oct. 2, 1849.] 

O.S.C. 

HILL, GEORGE WILLIAM (Mar. 3, 1838- 
Apr. 16,1914), mathematician, was born in New 
York City, the son of John William Hill, an 
artist and engraver, and Catherine (Smith) Hill 
of English and Huguenot descent. His paternal 
grandfather was John Hill In 1846 the 

family moved to a farm in West Nyack where he 
attended the local school. Later he went to Rut¬ 
gers College and had the good fortune to come 
under an able teacher, Dr. Theodore Strong 
[g.z>.], who gave him a thorough grounding in 
the fundamentals of mathematics and celestial 
mechanics by making him study the classical 
treatises of Euler, Lacroix, Laplace, Lagrange, 
and Legendre. He took his degree in 1859 and 
during the following thirteen years he must have 
spent a good deal of time mastering the later 
works on the lunar and planetary theories, es¬ 
pecially those of Delaunay and Hansen. His 
own publications on those subjects began in 
1872. It was this training that probably gave 
the trend to all his work—the application of 
mathematical analysis to the investigation of 
natural phenomena, with the final step of re¬ 
ducing the results to numerical data. In 1861 he 
joined the staff of the Nautical Almanac Office 
and spent a year or two in Cambridge, Mass., 
which was its headquarters at that time. Soon, 
however, he obtained permission to do his work 
at his home in West Nyack, and from then to 
the time of his death his only absences for any 
considerable period were the ten years, 1882-92, 
which he spent in Washington working on the 
theory and tables of Jupiter and Saturn, a trip 
to Europe, and two holidays in the northwest of 
Canada. He never married. His later life he 
spent alone on his farm, taking his meals with 
a married brother who lived nearby. He was 
essentially of the type of scholar and investigator 
who seems to feel no need of personal contacts 
with others. While the few who knew him speak 1 
of the pleasure of his companionship in frequent 
tramps over the country surrounding Wash¬ 
ington, he was apparently quite happy alone, 1 
whether at work or taking recreation. This iso- 1 
lation seems to have had no effect on him other 1 
than to preserve the independence of his ideas ] 
and to emphasize a natural indifference to ex- 1 

3 * 


Hill 

ternals: his intellectual outlook was always es¬ 
sentially sane. His one mild extravagance, the 
buying of books, was probably due to his desire 
to remain at home. He read somewhat widely, 
especially in botany, his hobby. 

His ability was first decisively shown in a 
memoir entitled “Researches in the Lunar Theo¬ 
ry,” which appeared (1878) in the opening num¬ 
ber of the newly founded American Journal of 
Mathematics . In this paper he calculated the 
first step in a new method for treating the mo¬ 
tion of the moon under the attractions of the 
earth and sun. What proved to be equally im¬ 
portant in the paper was the initiation of the 
“periodic orbit”—an idea which has had a pro¬ 
found effect on the later development of celestial 
mechanics. In the hands of H. Poincare, G. H. 
Darwin, and many others, it has greatly changed 
the approach to the study of the motions of three 
mutually attracting bodies. Its publication gave 
new life to a subject which had seemed to be 
marking time in merely securing higher nu¬ 
merical accuracy for the various gravitational 
theories of the bodies in the solar system, and 
the impetus is not yet exhausted. Another useful 
idea, the surface of zero velocity, is also set forth 
in this paper. The second step, which was ac¬ 
tually published the previous year in a paper, On 
the Part of the Motion of the Lunar Perigee 
Which is a Function of the Mean Motions of the 
Sun and Moon (1877), displays Hill's analytical 
skill in a marked degree. His initiation of the 
infinite determinant and the devices which he 
used to calculate its value to a high degree of 
accuracy were nearly all new. In this paper, 
also, he showed his unusual capacity to carry 
out accurately a long and intricate calculation. 
Shortly after the publication of these papers Hill 
was persuaded by Simon Newcomb to under¬ 
take a new theory of the motions of Jupiter and 
Saturn. This theory and the formation of the 
necessary tables occupied him until 1892. In 
order to avoid delay in completing the work, 
which was mainly a laborious and involved set 
of computations, Hill used a well-known meth¬ 
od, that of Hansen. This was perhaps unfor¬ 
tunate, for Hill was then at the height of his 
powers and if given more time he might have 
produced a new method which would have been 
of service in other similar problems. He was 
unwilling to use routine computers, finding it 
more trouble to explain what was to be done 
than to do it himself. The final result is one of 
the most important contributions to mathemati¬ 
cal astronomy of the past century. Among his 
later papers is a noteworthy contribution for 
calculating the effects of the planets on the mo- 



Hill 

tion of the moon. This is, in effect, a particular 
case of the problem of four bodies. 

While Hill was essentially a mathematician, 
he was interested in the subject only in so far as 
it could be used to deduce astronomical and 
other phenomena, and particularly those which 
depend on the law of gravitation. He had little 
interest in the modern developments of mathe¬ 
matics. His work bears in many respects a 
striking similarity to that of his contemporary, 
J. C. Adams, of Cambridge, England, the co¬ 
discoverer with Leverrier of the planet Neptune. 
In fact, immediately after the appearance of 
Hill's paper on the lunar perigee, Adams pub¬ 
lished one which showed that he had worked on 
the same lines and even had constructed and 
evaluated the infinite determinant. Adams, how¬ 
ever, had kept to the lunar problem, while Hill, 
as mentioned above, extended the idea in a gen¬ 
eral manner. The marks of recognition of his 
work included the presidency of the American 
Mathematical Society and the award in 1909 of 
the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of Lon¬ 
don—the highest scientific honor in the British 
Empire. He was a lecturer at Columbia Uni¬ 
versity, 1898-1901, but characteristically re¬ 
turned the salary, writing that he did not need 
the money and that it bothered him to look after 
it. His needs like his income were small. He 
was not gifted as an expositor. His papers while 
clearly expressed are very concise. On one oc¬ 
casion the method of deducing a long algebraical 
development which required special devices and 
several weeks of concentrated work is dismissed 
in a line. Most of his published papers have 
been reprinted by the Carnegie Institution of 
Washington in four quarto volumes, with a pref¬ 
ace by Henri Poincare, The Collected Mathe¬ 
matical Works of George William Hill (1905“ 
07). 

[Nat, Acad, of Sciences, Biog. Memoirs, vol. VIII 
(1919) ; Proc. of the Royal Soc. of London, ser. A, 
vol. XCI (1915) ; Columbia Univ . Quart., Sept. 1914; 
Nation (N. Y.), May 7, 1914J E.W. B. 

HILL, HENRY BARKER (Apr. 27, 1849- 
Apr. 6, 1903), educator, chemist, second of the 
six children of Thomas Hill [ q.v .] and Ann 
Foster (Bellows) Hill, was bom at Waltham, 
Mass. His boyhood was passed at Waltham, 
Yellow Springs, Ohio, and Cambridge, Mass. 
Graduating from Harvard College in 1869, the 
year after his father's resignation of the presi¬ 
dency, he spent a year at the University of Ber¬ 
lin and then, upon the urgent advice of his father, 
accepted the position of second assistant in chem¬ 
istry at Harvard. His career as a teacher cen¬ 
tered chiefly in qualitative analysis and organic 
chemistry. The former he raised from the pure- 


Hill 

ly mechanical to a discipline of the highest peda¬ 
gogical value, admirably adapted to give a stu¬ 
dent a foundation for a career in research. His 
lectures in organic chemistry showed his origi¬ 
nality of thought and independence of conven¬ 
tion. He had an uncanny instinct for separating 
the essential from the nonessential. Further¬ 
more, he kept always up to date, no easy matter 
in a rapidly growing science; he frequently 
reached conclusions on debatable topics ahead of 
the prevailing opinion of other experts in the 
field. This was notably true in the case of the 
constitution of the diazo compounds. Years later 
the views on this intricate and highly valuable 
group which he set before his students were 
adopted by chemists, and they are still held. In 
1874 he published Lecture Notes on Qualitative 
Analysis . 

In the year following his return from Ger¬ 
many, Hill had married (Sept. 2, 1871) Ellen 
Grace Shepard, daughter of Otis and Ann 
(Pope) Shepard of Dorchester, Mass., and sister 
of his father's second wife. To meet his neces¬ 
sary expenditures, modest as they were, he was 
obliged to supplement the meager stipend which 
he received from the College by devoting his 
spare time to commercial chemistry. He made 
investigations on food adulterations for the State 
Board of Health, rendered valuable service in 
solving chemical problems for a bleachery, and 
for some years was consulting chemist for the 
Carter ink company. After months of prepara¬ 
tory experimentation, he issued, in 1876, a study 
of the methyl derivatives of uric acid ( Proceed¬ 
ings of the American Academy of Arts and Sci¬ 
ences, vol. XII, 1877). His method in this in¬ 
vestigation, in the hands of the celebrated 
German chemist, Emil Fischer, later led to the 
final explanation of the constitution of uric acid. 
Induced by Edward Robinson Squibb [ q.v .] to 
undertake the investigation of a previously use¬ 
less by-product of the manufacture of acetic acid 
from the distillations of oak wood, Hill found 
therein abundance of furaldehyde, commonly 
called furfurol. Abandoning further work on the 
constitution of uric acid, he started an intensive 
investigation of the furaldehyde derivatives which 
occupied the rest of his scientific career and 
resulted in thirty publications. Most of his pa¬ 
pers were contributed to the Proceedings of the 
American Academy of Arts and Sciences or to 
the American Chemical Journal. 

His scientific work was conspicuous for his 
genius in getting at the kernel of a problem, ex¬ 
ceptional experimental technique, and painstak¬ 
ing thoroughness. This same thoroughness he 
demanded from all his students. His criticisms 



Hill 

were sharp, hut were given only when they were 
deserved. Seemingly austere and impatient, he 
was in reality most kindly, and was helpful to 
all who came under his influence. He became 
successively assistant professor, 1874, full pro¬ 
fessor, 1884, and director of the department of 
chemistry, 1894, holding this last position until 
his death. His vacations for the most part were 
spent at his summer home in Dublin, N. H., 
bicycling and working in his carpenter-shop. 
Naturally shy and devoted to his work, he be¬ 
came almost a recluse, yet he was a charming 
companion to the few friends whom he took into 
his circle. He read much and with a fine sense 
of discrimination, was interested in genealogy, 
and was a great student and lover of music. His 
only son became associated with the department 
of music at Harvard University. 

Hill despised sham and had no patience with 
any one who showed lack of sincerity. He was a 
man of deep religious feeling and set a high 
standard for things ethical, but he was not a 
regular church attendant. His health was deli¬ 
cate; the days when he was free from headache 
and dizziness were exceptional, but he did not 
permit this weakness to interfere with the per¬ 
formance of his regular duties. Frequently he 
would hold his lectures under physical discom¬ 
fort which would have sent the ordinary person 
to bed. His last illness was short and from the 
first serious; he died on Apr. 6, 1903, after an 
operation. 

[T. B. Peck, The Bellows Gened. (1898); Am. 
Chem. Jour., July 1903; “Proc. Am. Chem. Soc., 
1903,” in Jour. Am. Chem. Soc., vol. XXV (1903) ; 
Ber. Deut. Chem. Gesell. . . . 1903 (1904), pp. 4573- 
81; Nat. Acad. Set. Biog. Memoirs, vol. V (1905), 
with bibliog.; Eleventh Report of the Class of 1869, 
Harvard College (1919) ; Services in Memory of Henry 
Barker Hill in Appleton Chapel (1903) ; Boston Tran¬ 
script, Apr. 6, 1903; Harvard Univ. archives.] 

W. L.J—s. 

HILL, ISAAC (Apr. 6 , 1789-Mar. 22, 1851), 
editor, politician, was the eldest son of Isaac and 
Hannah (Russell) Hill, his family on both sides 
being of old colonial stock. He was born in 
Cambridge, Mass., but as the family was im¬ 
poverished in the depression following the Revo¬ 
lution and was handicapped- still further by the 
insanity of his father, his mother, a woman of 
great courage and force of character, about 1798 
purchased a small farm in Ashburnham where 
he spent the next four years. Lameness and a 
slight physique reduced his usefulness on the 
farm and he was apprenticed in 1802 to Joseph 
Cushing, printer, at Amherst, N. H. The change 
was advantageous, and he proved industrious. 
He was an omnivorous reader and more than 
thirty years later James Buchanan once re- 


Hill 

marked in the Senate that he had never known a 
man with a wider range of information on Amer¬ 
ican affairs. Before reaching his majority he 
moved to Concord, bought the press of the 
American Patriot, and on Apr. 18, 1809, pro¬ 
duced the first number of the New Hampshire 
Patriot, a publication destined to exert a pro¬ 
found influence on the politics of the state and 
the public careers of several of its leaders. 
Whether because of inherent democratic in¬ 
clinations or as a reaction from seven years' 
work in the Federalist establishment at Amherst, 
where he assisted in the publication of the Farm¬ 
er's Cabinet, Hill was a stalwart Jeffersonian. 
His new venture seemed inauspiciously timed, 
for the Republicans were discredited by the Em¬ 
bargo policy and by the accompanying business 
depression, but within a few weeks it was ap¬ 
parent that a new power had appeared in New 
Hampshire politics. Before long the Patriot was 
one of the most important journals in New Eng¬ 
land. The editor, who is said to have composed 
many of his articles while standing at the case, 
attracted the attention of party leaders through¬ 
out the country, the paper's circulation grew 
rapidly, and in addition Hill received tangible 
evidences of appreciation in the form of govern¬ 
ment printing and mail contracts. On Feb. 2, 
1814, he married Susanna Ayer, of Concord. 

Hill gave loyal support to the Madison admin¬ 
istration, especially during the War of 1812, and 
denounced the Federalists with the scurrility 
which characterized the political journalism of 
the day. Following the war he became an active 
participant in the Dartmouth College case, sup¬ 
porting the action of the state and fanning the 
flames of controversy until it assumed propor¬ 
tions which affected local politics for almost half 
a century. In the presidential contest of 1824 he 
was a supporter of Crawford and a vigorous 
opponent of the John Quincy Adams administra¬ 
tion. In the meantime he had become an active 
participant in state politics, serving a term as 
representative, two as clerk of the Senate, and 
four (1820-23, 1827-28) as a member of the 
latter body. He was an unsuccessful candidate 
for the United States Senate in 1828, but as an 
ardent supporter of Jackson he received in 1829 
a recess appointment as second comptroller of 
the treasury. Closing out his interests in the 
Patriot, he served until April 1830, when the 
Senate refused confirmation of his appointment, 
greatly to the indignation of President Jackson 
and the satisfaction of former President Adams, 
who classed him as a profligate libeler ( Memoirs 
of John Quincy Adams, vol. VIII, 1876, p. 218). 

Later in 1830 Hill was elected to the United 



Hill 

States Senate for the six-year term beginning 
Mar. 4, 1831. It was a triumph which was es¬ 
pecially sweet to him in view of his rejection for 
the comptrollership a few months before. He 
held office until May 30, 1836, when he resigned 
to accept the governorship of New Hampshire. 
As a personal friend of President Jackson he 
attracted some attention but he was not an es¬ 
pecially effective public speaker. His position 
as a member of the famous “kitchen cabinet ” 
however, made him a power in the land and un¬ 
doubtedly contributed greatly to strengthen his 
political hold on New Hampshire. In 1836 he 
was elected governor by a remarkably large 
majority, a performance repeated in the two fol¬ 
lowing years. As governor he was popular and 
successful. His official messages, much better 
than his Senate speeches, explain his political 
philosophy and his attitude on many concrete 
public issues. His message of June 3, 1836, was 
a distinct innovation in New Hampshire prac¬ 
tice, offering, in place of the brief generaliza¬ 
tions on state matters presented by former ex¬ 
ecutives, a lengthy and vigorous commentary on 
the trend of national affairs in support of strict 
construction, rotation in office, economy, and 
democratic simplicity, and denouncing the tariff, 
the collection and disbursement of surplus reve¬ 
nue, the operations of the United States Bank, 
and the use of national funds for internal im¬ 
provements. He was an earnest advocate of the 
construction of railroads, though he was em¬ 
phatic in his belief that railroads, canals, and all 
similar improvements should be left to private 
enterprise. He urged repeatedly that public pro¬ 
vision be made for the adequate care of the in¬ 
sane, a matter then grossly neglected, and also 
deserves credit for his insistence on the impor¬ 
tance of preserving the early records of New 
Hampshire. While denouncing the Abolitionist 
agitation, he declared that mob law was still 
more dangerous and urged that there be no in¬ 
terference with the right of free speech and 
assembly. 

After his retirement from the governorship 
he served, 1840-41, as head of the Boston sub¬ 
treasury but was removed with the incoming 
of the Harrison administration. In partnership 
with his sons he established another newspaper 
at Concord, Hill's New Hampshire Patriot, but 
this production failed to recapture some of the 
qualities that had made his earlier venture so 
successful. He had already established an agri¬ 
cultural journal, the Farmers' Monthly Visitor, 
maintaining his interest in this publication for 
the last fifteen years of his life. Hill's Patriot 
was merged with the original New Hampshire 


Hill 

Patriot in 1847, and his newspaper career was 
over. Hill was a shrewd and successful business 
man and developed a successful publishing and 
bookselling business in addition to his newspaper 
ventures. He was also interested in various 
banking and manufacturing enterprises and ac¬ 
cumulated a considerable estate. In his later 
years he was active in the promotion of agricul¬ 
tural improvements. He was never robust and 
in his last years suffered constantly from asthma. 
He died in Washington, D. C. 

[Sources include: Nathaniel Bouton, The Hist, of 
Concord (1856); E. S. Stackpole, Hist, of N. H. 
(1916), III, 95-99; E. S. Stearns and others, Geneal. 
and Family Hist, of the State of N. H., IV (1908), 
1981-83; N. H. Patriot and State Gazette, Mar. 27, 
1851; Farmefs Cabinet (Amherst, N. H.), Apr. 3, 
1851; and Vital Records of Cambridge, Mass., to the 
Year 1850, I (19x4), 354* Cyrus P. Bradley, Biog. of 
Isaac Hill, of N.-H.: With an Appendix, Comprising 
Selections from his Speeches, and Miscellaneous Writ¬ 
ings (1835), is a typical campaign biography prepared 
for the election of 1836, but the appendix contains use¬ 
ful and suggestive material. ] W. A. R 

HILL, JAMES (Dec. 20, 1734-Aug. 22, 1811), 
Revolutionary soldier, ship-builder, legislator, 
was born in Kittery, Me., the fourth child of 
Benjamin and Mary (Neal) Hill. His father 
was grandson of John Hill, an early settler in 
Dover, N. H. Here and in the near-by town of 
Newbury, Mass., James learned ship-building. 
At twenty he enlisted for the expedition of 1755 
against the French at Crown Point. Besides 
working on boats for the ascent of the Hudson 
and Lake George, Hill helped to build Fort Ed¬ 
ward and Fort William Henry and fought in the 
battle of Sept. 8, when the French under Dies- 
kau were defeated. The diary which he kept 
at that time gives brief but graphic notes con¬ 
cerning this first campaign of the French and 
Indian War. It is remarkably accurate in its 
account of the operations of the troops under 
Gen. William Johnson, and of the movements of 
the ranger Robert Rogers [q.v.], as well as of 
the daily life in camp. In 1758, as shipwright 
on the warship Achilles, he went to Jamaica and 
to England, whence he returned to America. In 
1761 he settled in Newmarket, N. H. Here he 
soon became prominent as a land-owner and 
ship-builder, and held numerous public offices. 

When the colonies broke away from England, 
Hill was a warm patriot. He signed the “Asso¬ 
ciation Test” of 1776, and also a petition to the 
Committee of Safety for drastic action against 
“those abandon’d wretches well known by the 
name of Tories.” His military services in the 
Revolution began with his captaincy of a com¬ 
pany stationed in 1775 on Pierce’s Island as part 
of General Sullivan’s defense of Portsmouth 
Harbor. In 1777 he was made lieutenant-colonel 


35 



Hill Hill 


of militia, but wishing more active service, he 
volunteered in a company raised by John Lang- 
don (in which Hill was ensign, or second 
lieutenant) to join Gates against Burgoyne at 
Saratoga, where he was probably present at Bur- 
goyne’s surrender. After the close of the war, 
in 1784, he was made colonel, and in 1788 briga¬ 
dier-general of New Hampshire militia, a po¬ 
sition held until he declined reappointment in 
1793 - 

Hill represented Newmarket in the New 
Hampshire Provincial Congress in April 1775. 
The next year he was appointed on a committee 
of the town to draw up a protest against the new 
form of state government proposed. He was a 
member of the state legislature at its first ses¬ 
sion under the new constitution in 1784, and 
again a member when the constitution of 1792 
was adopted. He was three times married: first 
to Sarah Coffin, who died in 1774; then to Sarah 
(Hoyt) Burleigh, widow of John Burleigh, Jr., 
and after her death, to Martha (Wiggin) Fol¬ 
som. All of his seven sons and all but two of his 
ten daughters survived him. 

[The most interesting and valuable source for Hill’s 
life is his own autograph diary and notebook, given by 
his great-great-grand-daughter to the library of Welles¬ 
ley College, Mass. Some early Newmarket town rec¬ 
ords in manuscript are in the library of the N. H. 
Hist. Soc., Concord, N. H. The most important printed 
material is in the series of N. H. Provincial and State 
Papers , vols. VII-IX, XIV-XV, XX-XXII (1873- 
93). Other sources include W. B. Lapham, John Hill 
of Dover in 1649> and Some of his Descendants 
(1889); E. S. Stackpole, Old Kittery and Her Families 
(1903); J- H. Fitts, Hist, of Newfields, N . H. (1912), 
ed. and arranged by N. F. Carter; and N.-H. Gazette 
( Portsmouth), Aug. 27, 1811 .3 E. V. M. 

HILL, JAMES JEROME (Sept. 16, 1838- 
May 29, 1916), railroad executive and financier, 
was born near Rockwood, Ontario, the third of 
four children of James and Anne (Dunbar) Hill. 
Both the Hills and the Dunbars had come to 
Canada from the north of Ireland and were 
among the original settlers of that part of On¬ 
tario. James J. Hiirs education began in the 
district school but at the age of eleven he became 
a pupil in the newly established Rockwood Acad¬ 
emy. His formal education was interrupted by 
the death of his father in 1852, and at the age of 
fourteen the boy began work as clerk in the vil¬ 
lage store. The father had intended that the son 
should be trained to become a doctor but that 
plan was abandoned when young Hill lost the 
sight of one eye by the accidental discharge of 
an arrow. During his four years in the store he 
found time, under the encouragement and as¬ 
sistance of William Wetherald, the principal of 
the academy, to continue his studies, and he was 
a diligent reader of good books. 


At the age of eighteen he started out for him¬ 
self. His imagination had been quickened by 
what he had read about India, China, and Japan, 
and his early ambition was to make his fortune 
in the Orient. On leaving home he headed for 
the Atlantic ports of the United States, reached 
Philadelphia, and later proceeded to Richmond. 
A favorable opportunity to go to the Orient did 
not present itself so he decided to approach his 
objective from a Pacific port. Accordingly he 
moved westward, intending to join one of the 
brigades of trappers and traders who yearly 
started from St. Paul to make the perilous trip 
across the wilds of western country. The acci¬ 
dent of arriving in St. Paul (1856) a few days 
too late to join the last brigade of that year 
changed the course of his life. It was necessary 
to wait another year, and in that time he had so 
firmly taken root in the community that it be¬ 
came his permanent home and the base of his 
great adventures. 

Hill’s first few years in St. Paul, then a little 
trading station with a population of not more 
than 5,000, were not marked by striking achieve¬ 
ment, but he built steadily, established a reputa¬ 
tion for integrity and ability to accomplish ef¬ 
fectually and profitably whatever he set out to 
do, and acquired the beginnings of that vast store 
of knowledge which later served him so well. 
He first worked as a clerk for a line of packet 
steamboats on the Mississippi. Partly through 
his initiative, his employers enlarged the scope of 
their commercial activities to include general 
trading in groceries, farm implements, and fuel, 
thus linking more closely the relations between 
steamboat transportation and commerce, indus¬ 
try, and agriculture. To him was left a large part 
of the initiative in fixing freight rates and he 
became an expert not only in that field but in the 
technique of construction and operation of steam¬ 
boats as well. In the meantime, the Civil War 
had begun. His attempt to enlist was blocked 
because of his sightless eye, but he was active 
and helpful in organizing the 1st Minnesota Vol¬ 
unteers. 

Hill’s first venture in an independent capacity, 
in 1865, was in the business of forwarding and 
transportation. He acted also as agent for the 
Northwestern Packet Company, bought and sold 
commodities in order to create or control traffic, 
pressed hay, and acted as warehouseman. A year 
later he became a partner in a larger business of 
the same general character and made his first 
contact with railroads as agent of the St. Paul & 
Pacific. In 1867 he contracted to furnish the 
railroad with fuel. He was one of the first to 
recognize the fact that coal would eventually dis- 


36 



Hill Hill 


place wood entirely for locomotive use. With 
characteristic thoroughness he made a compre¬ 
hensive survey of all available sources of coal 
supply and of markets. As the business grew 
steadily he took in new partners to supply ad¬ 
ditional capital, but in 1875 he bought them 
out and formed the Northwestern Fuel Com¬ 
pany, in which he had the controlling interest 
until 1878. 

It was at that time that he decided to give 
major attention to transportation on the Red 
River to Fort Garry (now Winnipeg), Mani¬ 
toba. Norman W. Kittson, who later was close¬ 
ly associated with Hill in his large dealings in 
railroads, was agent of the Hudson's Bay Com¬ 
pany, which in 1861 had begun the operation of 
a steamboat between Fort Garry and Fort Aber¬ 
crombie, Mich. That company, in an effort to 
maintain its monopoly of the fur trade, was fight¬ 
ing the free traders, and Kittson, who could not 
consistently transport their freight, suggested 
that Hill should do so. The latter’s boats became 
such serious competitors of the Hudson’s Bay 
line that Kittson, in 1872, asked Hill to join him 
by consolidating their separate activities in the 
Red River Transportation Company. The com¬ 
pany was successful and from its operations Hill 
made the beginnings of his fortune. His opera¬ 
tions on the Red River and many journeys made 
on horseback and on snowshoes had enabled Hill 
to gain intimate acquaintance with the region 
and to appreciate its great agricultural poten¬ 
tialities. To his mind the need of a railroad to 
Fort Garry was apparent. 

He had closely followed the affairs of the St. 
Paul & Pacific and knew that the road was head¬ 
ed for disaster. It was grossly overcapitalized, 
poorly constructed, and in bad physical condi¬ 
tion, and the small part of authorized mileage 
then built lacked integration. The money for 
construction came from bonds, which were sold 
at heavy discount and exorbitant commissions 
through a bank in Holland and could not be dis¬ 
posed of in the United States. The bonds were 
soon defaulted and the property placed in re¬ 
ceivership. In 1873, w ^n a large number of 
railroad companies were in like plight, the dis¬ 
couraged Dutch bondholders of the St. Paul & 
Pacific were in the mood to salvage the wreck on 
any terms. Hill had worked out plans to re¬ 
habilitate the property and make it pay if the 
purchase could be effectuated on terms consonant 
with his idea of actual value. The Northern Pa¬ 
cific management also had taken steps to gain 
control by the purchase of stock. Unfortunately 
for the Northern Pacific, however, it too was 
fprced intp receivership, by thp failure of Jay 


Cooke & Company, and was therefore in no po¬ 
sition to carry out the plan. 

The time was ripe for Hill to act, but before 
he could start negotiations it was necessary to 
enlist the aid of friends with capital. His first 
convert was his long-time associate, Norman W, 
Kittson, and together they induced Donald A. 
Smith (later Lord Strathcona) to join them. 
Smith, as a leader in the affairs of the Hudson's 
Bay Company, had had many dealings with Hill. 
Smith and Hill together enlisted the aid of 
George Stephen (afterward Lord Mount Ste¬ 
phen), then president of the Bank of Montreal. 
Hill and Kittson risked every cent they had; 
Smith and Stephen used their personal resources 
and influence to obtain credit, and after pro¬ 
tracted negotiations the four individuals pur¬ 
chased in 1878 the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad. 
Hill regarded this as the great adventure of his 
life. To the friends of the new owners it seemed 
a reckless gamble. Under Hill's management the 
road was rehabilitated by virtual reconstruction, 
and its lines were developed into an integrated 
system and extended, first to the Canadian bor¬ 
der (1878) connecting with a Canadian line to 
Winnipeg, then westward through the Dakotas 
and Montana to Great Falls (1887), and finally 
over the Cascade Range to the Pacific Coast at 
Everett (1893) and Seattle, with joint running 
rights over the Union Pacific to Portland, Ore. 
In the meantime, the original St. Paul & Pacific 
had been reorganized (1879), its name being 
changed to the St. Paul, Minneapolis fiz: Mani¬ 
toba Railway, and the several Hill-controlled 
lines, organized for construction purposes, had 
been absorbed in the new company. The need 
for further comprehensive permanent financing 
for extensions, actually made or planned for, led 
to the creation of the Great Northern Railway 
Company in 1890 to absorb all of the properties 
in one corporate entity. Since that time there 
have been further extensions and alliances with 
other companies but no notable changes in the 
corporate organization. During the years 1891- 
1906, an average of one mile of railroad was 
built and equipped for each working day of the 
year. Hill's official positions with the system 
were: general manager, 1879-81; vice-president, 
1881-82; president, 1882-1907; and chairman of 
the board, 1907-12. 

The striking peculiarity of the Hill railroad 
system was that under his management it alone 
of the transcontinental lines weathered all finan¬ 
cial storms and maintained an uninterrupted divi¬ 
dend record. The other railroads in that section 
had been given land grants or governmental fi¬ 
nancial aid. Hill had no such assistance in ex- 


37 



Hill 


Hill 


tending the system westward from Minnesota to 
Puget Sound. The strength of the Great North¬ 
ern was in its location, its low first cost, its con¬ 
servative financial structure, and the skill of its 
management. Hill built his lines where he knew 
that rail traffic would blossom; he personally 
supervised the construction, in small as well as 
in large matters; he selected the routes with 
favorable grades; he was a pioneer in recogniz¬ 
ing the value of adequate terminal facilities; and 
he insisted that the cost of operation should be 
lower than that of any railroad in the region. 
After its reorganization the Northern Pacific 
fought him at every step. One of Hill’s guiding 
principles was that an intimate knowledge of a 
rival undertaking was essential to effective pro¬ 
tection of his own interests. He knew that the 
Northern Pacific was over-capitalized, that its 
ton-mile cost was substantially greater than that 
of the Great Northern, and that he could beat it 
in fair competition. What he feared was another 
period of bankruptcy for the Northern Pacific, 
with the attendant risk of an uneconomic rate 

war. 

These fears were not groundless. In the panic 
of 1893, the year in which the Great Northern 
reached Puget Sound, the Northern Pacific en¬ 
tered upon its second receivership. Hill was 
prepared to stabilize the rail situation in the 
Northwest by assuming leadership in a reorgani¬ 
zation which, on the one hand, would insure 
proper cooperation rather than unwise strife be¬ 
tween the two railroads, and, on the other, would 
prevent the acquisition of the Northern Pacific 
by a system alien to the region. In May 1895, 
after nearly two years of negotiation, Hill, in 
association with Lord Mount Stephen and Ed¬ 
ward Tuck, entered into an agreement with the 
representatives of the Northern Pacific bond¬ 
holders, under which the Great Northern would 
guarantee the principal and interest of the 
Northern Pacific bonds, and the bondholders 
would give Hill and his associates a majority on 
the board of the new company and turn over to 
them as trustees one-half of the capital stock. 
The agreement, however, met with public op¬ 
position and suit to enjoin the unification was 
brought, by a stockholder of the Great Northern, 
under the Minnesota law which prohibited the 
consolidation of parallel and competing rail¬ 
roads. The circuit court dismissed the case but 
on appeal to the United States Supreme Court 
the injunction was granted in May 1896. There 

was, however, no legal barrier to the providing, 
by Hill and his associates as individuals, of a 
part of the funds for reorganization. They also 
acquired personally a block of Northern Pacific 


stock. That there was a community of interest, 
even though Hill actually had but a small frac¬ 
tion of the total stock, was shown by the joint 
action of the two companies early in 1901 when 
Hill and J. P. Morgan, acting for the Great 
Northern and the Northern Pacific respectively, 
negotiated with the board of directors of the Chi¬ 
cago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad and bought 
about ninety-seven per cent, of its entire capital 
stock. The purchase was financed by the issuance 
of bonds guaranteed jointly by the Great North¬ 
ern and Northern Pacific. The motives were to 
insure the two northern roads an entrance into 
Chicago and St. Louis, to give them increased 
traffic by reaching the markets and producing 
points in the central states and upper South, to 
reach the coal mines of Illinois, and to check¬ 
mate the efforts of Edward H. Harriman \_q.v .] 9 
who had been trying to obtain control of the 
Burlington and through it an entrance into the 
Northwest. Hill regarded that possibility as a 
menace to the Northwest and to the two northern 
roads. 

Hill had thwarted Harriman in acquiring con¬ 
trol of the Burlington but he was not through 
with that great master of railroad strategy. The 
Burlington was now beyond Harriman’s reach 
but the Northern Pacific, a half-owner of the 
Burlington, was vulnerable. Before Hill and 
Morgan realized the danger the Union Pacific 
group, by May 1901, had acquired a majority of 
the total stock, common and preferred combined, 
both of which had voting power. Hill and his 
friends had a bare majority of the common stock, 
but had the power to postpone the date of the 
forthcoming annual meeting, normally held in 
the fall, until after Jan. 1, 1902, retire the pre¬ 
ferred stock, and thereby destroy Harriman’s 
majority before he could change the board. The 
struggle between Harriman and Schiff on the 
one hand and Hill and Morgan on the other pre¬ 
cipitated the stock-market panic of May 9, 1901, 
when Northern Pacific soared to $1,000 a share 
and those who had sold short could not buy stock 
to cover their commitments. The battle ended in 
a draw. In the interest of peace and in order to 
calm the general disturbance in financial circles, 
Harriman was given minority representation on 
the Northern Pacific board, but the relations be¬ 
tween the Northern Pacific and the Great North¬ 
ern and their joint control of the Burlington 
were not disturbed. 

The incident caused Hill to put into effect a 
plan he had had in mind for many years. He 
was growing old; many of his associates were 
even older. The death of any one of them, and 
the settlement of his estate, might upset balances 


38 



Hill Hill 


in such a way as to undo quickly what had taken 
years to accomplish. The plan to insure stability 
in control took form late in 1901 in the organi¬ 
zation of the Northern Securities Company, a 
holding company to act virtually as trustee of 
the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, Burling¬ 
ton, and other properties associated with Hill's 
name. The new company, of which Hill was 
elected president, had a brief and litigious ca¬ 
reer. It was attacked almost at once by the State 
of Minnesota, by the Interstate Commerce Com¬ 
mission, and by the attorney-general of the 
United States, as contrary to the Sherman Anti¬ 
trust Act of 1890. Hill had believed, and com¬ 
petent counsel had advised, that the Sherman 
Law did not apply to railroads, but in March 
1904 the Supreme Court, by a five-to-four de¬ 
cision, declared the Northern Securities Com¬ 
pany contrary to law. Steps were taken at once 
to dissolve the company but there was further 
and protracted litigation over the method of 
liquidation followed by the company, which was 
upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court on 
Mar. 6, 1905. 

The failure of a plan which he believed to be 
economically sound and in broad public interest 
was a great disappointment to Hill. The disso¬ 
lution of the Northern Securities Company left 
the relations between the so-called Hill roads the 
same as they were in 1901, and the joint interests 
of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific were 
expanded in 1905 when the two companies joint¬ 
ly organized and began construction of the Port¬ 
land & Seattle Railway (later Spokane, Portland 
& Seattle). In 1907 Hill resigned the presi¬ 
dency of the Great Northern and became chair¬ 
man of the board. Succeeded by his son, Louis 
W. Hill, he did not give up his close contact with 
the affairs of the railroad, yet he took more time 
henceforth for matters of broad public interest. 
In 1912 he resigned the chairmanship but until a 
few days before his death in 1916 his interest in 
railroad matters was keen and constructive. 

The fact that Hill had an important part in the 
first years of the Canadian Pacific Railway, com¬ 
pleted from coast to coast in 1885, is obscured by 
his greater achievements in the Northwest. Don- 
.ald Smith and George Stephen had been of in¬ 
valuable assistance to him when he acquired the 
St. Paul & Pacific. It was natural that they 
should turn to him for assistance when later the 
project of the Canadian line was taking form. 
He was a member of the original syndicate that 
underwrote the project; for a few years he was 
a director of the company; and personally he had 
much to do with the selection of the route and 
the policies of construction. The man to whom 


belongs the greatest credit for carrying the un¬ 
dertaking to completion, William C. VanHome, 
was recommended to the board by Hill. His in¬ 
terest was not entirely dissociated with that of 
his own railroad. For a time, construction ma¬ 
terials in large quantities moved over his rails 
from St. Paul to the border while Canada was 
without a connecting link of its own through the 
rugged and inhospitable territory around the 
northern shores of Lake Superior. It was Hill's 
belief that the wise policy of the Canadian com¬ 
pany would be to defer the construction of that 
difficult section of the line and during the early 
years to concentrate upon colonizing the prairies 
of the Canadian Northwest while continuing to 
use the American route through St Paul. Van- 
Horne, however, thought otherwise and persuad¬ 
ed the board to undertake the construction of 
the Lake Superior section simultaneously with 
that of the far-western section. As soon as it ap¬ 
peared that the interests of the two companies 
would be competitive rather than mutually co¬ 
operative, Hill resigned (1883) from the Ca¬ 
nadian Pacific board. 

During the last twenty years of his life Hill 
was frequently called upon to make addresses on 
important occasions when questions of railroad 
regulation, finance, rates, and operation were un¬ 
der discussion. He usually responded freely to 
requests to talk to those who were interested in 
agriculture. The Great Northern was a pioneer 
in the running of agricultural demonstration 
trains, with expert lecturers, and Hill personally 
imported from England a substantial number of 
blooded bulls which he distributed gratis to farm¬ 
ers throughout the Northwest. He was an early 
advocate of the doctrine of conservation of natu¬ 
ral resources and was active in leadership of the 
movement of 1908 in that direction. His views 
on such public questions were expounded by him 
in more complete form in a volume, entitled 
Highways of Progress (1910). 

Hill's lifelong interest in Japan, China, and 
India led him to undertake an ambitious experi¬ 
ment intended to stimulate trade and commerce 
between the United States and the Orient. The 
Great Northern's balance of traffic, after a few 
years, was eastward in products of forests and 
•agriculture. The westward traffic was so much 
•smaller that a substantial portion of the west¬ 
bound trains consisted of empty cars. If a new 
traffic in commodities for export to the Orient 
could be developed, the commodities could be 
moved at relatively slight additional expense and 
subnormal freight rates would be justified. Hill 
had sent men to the Orient to make exhaustive 
studies and he knew the possibilities in the ex- 



Hill 

port of steel, cotton, flour, and other products. 
To stimulate their movement through Seattle he 
put into effect low export rates. In 1896 he made 
a contract with the principal steamship company 
of Japan and in 1900 organized the Great North¬ 
ern Steamship Company, which built two ves¬ 
sels larger than anything then in freight-carrying 
service. The Oriental traffic would not move ex¬ 
cept under rates substantially lower than those 
applying to domestic traffic. The low export 
rates were a form of discrimination, sound 
enough in this specific case, but difficult to ex¬ 
plain satisfactorily to those who paid higher 
domestic rates. The regulating authorities dis¬ 
approved of the low rates on export traffic and 
the vision of Oriental trade which was so bright 
in 1901-02, by 1905 had almost faded. 

In railroad administration Hill placed major 
emphasis on exact and complete knowledge of 
costs and every index of operating efficiency. 
He insisted that every operating officer on his 
railroads should be familiar with detail. Every 
superintendent was required to be thoroughly at 
home in accounts and statistics. Many stories 
are told about his alleged harshness in dealing 
with subordinate officials, but in each case there 
was probably a background of incompetence, in¬ 
complete knowledge of facts, or failure to con¬ 
trol unfavorable tendencies. Hill’s dictum was: 
“Intelligent management of railroads must be 
based on exact knowledge of facts. Guesswork 
will not do.” 

Hill guarded jealously the interests of his 
stockholders and had a high concept of his obli¬ 
gations to them and to the region which the rail¬ 
road served. His high sense of honor is indi¬ 
cated by the manner in which he disposed of his 
personal investment in the Mesabi ore ranges 
later served by the Great Northern. When he 
bought the lands (1899), then undeveloped and 
uncertain in value, the venture seemed too much 
of a gamble to risk the money of stockholders, so 
he personally acquired the properties (25,000 
acres) at a price of $4,050,000. Yet, after the 
success of the venture was assured, he felt im¬ 
pelled to give to the stockholders of the railroad 
the future profits, which, from 1906 to 1916, 
were $11,250,00a 

Whether Hill’s chief claim to greatness lay in 
his genius and achievements as a railroad builder 
and operator or in his skill in matters of finance 
is open to argument It is probable that if his 
energies had not been devoted mainly to railroad 
construction and management he would have 
shone in finance. For many years he was a di¬ 
rector of the Chase National Bank and the First 
National of New York and of the First National 


Hill 

and the Illinois Trust & Savings of Chicago. 
He was on the board of the First National of St. 
Paul from 1880 to 1912, when he bought con¬ 
trol of the Second National and merged the two 
institutions. Later he bought also the North¬ 
western Trust Company of St. Paul to operate 
in harmony with the First National. His idea 
was to have a strong bank in the Northwest to 
relieve its degree of dependence on Eastern in¬ 
stitutions. 

Hill is often referred to as an empire builder 
because of his great part in the development of 
the Northwest. At times he was criticized as 
capitalistic, but by and large the people of the 
region held him in high esteem and were lavish 
in their honors. When the management of the 
Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco in 
1915 asked each state to name its greatest living 
citizen for a hall of fame, a committee of five, 
appointed by the Governor of Minnesota to desig¬ 
nate the representative of that state, unanimous¬ 
ly selected Hill. At Harvard University the 
James J. Hill Professorship of Transportation, 
endowed by seventy-four of his friends and ad¬ 
mirers, was established in 1915. In politics Hill 
was a Democrat. He worked assiduously in 1884 
to promote the candidacy of Cleveland. Later, 
Cleveland and Hill became close friends and the 
President frequently sought his advice on finan¬ 
cial and transportation matters. Although Hill 
was of medium height, there was something 
about his appearance that suggested great size 
and strength—probably his powerfully built 
frame, massive head, the impression of immense 
reserves of power, and the indefinable qualities 
of one accustomed to command. Direct, almost 
brusque, in conversation, he had withal a keen 
sense of humor. He was a warm admirer of 
Burns and could recite many of his poems from 
memory. His simple and direct style reflect the 
influence of his early reading and rereading of 
Pilgrim's Progress . His business reports and 
statements, his public addresses and personal let¬ 
ters, were written in a peculiarly lucid style and 
with the minimum of words required to express 
the thought. His love for books led him in 1912 
to erect and provide for the maintenance of the 
Hill Reference Library, a beautiful building in 
St Paul. As early as the eighties he had begun 
to purchase paintings and his gallery contained 
one of the finest collections of the works of mod¬ 
ern French artists. He loved fine rugs and 
jewels and had remarkable skill in appraising 
and selecting them. 

Hill was brought up by a Methodist mother 
and Baptist father. On Aug. 19, 1867, he mar¬ 
ried Mary Theresa Mehegan, daughter of Timo- 


40 



Hill 

thy Mehegan and Joanna Miles, both originally 
from Ireland and of the Roman Catholic faith. 
The union was a happy one. He took enjoyment 
in endowing on account of his wife a seminary 
at St. Paul for the education of students pre¬ 
paring for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Of 
his ten children, seven girls and three boys, all 
but one daughter who died in infancy were liv¬ 
ing when he died, after a short illness, on May 
29, 1916. His widow died on Nov. 22, 1921. 

[Historical facts have been taken in the main from 
J. G. Pyle’s authorized biography, The Life of James 
J. Hill (2 vols., 1917), and Who’s Who in America, 
1916-17. Comments on Hill’s philosophy of manage¬ 
ment and personal characteristics are based on per¬ 
sonal interviews by the author of this sketch in 1916. 
Further references are: Hill’s own Brief Hist, of the 
Great Northern Ry . System (1912) ; B. H. Meyer, “A 
Hist, of the Northern Securities Case,” Bull, of the 
Univ. of Wis., Econ. and Pol. Sci. Ser. f vol. I, no. 3, 
July 1906 ; O. M. Sullivan, The Empire Builder (1928); 
St. Paul Dispatch, May 29, 1916; Minneapolis Morn - 
ing Tribune, May 30, 1916.] W.J.C. 

HILL, JOHN (1770-1850), engraver, was the 
English-born founder of a family of American 
artists. He made his mark as an engraver in 
aquatint in London, his birthplace, where his 
best plates were executed after paintings by Tur¬ 
ner and Loutherbourg. He was forty-six when, 
in the summer of 1816, he emigrated to America 
and settled in Philadelphia. He arrived oppor¬ 
tunely in the young Republic, for art, which 
until after the Revolution was closely associated 
with portrait-making, was just beginning to take 
cognizance of the New World’s wealth in natu¬ 
ral beauty, and the first signs were showing of 
a developing landscape school and of a vogue for 
reproductions. Here was scope for the aquatint 
engraver. Hill’s work, together with that of his 
compatriot, W. J. Bennett, who came at about 
the same time, marked, according to Weiten- 
kampf (American Graphic Art, p. 102), the 
culmination of a short period of successful prac¬ 
tice of aquatint in America. In 1819 Hill sent 
for his wife, Ann (Musgrove) Hill, and his son, 
and soon after their arrival he removed with 
them to New York, which was his home for the 
rest of his active professional life. 

Hill’s earliest work in America comprises a 
series of small magazine plates in black-and- 
white, including his views of Richmond, Va., 
and York Springs, Pa. Later he engraved a 
series of much larger plates which he colored by 
hand, “Picturesque Views of American Scenery,” 
after paintings by Joshua Shaw. Weitenkampf 
notes as evidence of craftsmanship the use of a 
much coarser, more open grain in these plates 
than in the earlier series of smaller size. Known 
as the Landscape Album, this series was pub¬ 
lished by Carey of Philadelphia in 1820 and re- 


Hill 

published in 1835 by Thomas T. Ash of the same 
city. Weitenkampf calls attention to the exis¬ 
tence of an earlier state of the engraved title- 
page bearing the date 1819 and the name “Moses 
Thomas” in place of Carey, which would seem to 
indicate a transfer of publishers before the plates 
were issued. Hill paid tribute to the grandeur 
of the “American Rhine” in a set of still larger 
plates entitled the Hudson River Portfolio, which 
he aqnatinted after watercolors by W, G. Wall. 
The series was published in 1828 by Catlin of 
New York and was reissued by Henry I. Me- 
garey. Owing to some renumbering of the plates 
this group has become “the despair of the col¬ 
lectors.” 

About 1836, when the popularity of aquatint¬ 
ing had waned, Hill retired to a lonely upland 
farm on the Nyack turnpike, thirty-five miles 
from New York and a half mile from the village 
of West Nyack. Here he died fourteen years 
later. His son, John William Hill—a painter as 
well as an engraver, and leader of the Pre- 
Raphaelite school in America—and later his 
grandson, John Henry Hill, carried on the fam¬ 
ily tradition into the twentieth century. In 1901, 
when Weitenkampf visited the farm-studio, the 
walls were hung with prints and paintings trac¬ 
ing the development of three generations of art¬ 
ists. One of Hill’s grandsons was the mathe¬ 
matical astronomer, George W. Hill [q.v.]. 

[Frank Weitenkampf, Am. Graphic Art (19x2), “Am. 
Scenic Prints,” Intemat. Studio, July 1923, and “Hack¬ 
ensack Disciple of Ruskin,” N. Y. Times, Supp., Dec. 
8, 1901; D. McN. Stauffer, Am. Engravers upon Cop¬ 
per and Steel (1907), I, 126-27, II, 221-27; “John 
Hill, Aquatinter, and His 'Landscape Album/ ” Bull, 
of the N. Y. Pub. Lib.. June 1920; C. W. Drepperd, 
Early Am. Prints (1930) ; John Henry Hill, An Artist’s 
Memorial (1881).] M.B.H. 

HILL, JOHN HENRY (Sept. 11, 1791-July 
1, 1882), foreign missionary and educator, was 
born in New York City. At the age of sixteen he 
graduated from Columbia College and embarked 
on a mercantile career. In 1821 he married 
Frances, daughter of John W. Mulligan of his 
native city. After twenty years spent as a busi¬ 
ness man, he entered the Protestant Episcopal 
seminary at Alexandria, Va., and in 1830 was 
ordained priest in Norfolk by Bishop Richard C. 
Moore. An enthusiastic Phil-Hellenist, he vol¬ 
unteered at once for service on a foreign mission 
to Greece, the first established by his church. 
He and his wife proceeded immediately to 
Athens, arriving as the Greek Kingdom was be¬ 
ing established. They at once opened schools for 
both boys and girls—the first schools in Athens 
since the expulsion of the Turks. When the 
Greek government in the following year pro¬ 
vided for the education of boys, the Hills devoted 



Hill Hill 


themselves entirely to the education of girls. In 
this they were remarkably successful, increas¬ 
ing their enrolment in a relatively expensive 
private school from 167 in the first year to 700 
in 1880, and at the same time broadening the 
training to include not only elementary but also 
secondary and normal courses. Their school ac¬ 
quired great prestige as providing the best edu¬ 
cation for girls in the whole Greek-speaking 
world and attracted many pupils from the 
wealthiest and most enlightened families. The 
training of teachers was one of their principal 
aims, and through their own example at Athens 
and that of numerous schools founded by their 
graduates they exercised a profound influence 
on female education in Greece, and their school 
served as prototype for many others. This was 
facilitated by the fact that they made no effort 
to proselytize but worked always in cordial co¬ 
operation with the Greek Church and govern¬ 
ment, giving advice and help in the development 
of the national schools. Along with their other 
work they conducted a free school in the Agora 
for the poorer classes. 

Hill gained the respect of foreigners as well 
as natives and for thirty years was chaplain of 
the British Legation. The Greek government 
gratefully recognized his great services to the 
country by repeatedly offering him decorations, 
which he always refused, and in 1881, on the fif¬ 
tieth anniversary of the founding of the girls’ 
school, King George I sent him an official letter 
of thanks. Five years before his death he be¬ 
came blind but still continued to direct the work 
with the aid of his very capable wife. His fu¬ 
neral was the occasion for a remarkable demon¬ 
stration of popular sorrow. At the request of the 
ministry it was public and observed with all the 
honors due to a taxiarch or grand commander. 
Theatres and shops were closed and the trams 
ceased running. The municipality of Athens 
erected a marble monument over his grave. The 
institution founded by him and his wife still con¬ 
tinues as the Hill Memorial School. A scholar 
and theologian as well as educator, Hill trans¬ 
lated a number of books into Greek and received 
honorary degrees from several American uni¬ 
versities. Although his manner was somewhat 
blunt and abrupt, he was a devoted friend to the 
people he served for more than fifty years and 
was regarded by the Greeks as one of themselves. 
His work deserves a place among the finest ex¬ 
amples of American missionary achievement. 

iThe Churchman, July 15, Aug. 5, 12, 26, 1882; the 
Church Eclectic, Oct. 1882; C. C. Tiffany, Hist, of the 
Protestant Episc . Ch. in the U. S. A. (1895), pp, 446- 
47; Jour. of the Proc . of the Convention of the Prot¬ 


estant Episc. Ch. of . . . Va., ip May 1831 (1831); 
N. Y. Times, July 9, 1882.] W.L.W—t.Jr. 

HILL, JOSHUA (Jan. 10,1812-Mar. 6,1891), 
United States senator, was born in Abbeville 
District, S. C. He was of Irish extraction, his 
ancestors settling first in Virginia, and later re¬ 
moving to South Carolina. His father was a 
man of moderate means. Tutored under John H. 
Gray and Moses Waddell, he later prepared him¬ 
self for the practice of law and then went to 
Georgia, where, after residing for a time in 
Monticello, he settled in 1848 at Madison. Soon 
he was drawn into politics. Having grown up 
with strong Whig and Unionist principles, he 
followed Benjamin H. Hill—not a kinsman— 
into the American or Know-Nothing party and 
was elected to Congress in 1856 as an American, 
defeating Linton Stephens [q.v.]. He served 
until January 1861. When the Constitutional 
Union party was organized in Georgia in i860 
in a last effort to stave off civil war, Hill took 
part in the deliberations and went as a delegate 
to the Baltimore Convention, which nominated 
Bell of Tennessee for the presidency. He was a 
bitter and outspoken opponent of secession, and 
on Georgia’s leaving the Union in January 1861, 
he declined to join in the letter addressed by the 
other Georgia congressmen to the speaker and 
resigned rather than withdraw with them. Re¬ 
turning to Georgia, he flatly refused to have 
anything to do with the war and on two occa¬ 
sions he had opportunity to assert his principles. 
In 1863, when he was placed in nomination for 
governor against Joseph E. Brown, he repre¬ 
sented the conservative element and the growing 
Union sentiment of north Georgia, but he polled 
only 18,000 of the 65,000 votes cast. Again, in 
the following year, after Sherman had devas¬ 
tated Georgia from the Tennessee line to At¬ 
lanta and had taken the city, the Federal com¬ 
mander thought the time ripe for a movement to 
separate Georgia from the Confederacy. He had 
interviews with certain prominent Georgians 
and sent emissaries to Governor Brown and 
Alexander H. Stephens, both known to be hostile 
to Davis’ government, and to President Lincoln. 
Hill was the emissary sent to confer with Brown. 
Hill also canvassed the legislature extensively in 
an effort to get a peace movement started from 
that quarter. This effort, however, proved abor¬ 
tive. 

The war ended, Hill threw himself into the 
work of reconstruction with great energy. He 
was elected to membership in the state consti¬ 
tutional convention under the Andrew Johnson 
regime, and in 1866, under the new constitution, 
he was a candidate for the United States Senate. 


42 



Hill Hill 


In this contest he was defeated by Alexander H. 
Stephens, who, however, was not allowed to 
take his seat In 1868, with Joseph E. Brown 
and Alexander H. Stephens, he was again a 
candidate for the Senate. The conservative 
Democrats, unable to elect Stephens, threw their 
strength to Hill, who was thus enabled to defeat 
Brown by no votes to 94. The only consolation 
the embittered Democrats got out of the election 
was the defeat of Brown, for Hill immediately 
and frankly voiced his Republican principles and 
his intention to support the policies of Congress. 
But despite the fact that he had stubbornly op¬ 
posed secession, had declined to take part in the 
war, had led a peace movement during the war, 
had entered the Republican party, and had 
worked for the radical reconstruction policies, 
he never incurred personal odium nor lost the 
respect of the Georgia people. His term expired 
in March 1873. On retiring from the Senate he 
returned to his home in Madison and took no 
further part in politics except to serve as a mem¬ 
ber of the state constitutional convention of 
1877. Shortly after taking up his residence in 
Monticello Hill had married Emily Reid, daugh¬ 
ter of a prominent planter and spoken of as a 
woman of beauty and culture. Eight children 
were born to the couple, four sons and four 
daughters. The second son, Legare, against the 
wishes of his father, entered the war and was 
killed at the battle of Resaca, in north Georgia. 
Hill lived to a ripe old age and left a large estate 
for the time. He was an atheist. 

[The best sketch of Hill is that by R. J. Massey in 
W. J. Northen, Men of Mark in Ga., vol. Ill (1911)* 
See also I. W, Hill, Hist, of Ga. 1850-81 (1881); Biog. 
Dir . Am. Cong . (1928); Morning News (Savannah), 
and the Atlanta Constitution, Mar. 7, 1891.] R.p. B. 

HILL, NATHANIEL PETER (Feb. 18,1832- 
May 22, 1900), metallurgist, senator from Colo¬ 
rado, was born at Montgomery, Orange County, 
N. Y., where his ancestor Nathaniel Hill had 
settled in 1730. He was the third of the seven 
children of Nathaniel P. Hill and Matilda 
(Crawford) Hill. A farmer’s boy with prepara¬ 
tory education at the local Montgomery Acad¬ 
emy, he entered Brown University, graduating 
in 1856. In 1856-58 he was assistant in chemis¬ 
try there, and from 1858 to 1864 instructor and 
then professor of chemistry applied to arts. Win¬ 
ning the confidence of a group of Rhode Island 
and Massachusetts manufacturers, he received a 
commission, in 1864, to investigate the geological 
and economic features of a tract of land in Gilpin 
County, Colo. While on this trip he observed 
the great loss of gold in the stamp mills of Black- 
hawk and vicinity where the amalgamation proc¬ 
ess was in use, and noted that the loss increased 


as surface (oxidized) ores were replaced by 
sulphide (“refractory”) ore. Hill, believing that 
the metal could be better extracted from these 
ores by smelting, returned to Colorado twice in 
1865, and made two trips to Europe, 1865-66 
and 1866-67, to investigate the problem. 

Although at that time there were no railroads 
west of the Missouri River, he transported seven¬ 
ty-two tons of ore to Swansea in Wales for ex¬ 
perimentation. Upon the success of the tests 
which he made there with the assistance of 
Welsh metallurgists, Hill organized the Boston 
& Colorado Smelting Company, of which he was 
general manager from 1867 until his death. Re¬ 
turning to Blackhawk, he built a smelting plant 
which commenced operation in January 1868. 
Later he secured the services of Richard Pearce 
Iq.v.], who in 1873 developed the refining proc¬ 
ess by which the precious metals were separated 
from the copper, thus obviating the necessity of 
making contracts abroad for this purpose. “Hill’s 
Smelter,” as the Boston & Colorado works near 
Denver were usually called, was typically Welsh, 
following as a “secret process” a metallurgical 
procedure which was destined soon to become 
obsolete. Nevertheless, to Hill’s opportune ob¬ 
servation that smelting, rather than the amalga¬ 
mation process, was required for the non-oxi- 
dized, deep-level ores is to be credited the 
inauguration of the great mining era of the 
Rocky Mountain region. 

Hill became mayor of Blackhawk in 1871, soon 
after his permanent settlement there; he was a 
member of the Territorial Council, 1872-73, and 
United States senator from Colorado from 1879 
to 1885. The speech on the silver question which 
he delivered in the Senate on June 20, 1882, in 
reply to Senator Sherman, received favorable 
comment from the London Economist (Aug. 26, 
1882). It was reprinted in Hill’s Speeches and 
Papers on the Silver, Postal Telegraph, and 
Other Economic Questions (1890). He was for 
some years a regent of the Smithsonian Insti¬ 
tution. Upon returning to Denver after the ex¬ 
piration of his term in the Senate, he became 
proprietor of the influential Denver Republican, 
through which he supported the free coinage of 
silver. In 1891 he was appointed to the Inter¬ 
national Monetary Commission and in 1893 was 
a delegate to the Bimetallic Conference. In addi¬ 
tion to his general managership of the Boston 
& Colorado Smelting Company he was actively 
interested in real estate and in the development 
of oil lands in the vicinity of Florence, Colo. He 
was married in July i860, to Alice Hale, whom 
he survived. They had one son and two daugh¬ 
ters, all of whom survived their father. 


43 



Hill 


Hill 


[Mining American, July 8, 1916; National Maga¬ 
zine, Feb. 1892; Hist. Cat. Brown Univ. (1905); Who's 
Who in America, 1899-1900 ; P. C. Headley, Public 
Men of Today (1882) ; Thos. Egleston, The Boston and 
Colo. Smelting Works (1877) ; Denver Republican and 
Colorado Springs Gazette, May 23, 1900; Alumni File, 
Brown Univ.; correspondence with Hill’s brother-in- 
law, Jesse D. Hale of Denver, Colo., who worked with 
Hill at the Boston & Colorado plant.] R. q q _ 

HILL, RICHARD (c. 1673-September 1729), 
Philadelphia merchant, legislator and judge, the 
son of Richard Hill, a sea captain who in 1673 
received a grant of land in Maryland from Lord 
Baltimore, was bom in Maryland and, after hav¬ 
ing been “brought up to the sea," settled in 
Philadelphia about 1700. He was a member of 
the Society of Friends and an intimate of Wil¬ 
liam Penn. In 1700 he married Hannah, widow 
of John Delaval and daughter of Thomas Lloyd 
Iq.v.], deputy governor of Pennsylvania. Soon 
becoming active in the political life of that col¬ 
ony, he was appointed a member of the Pro¬ 
vincial Council in 1703; in 1705 he was elected 
to the Assembly, and was reelected the following 
year. He was chosen mayor of Philadelphia in 
1710, and in 1711 an associate justice of the 
provincial supreme court, in which office he con¬ 
tinued until his death. He was again elected 
mayor of Philadelphia in 1715, 1716, and 1717, 
and between the years 1715 and 1724 he was a 
justice of the court of common pleas in Penn¬ 
sylvania. 

Always a dependable and energetic man, he 
was selected by the Provincial Council to serve 
on several commissions of great importance, es¬ 
pecially those concerned with treaties with the 
chiefs of the Five Nations. In 1721 he was a 
member of the commission which placated the 
Indians at a conference held at Conestoga, Pa., 
and in 1722 he was sent to Albany, N. Y., on the 
commission to treat with the Five Nations, whose 
chiefs were assembled there* He was perma¬ 
nently a member of the Supreme Council's com¬ 
mission on Proprietary Lands, and in 1713 was 
one of those who went to confer with Lord Bal¬ 
timore's representatives regarding the boundary 
between Maryland and Pennsylvania, a dispute 
that was not ended for half a century. 

A story exhibiting Hill's courage and spirit is 
given by Robert Proud in his History of Penn -- 
sylvania (I, 472). It had been decided by John 
Evans [g.^.], the new lieutenant-governor of the 
Province, that for the protection of the colony 
some regiments of militia should be raised—a 
proposition not kindly received by the Quakers. 
Evans carried his point, erected a fort at New 
Castle, and ordered all ships to stop and pay toll. 
This regulation met with great opposition, and 
Hill, who had a sloop ready laden to proceed to 


Barbados (June 1706), decided to defy it He 
boarded his vessel and ordered the captain not 
to stop at the fort. Even when the guns of the 
fort fired upon the little sloop, Hill had it keep 
on its course; and when the commander of the 
fort overtook the vessel, Hill made him prisoner 
and carried him to Salem, N. J., for the case to 
be decided by the Admiral of the Delaware, Lord 
Cornbury [q.v.], who ordered the vessel to con¬ 
tinue her voyage and reprimanded the comman¬ 
der of the fort. Hill died in Philadelphia and 
was buried there on Sept. 5,1729. 

[J. H. Martin, Martin’s Bench and Bar of Phila . 
(1883) ; Robt. Proud, Hist, of Pa., vol. I (1797) ; C. 
P. Keith, Chronicles of Pa. 1688-1748 (2 vols., 1917) ; 
Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pa., vol. Ill 
(1852); John Jay Smith, Letters of Dr. Richard Hill 
to his Children (1854) ; Am. Weekly Mercury (Phila.), 
Sept. 11, 1729.] jj 

HILL,ROBERT ANDREWS (Mar.25,1811- 
July 2,1900), jurist, was born in Iredell County, 
N. C., the son of David and Rhoda (Andrews) 
Hill and the grandson of Scotch-Irish forebears 
who had emigrated to Pennsylvania in the eigh¬ 
teenth century and had later settled in North 
Carolina. In 1816 his father moved to Giles 
County, Tenn., thence to Williamson County, 
where the son was brought up. Called upon at 
the age of ten to contribute to the support of the 
family, Robert worked on the farm and gained 
his education by devoting his spare time to 
study. By 1833 he was able to combine school- 
teaching with his farm work, and in that year he 
was married to Mary Andrews. In 1834 he was 
elected constable, serving until his election in 
1836 as justice of the peace. While in this office 
he read law and in December 1844 be resigned to 
launch upon a legal career. Settling in Waynes¬ 
boro, Tenn., he practised in partnership with 
Elijah Walker until 1847, when he was elected 
by the legislature attorney-general for the cir¬ 
cuit. He was reelected in 1854, but in 1855 the 
office was made elective by popular vote, and 
Hill, who was a Whig, was defeated. He then 
moved to Jacinto, Tishomingo County, Miss., 
where he entered into a law partnership with 
John F. Arnold. In 1858 he became probate 
judge and held the office during the Civil War. 

Hill took no part in secession but he gained the 
respect of both Confederate and Federal leaders. 
After the war he was appointed chancellor of his 
district by Provisional-Governor Sharkey and 
held office until he was appointed United States 
district judge by President Johnson in 1866. He 
had served, meanwhile, as a delegate to the con¬ 
stitutional convention of 1865, and in the same 
year he had visited Washington in the interest of 
the South. There he was instrumental in secur- 


44 



Hill 

ing the suspension of the direct land tax, amount¬ 
ing to about $484,000 in Mississippi, only a small 
portion of which had been collected. As a federal 
judge during Reconstruction, Hill had occasion 
to display the qualities which distinguished him. 
He desired to enforce United States laws, but he 
did so with as little oppression and hardship as 
circumstances permitted. When the act of Apr. 
9, 1866, was passed by Congress, giving the ne¬ 
groes civil rights and privileges, he recommended 
to the state legislature the repeal of all laws in 
conflict with the provisions of the federal statute, 
so that litigation might be minimized. The act of 
Mar. 2, 1867, which declared null and void all 
state interference with acts of military authori¬ 
ties, he upheld as constitutional, but he further 
held that it was not designed to deprive citizens 
of their constitutional rights to fair public trial. 
With the passage of the act of Apr. 20, 1871, au¬ 
thorizing the president to suppress Ku-Klux dis¬ 
turbances by military force, Hill believed that he 
should prosecute cases under the law in order to 
keep the trials in civil rather than military courts. 
This he did by imposing a nominal fine on those 
declared guilty of violation of the act, releasing 
them on their own recognizance under bond to 
keep the peace toward their fellow citizens. 

Hill resigned from the bench on Aug. 1, 1891 ; 
he was then a man of eighty. Long interested in 
education and religion, he had served for many 
years as a trustee of the University of Mississippi 
and had been an active member of the Cumber¬ 
land Presbyterian Church. Perhaps most satis¬ 
fying to him was the fact that although he had 
not been a delegate to the constitutional conven¬ 
tion of 1868, he had prepared the provisions re¬ 
garding the judiciary which had become a part 
of the fundamental law of the state. Following 
his resignation from the bench he continued to 
live at Oxford, Miss., where he spent his last 
years in peaceful retirement. 

[Sources include: Blog, and Hist. Memoirs of Miss. 
(1891), vol. I; Dunbar Rowland, Mississippi (1907), 
vol. I; J. F. H. Claiborne, Miss., as a Province, Terri- 
tory and State (1880), footnote, pp. 471-72; J. W. Gar¬ 
ner, Reconstruction in Miss. (1901) ; Miss. Hist. Soc. 
Pubs., vol. V (1902), vol. XIII (1913); Vicksburg 
Herald, July 3, 1900 ; Weekly ClarionrLedger (Jackson, 
Miss.), July 5, 1900. There is a manuscript autobi¬ 
ography of Hill in the possession of the Miss. Hist. 
Soc -3 M.B.P. 

HILL,THOMAS (Jan. 7,1818-Nov. 21,1891), 
Unitarian clergyman, scientist, college president, 
was born in New Brunswick, N. J. His father, 
Thomas Hill, was in his youth a farmer near 
Tamworth in Warwickshire. He was a Uni¬ 
tarian, and in 1791, during the prevailing polit¬ 
ical, religious, and social upheaval in England, 
emigrated to America in search of religious lib- 


Hill 

erty. Starting business as a tanner in New 
Brunswick, N. J., where he later served for 
many years as a judge of the court of common 
pleas, he married, as his second wife, Henrietta 
Barker, whose father likewise had been driven 
from England during the religious persecutions 
following the Birmingham riot. When young 
Thomas was only ten years old his father died, 
but the difference between the Christianity prac¬ 
tised in the Hill household and the orthodoxy of 
the neighbors had already made its impression 
on the boy, as had the elder Hill's Sunday-after- 
noon discussions with deitistical friends. The 
father was a lover of nature, taught his family 
the scientific names of plants, and awakened an 
interest in natural science in his children. Be¬ 
fore Thomas was twelve he had read works of 
Franklin and Erasmus Darwin. After three 
years of formal schooling, during which he 
showed especial aptitude for mathematics, he en¬ 
tered the office of the Fredonian in September 
1830 as a printer's apprentice. The fare provid¬ 
ed brought on illness and despondency which 
finally drove him to flight. The next eighteen 
months, until October 1834, he spent under 
his eldest brother at Lower Dublin Academy, 
Holmesburg, Pa. At that time he was inclined 
towards civil engineering, but since no place of¬ 
fered itself, he was finally apprenticed to an 
apothecary. By May 1838, he had convinced his 
brothers of his bent for the ministry, and started 
to prepare for Harvard. Lacking only knowl¬ 
edge of the classics, he accomplished his prepa¬ 
ration in the space of fifteen months; one year 
under the tutelage of Rufus P. Stebbins 
the Unitarian minister at Leominster, Mass., 
the remainder of the time at Leicester Academy. 
After four years in Harvard College, where 
he attained particular distinction in mathemat¬ 
ics and invented an instrument for calculating 
eclipses and occupations for which he was 
awarded the Scott Medal of the Franklin Insti¬ 
tute, he graduated in 1843. In that year he pub¬ 
lished a little volume, Christmas, and Poems on 
Slavery . Entering the Divinity School, he grad¬ 
uated in 1845, married Ann Foster Bellows, of 
Walpole, N. H., and was settled happily for 
fourteen years as minister at Waltham, Mass. 
During this period he published two mathemat¬ 
ical textbooks, two papers on curves, and Georn^ 
etry and Faith (1849), which was revised and 
republished in 1874 and almost completely re¬ 
written in 1882. In 1858 he delivered the Phi 
Beta Kappa oration, Liberal Education, at Har¬ 
vard, and the following year gave a series of 
Lowell Institute lectures on “The Mutual Rela¬ 
tion of the Sciences.” In 1859 he was persuaded, 


45 



Hill 

much against his wishes, to accept the presi¬ 
dency of Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, 
in which his wife’s kinsman, Rev. Henry Whit¬ 
ney Bellows [q.v .], was enthusiastically inter¬ 
ested. His studies in education fitted him admi¬ 
rably for the post, but the financial insecurity of 
the college compelled him to spend his energies 
in securing funds for running expenses. In 1862 
the war forced the college to suspend, and Hill 
was called to the presidency of Harvard. 

His administration was not without opposi¬ 
tion, because of his liberal theology, predilec¬ 
tion towards science, and lack of executive abil¬ 
ity. Unfortunately the latter gave some cause 
for criticism, and the death of his wife in 1864, 
together with the incurable illness of his second 
wife, Lucy Elizabeth Shepard of Dorchester, 
whom he married in 1866, and a breakdown in 
his own health, saddened Hill’s years at Har¬ 
vard ; yet, during a period of war and financial 
unrest, he introduced the elective system, the 
Academic Council, and that germ of graduate in¬ 
struction, the University Lectures, and warmly 
encouraged scientific investigation. 

His resignation was accepted in 1868, and fol¬ 
lowing a year of travel and another representing 
Waltham in the legislature (1871), he sailed 
with his friend Agassiz on an expedition to South 
America. In 1873 he returned to assume the 
pastorate of the First Church in Portland, Me., 
where he spent eighteen happy years preach¬ 
ing, writing, lecturing, and interesting himself 
in scientific and educational experiments. His 
Lowell Lectures delivered in 1870 were pub¬ 
lished, somewhat revised, as a series of articles 
in the Bibliotheca Sacra (January 1874-April 
1875), and in book form as A Statement of the 
Natural Sources of Theology (1877). In 1876 
he published The True Order of Studies, giving 
expression to his belief that education should 
embrace an organization of all knowledge; in 
February 1878 he printed in the Unitarian Re¬ 
view an address on “Geometry and Biology” in 
which he cautioned his hearers against Darwin’s 
theory of accidental variation. One of his prin¬ 
cipal tenets was that “there must be algebraic 
and geometric law at the basis, not only of each 
organic form, but of the series of forms” ( Geom¬ 
etry and Faith, 3rd ed., 1882). He collaborated 
with G. A. Wentworth in the preparation of A 
Practical Arithmetic (1881). A volume of poems, 
In the Woods, and Elsewhere, appeared in 1888. 
Four years after his death were published, under 
the tide Postulates of Revelation and of Ethics 
' (1895), the lectures he had delivered at the 
Meadville Theological School on natural theol¬ 
ogy. In the spring of 1891, as he was returning 


Hill 

to Portland from Meadville, he was overtaken 
by illness at the home of his daughter in Wal¬ 
tham, Mass., where after several months of suf¬ 
fering he died. He was survived by four daugh¬ 
ters and three sons, one of whom was Henry 
Barker Hill [g.z/.], professor of chemistry at 
Harvard. 

[Sources include Hiirs article, “Books that Have 
Helped Me,” in Forum, Dec. 1889; memoirs by A. P. 
Peabody, in Proc. Am. Acad. Arts and Sci., vol. XXVII 
(1893) and by H. C. Badger, in Spirit and Life, Jan. 
189a; J. H. Allen, Sequel to “Our Liberal Movement'' 
(1897) ; Unitarian Rev., Dec. 1891; Christian Register, 
Feb. 18,1892, and Sept. 5,1912; Portland Press, Jan. 7, 
1917; Tributes to the Memory of Rev. Thomas Hill 
(1892); Daily Eastern Argus (Portland, Me.), Nov. 
23, 1891; and an unusually complete file of letters, the 
basis of a biography in preparation. See also Francis 
A. Christie, The Makers of the Meadville Theol. School 
(1927), ch. i$; C. W. Eliot, Harvard Memories 
(1923); and T. B. Peck, The Bellows Geneal . (1898).] 

W.G.L. 

HILL, THOMAS (Sept 11, 1829-June 30, 
1908), landscape painter, was born at Birming¬ 
ham, England, whence in his early childhood his 
parents, Thomas and Maria Hill, emigrated to 
the United States. After a common-school edu¬ 
cation at Taunton and Gardner, Mass., he was 
apprenticed to a coach-painter, and in 1844 he 
secured employment in Boston as a decorator, 
acquiring a wide reputation as a grainer and 
hair-line scroller. In time his trade took him to 
Philadelphia, where, at the Pennsylvania Acad¬ 
emy of the Fine Arts, he first drew from life. In 
1853 one of his canvases was awarded the first 
prize at the exhibition of the Maryland Insti¬ 
tute, Baltimore. Owing to ill health, in 1861 he 
went to San Francisco and opened a studio. He 
painted many portraits and won for his large 
painting, “The Merchant of Venice,” the first 
prize at the San Francisco Art Union in 1865. 
Encouraged by his success, he went to Paris and 
enrolled himself in 1866 as a pupil of Paul Mey- 
erheim, who, when shown some of his sketches 
made at Fontainebleau, advised him to devote 
himself to landscape. With that object in view, 
Hill settled in Boston in 1867. While there he 
painted several New England mountain subjects 
and the panoramic canvas, “Yosemite Valley,” 
which was exhibited with much journalistic ac¬ 
claim at the Childs Art Gallery, Tremont Street. 
The piece was reproduced in 1870 by process of 
chromo lithography by L. Prang & Company and 
was also engraved as a frontispiece to J. M. 
Hutchings’ Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in 
California (1870). The original was acquired 
by Charles Crocker of San Francisco. 

Again on account of his health, Hill returned 
to California where he could live an outdoor life. 
He remained chiefly in the Yosemite Valley and 
at Wawona, Mariposa County. He was a tire- 


46 



Hill 


Hill 


less worker, carrying his grandiose compositions 
to a high finish. Especially remarkable for sus¬ 
tained effort was “The Last Spike,” a picture 
commemorating the ceremonies attending the 
completion of the overland railroad. It con¬ 
tained many figures, each an accurate portrait 
of the participants in the event. At the Philadel¬ 
phia Centennial of 1876, Hill was awarded the 
first landscape prize for his “Donner Lake” and 
“Yosemite Valley.” The former work was 
bought by Leland Stanford. His “Grand Can¬ 
yon of the Sierras,” which won the medal of the 
New York Palette Club, was acquired by Mrs. 
E. B. Crocker of Sacramento, and his “Heart of 
the Sierras,” by E. J. Baldwin of San Francisco. 
At his death, which occurred at Raymond, Cal., 
he possessed thirty-one medals of various art so¬ 
cieties. Although he was unrepresented at the 
Chicago and St. Louis expositions, in the esti¬ 
mation of Californians of his own generation he 
took rank among the century's leading artists. 
It is possible that the revived popularity, in this 
century, of the paintings of William Keith, also 
a painter of romantic phases of California scen¬ 
ery, may eventually lead to a reconsideration 
among collectors and museum directors of the 
artistic merits of Hill's very conscientious work. 

[There is a biographical sketch of Hill by Robert R. 
Hill and an account of the painting, “The Last Spike,” 
in Eben Putnam, Lieut . Joshua Hewes (1913). An¬ 
other sketch, not altogether accurate, is contained m 
S. G. W. Benjamin, Our Am . Artists (copyright 1879). 
A letter relating to his family connections and early 
life as an artist, written by Hill’s nephew, was printed 
in the Boston Herald, Sept. 29, 1929, Other sources 
include: Who*s Who in America, 1906-07; Am. Art 
Annual, 1909-10; San Francisco Chronicle, July 2, 
1908.] F.W.C. 

HILL, URELI CORELLI (c. 1802-Sept. 2, 
1875), violinist, conductor, was probably born 
in Connecticut. He was the son of Ureli (some¬ 
times given as Uri) K. Hill, a Boston musician 
and organist of the Brattle Street Church, and 
Nancy Hull, the daughter of Stephen Hull, of 
Hartford, Conn. George Handel Hill [q.v.], 
known as “Yankee” Hill, was his brother. As a 
boy Ureli Hill took an interest in music and— 
probably with little instruction—learned to play 
the violin. He found his way ultimately into 
various orchestras and by 1828 was playing first 
violin in the New York Sacred Music Society, 
which in 1831, under his baton, gave die first 
complete performance of The Messiah in New 
York City. In 1836 he went to Cassel to study 
with Ludwig Spohr and on his return to New 
York became one of the city's most popular vio¬ 
lin teachers, despite the fact that he was not a 
distinguished performer. He best deserves re¬ 
membrance for his part in the founding of the 
Philharmonic Society of New York, which he 


served for the first six years as president, later 
as vice-president, and finally as a member of the 
board of directors. At the initial concert of the 
society, given Dec. 7, 1842, he played with the 
first violins, and during the first five seasons he 
conducted eight of the orchestra's concerts. In 
the year following the establishment of the Phil¬ 
harmonic Society he organized a string quartet 
which is said to have been the first of its kind in 
the city to give public performances. Samuel 
Johnson, one of its critics, remarked of it that 
it was “a miserable failure, artistically and finan¬ 
cially,” and added that it would be a “gross flat¬ 
tery” to call Hill a third-rate violinist (Ritter, 
post, p. 202), but the quartet's soirees were popu¬ 
lar, and Hill's enthusiasm for good music never 
waned. 

In other ventures Hill met disheartening fail¬ 
ures. He invented a piano which he claimed 
could not get out of tune because of its small bell 
tuning-forks, which took the place of wire 
strings. At considerable expense he exhibited 
the instrument in London and New York, but it 
was an entire failure in both cities. About 1847 
Hill went to Cincinnati, but after three or four 
years he returned to the East. He was induced to 
invest heavily in real estate in Paterson, N. J., 
but the profit which he expected to reap from his 
investments did not materialize. He continued 
his musical career, taught for several years at 
the Conservatory of Music in Newark, and car¬ 
ried on his orchestra work, but his role became 
more difficult- As old age came upon him he 
found himself unqualified to meet the higher de¬ 
mands made upon its performers by the Phil¬ 
harmonic Society and in 1873 he resigned. Still 
later he tried to hold a position at Wallack's but 
failed. Unable then to bear the double disap¬ 
pointment of his artistic and business failure, he 
committed suicide at his home in Paterson, 

[G. H. Hill, Scenes from the Life of an Actor 
(1853); F, L. Ritter, Music in America (1883) ; J. G. 
Huneker, The Philharmonic Soc. of N. 7.: A Retro¬ 
spect (n.d.); H. E. Krehbiel, The Philharmonic Soc . 
of N. Y.: A Memorial (1895); Newark Daily Adver¬ 
tiser, Sept. 4, 1875.] F.H.M. 

HILL, WALTERBARNARD (Sept. 9,1851- 
Dec. 28, 1905), lawyer, educator, was bom in 
Talbot County, Ga. His father was Judge Bar¬ 
nard Hill, a native of Massachusetts, who went 
to Georgia in 1822, first settling in Talbotton, 
but later at Macon. His mother was Mary Clay 
Birch, a native Georgian, said to be a relative of 
Henry Clay. In the spring of 1868 Hill entered 
the University of Georgia as a sophomore half- 
advanced. He was graduated with honors in 
1870 and in the following year completed both 
the one-year law course and the requirements 
for the M.A. degree, thus receiving three degrees 


47 



Hill 

in three years. On graduation he entered upon 
the practice of law in partnership with his father 
at Macon, and when only twenty-one he was ap¬ 
pointed on a commission to revise the code of 
Georgia. On the elevation of his father to the 
bench, he formed a law partnership with Na¬ 
thaniel E. Harris, a classmate at the university 
and later governor of Georgia. Chief Justice 
Simmons of the state supreme court declared 
that Hill was the best brief maker he had ever 
known at the Georgia bar, and he was generally 
referred to as “the scholar of the Georgia bar.” 
For five years he was a member of the law fac¬ 
ulty of Mercer University at Macon. He was 
one of the organizers of the Georgia Bar Asso¬ 
ciation and served as its secretary, 1883-86, and 
as president, 1887-88. Throughout his connec¬ 
tion with the Association he was most active in 
using the organization of lawyers to effect need¬ 
ed reform in legal procedure and in raising the 
standard of legal education and admission to the 
bar. He was also a member of a committee of 
the American Bar Association appointed to make 
a study of the business of the federal courts with 
a view to relieving the congestion on the docket 
of the United States Supreme Court, which was 
at the time about five years behind with its cal¬ 
endar. The circuit courts of appeal developed 
as the result of the work of that committee. 
Aside from his legal activities Hill was an out¬ 
standing figure in the Methodist Episcopal 
Church South, and was also interested in the 
cause of prohibition in Georgia, being called the 
“apostle of prohibition” in the state. He wrote 
occasional speeches and essays of which the most 
important, probably, was Anarchy, Socialism , 
and the Labor Movement, published in 1886. 

In 1899 the board of trustees of the University 
of Georgia elected Hill chancellor, breaking the 
long tradition of electing a clergyman to the of¬ 
fice. In a few years he injected into the univer¬ 
sity community a new impulse, a new vision, a 
new determination. This spiritual revival was 
his prime contribution to higher education in the 
state. His tangible accomplishments, however, 
were of first importance. He induced the gov¬ 
ernor and the board of trustees of the university 
to visit the University of Wisconsin in order to 
see a great modern state university in opera¬ 
tion; he allayed the bitter hostility of the less 
liberal leaders of certain denominations; he pre¬ 
vailed upon the legislature in 1900 to recognize 
the university in the annual appropriations bill; 
and he obtained appropriations for several new 
buildings, the first to be erected in many years. 
He also gained for the institution a new library, 
presented through the generosity of a personal 

48 


Hill 

friend, and began a campus-extension movement 
which ultimately resulted in the expansion of 
the campus from 36 to 1,200 acres. Through his 
efforts also the system of university secondary- 
school inspection and certification was initiated 
with funds which he secured from the General 
Education Board, and, most important of all, 
under his guidance the College of Agriculture 
and the Mechanic Arts was reorganized involv¬ 
ing the creation of a State College of Agricul¬ 
ture, though the act creating the college was 
passed the year after Hill’s death. It has been 
calculated that the money value of the legisla¬ 
tive appropriations and private gifts obtained by 
the university during the six years of Hill’s ad¬ 
ministration was nearly three times as much as 
the institution had received from similar sources 
in its entire history up to that time. When Hill 
died suddenly in the winter of 1905 from an at¬ 
tack of pneumonia, his passing was regarded as 
truly disastrous. In 1879 Hill married Sallie 
Parna Barker, of Macon, Ga. To them four 
children, two sons and two daughters, were born. 
Hill was a reserved man with little joviality or 
popular appeal, but those who were associated 
with him in any intimate way retain lasting im¬ 
pressions of his nobility of character. 

[Report of the Twenty-third Ann. Sess. of the Ga. 
Bar Asso. (1906) ; Bull . of the Univ. of Ga., memorial 
number, May 1906; Albert Shaw, “A Great Citizen of 
Ga.,” Am. Monthly Illustrated Rev. of Revs., Feb. 
1906; sketch by W. W. Landrum in W. J. Northen, 
Men of Mark in Ga., vol. IV (1908) ; the Atlanta Jour., 
Dec. 28, 29 , 1905.3 R.P.B. 

HILL, WILLIAM (1741-Dec. 1,1816), South 
Carolina ironmaster and Revolutionary soldier, 
is said to have been of English stock transplant¬ 
ed to north Ireland, where he was born. Upon 
arriving in America, he settled in York County, 
Pa., but soon migrated to what is now York 
County, S. C., in April 1762 taking out a land 
grant for 100 acres on Bowers Mill Creek. Be¬ 
fore the Revolution he acquired grants aggre¬ 
gating some 5,000 acres, in various localities, 
but mainly near Nanny’s Mountain, where iron 
ore was believed inexhaustible. With Isaac 
Hayne Iq.v.'] he began iron-works on Allison’s 
Creek, and in March 1776 secured a loan of 
£1000 currency from the South Carolina treasury 
to complete it. In 1779 he advertised zEra Fur¬ 
nace in blast, offering—wholesale or retail— 
farm tools, smiths’ tools, kitchen-ware, swivel- 
guns, and cannon up to four-pounders with their 
balls. He also advertised for a hundred negroes, 
but is said to have had to send “all the way to 
Troublesome Iron Works in Virginia” for labor 
(Hill, post). The furnace operated on the Cat¬ 
alan plan, the ore being reduced with charcoal 



Hill 

from Hill's timber lands. In 1780 he supplied 
most of the different kinds of cannon balls used 
at the siege of Charleston. Although carefully 
guarded, the iron-works were burned by the 
British in June 1780, and Hill lost his home, 
grain mill, sawmills, negro houses, and ninety 
negroes. Leaving his family in a log hut, he 
joined Gen. Thomas Sumter \_q.vJ\ as lieutenant- 
colonel of militia and soon after fought at Wil¬ 
liamson's Plantation. He distinguished himself 
at Rocky Mount, and although wounded in the 
arm at Hanging Rock, was present at King's 
Mountain and fought at Fishdam Ford and 
Blackstock's. 

After the Revolution he served many terms in 
the South Carolina legislature. In 1783 he was 
a justice for Camden District, and from 1785 
to 1799 he was a member of the county court 
of York, He rebuilt Mra. Furnace in 1787 and 
built JEtna Furnace the next year, utilizing a 
simple method of blowing his fires by a fall of 
water, which gave a more regular blast than bel¬ 
lows, without freezing. Besides slaves, he em¬ 
ployed miners, founders, woodcutters, and col¬ 
liers, whom he paid in iron. Since the nearest 
river landing from which he could ship his prod¬ 
uct was at Camden, seventy miles away, Hill be¬ 
came active in transportation schemes. In 1782 
he was a member of the House committee on im¬ 
provement of inland navigation; he was a char¬ 
ter member of the Santee canal company and of 
the Catawba company, and commissioner for 
making navigable the Broad. 

In 1795 Hill and the executors of Hayne ad¬ 
vertised the iron-works for sale, with brick 
house, gristmill, sawmills, and 15,000 acres of 
land; but in 1798 he was still operating and sold 
to the state fifty horsemen's swords and fifteen 
field-pieces with cannon balls. In 1815, “hav¬ 
ing waited near thirty years,” as he said, for cer¬ 
tain errors in Revolutionary history to be cor¬ 
rected, he undertook the task himself and dic¬ 
tated his memoirs, largely to justify General 
Sumter. Hill was a vigorous personality; in the 
legislature he spoke often and in his community 
he wielded great influence. He was survived by 
four sons, two daughters, and his widow who 
was Jane McCall; and he is buried in an un¬ 
marked grave at Bethel Presbyterian Church, 
near York. 

[County records, York, S. C.; state archives, Co¬ 
lumbia, S. C.; The Statutes at Large of S. C. t vols. 
VI, VII (1840), IX (1841) ; Gazette of the State of S . C. 
(Charleston), Nov. 24, 1779; City Gazette and Daily 
Advertiser (Charleston), May 12, 1795; address by 
D. H. Hill, in YorkviUe Enquirer (York, S. C), Oct. 
28, 1919; Col. William HilVs Memoirs of the Revolu¬ 
tion (1921) ; M. A. Moore, Reminiscences of York 
(n.d., 1870?) ; J. M. Swank, Hist . of the Manufacture 


Hillard 

of Iron in All Ages (1884); J. L. Bishop, A Hist . of 
Am. Manufactures , vol. I (1866).] A K G 

HILLARD, GEORGE STILLMAN (Sept. 
22, 1808-Jan. 21, 1879), lawyer, man of letters, 
was born in Machias, Me., the son of John and 
Sarah (Stillman) Hillard. In 1828 he gradu¬ 
ated with first honors from Harvard College. 
After teaching for two years under George Ban¬ 
croft in the Round Hill School in Northampton, 
he entered the Dane Law School in Cambridge; 
received his A.M. from Harvard in 1831 and his 
LL.B. in 1832; was admitted to practice in 1833; 
aided George Ripley for a year in conducting 
the Christian Register , a Unitarian weekly; and 
in 1834 opened a law office with Charles Sum¬ 
ner and became editor of the Jurist. In 1835 
married Susan Tracy Howe, daughter of Judge 
Samuel Howe [q.v.] of Northampton. Their 
one child, a son, died in infancy. In 1835, also, 
he was elected to the state House of Representa¬ 
tives. Hillard was ambitious of success at the 
bar, in politics, and in literature, and his career 
began auspiciously. He had a retentive memory, 
cultivated taste, unfailing amiability and cheer¬ 
fulness, high moral character, and a strong sense 
of public duty; but since he lacked sufficient 
health, vigor, and money, his divided aims over¬ 
taxed him and he never achieved the eminence 
to which he seemed destined. Although he had 
many of the higher qualities of an advocate, he 
was respectable rather than distinguished as a 
lawyer. For the rough and tumble of politics he 
was decidedly unfit; he seldom got reelected to 
anything. He was president of the Common 
Council of Boston, 1846-47; a state senator in 
1850, and a delegate to the constitutional con¬ 
vention of 1853, contributing the “Letters of 
Silas Standfast to his Friend Jotham” to the 
Discussions on the Constitution Proposed to the 
People of Massachusetts by the Convention of 
1853 (1854); city solicitor from 1854 until 1855, 
when the irruption of the Know Nothings turned 
him out; and United States attorney for the dis¬ 
trict of Massachusetts, 1866-71. In spite of his 
warm friendship with Charles Sumner, he clung 
with fatuous loyalty to the Whig party, accept¬ 
ed the Fugitive-Slave Law of 1850 without a 
murmur, and went with his party into limbo. 
His greatest talents were literary and forensic. 
He was master of rhetoric and an excellent 
though seldom a profoundly moving orator. His 
occasional addresses, such as that on the Rela¬ 
tion of the Poet to His Age (1843), delivered 
Aug. 24, 1843, before the Harvard chapter of 
Phi Beta Kappa, were famous in their day. To 
Sparks's Library of American Biography (1 
ser. II, 1834), he contributed a Life of Captain 



Hillebrand 

John Smith ; he edited A Memorial of Daniel 
Webster from the City of Boston (1853); he 
wrote a campaign biography, George B. McClel¬ 
lan (1864), and was the author of a number of 
other memoirs, including the Memoir and Cor¬ 
respondence of Jeremiah Mason (privately 
printed, 1873; Kansas City, Mo., 1917), and 
various contributions to the Proceedings of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society. He wrote 
twenty-three articles for the North American 
Review. His edition in five volumes of the Poet¬ 
ical Works of Edmund Spenser (1839) was an 
advance on previous editions. His most sub¬ 
stantial work, and the fullest revelation of his 
character, is his Six Months in*Italy (1853; 21st 
ed., 1881), the product of his travels in 1847-48. 
To Nathaniel Hawthorne he was a tactful, help¬ 
ful friend in a period of difficulty. In 1873 he 
suffered a stroke of paralysis from which he 
never recovered fully. He died at his home in 
Longwood, near Boston, after a second stroke. 

[Memoir by F. W. Palfrey and reminiscences by 
other members in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vols. XVII 
(1880) and XIX (1882) ; Library of Harvard Univ., 
Bibliographical Contributions, no. 46 (1892), 18-19, 
26-27; Cat. of the Private Library of the late Hon. G. 
S. Hillard ... To be Sold at Auction (1879); Boston 
Transcript, Jan. 21 (obituary and editorial), 22, 23, 
1879; E. L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles 
Sumner , vols. III, IV (1893) ; Julian Hawthorne, Na¬ 
thaniel Hawthorne and his Wife (1884), vol. I; Sam¬ 
uel Longfellow, Life ' of H. W. Longfellow (2 vols., 
1886); W. D. Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaint¬ 
ance (1900).] G.H.G. 

HILLEBRAND, WILLIAM FRANCIS 

(Dec. 12, 1853-Feb. 7, 1925), chemist, the son 
of William and Anna (Post) Hillebrand, was 
bom in Honolulu. His father, a native of Ger¬ 
many, was a physician, a botanist, and a member 
of the Privy Council of King Kamehameha V; 
his mother was an American. The son's first 
schooling was at Oahu College, Punahou, and 
at the College School, Oakland, Cal. He entered 
Cornell University in 1870, where he stayed until 
1872. That summer, while at Bonn, Germany, 
he decided upon his profession, but only because 
his father suggested chemistry. He matriculated 
at Heidelberg, where he studied under Bunsen, 
Kirchhoff, Blum, the younger Leonhard, Karl 
Klein, and Treitschke, and received the degree 
of doctor of philosophy, summa cum laude, in 
March 1875. J ust before his death the Univer¬ 
sity awarded him the honorary degree of doctor 
of natural philosophy, because of his many dis¬ 
coveries in the field of chemical geology. 

Hillebrand's first research, in collaboration 
with Thomas Herbert Norton, was on the prep¬ 
aration, for the first time, of the metals cerium, 
lanthanum and “didymium” (J. C. Poggendorff, 
Annalen der Physik und Chemie, vol. CLVI, 


Hillebrand 

1875). Working alone he showed that these are 
trivalent rare-earth metals, and not divalent alka¬ 
line earths ( Ibid., CLVIII, 1876; Philosophical 
Magazine, February 1877). During three se¬ 
mesters at Strassburg, he studied organic chem¬ 
istry with Fittig and microscopical petrography 
under Rosenbusch. In the winter of 1877-78 he 
took courses in metallurgy and assaying at the 
Royal Mining Academy in Freiberg. In the fall 
of 1878 he returned to the United States. The 
next summer he went to Colorado, where he 
worked as assayer at Leadville until 1880, when 
he became chemist of the Rocky Mountain Divi¬ 
sion of the United States Geological Survey at 
Denver. In November 1885 he was transferred 
to the Washington laboratory. 

Within less than a decade after joining the 
Geological Survey, Hillebrand began to be 
known for his accurate and complete analyses of 
minerals and rocks. Laying especial stress upon 
the determination of the elements which occur 
in very small percentages, because of their sig¬ 
nificance to the geologist, he discovered that the 
igneous rocks of the Rocky Mountain region con¬ 
tain larger percentages of barium and strontium 
than are found in similar rocks farther east and 
west To make such analyses required new meth¬ 
ods, or the adaptation and improvement of 
existing ones. He was active in such work, and 
was the first to publish a consistent outline for 
the complete analysis of a silicate rock. Appear¬ 
ing first as a fifty-page section of Bulletin 148 
(1897) of the United States Geological Survey, 
this outline was four times revised, enlarged, and 
separately published by the Survey ( Bulletin 
176 , 1900; 305 , 1907; 422 , 1910, partly revised 
when reprinted in 1916; and 700 , 1919). The 
first and third revisions were translated into 
German. 

In 1890 Hillebrand announced the discovery 
of nitrogen in the gas evolved when uraninite is 
dissolved in acids ( American Journal of Science, 
November 1890; United States Geological Sur¬ 
vey Bulletin 78 , 1890). Some peculiarities of 
the gas led him to suspect that there was some 
other element in it. He pointed out that the 
summations of his analyses would be correct if 
the gas were half as dense as nitrogen. Before 
he was able to follow the matter up, Sir William 
Ramsay discovered (1895) that hydrogen, ar¬ 
gon, and helium (the last-named gas up to that 
time had been known only by lines in the sun's 
spectrum), are evolved from cleveite; and soon 
afterwards, working with uraninite supplied by 
Hillebrand, Ramsay found that the gas evolved 
from it is a mixture of nitrogen and helium. 

Hillebrand was appointed chief chemist of the 

50 



Hillegas 

Bureau of Standards in 1908, and held the posi¬ 
tion until his death. Under him the chemistry 
division increased greatly in the scope of its 
work. From 1892 to 1910 he was professor of 
general chemistry and physics in the National 
College of Pharmacy (after 1906 a part of 
George Washington University). He was active 
in the American Chemical Society; he served on 
its committee on coal analysis, and for years was 
chairman of the supervisory committee on stand¬ 
ard methods of analysis. He was president of 
the society in 1906, and at one time or another 
was assistant or associate editor of its three jour¬ 
nals. He was a member and then fellow of the 
American Association for the Advancement of 
Science, a member of the American Society for 
Testing Materials, the Geological Society of 
Washington, the American Philosophical Soci¬ 
ety, and the National Academy of Sciences; a 
charter member of the Washington Academy of 
Sciences, corresponding member of the Got¬ 
tingen Gesellschaft, honorary member of the 
Colorado Scientific Society. In 1916 he was 
awarded the Chandler Gold Medal by Columbia 
University. 

Hillebrand was a man of wide interests out¬ 
side his professional field. He enjoyed books of 
biography and travel, and liked gardening, bird 
study, piano playing, the game of skat He was 
fond of baseball and was an enthusiastic fisher¬ 
man. He married Martha Westcott of Perrys- 
burg, Ohio, in 1881, and they had two sons. 

[Autobiographical sketch written for eventual use in 
the preparation of a biographical memoir for the Na¬ 
tional Academy of Sciences; F. W. Clarke, “Biograph- 
ical memoir of William Francis Hillebrand, 1 with bib¬ 
liography, Nat. Acad. Set. Biog. Memoirs, vol. XII, 
no. 2 (1928); letters selected by Hillebrand and 
marked “of possible interest to my biographer” ; Who's 
Who in America, 1924-25 ; sketches in Science, Mar. 6, 
1925, and Jour. Am. Chem. Soc., Apr. 1925.] 

C. E. W. 

HILLEGAS, MICHAEL (Apr. 22,1729-Sept. 
29,1804), merchant, first treasurer of the United 
States, was born in Philadelphia, the son of Mi¬ 
chael and Margaret Hillegas. His father,^ an 
emigrant from the Palatinate, was a naturalized 
citizen of Pennsylvania, a prosperous merchant, 
and a respected leader of the German population. 
His son was given the best education afforded at 
the time by the parochial schools and academies 
of Philadelphia, and at an early age entered his 
father's counting-room. When he was twenty- 
one, upon his father's death, he became manager 
of the business and one of the administrators of 
his father's estate. Later he invested in sugar 
refining and in the manufacture of iron and 
amassed a considerable fortune. His first pub¬ 
lic service was that rendered in 1762 as a com- 


Hillegas 

missioner to locate and erect Fort Mifflin, Pa. 
He was a member of the provincial Assembly of 
Pennsylvania, 1765-75, and during this time was 
a member of the commission to audit and settle 
the accounts of the general land office and other 
public accounts. He was a member of the board 
of commissioners to improve the navigation of 
the Delaware River in 1771; a member of the 
committee of observation for Philadelphia, 1774 > 
and on June 30,1775, was appointed treasurer of 
the Pennsylvania committee of safety. A month 
later, July 29, 1775, Hillegas and George Clymer 
were made joint treasurers of the united colo¬ 
nies, by action of the Continental Congress, 
being styled “Continental Treasurers." Mean¬ 
while, on May 30, 1776, he assumed the addi¬ 
tional duties of treasurer of the Province of 
Pennsylvania. When Clymer took his seat in 
Congress, Hillegas was made sole Continental 
Treasurer, Aug. 6, 1776, and on Sept. 6, 1 777 , 
he was appointed treasurer of the United States 
of America. He continued to serve until Sept. 
11, 1789, after the Treasury Department had 
been established by act of Congress, under the 
federal Constitution. During the Revolution he 
contributed a large part of his fortune, by gift 
or loan, to the support of the army, and in 1781 
he was one of the first subscribers to the Bank 
of North America. By direction of the Penn¬ 
sylvania General Assembly he compiled and pub¬ 
lished in 1782 Volume I of Journals of the House 
of Representatives of the Cowimonwealth of 
Pennsylvania , covering the period between Nov. 
28, 1776, and Oct. 2, 1781. Apparently this task 
stimulated his interest in the preservation of his¬ 
torical material, for in a letter of Aug. 20, 1781, 
to the governor of New Hampshire he suggested 
“the propriety of each legislature in the Union 
adopting measures similar to those taken by this 
state for the above purpose" (Egle, post). Upon 
the discovery of anthracite coal in Pennsylvania 
about the first of the year 1792, Hillegas with 
some others formed an association called the Le¬ 
high Coal Mining Company which purchased 
several thousand acres from the Commonwealth 
of Pennsylvania but probably never mined any 
great quantity of coal. He was an alderman of 
Philadelphia from 1793 until the year of his 
death, and an associate justice of the mayor's 
court. He was elected a member of the Ameri¬ 
can Philosophical Society, Apr. 8,1768. At one 
time he was a vestryman of Christ Church. 
“Hillegas ... is a great musician,” wrote John 
Adams, “talks perpetually of the forte and piano, 
of Handel, etc. and songs and tunes. He plays 
upon the fiddle” ( The Works of John Adams , 
vol. II, 1850, p. 429). On May 10, 1753 , he mar- 

<1 



Hillhouse 

ried Henrietta Boude, daughter of Samuel and 
Deborah Boude of Philadelphia, by whom he 
had ten children. He died in Philadelphia. 

[E. St. C. Whitney, Michael Hillegas and His De¬ 
scendants (1891) ; M. R. Minnich, Memoir of the First 
Treasurer of the U. S. (1905) and “Some Data of the 
Hillegas Family,” in Am. Hist . Reg., Sept. 1894; Emil 
Baensch, in Trust Companies, Sept. 1917; W. H. Egle, 
in Pa. Mag. of Hist, and Biog., Jan. 1888; J. H. Mar¬ 
tin, Martin’s Bench and Bar of Phila. (1883) ; G. Mor¬ 
gan, The City of Firsts (1926) ; Retfs Phila. Gazette, 
Sept. 2g, 1804; Poulson’s Am. Daily Advertiser 
(Phila.), Oct. 1, 1804.] J.H.F. 

HILLHOUSE, JAMES (Oct. 20, 1754-Dec. 
29, 1832), congressman, was born at Montville, 
Conn., the son of William Hillhouse and the 
grandson of the Rev. James Hillhouse, the first 
minister of Montville, who came to America 
from County Londonderry, Ireland, about 1720. 
His mother was Sarah Griswold, the sister of 
Matthew Griswold \_q.v.~\. At the age of seven 
he was adopted by his uncle, James Abraham 
Hillhouse of New Haven. He graduated from 
Yale College in 1773, took up the study of law, 
was admitted to the bar, and inherited the prac¬ 
tice of his uncle, who died in 1775. On the out¬ 
break of the Revolution, he was appointed lieu¬ 
tenant of a company of volunteers raised in the 
town of New Haven in December 1776. He be¬ 
came lieutenant of the 2nd company of Gov¬ 
ernor^ Foot Guards in May 1777, and captain 
of the company two years later. In July 1779 
he took part in the successful defense of New 
Haven against the invasion of the British under 
Tryon. Elected as a representative of New Ha¬ 
ven to the General Assembly of Connecticut in 
1780, he was repeatedly returned to the office, 
and in 1789 he began a service of two terms in 
the upper house of the legislature. Although he 
was chosen a delegate to the Continental Con¬ 
gress in 1786, 1787, and 1788, he did not attend. 
In 1790, however, he was elected to the Second 
Congress of the United States and took his seat 
in the House in October 1791. He was also a 
member of the Third and Fourth Congresses and 
in December 1796 was elected to fill a vacancy 
in the United States Senate caused by the resig¬ 
nation of Oliver Ellsworth Iq.v.] . He was three 
times reelected. He supported the Jay Treaty, 
maintaining it to be "as good a Treaty as we 
had a right to expect, and as he had ever ex¬ 
pected to obtain.” Upon the retirement of Jef¬ 
ferson as vice-president in 1801, he was chosen 
president pro tempore of the Senate. In political 
sympathies he was a Federalist, but he feared 
the concentration of power in the hands of the 
president of the United States, and in 1808 he 
submitted to the Senate a proposal that seven 
amendments be added to the federal constitution 


Hillhouse 

{Propositions for Amending the Constitution of 
the United States, 1808). These amendments 
provided for the annual election of representa¬ 
tives, a term of three years for senators, the abo¬ 
lition of the office of vice-president, a term of one 
year for the president, who would be chosen by 
lot from among the senators, the confirmation of 
appointments by the House of Representatives 
as well as by the Senate, and the ratification by 
both houses of removals from office. Hillhouse 
also introduced a resolution for the repeal of 
the Embargo. He resigned from the Senate in 
1810. In this same year he was appointed com¬ 
missioner of the school fund of Connecticut 
which had accrued from the sale of the lands re¬ 
served by Connecticut at the time the state ceded 
its title to western lands to the federal govern¬ 
ment. From 1795 to 1810 the fund had been in 
the hands of a commission of eight who were in¬ 
experienced financiers and was a tangle of un¬ 
paid interest and depreciated securities. In a 
light sulky Hillhouse traveled through the un¬ 
settled country, inspected the properties and met 
the state’s debtors, and administered the fund 
so well that when he resigned in 1825 to superin¬ 
tend the construction of the Farmington and 
Hampshire Canal, he handed over to the state 
an augmented and well-invested fund. In 1814 
he was one of the delegates of Connecticut to 
the Hartford Convention to protest against the 
conduct of the War of 1812. He was treasurer 
of Yale College from 1782 until his death. He 
was twice married: on Jan. 1, 1779, to Sarah 
Lloyd of Stamford, who died Nov. 9, 1779, and 
on Oct. 10, 1782, to Rebecca Woolsey of Dosoris, 
Long Island, who died Dec. 30, 1813. From this 
second marriage there were two sons, one of 
whom was James Abraham [ q.v .], and three 
daughters. Hillhouse died at New Haven, Dec. 
29, 1832. 

[Leonard Bacon, Funeral Discourse Pronounced at 
the Interment of the Hon. James Hillhouse, Jan. 2,1833 
(1833), reprinted in the Quart. Christian Spectator, 
June 1833; F. B. Dexter, Biog. Sketches of the Grads, 
of Yale Coll., vol. Ill (1903) ; E. E. Atwater, Hist, of 
the City of New Haven (1887) ; Margaret P. Hillhouse, 
Hist, and Geneal. Colls. Relating to the Descendants of 
Rev. Jas. Hillhouse (1924) ; The Public Records of the 
State of Conn. (3 vols., 1894-1922) ; Columbian Reg¬ 
ister (New Haven), Jan. 5, 1833.] DeF.V-S. 

HILLHOUSE, JAMES ABRAHAM (Sept. 
26, 1789-Jan. 4, 1841), poet, was born in New 
Haven, Conn., the eldest child of James [ q.v.~\ 
and Rebecca (Woolsey) Hillhouse. Entering 
Yale at the age of thirteen, he withdrew before 
the end of his freshman year and eventually re¬ 
ceived his A.B. degree with the class of 1808. 
Upon taking his master’s degree in 1811, he de¬ 
livered an oration on "The Education of a Poet.” 


52 



Hilliard 


Hilliard 


The following year, at the anniversary of the 
Phi Beta Kappa Society, he read “The Judg¬ 
menta vision-poem describing the day of final 
retribution. Though highly praised by contem¬ 
porary critics, it is labored in imagery and con¬ 
ventional in conception. The poem was pub¬ 
lished in 1821. His plans for a business career 
being interrupted by the War of 1812, he re¬ 
tired from Boston, where he had resided for 
three years after his graduation, and returned 
to New Haven. At this period he wrote two 
verse dramas, Demetria and Percy's Masque . 
In 1819 he visited England. In London he first 
published Percy's Masque (1819), a five-act 
drama which owes its inspiration to Bishop 
Percy’s ballad, “The Hermit of Warkworth.” 
Returning to America in 1820, Hillhouse en¬ 
gaged in business as a hardware merchant in 
New York City. In 1822, he married Cornelia 
Lawrence, eldest daughter of Isaac Lawrence, a 
wealthy merchant of New York, and the follow¬ 
ing year he removed to New Haven, where he 
built a house on Pierson-Sage Square. Here he 
spent the remainder of his life in study and 
literary pursuits. In 1824, he wrote Hadad 
(1825), a blank-verse drama in five acts based 
upon the Biblical narrative of Absalom’s rebel¬ 
lion. His introduction to this piece informs the 
reader that “The peculiar feature of this poem is 
ascribable to the Book of Tobit,;where the su¬ 
pernatural throws a mystical wildness^ over a 
touching narrative of human interests.” This, 
the longest and most pretentious of his dramatic 
poems, received the greatest praise from his 
contemporaries. It is, however, less important 
than Demetria, a romantic tragedy of intrigue, 
written in 1813 and published in 1839. Though 
highly conventional in plot and feeble in char¬ 
acter drawing, Demetria may fairly be called his 
best poem because of the purity of its style and 
the elegance of its verse. For a man of his schol¬ 
arly inclinations and apparent leisure his liter¬ 
ary output was extremely small. Almost all his 
writings are contained in two slender volumes: 
Dramas, Discourses, and Other Pieces (1839)* 


[Some biographical material is found jn the notes to 
his poem, Sachem’s-Wood (1838) ; and m GW. Ever¬ 
est, The Poets of Conn. (1843) J most accurate 
biography is in F. B. Dexter, Biog . Sketches Grads. Yale 
Coll, vol. VI (1912) ; family history is given in Mar¬ 
garet P. Hillhouse, Hist, and Geneal. Colls . Relating 
to the Descendants of Rev. las. Hillhouse _ (1924) ; the 
most judicious contemporary criticism of his poetry, 
though at times too laudatory, is found in the Southern 
Lit. Messenger, Apr. 1841, PP- 3 ? 9“35 >' other articles 
are listed in Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature.} 

TT. W. S— s —r. 


HILLIARD, FRANCIS (Nov. i, 1806-Oct. 
9, 1878), legal writer, was bom in Cambridge, 


Mass., the son of William Hilliard, a printer and 
bookseller, and his wife Sarah Lovering. The 
first Hilliard came to New England in 1635 and 
the family settled in New Hampshire. Francis’ 
grandfather, Timothy, was pastor of the First 
Parish Church in Cambridge from 1783 until 
his death in 1790. Francis left Harvard with 
some thirty-seven members of the class of 1823, 
who had rebelled at the disciplinary measures 
imposed upon a classmate, but with the most of 
these he received his degree in 1842, out of 
course. In 1826 he attended Harvard Law 
School for a few months. He was admitted to 
the Middlesex bar, and to the Suffolk bar in 
1830. He practised law in Boston with some 
success and married Catherine Dexter Haven, 
daughter of Samuel Haven. After residing in 
Dracut, Dedham, and Cambridge, the couple 
finally settled in Roxbury. Hilliard served as a 
member of the legislature, commissioner of in¬ 
solvency, and judge of insolvency for Norfolk 
County. On the establishment of the Roxbury 
police court in 1855, he was appointed its first 
judge. He died in Worcester, Mass. 

He early abandoned practice for writing and 
published the following treatises, the most of 
which went through more than one edition: 
Elements of Law (1835); An Abridgment of 
the American Law of Real Property (2 vols., 
1838-39); A Treatise on the Law of Sales of 
Personal Property (1841) ; The Law of Mort¬ 
gages (1853); The Law of Vendors and Pur¬ 
chasers of Real Property (1858) ; The Law of 
Torts (1859) * A Treatise on the Law of Bank¬ 
ruptcy and Insolvency (1863) ; The Law of In¬ 
junctions (1865); The Law of New Trials 
(1866); The Law of Remedies for Torts 
(1867); The Law of Contracts (1872); The 
Law of Taxation (1875); American Law: A 
Comprehensive Summary of the Law in its 
Various Departments (2 vols., 1877-78). At the 
time that he wrote, judges and lawyers lacked 
legal treatises which cited American decisions 
and showed how far the English common law 
had been followed by American courts or mod¬ 
ified to suit new conditions. Textbooks present¬ 
ing cases from all states were also needed in 
order to encourage the development of national 
judge-made law rather than particularistic local 
doctrines. Hilli&rd was one of the first and most 
voluminous of the authors who met these needs. 

His chief distinction lies in the fact that he 
wrote (1859) the first-treatise in English on 
Torts, a work which devoted much more atten¬ 
tion to the common features of the various 
wrongs than Addison’s later book on the English 
law, Wrongs and Their Remedies, Being a Trea - 



Hilliard 

tise on the Law of Torts (i860). Although phil¬ 
osophical writers on law had long recognized 
that private wrongs, as distinguished from 
breaches of contract and crimes, formed a sepa¬ 
rate legal category, practical text-writers before 
Hilliard regarded such wrongs as too divergent 
in nature for unified treatment, and merely dis¬ 
cussed some distinct wrong, like assault or libel 
or trespass. Even as late as 1871, the American 
Law Review stated, “We are inclined to think 
that Torts is not a proper subject for a law book” 
(January 1871, p. 341). Hilliard's book thus 
marks the beginning of a revolution in legal 
thought Unfortunately, his execution of his 
projects was inferior to his conception. He 
cannot be ranked with writers like Story, whose 
systematic analysis of the principles which ought 
to govern some branch of the law, illuminated 
by Continental as well as English experience, 
actively helped to create a body of American ju¬ 
dicial and legislative rules adapted to the just 
settlement of disputes in a new age and country. 
Hilliard for the most part stated the decisions 
with little indication of his own views even where 
authorities conflicted. Sometimes he omitted im¬ 
portant cases. His books are justly described by 
contemporary reviewers as neither very good 
nor very bad. First in the field, they made litiga¬ 
tion less difficult and costly than if they had not 
been written; but they were rapidly superseded. 
Only a genius could have written well on the 
numerous widely separated subjects which he 
attempted. 

[Date of birth, sometimes erroneously stated as 
1808, from Vital Records of Cambridge, Mass., vol. I 
(1914) ; W. T. Davis, “Hist, of the Bench and Bar, 
in Professional and Industrial Hist, of Suffolk County, 
vol. I (1894); William Allen, The Am. Biog. Diet . 
(3rd ed., 1857) ; D. H. Hurd, Hist, of Middlesex Coun¬ 
ty, vol. I (1890); L. R. Paige, Hist, of Cambridge, 
Mass . (1877); Am. Law Rev., Jan. 1879; “Remarks of 
Francis Hilliard, Esq. Standing Justice of the Police 
Court... at the Opening of said Court.. .,** Roxbury 
City Doc . No. 15 (1855); “Francis Hilliard’s Legal 
Treatises,” Monthly t Law Reporter m (Boston), Apr. 
1865; reviews of individual treatises in Am. Law Rev., 
Oct. 1866, Jan., July 1867, Jan., Oct. 1869, and South¬ 
ern Law Rev., St. Louis, Apr. 1874; Worcester Daily 
Spy, and Boston Transcript, Oct. n, 1878.] 

Z.C.Jr. 

HILLIARD, HENRY WASHINGTON 

(Aug. 4,1808-Dec. 17, 1892), lawyer, congress¬ 
man, author, was born in Fayetteville, N. C. He 
graduated from South Carolina College in 1826 
and after studying law in die office of William C. 
Preston [q.v.], Columbia, S. C., he went to' 
Athens, Ga., and in 1829 was admitted to the 
bar. From 1831 to 1834 he held the first chair 
of English literature in the University of Ala¬ 
bama and acquired a state-wide reputation as an 
orator. Finding a professor's life monotonous, 


Hilliard 

he abandoned it and settled at Montgomery to 
practise law and enter politics. Identifying him¬ 
self with the Whig party, he served in the state 
legislature from 1836 to 1838 ( Biographical Di¬ 
rectory of the American Congress, 1928), and 
was one of the youngest delegates to the Whig 
national convention of 1839. He was defeated 
for Congress on the Whig ticket in 1840 and as 
a reward for party services was appointed, May 
1842, charge d'affaires to Belgium, in which of¬ 
fice he served until June 1844. Returning to the 
United States, he was nominated for Congress 
from the Montgomery district in 1845 and was 
the first Whig to be elected from that district 
and the only Whig to be elected from the state in 
that year. In 1847 he was reelected without op¬ 
position and continued to serve until 1851 when 
he refused to be a candidate. 

From the beginning of his political career Hil¬ 
liard was the leader of the forces in the state 
which were hostile to secession. He opposed the 
Wilmot Proviso, but supported the compromise 
measures of 1850. He was a prominent delegate 
to the state “union” convention in 1851 and was 
largely responsible for the convention's taking 
the position that a state has no constitutional 
right to secede. He was the political opponent 
of William L. Yancey throughout his life 
and was regarded as the only man in Alabama 
who could meet Yancey on the platform on equal 
terms. Every political question of any impor¬ 
tance between 1840 and i860 was debated by the 
two men, and their debates attracted nation¬ 
wide attention. Hilliard was a keen debater and 
a masterly stump speaker. 

The rising tide of secession in Alabama swept 
him from his political moorings. In 1854 he left 
the Whigs and became a Know-Nothing. In 
1857 he entered the ranks of the Democratic 
party, and in i860 he voted the Constitutional 
Union ticket. At the next election in which- he 
participated (1872) he voted for Horace Gree¬ 
ley. These shifts of party loyalty were denounced 
by his political enemies and Hilliard won a repu¬ 
tation for vacillation in party matters. From 
his own point of view, however, he was quite 
consistent He was a supporter of the Constitu¬ 
tion and the Union and he voted and worked for 
the party which offered him the best opportunity 
to oppose efforts to destroy them. In the Ala¬ 
bama convention in 1861 he led his last fight 
against secession. All his eloquence was used 
to defeat the ordinance. He appealed to the dele¬ 
gates to remember the debt they owed the Union 
for their growth and prosperity, and warned 
them that it would be a difficult thing for a 
group of agricultural states to conduct a gov- 



Hillis 

emment and protect their citizens successfully. 
His own comment on his failure is that they 
“heard me respectfully, but did not give me their 
sympathy” ( Politics and Pen Pictures , p. 310). 
He took no part in the organization of the Con¬ 
federate government, but when President Lin¬ 
coln called for volunteers he became a supporter 
of that government on the ground that the coer¬ 
cion of a state was a usurpation of authority by 
the president, and justified Southern resistance. 
In 1861 he was Confederate commissioner under 
appointment of President Davis, to influence 
Tennessee to secede from the Union. He organ¬ 
ized “Hilliard's Legion” and served in the West 
in Bragg's army with the rank of colonel. On 
Dec. 1,1862, he was honorably discharged from 
service, having resigned to give his attention to 
his personal affairs. He returned to Montgom¬ 
ery and resumed the practice of law. 

After the war he made his home in Atlanta, 
Ga., and practised there. He was an unsuccess¬ 
ful candidate for Congress in 1876. In 1877 
President Hayes appointed him minister to Bra¬ 
zil, where many Southerners had settled at the 
close of the war, the appointment being a friend¬ 
ly gesture toward these voluntary exiles. Hil¬ 
liard's period of service fell during the time that 
the emancipation of slaves was in progress in 
Brazil, and he lent a support to those who were 
agitating a quicker and more drastic method 
which attracted wide notice. In 1881 he re¬ 
turned to Atlanta, where he died. He had some 
literary skill, prepared the introduction and notes 
for a translation of Alesandro Verri's Roman 
Nights (1850), and was the author of a novel, 
De Vane: A Story of Plebeians and Patricians 
(1865). His best work, however, was done in 
his reminiscences, Politics and Pen Pictures at 
Home and Abroad (1892). He also published a 
collection of his early speeches under the title 
Speeches and Addresses (1855). He was twice 
married: first to a Miss Bedell; and second to a 
Mrs. Mays, nee Glascock. 

[A good critical study is Toccoa Cozart’s “Henry W. 
Hilliard,” in Trans. Ala. Hist. Soc., vol. IV (1904) 5 A. 
B. Moore, Hist, of Ala. and Her People (1927)1 vol. I, 
gives an excellent picture of the political struggles in 
which he engaged; the story of his rivalry with Yancey 
may be found in J. W. Du Bose, The Life and Times 
of William Lowndes Yancey (1892) ; see also A. D. 
Jones, The Am. Portrait Gallery (1855); W. Brewer, 
Ala. Her Hist.j Resources, War Record , and Public 
Men (1872); T. M, Owen, Hist, of Ala. and Diet, of 
Ala . Biog. t vol. Ill (1921); Am. Rev., Dec. 1849; At¬ 
lanta Constitution, Dec. 18, 1892.] H.F. 

HILLIS, DAVID (November 1788-July 8, 
1845), Indiana pioneer, was born in Washing¬ 
ton County, Pa., the son of William Hillis, a sol¬ 
dier in the Revolution, and Jane (Carruthers) 
Hillis, whose father was a planter on the James 


Hillis 

River, in Virginia. The family was caught in 
the westward movement and reached Kentucky 
in 1791. When twenty years of age, David mi¬ 
grated to Indiana Territory. He obtained a large 
tract of land near Madison, southwest of Cin¬ 
cinnati, where he built a cabin on the bluffs of 
the Ohio. In time he became one of the most ex¬ 
tensive farmers in his part of the commonwealth. 
He employed many men to clear his farm and 
bring it under cultivation, and later a number 
of tenants lived on his lands. During the terri¬ 
torial period, the Indian frontier was but a short 
distance from his home, the natives were hostile, 
and Hillis of necessity became an Indian fighter. 
In the War of 1812, he was made lieutenant- 
colonel of the 6th Indiana Militia ( Indiana Mag¬ 
azine of History, March 1924, pp. 13-14), and 
led several attacks on the Indian villages along 
the forks of the White River. Hillis also went 
to the relief of Capt. Zachary Taylor who was 
in charge of Fort Harrison, just north of Terre 
Haute on the Wabash. From 1813 to 1814 he 
was lieutenant in Captain Dunn’s company of 
rangers. 

Having somehow acquired a fair education 
during his youth, Hillis served as a civil engi¬ 
neer and was employed by the federal govern¬ 
ment as a surveyor of public lands in Indiana, 
Illinois, and southern Michigan. A short time 
after Indiana entered the Union as a state, he 
was elected an associate judge of the Jefferson 
County circuit court. He had no training for 
such an office, but is said to have “displayed a 
legal acumen unusual in one not bred to the law,” 
(Woollen, post, p. 174) and to have satisfied the 
attorneys who practised before him. He was 
elected to the lower branch of the general assem¬ 
bly of Indiana in 1823, and reelected five times 
before 1832. In the latter year, he was chosen to 
the upper house and reelected in 1835, the sena¬ 
torial term being three years. In the exciting 
state election of 1837, when both parties were 
divided over the extensive internal improve¬ 
ment system launched in 1836, Hillis was a can¬ 
didate for lieutenant-governor on the ticket with 
David Wallace [qr.z/.J. Both Wallace and Hillis, 
who were elected, championed the simultaneous 
construction of the whole system of public works, 
while the opposing candidates, also Whigs, called 
“modifiers” or “classifiers,” advocated the com¬ 
pletion of but one or two of the improvements at 
first, and others later. After his term as lieuten¬ 
ant-governor was finished, Hillis was again 
elected to the Indiana house of representatives, 
in 1842 and in 1844. 

He belonged to the religious sect known as 
Seceders, and was the mainstay of the church 


55 



Hillis Hillis 


emment and protect their citizens successfully. 
His own comment on his failure is that they 
“heard me respectfully, but did not give me their 
sympathy” ( Politics and Pen Pictures, p. 310). 
He took no part in the organization of the Con¬ 
federate government, but when President Lin¬ 
coln called for volunteers he became a supporter 
of that government on the ground that the coer¬ 
cion of a state was a usurpation of authority by 
the president, and justified Southern resistance. 
In 1861 he was Confederate commissioner under 
appointment of President Davis, to influence 
Tennessee to secede from the Union. He organ¬ 
ized “Hilliard's Legion” and served in the West 
in Bragg's army with the rank of colonel. On 
Dec. 1,1862, he was honorably discharged from 
service, having resigned to give his attention to 
his personal affairs. He returned to Montgom¬ 
ery and resumed the practice of law. 

After the war he made his home in Atlanta, 
Ga., and practised there. He was an unsuccess¬ 
ful candidate for Congress in 1876. In 1877 
President Hayes appointed him minister to Bra¬ 
zil, where many Southerners had settled at the 
close of the war, the appointment being a friend¬ 
ly gesture toward these voluntary exiles. Hil¬ 
liard's period of service fell during the time that 
the emancipation of slaves was in progress in 
Brazil, and he lent a support to those who were 
agitating a quicker and more drastic method 
which attracted wide notice. In 1881 he re¬ 
turned to Atlanta, where he died. He had some 
literary skill, prepared the introduction and notes 
for a translation of Alesandro Verri's Roman 
Nights (1850), and was the author of a novel, 
De Vane: A Story of Plebeians and Patricians 
(1865). His best work, however, was done in 
his reminiscences, Politics and Pen Pictures at 
Home and Abroad (1892). He also published a 
collection of his early speeches under the title 
Speeches and Addresses (1855). He was twice 
married: first to a Miss Bedell; and second to a 
Mrs. Mays, nee Glascock. 

[A good critical study is Toccoa Cozart’s “Henry W. 
Hilliard,” in Trans. Ala . Hist. Soc., vol. IV (1904) » A. 
B. Moore, Hist, of Ala. and Her People (1927), vol. I, 
gives an excellent picture of the political struggles m 
which he engaged; the story of his rivalry with Yancey 
may be found in J. W. Du Bose, The Life and Times 
of William Lowndes Yancey (1892) ; see also A. D. 
Jones, The Am. Portrait Gallery (1855); W, Brewer, 
Ala. Her Hist., Resources, War Record, and Public 
Men (1872) ; T. M. Owen, Hist, of Ala. and Diet, of 
Ala. Biog., vol. Ill (1921); Am. Rev., Dec. 1849; At¬ 
lanta Constitution, Dec. 18, 1892.] H.F. 

HILLIS, DAVID (November 1788-July 8, 
1845), Indiana pioneer, was born in Washing¬ 
ton County, Pa., the son of William Hillis, a sol¬ 
dier in the Revolution, and Jane (Carruthers) 
Hillis, whose father was a planter on the James 


River, in Virginia. The family was caught in 
the westward movement and reached Kentucky 
in 1791. When twenty years of age, David mi¬ 
grated to Indiana Territory. He obtained a large 
tract of land near Madison, southwest of Cin¬ 
cinnati, where he built a cabin on the bluffs of 
the Ohio. In time he became one of the most ex¬ 
tensive farmers in his part of the commonwealth. 
He employed many men to clear his farm and 
bring it under cultivation, and later a number 
of tenants lived on his lands. During the terri¬ 
torial period, the Indian frontier was but a short 
distance from his home, the natives were hostile, 
and Hillis of necessity became an Indian fighter. 
In the War of 1812, he was made lieutenant- 
colonel of the 6th Indiana Militia ( Indiana Mag¬ 
azine of History, March 1924, pp. 13-14), and 
led several attacks on the Indian villages along 
the forks of the White River. Hillis also went 
to the relief of Capt. Zachary Taylor who was 
in charge of Fort Harrison, just north of Terre 
Haute on the Wabash. From 1813 to 1814 he 
was lieutenant in Captain Dunn's company of 
rangers. 

Having somehow acquired a fair education 
during his youth, Hillis served as a civil engi¬ 
neer and was employed by the federal govern¬ 
ment as a surveyor of public lands in Indiana, 
Illinois, and southern Michigan. A short time 
after Indiana entered the Union as a state, he 
was elected an associate judge of the Jefferson 
County circuit court. He had no training for 
such an office, but is said to have “displayed a 
legal acumen unusual in one not bred to the law,” 
(Woollen, post, p. 174) and to have satisfied the 
attorneys who practised before him. He was 
elected to the lower branch of the general assem¬ 
bly of Indiana in 1823, and reelected five times 
before 1832. In the latter year, he was chosen to 
the upper house and reelected in 1835, the sena¬ 
torial term being three years. In the exciting 
state election of 1837, when both parties were 
divided over the extensive internal improve¬ 
ment system launched in 1836, Hillis was a can¬ 
didate for lieutenant-governor on the ticket with 
David Wallace [g.p.]. Both Wallace and Hillis, 
who were elected, championed the simultaneous 
construction of the whole system of public works, 
while the opposing candidates, also Whigs, called 
“modifiers” or “classifiers,” advocated the com¬ 
pletion of but one or two of the improvements at 
first, and others later. After his term as lieuten¬ 
ant-governor was finished, Hillis was again 
elected to the Indiana house of representatives, 
in 1842 and in 1844. 

He belonged to the religious sect known as 
Seceders, and was the mainstay of the church 



Hillis 

of that faith in Madison. He also opposed all 
secret societies, and believed that no Christian 
could properly belong to one. His first wife, 
whom he married in 1812, was Ealia Werden, by 
whom he had three children; his second, Mar¬ 
garet Burk, by whom he had two children. 

[Ind. State Jour., 1837, 1842, 1845 ; journals of the 
House and Senate of Ind., 1823-44; W. W. Woollen, 
Biog. and Hist . Sketches of Early Ind. (1883) ; letters 
of John Dumont to James H. Stewart (election of 
1837), in Stewart, Recollections of the Early Settle¬ 
ment of Carroll County (1872); information from de¬ 
scendants. ] W. O. L. 

HILLIS, NEWELL DWIGHT (Sept. 2, 
1858-Feb. 25, 1929), clergyman, author, was 
born at Magnolia, Iowa, die son of Samuel 
Ewing and Margaret (Hester) Hillis. On his 
father's side he was descended from John Hillis, 
who settled in Chester County, Pa., about 1690, 
and on his mother's, from an ancestor who came 
to Pennsylvania from Amsterdam in 1740. Fire 
swept away his parents' property and the family 
removed to Nebraska, where Newell could get 
only a common-school education in the intervals 
of work on the farm. He was already an insa¬ 
tiable reader. At the age of seventeen he en¬ 
tered the service of the American Sunday School 
Union and became a successful organizer of 
Sunday schools and union churches in Nebraska, 
Utah, and Wyoming, often sleeping in dugouts 
and deserted log houses, sometimes in the vicin¬ 
ity of hostile Indians. He established the first 
Sunday school in Wyoming, in a saloon. He 
graduated at Lake Forest College, Ill., in 1884, 
and in 1887, at McCormick Theological Sem¬ 
inary, Chicago. On Apr. 14 of this year he mar¬ 
ried Annie Louise Patrick of Marengo, Ill., who 
later achieved some prominence as a writer. 
Called to the pastorate of the First Presbyterian 
Church of Peoria, Ill., he was ordained by the 
Presbytery of Peoria on May 1, 1887. From 
1890 to 1895 he was pastor of the First Presby¬ 
terian Church of Evanston, Ill., whence he was 
called, December 1894, to succeed Prof. David 
Swing in the pulpit of Central Church (inde¬ 
pendent), Chicago. Here he attained widening 
reputation as preacher and lecturer. 

In 1899 he was called to Plymouth Congrega¬ 
tional Church, Brooklyn, made famous by the 
pastorates of Henry Ward Beecher and Lyman 
Abbott, and accepted the invitation notwith¬ 
standing the strong efforts of his Chicago par¬ 
ishioners to retain him. The difficulties arising 
from changing conditions in the older part of 
Brooklyn he met successfully by his brilliance 
as a preacher and by practical contributions to 
social betterment. He carried to completion the 
Plymouth Institute, an organization for educa- 


Hillis 

tional and recreational purposes, and secured its 
endowment. The stained-glass windows, which 
were his project, depicting great events and lead¬ 
ers in the history of freedom, drew week-day 
throngs to the church. He was greatly inter¬ 
ested in city planning and preached a series of 
discourses on the duty of making cities beautiful. 
His illustrated lecture, "A Better America," was 
used by the government during the World War 
and is now widely employed by patriotic agen¬ 
cies. He felt deeply the importance of the early 
entrance of the United States into the war and 
between August 1914 and April 1917 he lec¬ 
tured in 250 cities on the nation's moral obliga¬ 
tion to join the Allies, a procedure which sun¬ 
dered many friendships and brought him thou¬ 
sands of threatening letters. When the first Lib¬ 
erty Loan was announced he was selected by the 
group of American bankers to write the state¬ 
ment regarding it sent out to the American 
churches. In connection with each of the 
“drives" he toured the country, at one time being 
the central figure in the raising of one hundred 
million dollars in forty-six days, speaking three 
and four times a day in the cities of thirty states. 
The British government published one of his ad¬ 
dresses as a war document and distributed nine 
million copies. A too-sanguine promotion by 
Hillis of investments in Canadian timber lands 
resulted in financial embarrassments which for 
several years caused him anxiety, severe criti¬ 
cism, and chagrin, and led to harassing law¬ 
suits. Throughout the ordeal, however, his 
church stood by him loyally. 

He had unusual capacity for utilizing effec¬ 
tively the results of wide reading. Attractive 
thought and kindling imagination, fused in sym¬ 
pathetic eloquence, combined to make him a 
speaker and writer of great charm. His sermons, 
which he never wrote before delivery, were re¬ 
ported stenographically and revised on Monday 
mornings. During his Plymouth pastorate of 
twenty-five years more than a thousand of these 
were printed, one each week, in the Brooklyn 
Eagle , a record unsurpassed except by Charles 
H. Spurgeon of London. Hillis delivered about 
a hundred lectures each year and wrote an arti¬ 
cle weekly for the press. A cerebral hemorrhage 
in January 1924 terminated his active ministry; 
but after eight months of complete rest he was 
able to preach frequently and to travel somewhat 
extensively with his wife. He also completed a 
long-planned life of Christ. Among the twenty- 
five or more books by him, of which over a mil¬ 
lion copies have been issued, are A Man's Value 
to Society (1896), The Investment of Influence 
(1898), Great Books as Life-Teachers (1899), 



Hillman 

The Influence of Christ in Modem Life (1900), 
Building a Working Faith (1903), The Quest 
of John Chapman (1904), The Contagion of 
Character (1911), The Story of Phaedrus 
(1914), Studies of the Great War (1915), Great 
Men as Prophets of a New Era (1922). He also 
edited The Message of David Swing to His Gen¬ 
eration (1913), and Lectures and Orations by 
Henry Ward Beecher (1913)- In 1930 After 
Sermon Prayers of Newell Dwight Hillis was 
published. 

[M. M. Hester, Hist, and Geneal. of the Descendants 
of John Lawrence Hester and Godfrey Stough (1905) ; 
Brooklyn Eagle, N. Y. Times, and N. Y. Herald Trib¬ 
une, Feb. 26, 1929; editorial in the Congregationalist, 
Mar. 7, 1929; H. D. McKeehan, Anglo-American 
Preaching (1928); Who's Who in America, 1928-29.] 

E.D.E. 

HILLMAN, THOMAS TENNESSEE (Feb. 
2, 1844-Aug. 4, 1905), industrialist, one of the 
Tennesseeans who invaded the new Birming¬ 
ham industrial district and left an indelible im¬ 
pression upon the new Alabama, was the son of 
Daniel and Ann (Marable) Hillman, and was 
born in Montgomery County, Tenn. Both his 
father and his grandfather, descendants of a 
long line of Dutch ironmasters, were practical 
iron men of New Jersey, who for many years 
made iron in Kentucky and Tennessee. Thomas 
spent his early boyhood about his father's fur¬ 
nace in Lyon County, Ky. At the age of seven 
he was severely injured by a fall from a horse 
which made him an invalid for six years and 
from which accident he never fully recovered. 
He was a boy of ambition and pluck, however, 
and although his back was weak he insisted on 
going hunting like other boys, his father sending 
along slaves to carry him on their shoulders. At 
fifteen he went to Louisville where he worked in 
a rolling-mill, returning home the next year to 
enter Vandusia Academy, near Nashville, where 
he remained for two years. Upon leaving school 
he joined his father's Empire Coal Company in 
Trigg County, Ky. This concern made bar and 
sheet iron which supplied about eighty per cent 
of the Southern field. Between the years 185s 
and 1862 the firm is said to have cleared $1,- 
300,000. 

During the Civil War young Hillman man¬ 
aged the Center and Empire furnaces. On his 
twenty-first birthday his father gave him a fifty- 
thousand-dollar interest in the company and 
made him manager. On July 25, 1867, he mar¬ 
ried Emily S. Gentry of Nashville. They had 
no children. In 1879 Hillman entered the mer¬ 
cantile field in Nashville, but within a year that 
inspiring genius of the new Birmingham dis¬ 
trict, H. F. De Bardeleben [q.v.], had interested 


Hillyer 

him again in iron making. He removed to Bir¬ 
mingham and in association with De Bardeleben 
built the Alice Furnace No. 1, which began oper¬ 
ation Nov. 30, 1880, the first iron furnace to be 
built in the city proper. Hillman was made pres¬ 
ident and general manager, the company being 
capitalized at a quarter of a million dollars. In 
1883 Alice No. 2 (“Big Alice") was completed. 
The following year Hillman entered the com¬ 
bination of interests under the leadership of 
Enoch Ensley of Memphis, the corporation be¬ 
ing known as the Pratt Coal & Iron Company. 
Later Ensley's dominating personality and his 
habit of claiming credit for the success of the 
Alice furnaces caused Hillman to induce the 
Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company to 
buy into the Pratt concern, thus forcing Ensley 
out of control (1886). Hillman was made vice- 
president, and under his direction were built the 
four furnaces comprising the first unit of the 
Tennessee Company's new plant at Ensley, now 
a part of the greater Birmingham. The Tennes¬ 
see Company became the largest interest in the 
region and some twenty years later was absorbed 
by the United States Steel Corporation (No¬ 
vember 1907). 

Hillman, in 1904, with G. B. and H. E. Mc¬ 
Cormack, Erskine Ramsay, and others, formed 
the Pratt Consolidated Coal Company, consist¬ 
ing of nine separate coal interests with fifty-four 
mines having a daily capacity of 12,000 tons. 
He was president of this company at the time of 
his death. He was also a director of the Bir¬ 
mingham Railway, Light & Power Company, a 
director of the First National Bank of Birming¬ 
ham, and president of the Ensley Railway Com¬ 
pany (electric). For him were named the Hill¬ 
man Hospital (a county institution) and the 
Hillman Hotel of Birmingham. He died in At¬ 
lantic City, N. J., in the summer of 1905, at the 
age of sixty-one. 

[T. M. Owen, Hist, of Ala. and Diet, of Ala. Biog. 
(1921), vol. Ill; Ethel Armes, The Story of Coal and 
Iron in Ala. (1910) ; G. M. Cmikshank, Hist, of Bir¬ 
mingham and Its Environs (1920) ; Memorial Record 
of Ala. (1893), vol. II; Birmingham Age-Herald, Aug. 
5, 1905; Nashville Banner, Aug. 7, 1905-] H. A.T. 

HILLYER, JUNIUS (Apr. 23,1807-June 21, 
1886), lawyer, congressman, was bom in Wilkes 
County, Ga., the son of Shaler and Rebecca 
(Freeman) Hillyer. His paternal grandfather, 
Asa, was a native of Connecticut and served in 
the Revolutionary War; his maternal grand¬ 
father, John Freeman, was a Revolutionary sol¬ 
dier in Georgia. When Junius was fourteen 
years old his father died and his mother removed 
to Athens, the seat of the University of Georgia, 
to educate her three sons. Junius received his 

57 



Hillyer 

A.B. degree from the university in 1828 and 
shortly after graduation was admitted to the bar. 
He began practice in Athens. At twenty-seven 
he was elected solicitor-general of the western 
district of Georgia and seven years later he be¬ 
came judge of the superior court in the same dis¬ 
trict, holding the position for four years, 1841- 
45. In the stirring campaign of 1851, led by 
Toombs, Stephens, and Cobb, for the purpose of 
swinging the people of Georgia to support the 
compromise measures of 1850, Hillyer support¬ 
ed the triumvirate, helped elect Cobb as gov¬ 
ernor, and fell heir to the latter’s seat in Con¬ 
gress (1851-55). After the election of Bu¬ 
chanan he became solicitor of the United States 
treasury and held this post until secession forced 
his retirement. 

During his last days in office Hillyer addressed 
a series of letters to Howell Cobb which are im¬ 
portant in that they reveal the ideas of a trained 
observer of events. Late in January 1861, he 
believed that none of the border states would fol¬ 
low the South in secession and therefore thought 
that the approaching Montgomery Convention of 
seceding states should act with circumspection 
to avoid alienating them. If, as was anticipated, 
the Confederate government should establish 
free trade, Virginia and Maryland, Hillyer felt, 
would be lost; if the navigation of the Missis¬ 
sippi were obstructed, Arkansas, Tennessee, 
Kentucky, and Missouri would remain in the 
Union. Writing on Feb. 9, he strongly argued 
that free trade with direct taxation as the means 
of raising revenue in the Confederacy would 
ruin the cause and urged that a tariff for rev¬ 
enue was the only expedient measure. He was 
confident that the Republican party would acqui¬ 
esce in secession, if a collision were avoided un¬ 
til Lincoln’s inauguration. 

On resigning as solicitor of the treasury, Feb. 

13, 1861, Hillyer returned to Georgia and ap¬ 
pears to have taken no part in the Civil War nor 
to have again offered for public office. He lived 
twenty-five years longer. This quarter-century 
he devoted to his private law practice, to devel¬ 
oping the economic resources of Georgia, and to 
furthering the educational interests of the state. 
Long before the Civil War he had been one of 
the original projectors of the Georgia Railroad. 
For many years he was a trustee of the Univer¬ 
sity of Georgia and of Mercer University at 
Macon. He had married, in October 1831, Jane 
(Watkins) Foster. He died in Decatur, Ga., 
which had been his home since 1871. 

[Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928) ; W. J. Northen, ed., 
Men of Mark in Ga vol. II (1910) ; Toombs, Stephens 
and Cobb Correspondence [1913), published as Vol. II 

58 


Hilprecht 

of the annual report of the Am. Hist. Asso. for the year 
1911 ; Atlanta Constitution , June 22, 1886.] p_p j 

HILPRECHT, HERMAN VOLRATH (July 
28, 1859-Mar. 19, 1925), Assyriologist, was 
born at Hohenerxleben, Germany, the son of 
Robert and Emilie (Wielepp) Hilprecht. He 
graduated from the Gymnasium at Bernburg in 
1880 and for five years, 1880-85, studied theol¬ 
ogy, philology, and law at the University of 
Leipzig. In 1885 he became “repetent” of Old 
Testament theology at the University of Er¬ 
langen and in 1886 he emigrated to Philadelphia 
as oriental editor of the Sunday School Times. 
He soon became professor of Assyriology in the 
University of Pennsylvania and in the next year, 
1887, he became curator of the Babylonian sec¬ 
tion of the university museum, both of which po¬ 
sitions he held until his resignation in 1911. In 
1888-89 h e was a member of the first expedition 
of the university which, under the leadership of 
John P. Peters, excavated at Nippur, and in 
1895, upon Peters’ removal from Philadelphia, 
Hilprecht became scientific director of this ex¬ 
cavation. The field work at that time was under 
the direction of John Henry Haynes [q.v.]. Hil- 
precht’s fame as an Assyriologist was estab¬ 
lished by the publication in 1893 of the first part 
of his Old Babylonian Inscriptions, Chiefly 
from Nippur, the second part of which appeared 
in 1896. The inscriptions treated in this study 
were considerably older than the historical in¬ 
scriptions previously published and were nat¬ 
urally in a much more archaic script. The beau¬ 
ty and accuracy of Hilprecht’s copies and his 
skill as a translator were at once recognized. 

Since, according to the law, all antiquities ex¬ 
cavated within Turkish territories belonged to 
the government, those found at Nippur were 
taken to Constantinople. In 1893 Hilprecht was 
asked to reorganize the Imperial Ottoman Mu¬ 
seum at Constantinople and until 1909 he was 
practically in charge of the museum. Meantime 
he projected four series of publications of the 
materials from Nippur, of which he was to be 
the editor. Of these, fourteen volumes of texts 
appeared. Hilprecht himself wrote two of these 
as well as two volumes for Series D, “Researches 
and Treatises.” In 1900 he went to Babylonia 
for a second time. Haynes had discovered an 
archive of several thousand tablets there and, as 
scientific director, Hilprecht wished to be on the 
spot. Three years later his Exploration in Bible 
Lands during the Nineteenth Century was pub¬ 
lished—a book which soon precipitated the “Hil¬ 
precht Controversy” and ultimately led to his re¬ 
tirement. On page 532 of this work he spoke of 
an unopened clay letter addressed “To Lush- 



Hilprecht 

tamar” as if it were found in the “Temple Li¬ 
brary” at Nippur, whereas the label on the tab¬ 
let, which was exhibited in the museum, showed 
that it had been bought with a collection and 
probably did not come from Nippur at all. When 
confronted with the fact, instead of acknowledg¬ 
ing a careless mistake, Hilprecht accounted for 
the discrepancy by a story that seemed improb¬ 
able and for some years he sought to maintain 
his position. Finally in 1911 he resigned his 
posts at the University of Pennsylvania, spent a 
year in travel, then settled for several years in 
Hesse-Nassau in Germany. After the war he re¬ 
turned to Philadelphia and became a naturalized 
American citizen. 

Hilprecht’s influence on Assyriological re¬ 
search in the United States was, in spite of the 
cloud which obscured his last years, great and 
beneficial, for he was a thorough and an excel¬ 
lent teacher. He inaugurated a careful and beau¬ 
tiful type for copying cuneiform texts and not 
only practised it himself, but successfully taught 
it to his pupils. Professors Albert Tobias Clay 
[q.vf], Daniel David Luckenbill, William John 
Hinke, and Arno Poebel-—to mention but a few— 
learned their science at his feet and learned to 
emulate his accuracy and skill. During the early 
years of his career in America he set a high 
standard in the publication of texts, and this had 
a beneficial effect. Had he maintained the same 
high standard in all his later work and had he 
been generous in according recognition to his 
associates, no cloud need have darkened his ca¬ 
reer. In the book which contained the unfor¬ 
tunate reference to “Lushtamar” he was often 
at pains to discredit the work of John Henry 
Haynes, who was field director at Nippur dur¬ 
ing the expeditions of the nineties and who had 
worked heroically, almost alone at times, in a 
deadly climate. Hilprecht’s treatment was—to 
say the least—ungenerous, and the impression 
sometimes given that the discovery of the “Li¬ 
brary” should be credited to himself, unfair. 
Haynes came home a broken man-broken not 
only in health, but in spirit—partly because of 
this treatment. Another manifestation of this 
foible, in what was otherwise a noble nature, ap¬ 
pears in the statement from Hilprecht’s own 
hand in several editions of Who’s Who in Amer¬ 
ica that the university museum contained “over 
fifty thousand Babylonian antiquities, for the 
greater part presented by him.” In reality these 
antiquities were the University’s share of the 
finds exhumed at Nippur, due it because it had 
furnished all the money with which the excava¬ 
tion had been carried on. The Turkish govern¬ 
ment chose to employ the fiction that it present- 


Himes 

ed them to Hilprecht in recognition of his serv- 
ices to the Imperial Ottoman Museum. Moral¬ 
ly he was bound to pass them on to the organi¬ 
zation which had furnished the funds. Except 
by a fiction they were never his. In 1886 Hil¬ 
precht was married to Miss S. C. Haufe. She 
died in 1902 and on Apr. 24, 1903, he was mar¬ 
ried to Sallie (Crozer) Robinson, the daughter 
of Samuel Aldrich Crozer of Philadelphia. 

iWho*s Who in America, 1916-17; Am. Jour, of 
Scientific Languages, Apr. 1908; the Nation, May 2, 
Nov. 2 1, 1907, Feb. 13, May 7, 1908 ; Jour, of Biblical 
Literature, vol. XLV,pts. 3 and 4 (19 26); Public Ledg¬ 
er (Phila.), Evening Star (Washington), N. Y. Times, 
Mar. 20, 1925J G.A.B—n. 

HIMES, CHARLES FRANCIS (June 2, 
1838-Dec. 6, 1918), educator and scientist, was 
born in Lancaster County, Pa. His paternal an¬ 
cestor, William Heim, came to America from 
the German Palatinate, arriving in Philadel¬ 
phia, Aug. 29, 1730. His maternal ancestor, 
Jacob Lanius, also from the Palatinate, came to 
Philadelphia, Sept. 11, 1731. His father was 
William D. Himes, born in New Oxford, Adams 
County, Pa., in 1812; and his mother, Magdalen, 
a daughter of Christian and Ann Lanius of York 
County, Pa. When Charles Francis was still 
a small boy his parents moved to New Oxford. 
Here he attended an academy conducted by Dr. 
M. D. G. Pfeiffer. He entered Dickinson Col¬ 
lege as a sophomore in the spring of 1853 and 
was graduated in June 1855 at the age of seven¬ 
teen. After graduation he was instructor for a 
year in mathematics and natural sciences at the 
Wyoming Conference Academy, Wayne County, 
Pa., and the following year he taught in the pub¬ 
lic schools of Missouri. Following a short pe¬ 
riod of teaching at the Baltimore Female Col¬ 
lege, in i860, when only twenty-two years old, 
he was appointed professor of mathematics at 
1 Troy University, Troy, N. Y. Here he re¬ 
mained until 1863 when he went to Germany, 
where he attended the University of Giessen. 
Returning to America in 1865, he was elected 
to the chair of natural science at Dickinson Col¬ 
lege, and remained with the college for thirty- 
i one years. In 1885 the natural-science depart¬ 
ment was divided and he was made professor of 
1 physics. After the resignation of President 

■ James A. Macauley in 1888 he served as acting 
president for one year. He was a teacher of ex- 

: ceptional force and originality: his lectures were 
: clear and logical; and he kept well abreast of the 
; science of his day. In 1865 he started elective 
i laboratory courses at Dickinson, which was one 
* of the first colleges to offer such courses. He 

■ made a special study of photography and became 
a leading authority on certain branches of that 

59 



Himes Himes 


science. In 1869 he was appointed on the United 
States government expedition to observe at Ot¬ 
tumwa, Iowa, the total eclipse of the sun. His 
official report appeared in the Journal of the 
Franklin Institute, October 1869; and in addi¬ 
tion he published Some of the Methods and Re¬ 
sults of Observation of the Total Eclipse of the 
Sun, August 7 th, 1869 (1869). From 1872 to 
1879 he was associated with Spencer Fullerton 
Baird [ q.v .] of the Smithsonian Institution in 
the preparation of the Annual Record of Science 
and Industry for 1871-78 (8 vols., 1872-79). In 
1884 he organized at Mountain Lake Park, Md., 
the first summer school of photography. He 
published many articles of scientific and peda¬ 
gogical interest, among which are “On the Con¬ 
vergence of the Optic Axes in Binocular Vision** 
(American Journal of Photography, September 
1862); “Discussion of the Phenomenon of the 
Horizontal Moon by Aid of the Stereoscope** 
(British Journal of Photography, Sept. 30, 
1864); “Actinism** ( Journal of the Franklin 
Institute, May 1885) ; “The Stereoscope and Its 
Applications** (Ibid., May, June 1887); “Ama¬ 
teur Photography in Its Educational Relations’* 
(Ibid., May 1889); “The Making of Photog¬ 
raphy** (Ibid., December 1899); “Photographic 
Record Work** (Ibid., March 1900); “Treat¬ 
ment of Written Historical Documents for Pres¬ 
ervation** (Ibid., March 1907). He also pub¬ 
lished Heinrich Will’s Tables for Qualitative 
Chemical Analysis, translated and enlarged, in 
1867; A Sketch of Dickinson College (1879); 
The True John Dickinson (1912); Col. Robert 
Magaw, the Defender of Fort Washington 
(1915); and Life and Times of Judge Thomas 
Cooper (1918). 

On Jan. 2, 1868, he married Mary Elizabeth 
Murray, and two daughters were born to them. 
At Dickinson College he was active in the affairs 
of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity, of which 
he was one of the founders. His death occurred 
in Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. 

[Biog. Annals of Cumberland County, Pa. (1905); 
J. W. Jordan, Encyc. of Pa. Biog., vol. II (1914) ; Par 
German Soc. Proc. and > Addresses, vol. VII (1897), 
vol. XXX (1924) ; Carlisle Herald, Dec. 7, 19x8; Bal¬ 
timore American, Dec. 8, 1918; information from 
daughter, Mrs. P. E. Vale; personal acquaintance.] 

J.F.M. 

HIMES, JOSHUA VAUGHAN (May 19, 
1805-July 27, 1895), reformer, a leader in the 
Second Advent movement, was born in North 
Kingstown, R. I., the son of Stukeley Himes, a 
West India trader, and Elizabeth (Vaughan) 
Himes. It had been the intention of the father 
to educate Joshua at Brown University for the 
ministry of the Episcopal Church, but in 1817 


an unfaithful captain absconded with a ship and 
cargo, ruining the elder Himes financially. The 
boy was then apprenticed to a cabinetmaker in 
New Bedford. During his apprenticeship he be¬ 
came an exhorter and in 1827 he entered the 
ministry of the Christian Church and was as¬ 
signed to evangelistic work in southern Massa¬ 
chusetts. In 1830 he was called to Boston as 
pastor of the First Christian Church. Seven 
years later he organized the Second Christian 
Church, of which he remained in charge until 
1842. Under his labors it grew from a little 
handful to such numbers that the Chardon Street 
Chapel with a capacity of about five hundred 
was built. Through the influence of William 
Lloyd Garrison, he became active in the aboli¬ 
tionist movement, and he took a prominent part 
in other reforms of the day. He helped to organ¬ 
ize the Non-resistance Society of Boston in the 
late thirties, and promoted a manual-training 
school. 

In 1839 he met William Miller, who was 
preaching that the second coming of Christ was 
likely to occur about 1843. He accepted Miller’s 
teaching and became his chief assistant. An agi¬ 
tator and a reformer by nature, he turned his 
restless energy to the crusade of preparing the 
world for Christ’s coming. He organized and 
financed the Adventist publishing work and at 
thirty-five years of age was one of the outstand¬ 
ing publicity agents of his day. Previous to his 
meeting with Himes, Miller had been a rather 
obscure figure working in the rural sections. As 
if by magic, Himes opened the great cities to 
his captain, and within three years Miller’s name 
and doctrine were on the lips of every one. He 
became a veritable Aaron to the Moses of the 
Advent movement. Early in 1840 he began at 
Boston the publication of Signs of the Times . 
This grew into a vigorous weekly. In 1842 The 
Midnight Cry was established in New York, 
running for one month as a daily and thereafter 
as a weekly. A huge tent was purchased and 
Miller and Himes journeyed from city to city 
holding immense meetings, warning the world 
of the near advent of Christ. In the larger 
places visited, papers were started and within 
two years flourishing little journals had been 
established in Philadelphia, Rochester, Cincin¬ 
nati, and elsewhere. Under his direction tracts, 
pamphlets, and books streamed from the press 
for distribution to the ends of the earth. Litera¬ 
ture was placed on the ships leaving New York; 
bundles of papers were mailed to post offices and 
newspaper offices for free distribution. Owing 
to his direct connection with the publishing work 
and to the fact that he handled large sums of 


60 



Hindman 

money, the press accused him of insincerity and 
of enriching himself at the expense of his credu¬ 
lous followers. These charges he readily dis¬ 
proved and stood acquitted in the public eye. He 
was not without faults, however, for at a church 
trial a few years later some of his earlier actions 
were shown to be questionable; but his short¬ 
comings appear to have been due to personal 
weakness in time of stress rather than to insin¬ 
cerity. 

Bitterly disappointed that Christ did not ap¬ 
pear in 1843 or I ^44 i he looked for his coming 
in 1854 but was again disappointed. In the late 
fifties he sold the Advent Herald (formerly 
Signs of the Times) at Boston and moved West, 
publishing the Advent Christian Times in Bu¬ 
chanan, Mich., and Chicago, for some years. 
Because of differences arising between him and 
the Advent Christian denomination of which he 
had become a member, he left it, and in 1878 re¬ 
turned to the Episcopal Church, although his 
views on the Advent remained unchanged. The 
following year he took charge of the Vermilion 
and Elk Point missions, South Dakota, and at 
the time of his death was rector of St. Andrew’s 
Episcopal Church, Elk Point. He was twice 
married: first, in 1826, to Mary Thompson 
Handy, who died in 1876; and second, in 1879, 
to Hannah Harley. 

[See E. N. Dick, “The Adventist Crisis 1831-1844” 
(1930), a doctoral dissertation (MS.) at the Univ. of 
Wis.; J. N. Arnold, Vital Record of R. 1836-1850 , 
vol. V (1894); I. C. Wellcome, Hist, of the Second 
Advent Message and Mission f Doctrine and People 
(1874) ; M. E. Olsen, A Hist, of the Origin and Prog¬ 
ress of Seventh Day Adventists (1925) ; Evening Ar- 
gus-Leader (Sioux Falls, S. D.), July 29, 1895. A pho¬ 
tograph of Himes's signature (Dick, ante ) shows that 
he spelled his middle name “Vaughan.”] ^ jgr 

HINDMAN, THOMAS CARMICHAEL 

(Jan. 28, 1828-Sept. 28, 1868), lawyer, states¬ 
man, soldier, was born in Knoxville, Tenn., the 
son of Thomas Carmichael and Sallie (Holt) 
Hindman. In 1832 the elder Hindman moved 
with his family to Jacksonville, Ala., where he 
served as an agent for the federal government in 
Indian affairs, then in 1841 he moved to Mis¬ 
sissippi and established a large plantation near 
Ripley. Young Thomas was sent to the local 
schools in Jacksonville and Ripley and for four 
years attended the Classical and Commercial 
High School at Lawrenceville, N. J. At the out¬ 
break of the Mexican War he at once volunteered, 
was made a lieutenant on the battle-field for con¬ 
spicuous bravery, and served throughout the 
war. Soon after returning from the war he was 
admitted to the bar. He was interested in poli¬ 
tics, and, being able as a speaker, in 1851 he can¬ 
vassed northern Mississippi in behalf of Jeffer- 

6l 


Hindman 

son Davis against Henry S. Foote in the notable 
campaign for governor. In 1854 he was himself 
elected to the legislature. In 1856 he moved to 
Helena, Ark., where he resumed the practice of 
law, and that year canvassed the district against 
the American party. Two years later, on the 
Democratic ticket, he was elected to Congress, 
where he took an active part in the contest over 
the election of speaker in 1859. He was reelected 
in i860 but never took his seat. 

In the state election of i860 Hindman and 
others joined in a revolt against the “Johnson 
family/’ which had controlled the local Demo¬ 
cratic party since the state had been admitted to 
the Union, and brought out Henry M. Rector 
[q.z\], who gained the election in opposition to 
R. H. Johnson, the regular nominee. After the 
election of Lincoln Hindman met Foote in a 
joint debate in Memphis, where Hindman took 
the position that the time for state action had 
come. On Jan. 8,1861, by which time President 
Buchanan was becoming less yielding to the 
South, Hindman and Senator R. W. Johnson 
advised the people of Arkansas to secede. The 
state convention which assembled on Mar. 4 sub¬ 
mitted the question to the people to be voted upon 
Aug. 5. Hindman and others stumped the Union 
counties, but upon the bombardment of Fort 
Sumter, the convention reassembled and took 
the state into the Confederacy without waiting 
for a vote of the people. Because of trouble with 
Rector over martial law and conscriptions, Hind¬ 
man deserted him in 1862 and supported Harris 
Flanagin [ q.v .] for governor. 

As soon as Arkansas seceded Hindman re¬ 
signed from Congress, raised a regiment, and 
was soon in active service as a colonel. He dis¬ 
played unusual military capacity and soon rose 
to the rank of major-general. He was assigned 
to the Trans-Mississippi Department, with head¬ 
quarters in Arkansas, and assumed the task of 
appeasing those who were displeased with Davis’ 
policy of stripping the West of troops. Being too 
vigorous in enforcing conscription and imposing 
martial law, he aroused great opposition among 
the politicians. To allay this opposition Gen. T. 
H. Holmes was sent to supersede him. There¬ 
upon Hindman took the field and fought with 
credit the drawn battle of Prairie Grove, Dec. 7, 
1862, and soon thereafter, at his own request, he 
was transferred to the East and took part in the 
fighting around Chattanooga. While serving 
under Johnston against Sherman on the road to 
Atlanta he was so badly wounded in the eye that 
he was disqualified for further service. After 
the war he retired to Mexico to engage in coffee 
planting, but his wife did not like her new sur- 



Hindman Hinds 


roundings and in 1867 they returned to Arkansas. 
Against congressional Reconstruction Hindman 
again took up the cudgels. On one occasion, 
having listened to an inflammatory address to 
the negroes by Powell Clayton Iq.v.], he re¬ 
turned a hot answer. Shortly afterward he was 
shot by an assassin who fired through a window, 
killing the general as he sat quietly at home. 
Hindman had married, on Nov. 11, 1856, Mary 
Watkins Biscoe, daughter of Henry L. Biscoe, 
of Helena, Ark. 

[War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); 
C. A. Evans, Confed. Mil Hist., vol. X (1899) ; C. E. 
Nash, Blog. Sketches of Gen. Pat Cleburne and Gen. 
T. C. Hindman (1898); D. Y. Thomas, Ark. in War 
and Reconstruction, 1861-74 (1926); John Hallum, 
Biog. and Pictorial Hist, of Ark., vol. I (1877); Fay 
Hempstead, A Pictorial Hist. of Ark. (1890) ; Daily 
Ark. Gazette , Sept. 29, 1868; information as to certain 
facts from Hindman’s son, Biscoe Hindman.] 

D.Y.T. 

HINDMAN, WILLIAM (Apr. 1, 1743-Jan. 
19, 1822), lawyer, Revolutionary leader, United 
States senator, was the grandson of Rev. James 
Hindman who upon his arrival from England 
about 1710 became the rector of Saint Paul’s 
Parish in Talbot County, Md. His father, Jacob 
Hindman, a prosperous planter of Talbot and 
Dorchester counties, married Mary, daughter of 
Henry Trippe, and to them William was born 
in Dorchester County. He attended the College 
of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsyl¬ 
vania) in the class of 1761, and in 1765 he re¬ 
turned from London where he had gone to com¬ 
plete his preparation for the practice of law. He 
was admitted that year to the bar of Talbot 
County, but, having inherited large estates, he 
was compelled to divide his time between law 
and agriculture until his entry into public life 
on the eve of the Revolution. 

Hindman commenced his public career in 1775 
as a member of the Talbot County Committee of 
Observation, the duties of which were to exe¬ 
cute, within the county, the resolves of the Con¬ 
tinental Congress and the Maryland Revolution¬ 
ary conventions. He was a member of the con¬ 
vention which met at Annapolis, July 26, 1775, 
was chosen by that body treasurer of the Eastern 
Shore, and signed the Association of the Free¬ 
men of Maryland for the maintenance of order 
and for the support of armed opposition to the 
mother country. The first state constitution of 
Maryland went into operation in 1776 and in 
April of the following year Hindman was chosen 
a member of the Maryland Senate. He retained 
his seat in that body until December 1784 and 
in 1779 fearlessly but unsuccessfully opposed a 
bill for the confiscation of all British property 
within the state. He vacated his seat in the 


state Senate to serve as a delegate to the Con¬ 
gress of the Confederation until 1788. He was 
a member of the executive council of the gov¬ 
ernor of Maryland from 1789 to 1792 and was 
again serving in the Maryland Senate in 1792 
when he was elected to fill out the unexpired 
term, Second Congress, of Joshua Seney in the 
United States House of Representatives. He 
was reelected to the Third, Fourth, and Fifth 
congresses and served continuously from Jan. 
30, 1793, to Mar. 4, 1799. Hindman was not an 
effective public speaker and he participated but 
little in the debates on the floor of the House, 
but he was consulted on questions of major im¬ 
portance and exerted a strong influence in sup¬ 
port of authority, promotion of harmony, and 
dissolution of discontent. With other Federal¬ 
ists, however, he suffered political unpopularity 
following the passage of the Alien and Sedi¬ 
tion Laws and, after a vigorous contest, was de¬ 
feated in the congressional election of 1798 by 
Joshua Seney who had resigned his seat as a 
Maryland judge to reenter the political arena. 
Following his defeat Hindman was elected a 
member of the Maryland House of Delegates 
and served in that body in 1799 and until Dec. 12, 
1800, when he was chosen to fill the vacancy in 
the United States Senate created by the resigna¬ 
tion of James Lloyd. He was continued in the 
Senate, by appointment of the governor, until 
Nov. 19, 1801, when he retired from public life. 
His remaining years were devoted to agricul¬ 
tural pursuits on his estate near Wye Landing. 
He died, a bachelor, at the home of his brother, 
James Hindman, in Baltimore. 

[S. A. Harrison, A Memoir of the Hon. Wm. Hind¬ 
man (1880); Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928) ; Archives 
of Md., vol. XI (1892); Baltimore Patriot <§* Mercan¬ 
tile Advertiser, Jan. 21, 1822.] N.D.M. 

HINDS, ASHER CROSBY (Feb. 6, 1863^ 
May 1, 1919), congressman, parliamentarian, 
was bom at Benton, Me. His parents, Albert 
D. and Charlotte (Flagg) Hinds, died when he 
was still a boy. He was educated in the common 
schools of Benton, attended Coburn Classical 
Institute for a year, and graduated at Colby Col¬ 
lege in 1883. Soon after graduation he went to 
Portland and joined the staff of the Portland 
Daily Advertiser, of which a kinsman, Hobart 
W. Richardson, was then editor. First he 
learned the printer’s trade, then, upon being 
made a reporter, he was so successful that in 
1885 he was invited to join the Portland Daily 
Press. He was actively engaged on this journal 
for a number of years and at the same time ac¬ 
quired an interest in its ownership. His first 
acquaintance with legislative operations appears 


62 



Hinds Hine 


to have been gained soon after he joined the 
Press, when he covered a session of the Maine 
legislature and was said to have started an agi¬ 
tation for the removal of the capital to Portland 
which was defeated only by the intervention of 
James G. Blaine. When Thomas B. Reed be¬ 
came speaker in the Fifty-first Congress in 1889 
he appointed Hinds speaker’s clerk, but the ad¬ 
verse results of the elections of 1890 and 1892 
relegated him again to his editorial duties. 
When Reed again became speaker in 1895, 
Hinds was promoted to the post of clerk at the 
speaker’s table and at the advice of the speaker, 
who desired to make the position one of dignity 
and importance, began the study of parliamen¬ 
tary law and procedure. 

The diligence and capacity which Hinds dis¬ 
played in this work made him an invaluable as¬ 
sistant to Speakers Reed, Henderson, and Can¬ 
non, and he retained his post at the speaker’s 
table from 1895 to 1911. During his incumbency 
he was able to bring to completion his monu¬ 
mental work: Hinds' Precedents of the House 
of Representatives of the United States (1907- 
08), published as House Document 355 , 59 Con¬ 
gress, 2 Session. This study had had its modest 
beginnings in a scrapbook in which he posted 
the rulings of various speakers and other useful 
material for consultation and had been preceded 
in 1899 by the publication of a valuable manual 
on the rules and practices of the House (House 
Document 576 , 55 Cong., 2 Sess.). In its final 
form, containing five volumes of more than a 
thousand pages each, with a multitude of cita¬ 
tions covering the entire history of the House, 
together with three additional volumes of index 
and digest, it constituted a work of unique im¬ 
portance. “His great work,” says the historian 
of the House, “happily combines minuteness of 
research with wideness of vision. Nothing seems 
to have escaped his eye, or to have blurred his 
appreciation of the historic value of the slightest 
incident. . . . Congress should ever be proud 
that it possessed a teacher whose constructive 
work must always remain its richest heritage” 
(D. S. Alexander, History and Procedure of 
the House of Representatives, 1916, Preface, p. 
xiv). Hinds succeeded Amos Allen as repre¬ 
sentative of the 1st Maine district in 1911, but 
his health had broken under the strain of labors 
on the Precedents and his career as a member of 
the House (1911-17) was not conspicuous. It 
is also a matter of regret that failing strength 
had obliged him to abandon a projected biog¬ 
raphy of Speaker Reed which he would have 
been admirably qualified to write. His death 
took place in Washington, D. C. He had mar¬ 


ried Harriet Louise Estey of Roslindale, Mass., 
Sept, 3, 1891. 

CA. H. Hinds, Hist, and Geneal. of the Hinds Family 
(1899) ; G. T. Little, Geneal and Family Hist, of the 
State of Me. (1909), III, 1537-39; Who's Who in 
America, 1918-19; N. Y. Times, May 3, 1919; Port- 
land Daily Press, May 3, 8, 1919 ; Portland Evening 
Express and Advertiser, May 10, 1919.] W.A.R. 

HINE, CHARLES DE LANO (Mar. 15, 
1867-Feb. 13, 1927), railroad official, author, 
and organization expert, was bom at Vienna, 
Fairfax County, Va. He was a descendant of 
Thomas Hine who settled in Milford, Conn., 
about 1639, and the son of Orrin Eugene Hine, 
a major in the 50th New York Volunteer Engi¬ 
neers, 1861-65, and of Alma (De Lano) Hine, 
After graduating from the United States Mili¬ 
tary Academy on June 12, 1891, and receiving a 
commission as second lieutenant, he studied law 
at the Law School of Cincinnati College and in 
1893 was admitted to the bar. In 1895 he sev¬ 
ered his connection with the army and began the 
railway service which was to be his life work, 
although he twice returned temporarily to army 
life. During the Spanish-American War he 
served as major, 1st District of Columbia Vol¬ 
unteer Infantry, taking part in the siege and 
occupation of Santiago de Cuba in July and Au¬ 
gust 1898, Nineteen years later, in July 1917, 
he was again called to military service; his first 
duty was that of commanding trains and military 
police for the 27th Division at New York; from 
Aug. 20, 1917, to Jan. 9, 1918, he was in com¬ 
mand of the 165th Infantry, at first in the United 
States and then in France; he was assigned in 
January to special duties at headquarters (Serv¬ 
ices of Supply), was transferred as colonel to 
the Motor Transport Corps in September 1918, 
and was honorably discharged at Washington 
on Jan. 10, 1919, after the conclusion of hostili¬ 
ties. In October 1921, he was appointed colo¬ 
nel in the Officers’ Reserve Corps. 

Dominated by a desire to learn railroading 
thoroughly, Hine became a freight brakeman in 
1895 with the Cleveland, Cincinnati & St. Louis 
Railroad, and was successively, before 1898, 
switchman, yardmaster, conductor, and chief 
clerk and trainmaster for the Cincinnati-Indian- 
apolis division of this road. He thus gained an 
intimate knowledge of the workings of the rail¬ 
road machine which, with the background of a 
legal and military education, an active, inquir¬ 
ing mind, and an interest in human relationships, 
enabled him to become an organization expert of 
more than usual importance. After the Spanish- 
American War, he occupied several positions 
with minor railroads for short periods, and spent 
some time engaged in farming in Vienna, Va„ 



Hine 

following his father’s death in 1899. I 9 00 he 

was an inspector of safety appliances for the In¬ 
terstate Commerce Commission. In 1907-08 he 
acted as receiver for the Washington, Arling¬ 
ton & Falls Church Railway, an electric line. 
He was the author of two exceptionally vivid 
books, Letters from an Old Railway Official to 
His Son , a Division Superintendent (1904) and 
Letters from an Old Railway Official, Second 
Series, to His Son, a General Manager (1912). 
These two series contain the writer’s philosophy 
of human relations as applied to problems of 
railroad organization. They are direct, conver¬ 
sational, intentionally filled with homely phrases 
and railroad metaphors, but skilfully composed 
and rich in thoughtful suggestions. While many 
of the problems discussed are local, pertaining to 
a given time and place, the series in general have 
elements of value which ensure them a place in 
the literature of railroad operation. He was 
also the author of an article on wartime rail¬ 
roading in Mexico contributed to The Railway 
Library 1913 (1914). 

Hine was an advocate of what he called the 
“unit system of management” This system he 
described in detail in a series of articles pub¬ 
lished in the Engineering Magazine from Janu¬ 
ary to June 1912 and in a book entitled Modern 
Organization: An Exposition of the Unit Sys¬ 
tem (1912). As proposed, the plan of reorgani¬ 
zation was limited to railroads. From 1908 to 
1911 he was organization expert for the Union 
Pacific System, and as such put his plan into 
operation on several of the Harriman lines. 
After the dissolution of the Union Pacific- 
Southern Pacific combination by order of the 
Supreme Court, his plan was abandoned. In 
1912-13 he was senior vice-president and gen¬ 
eral manager of the Southern Pacific Railroad 
of Mexico, and the Arizona Eastern Railroad. 
In his later years, he was retained as an expert 
organizer by several railroads, including the 
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Baltimore & 
Ohio, the Delaware & Hudson, the Erie, and 
the New York, New Haven & Hartford. In 
this work, as in his previous work for the Union 
Pacific, his basic principle was that too much 
specialization is the lazy man’s excuse for shift¬ 
ing responsibility to other people. 

In March 19x5, Hine married Helen Under¬ 
wood of Covington, Ky. They had no children. 
He died in New York City. 

Who's Who in America, 1927-28; R. C. Hine, Hine 
Geneal. (1899) > G. W. Cullum, Biog. Reg, Officers and 
Grads., U. S . Mil. Acad., Supp., vol. VI-A (1920) ; The 
Biog. Directory of the Railway Officials of America, 
1913; Railway World, July 1914; Railway Age , Feb. 
19, 1927; Railway and Locomotive Engineering, Mar. 


Hinman 

1927; Evening Star (Washington, D. G), Feb. 14, 
1927 -3 S.D. 

HINMAN, ELISHA (Mar. 9, i734“Aug. 29, 
1805), naval officer, was born at Stonington, 
Conn., the eighth of the nine children of Capt. 
Andrew and Mary (Noble) Hinman and the 
great-grandson of Sergeant Edward Hinman 
who settled in Stratford, Conn., about 1650. He 
went to sea young and at nineteen commanded a 
brig in the West-India trade. About 1760 he 
settled in New London. Early in 1776 he en¬ 
tered Revolutionary service as a lieutenant in the 
Continental navy, assigned to the Cabot, one of 
Commodore Esek Hopkins’ squadron on the 
New Providence Expedition. Commanded by 
Capt. J. B. Hopkins [q.vJ], son of the commo¬ 
dore, the brig bore the brunt of the action with 
the British ship Glasgow . In August Hinman 
was appointed to command her, and on the list 
of captains, as established Oct. 10, 1776, he is 
number twenty. Later he was given command 
of the ship Alfred. After an uneventful cruise 
in the spring of 1777, the Alfred was ordered to 
France in company with the frigate Raleigh, 
with Capt. Thomas Thompson as senior officer. 
They sailed in August. Falling in with a large 
British convoy escorted by four men-of-war, 
they planned a descent on the convoy and the 
capture of many prizes, but their scheme was 
frustrated by circumstances and by the incapac¬ 
ity of Captain Thompson. The ships arrived in 
France and at the end of December set sail on 
the return voyage. In March 1778 they fell in 
with two British ships of inferior force, but the 
Americans being separated, both enemy ships 
attacked the Alfred and forced her surrender. 
Thompson, blamed for not coming to her rescue 
and for fleeing from an inferior force, was tried 
by court-martial and was dismissed from the 
navy. Hinman was tried later and acquitted 
(Independent Chronicle, Boston, Mar. 18,1779). 
Meanwhile he was confined in Forton prison, 
but, escaping, he made his way to France and 
thence home. This ended his Revolutionary serv¬ 
ice. Finding no further employment in the 
navy, in the later years of the war he turned to 
privateering. He commanded the ship Deane 
and the brigantine Marquis de Lafayette, but lit¬ 
tle is known of his success in these ventures. 
When in 1779 the Trumbull, built in the Con¬ 
necticut River, was unable to pass over the bar, 
Hinman, it is said, suggested the device used to 
lift the frigate and float her over ( Records and 
Papers of the New London County Historical 
Society, vol. I, pt. 4,1893, P* 47 )« After the war 
he was engaged in mercantile business and for 
several years commanded the revenue cutter at 



Hinman 

New London. He died at Stonington in his sev¬ 
enty-second year. He had married, on Mar. i, 
1777, Abigail Dolbear, the daughter of George 
Dolbear of New London. 

[R. R. Hinman, A Family Record of the Descendants 
of Sergeant Edward Hinman (1856) ; L. F. Middle- 
brook, Hist, of Maritime Conn. During the American 
Revolution (2 vols., 1925) ; Records and Papers of the 
New London County Hist. Soc. f vol. I, pt. 2 (1890), 
p. 49 ; C. O. Paullin, ed., “Out-Letters of the Continen¬ 
tal Marine Committee and Board of Admiralty, Aug. 
1776-Sept. 1780,” Pubs. of the Naval Hist. Soc., vols. 

IV and V (1914) ; C. H. Lincoln, Naval Records of 
the American Revolution, 1775-88 (1906); G. W. 
Allen, A Naval Hist, of the Am. Revolution (2 vols., 

G.W.A. 

HINMAN, GEORGE WHEELER (Nov. 19, 
1864-Mar. 31, 1927), editor, publicist, educator, 
president of Marietta College, was bom in 
Mount Morris, N. Y., the son of Wheeler and 
Lydia Kelsey (Seymour) Hinman. He attended 
Mount Morris Academy, entered Hamilton Col¬ 
lege in 1880, and graduated with honors in 1884. 
After a little more than a year as a newspaper 
reporter in Chicago and St. Louis he entered 
upon advanced studies in economics and public 
law in the universities of Germany. He studied 
under Rudolf von Gneist in Berlin and other fa¬ 
mous teachers in Leipzig and Heidelberg and 
received the degree of Ph.D. at Heidelberg in 
February 1888. He then returned to the United 
States to begin a long career as a journalist, or 
publicist, as he preferred to call himself. He 
joined the staff of the New York Sun (1888), 
then under the editorial direction of Charles A. 
Dana, and in time acquired the vigorous, plain- 
speaking literary style of the elder man. In 1891 
he married Maud M. Sturtevant of New York 
City. After nearly ten years with the Sun he 
became editor-in-chief of the Chicago Inter 
Ocean (1898) and later president of the com¬ 
pany (1902). His editorial ability made his 
newspaper a powerful influence in the Middle 
West, but he and his associates never succeeded 
in placing it on a sound financial basis. In 1912 
Hinman disposed of his interest in the Inter 
Ocean , intending to retire from active editorial 
work, but in the following year he accepted the 
presidency of Marietta College. His inaugural 
address, delivered on Oct. 14, 1913 (“The New 
Duty of American Colleges,” Marietta College 
Bulletin, Dec. 1913, and United States Senate 
Document 236 , 63 Cong., 1 Sess.), was a de¬ 
fense of the “representative republic” of the Fa¬ 
thers and a condemnation of the “limitless de¬ 
mocracy” which Hinman saw behind the indus¬ 
trial reforms advocated by Presidents Roosevelt 
and Wilson. “Education has the imperative duty 
to prepare men either to fall in with this mighty 
change intelligently or to resist it intelligently— 

65 


Hinman 

to let them know just what are these institutions 
which it is proposed to bring from other ages 
and peoples and substitute for the institutions 
that we now have.” His policy for Marietta Col¬ 
lege was to secure for its students not only a lib¬ 
eral education, but to give a special education in 
the problems of the day that every one might 
know “the verdict of history on such a govern¬ 
ment as is proposed to us.” Among his own 
students he fortified his position by teaching in 
great detail a course in the history of the French 
Revolution. His policies and his personal meth¬ 
ods divided the college body into two antago¬ 
nistic factions. He did not seek, and likewise 
did not win, much favor from the alumni body. 
On Jan. 1, 1918, he left college administration 
and returned to Chicago and newspaper work. A 
life of retirement was foreign to his nature. In 
1921 he became head of the association which 
published the Chicago Herald and Examiner. 
In March 1923 he resigned this position but con¬ 
ducted a column syndicated in the Hearst papers. 
His home was at Winnetka, Ill., and there he 
died in his sixty-third year, active until the end. 
Although Hinman possessed a commanding fig¬ 
ure and seemed to enjoy defending his convic¬ 
tions, he was ordinarily gentle and sympathetic 
and was always deeply religious. It was not as 
an educator or college administrator that he 
made deepest impress on his generation, but as 
an editor and publicist. He was the last of the 
old school of personal editors, and the Inter 
Ocean was the last of the personally edited news¬ 
papers of Chicago. He differed from his con¬ 
temporaries in the deliberate choice of his career 
and in his unusual preparation for its responsi¬ 
bilities, but he did not escape the intense preju¬ 
dices common to the writers on public questions 
at the opening of the twentieth century. 

{Sigma Phi Flame, Oct. 1927 ; Marietta Coll. Alumni 
Quart., Apr. 1927 ; Hist, of the Class of 1884 Hamilton 
Coll., 1884-1914 (19x4); Who's Who in America, 
1926-27 ; Chicago Herald and Examiner, Chicago Trib¬ 
une, Apr. i, 1927.] E.J.B. 

HINMAN, JOEL (Jan. 27,1802-Feb. 21,1870), 
jurist, born at Southbury, Conn., was the twelfth 
of the fifteen children of Joel and Sarah (Cur¬ 
tis) Hinman. He was descended from Edward 
Hinman, said to have been of the bodyguard of 
Charles I, who settled in Stratford, Conn., about 
1650. Both his father and his grandfather, Col. 
Benjamin Hinman, served as officers in the Rev¬ 
olutionary War. Later his father became a pros¬ 
perous farmer in Southbury. Young Hinman 
received a common-school education and then 
began the study of the law. He first studied with 
Judge Chapman at Newtown and later in the 
firm of Staples & Hitchcock at New Haven. 



Hinsdale 

Shortly after reaching his majority he was ad- 
mitted to the New Haven County bar and settled 
in Waterbury to practise law. On Oct. 9, 1825, 
he married Alathea Maria Scovill of Water¬ 
bury. In 1830 he was appointed a judge of pro¬ 
bate for the Waterbury district and held this of¬ 
fice for ten years. Having taken an active in¬ 
terest in party politics, he was elected to repre¬ 
sent the 5th district in the state Senate in 1836 
and was reelected for the succeeding term. He 
then served as a member of the House of Repre¬ 
sentatives for the town of Waterbury. In 1842, 
while a member of the House, he was elected a 
judge of the superior and supreme courts, there¬ 
by winning the distinction of being the youngest 
man up to that time elevated to that position. 

There was little in Hinman’s record to war¬ 
rant his receiving this honor. During his ca¬ 
reer as a legislator he spoke seldom and never 
at length, and in the active practice of his pro¬ 
fession he was slow of utterance, indolent, and 
unmethodical. The limited practice of a country 
lawyer provided no incentive for wide legal re¬ 
search and it had only been upon rare occasions 
that he had displayed any considerable knowl¬ 
edge of the law. He was recognized as a leader, 
however, and his elevation to the bench gave 
him some inducement to exert himself and an 
opportunity to display his native qualities of 
mind. After some nineteen years on the bench 
he became the chief justice, a post which he held 
until his death. His opinions, contained in twen¬ 
ty volumes of the Connecticut Reports } are sim¬ 
ple and direct, and are remarkable for their prac¬ 
tical common sense rather than for their erudi¬ 
tion. Hinman was an unusually heavy person 
and was slow and ponderous in his movements. 
For forty years he maintained the same style in 
dress and was always to be seen in frock coat 
and full broad-ruffled shirt. 

[R. R. Hinman, A Family Record of the Descendants 
of Sergeant Edward Hinman (1856) ; 35 Conn. 590- 
603; Albany Law Jour., Mar. 5, i8;o; Hartford Daily 
Courant, Feb. 22, 1870.] L H S 

HINSDALE, BURKE AARON (Mar. 31, 
1837-Nov. 29, 1900), educator, editor, author, 
was born on a farm near Wadsworth, Ohio, the 
son of Albert Hinsdale, who moved from Tor- 
rington, Conn., to Ohio, in the fall of 1816, and 
Clarinda Elvira Eyles, the daughter of other 
emigrants from Connecticut who had cast their 
lot in the Western Reserve. He was descended 
from Robert Hinsdale who came to America in 
1637, settling first at Dedham, Mass., and later 
in Deerfield. He worked on his father’s farm 
and attended the short sessions of the district 
school until his sixteenth year. He then entered 
Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram 

66 


Hinsdale 

College). His student days, scattered over the 
years from 1853 to i860, were interspersed with 
short winter terms of school teaching. At Hiram 
he found James A. Garfield, first a student and 
later a member of the faculty and principal of 
the Institute. Between them developed a life¬ 
long friendship. In i860 Hinsdale became a 
tutor in the Eclectic Institute and through the 
Civil-War period he was one of a small group 
of instructors that remained at the school. Later, 
from 1864 to 1869, he held church pastorates in 
Solon and Cleveland and was for one year a pro¬ 
fessor in a college which had a brief existence at 
Alliance, Ohio. During this interval he was as¬ 
sistant editor of the Christian Standard , a church 
weekly published under the auspices of the Dis¬ 
ciples of Christ. On May 24, 1862, he had mar¬ 
ried Mary Eliza Turner of Cleveland who had 
been a classmate at Hiram. 

In 1869 Hinsdale became professor of philoso¬ 
phy, English literature, and political science in 
Hiram College. In the next year he was made 
president, and under his administration the in¬ 
stitution became a college in fact as well as in 
name. He continued at its head until 1882, serv¬ 
ing as lecturer, preacher, and administrator. 
During these years also he wrote three books on 
theological subjects and in 1880, at the request 
of the Republican National Committee, he wrote 
a campaign life of Garfield. Upon the death of 
the President, he published as a Hiram memorial 
President Garfield and Education (1881), a trib¬ 
ute revealing the author’s growing interest in 
the problems of education. Later he edited The 
Works of James Abram Garfield (2 vols., 1882- 
83). Having won wide recognition as an edu¬ 
cator, in 1882 he became superintendent of the 
Cleveland schools, an office which he held four 
years. At the time the Cleveland school system 
was under a cloud of textbook and patronage 
scandals and it is doubtful whether Hinsdale and 
the board of education had much in common or 
ever understood one another. He was not re¬ 
elected in 1886, but he remained two years in 
Cleveland largely engaged in compiling his his¬ 
torical study, The Old Northwest (1888). He 
had meanwhile published a collection of articles 
and addresses under the title: Schools and Stud¬ 
ies (1884). In 1888 he accepted the professor¬ 
ship of the science and art of teaching at the Uni¬ 
versity of Michigan, and in addition to his teach¬ 
ing he continued to write on the subjects which 
had long interested him. In his studies in the 
field of education, he showed himself in his later 
works to be rather less critical of existing meth¬ 
ods of instruction than he had formerly been, 
supplanting his criticism with constructive meth- 



Hirsch 


Hirsch 


odology. His most important studies of his 
last period were: The American Government 
(1891); How to Study and Teach History 
(1894); Jesus as a Teacher and the Making of 
the New Testament (1895) ; Teaching the Lan¬ 
guage-Arts (1896); Horace Mann and the Com¬ 
mon School Revival in the United States 
(1898); The Art of Study (1900) J and History 
of the University of Michigan (1906), posthu¬ 
mously published. Hinsdale died at Atlanta, 
Ga., in his sixty-fourth year. Although he had 
never graduated from college, he received aca¬ 
demic recognition from Williams College, Beth¬ 
any College, Ohio State University, Hiram Col¬ 
lege, and Ohio University. 

[Hinsdale’s letters and manuscripts were given to 
Hiram College. For printed sources consult: Herbert 
C. Andrews, Hinsdale Geneal. (1906) ; Hinsdale’s Hist, 
of the University of Mich. (1906), ed. by I. N. Dem- 
mon; Samuel C. Derby, memoir in the “Old Northwest” 
Geneal . Quart., Oct. 1901; Ohio Archceol. and Hist . 
Quart., Jan. 1901; F. M. Green, Hiram Coll, and West¬ 
ern Reserve Eclectic Inst. (1901) ; J. R. Angell, memoir 
in Nat. Educ. Asso.: Jour, of Proc. and Addresses, 
1901; Educ. Rev., Feb., Mar. 1901 ; Mich. Alumnus, 
Jan. 1901; Detroit Free Press , Nov. 30, 1900.] 

E.J.B. 

HIRSCH, EMIL GUSTAV (May 22, 1851- 
Jan. 7, 1923), rabbi, scholar, civic leader, was 
the youngest child of Samuel Hirsch, chief rabbi 
of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, and Louise 
(Michols) Hirsch. His father, whose influence 
on his thinking was always evident, was a Jew¬ 
ish scholar of great attainments, with deep philo¬ 
sophic interests. When Hirsch was fifteen years 
old, his father accepted a call from a Jewish con¬ 
gregation in Philadelphia which transplanted the 
family to the United States. In Philadelphia, 
Hirsch studied both at the Episcopal Academy 
and at the University of Pennsylvania, where he 
graduated in 1872. From 1872 to 1876 he studied 
at the Hochschule fur die Wissenschaft des Ju- 
dentums at Berlin, and also at the universities 
of Berlin and Leipzig. He was greatly inspired 
as well as instructed by such masters of Jewish 
lore as Abraham Geiger, Moritz Lazarus, and 
Herman Steinthal. Returning to America, he 
preached for a short time in Philadelphia, then 
at Har Sinai Congregation, Baltimore (1877- 
78), and at Congregation Adath Israel, Louis¬ 
ville, Ky. (1878-80). During his ministry in 
Louisville, in 1878, he married Mathilda Ein- 
hom, the daughter of Rabbi David Einhorn 
[q.v .]. In the year 1880 he was called to Chicago 
Sinai Congregation, left vacant by the resigna¬ 
tion of Kaufman Kohler \_q.vJ\> his brother-in- 
law. 

He was much sought as lecturer, orator, 
champion and advocate of worthy causes then 
unpopular. His power over audiences came not 


through mere oratory, but from a strong con¬ 
tagious conviction, a keen intellectual analysis 
of the issues involved, and a mastery of the sub¬ 
ject. Sinai pulpit attracted Jews and non-Jews, 
and opponents as well as proponents of the 
varied humanitarian causes advocated. He was 
equally forcible as a writer and editor. He was 
editor of the Zeitgeist (Milwaukee), 1880-83; 
of the Jewish Reformer (New York), 1886; and 
of the Reform Advocate from 1891 until his 
death in 1923. 

As a Jew, Hirsch was known to be extremely 
liberal. He swept aside forms and ceremonies 
which he felt had outlived their usefulness. He 
was the first to have only a Sunday service in 
the Synagogue, permitting the traditional Jew¬ 
ish sabbath to be unobserved. He had little sym¬ 
pathy with the racial and national interpretation 
of Jewish life and philosophy, insisting that 
Jews were a religious people—not a race or na¬ 
tion. He therefore opposed vigorously the Zion¬ 
ist movement, though there was much in its cul¬ 
tural program with which he might have been in 
complete harmony. He was one of the leading 
spirits in organizing the Associated Jewish 
Charities of Chicago; he advocated and inspired 
the Home Finding Society, insisting on “or¬ 
phans in homes” rather than “orphan homes.” 
When during the last two decades of the nine¬ 
teenth century there was a great influx of immi¬ 
grants from Eastern Europe, he saw the need 
for and organized the Jewish Training School 
(manual training), and supported it until educa¬ 
tors in general caught the vision and it was 
made part of the public school system. What 
others had done toward socializing the Church, 
Hirsch not only did for the Synagogue, but also 
pointed out, in no uncertain terms, that while 
Christianity began as a religion of personal sal¬ 
vation, the prophets of Judaism always voiced 
a social message. In 1888 he was a member of 
the Board of the Chicago Public Library and 
later became its president; he was a member of 
the State Board of Charities. During the 
World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, he was 
one of the outstanding leaders of the Parliament 
of Religions. In 1896 he served as a presiden¬ 
tial elector. Frequently he served on boards of 
arbitration in labor disputes. 

In 1892 he was appointed to the chair of rab¬ 
binic literature and philosophy at the University 
of Chicago, being one of the learned group of 
research scholars that William Rainey Harper 
[g.i/.], the first president of the University, gath¬ 
ered about him. He received numerous hon¬ 
orary degrees. He was editor of the Biblical 
Department for the last ten volumes of the Jew - 


6 7 



Hirst 

ish Encyclopedia, and wrote many valuable arti¬ 
cles himself, both in his own department and in 
the department of rabbinical literature, philoso¬ 
phy and ethics. 

In a very literal sense of the word, Hirsch was 
the Jew's ambassador to the Gentiles, the Jewish 
apostle to the non-Jewish world. In carrying 
the message of Judaism to what frequently was 
an unsympathetic audience, he never stooped or 
compromised; and he gave the non-Jew an ap¬ 
preciation of Judaism, even as he taught the Jew 
to understand Christianity. Before non-Jewish 
audiences he insisted that Jesus was not a Chris¬ 
tian, but a Jew; that the New Testament was 
largely a Jewish document, with the old Mid- 
rashic and Talmudic literary gems reset and re¬ 
polished. He taught the non-Jewish world to 
understand that Judaism did not end with the 
Old Testament but began with it, that Jews 
wrote the Bible, that it was a product of their re¬ 
ligious genius; and to Jews he always insisted 
that Israel has a “mission” to perform to unite 
mankind in righteousness and peace. 

[Who's Who in America, 1922-23; E. G. Hirsch, 
My Religion (1925), with introduction by G. B. Levi; 
The Jewish Encyc VI (1925), 410-11; Reform Advo¬ 
cate, May 21, 1921, Jan. 13 and May 26, 1923; Univer¬ 
sity Record (Chicago), Apr. 1923; Central Conf . of 
Am, Rabbis, Thirty-fourth Ann . Corn. (1923); Chi¬ 
cago Tribune, Jan. 8, 1923,] L.L.M. 

HIRST, HENRY BECK (Aug. 23,1817-Mar. 
30, 1874), poet, lawyer, was born in Philadel¬ 
phia. His father, Thomas Hirst, was a mer¬ 
chant ; nothing is known of his mother. His half- 
brother, William L. Hirst, gained some distinc¬ 
tion as a barrister, and in 1830, “with no other 
education than that received previously at an in¬ 
fant school,” Henry later wrote, “I entered the 
office of my half-brother” to study law. At the 
age of sixteen he was enrolled in the preparatory 
school of the University of Pennsylvania where 
he remained nine months. “I carried off the 
leading honors in all my classes,” he asserted, 
but he apparently returned soon to his law read¬ 
ings. He was admitted to the bar in 1843. A 
few years previous he had been in business as a 
florist and seed merchant. From boyhood he had 
shown an active interest in natural history. “I 
studied ornithology, botany, mineralogy, and 
conchology very closely,” he later wrote. A por¬ 
tion of the above assertion is borne out by The 
Book of Caged Birds (1843), a rare and queer 
little volume containing a number of poems, 
three of them by Hirst To his dying day Hirst 
stanchly maintained that he, and not Edgar 
Allan Poe, with whom for a time he was inti¬ 
mate, was the author of “The Raven.” This 
statement oft repeated has been the source of a 


Hirst 

small sheaf of controversial literature. Hirst 
was a diligent contributor to the magazines of 
the day. His poems appeared in the Ladies' 
Companion, the Southern Literary Messenger, 
and Graham's . Some of them were signed Anna 
Maria Hirst. In the forties Hirst was on the 
staff of two Philadelphia papers. His first col¬ 
lection of poems, The Coming of the Mammoth, 
appeared in 1845. Three years later his most 
distinguished effort, Endymion, was issued. In 
1849 he published The Penance of Roland, with 
a Proem dedicated to his wife, from which it may 
be concluded that he was married before or dur¬ 
ing this year. Meantime he had sacrificed his 
friendship with Poe on the altar of parody. He 
had distorted Poe's matchless lines in “The 
Haunted Palace” to 

“Never negro took a ‘nip’ in 
Fabric half so black and bare.” 

Though the content of Hirst's poems is bi¬ 
zarre, illogical, often quite negligible, he proved 
himself not infrequently a master of versifica¬ 
tion. He employed many meters, often well man¬ 
aged, but it would be difficult to find another 
poet of repute who ruined the lilt of his verse 
with so many jarring and banal rhymes. The 
explanation is probably to be found in the state¬ 
ment that “Hirst was an amorous fellow who 
drank absinthe at a ruinous rate” (Oberholtzer, 
post, p. 302). Though he sent copies of his 
books to President Grant, stating that he had re¬ 
ceived degrees from Oxford, he was at no time 
recipient of an honorary degree at home or 
abroad. Undoubtedly by 1869 his dissipations 
had disarranged his mind. Toward the close of 
his life he became an object of pity: “Purring 
like a cat and swaying his body to and fro to the 
rhythm he was trying, he would jot down words 
here and there with intervals left to be filled in.” 
His former inordinate self-esteem had developed 
into insanity. He moved about the streets of 
Philadelphia in strange habiliments, “imagining 
himself by turns the President of the United 
States and the various emperors, kings, and 
queens of Europe” (Ibid,, p, 304). He was final¬ 
ly placed in the insane department of the Block- 
ley Almshouse, where he died at the age of 
sixty. 

[The biography of Hirst mentioned by Matthew 
Woods in a letter to George Edward Woodberry (see 
Appendix to Woodberry’s Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 
1909), has never appeared; nor has diligent search been 
able to discover any manuscript material. A sketch of 
Hirst by Thomas Dunn English in an obscure maga¬ 
zine has eluded every attempt to discover it. A sketch 
by Poe appears in The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (4 
vols., 1876), III, 209. The only authentic, carefully 
documented biography of Hirst is the manuscript copy 
of a master’s thesis in the Columbia Univ. Lib,; “The 



Hise 

Life and Writings of Henry Beck Hirst of Philadel¬ 
phia,” by Helen Lucille Watts (May 1925). A small 
collection of letters to Hirst are in the N. Y. Pub. Lib. 
Certain information may be found in E. P. Oberholtzer, 
The Lit. Hist, of Phila. (1906) ; J. H. Martin, Martin's 
Bench and Bar of Phila . (1883); E. A. and G. L. 
Duyckinck, The Cyc. of Am. Lit (rev. ed. 1875), H, 
502; R. W. Griswold, The Poets and Poetry of Amer¬ 
ica *(1842 ); John Sartain, The Reminiscences of a 
Very Old Man (1899) ; Huh. Ledger (Phila.), Apr. 1, 
1874; Press (Phila.), Apr. 2, 1874.] C.F.S. 

HISE, ELIJAH (July 4, 1801-May 8, 1867), 
lawyer, judge, charge d'affaires to Guatemala, 
was born in Allegheny County, Pa., of German 
parentage. His father, Frederick Hise, seems 
to have come to the United States during the 
Revolution and to have fought in some of its 
battles. In the early years of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury the father moved his family to Kentucky 
and finally settled as a merchant in Russellville, 
Logan County. Here, Elijah, the eldest son, evi¬ 
dently secured his preparatory schooling, but 
he went to Transylvania University, at Lexing¬ 
ton, for his professional training, receiving the 
degree of LL.B. in 1823. Shortly afterward he 
began the practice of law in Russellville. Aided 
by dramatic gifts and unusual eloquence, as well 
as by natural aptitude for the law, he developed 
a large practice, became widely known as a law¬ 
yer, and accumulated a fortune. In 1832, after 
being well established in his profession, he mar¬ 
ried .Elvira L. D. Stewart, whose parents were 
Russellville pioneers. 

Though Hise was an ardent Democrat and 
supported Jackson in a strongly Whig commu¬ 
nity, he filled no important political office until 
after President Polk had appointed him, early in 
April 1848, charge to Guatemala. At the time, 
the United States government was disturbed 
over British aggressions in Central America, 
especially in Nicaragua, where the British gov¬ 
ernment had set up a protectorate over the Mos¬ 
quito Indians. It was the aim of the Polk ad¬ 
ministration to learn through Hise the extent of 
the British activities and to secure a general 
survey of the situation in Central America, with 
a view to adopting a specific policy. Hise was 
instructed accordingly. Shortly after his arrival 
on the Isthmus he negotiated treaties of friend¬ 
ship and commerce with Guatemala, Honduras, 
and Nicaragua. He had been instructed not to 
treat with the last two but felt justified in doing 
so because he had become quickly convinced of 
the unfriendly designs of England. That coun¬ 
try, he believed, aimed especially to monopolize 
the canal route across Nicaragua. Hence, after 
having waited in vain for further instructions 
from his government, he decided to prevent the 
success of the supposed British schemes by sign¬ 
ing, on his own responsibility, a canal treaty 


Hitchcock 

with Nicaragua. This was done in June 1849. 
By the terms of the document the United States 
or its citizens were to receive the exclusive right 
to build an interoceanic waterway across Nica¬ 
ragua, and in return fo'r this concession the 
United States was to guarantee protection to 
Nicaragua in all territory rightly hers. Mean¬ 
while, in May 1849, Hise had been recalled, 
though he did not receive word until after the 
treaty had been negotiated. The treaty was never 
ratified, but it caused considerable embarrass¬ 
ment to the Taylor administration. 

During the remainder of his career Hise de¬ 
voted most of his time to private law practice; 
but in 1851 he was elected judge of the Kentucky 
court of appeals, serving until August 1854. On 
the bench he showed great independence of 
mind and gained considerable attention by his 
elaborate dissenting opinion in the case of Slack 
vs. Maysville and Lexington Railroad Company 
(52 Ky., 1). In the autumn of 1866 he was 
elected to Congress from Kentucky, to fill out 
the term of Henry Girder, and devoted himself 
with despairing energy to the vain task of sup¬ 
porting President Johnson and of preventing the 
passage of drastic reconstruction legislation. 
Early in May 1867, he was reelected to office, 
but a few days later, ill and despondent over his 
inability to help his country, he shot himself in 
his Russellville home. Though Hise was un¬ 
compromising in his political views, high-strung, 
and at times morose, his frankness and sincerity, 
his keen, logical mind, and especially his un¬ 
usual ability as a public speaker, won him con¬ 
siderable admiration and respect. 

[Brief sketches of Hise are to be found in The Law¬ 
yers and Lawmakers of Ky. (1897), ed. by H. Levm, 
and in the Biog. Encyc. of Ky. (1878). Other sources 
include: 51» 5 2 > and 53, Ky. Reports ; Letters of Ban¬ 
croft and Buchanan on the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 
1849,1850/’ Am. Hist . Rev., Oct. 1899; Lhe Works of 
las. Buchanan (12 vols., 1908-11), ed. by J. B. Moore; 
House Executive Doc. 75 , 31 Cong, 1 Sess.; Cong. 
Globe, 39 Cong., 2 Sess., passim/, Ibid., 40 Cong., 2 
Sess., pp. 743 - 45 ; Louisville Daily Jour., May 9, 10, 
1867; Louisville Daily Democrat, May 9, 1867.] 

M.W.W. 

HITCHCOCK, CHARLES HENRY (Aug. 
23,1836-Nov. s, 1919). geologist, son of Edward 
[g.v.] and Orra (White) Hitchcock and brother 
of the younger Edward Hitchcock [g.w.], was 
born in Amherst, Mass., where his father was 
professor of geology in Amherst College. As a 
child Charles is said to have taken a lively inter¬ 
est in his father’s work and to have accompanied 
him on his geological excursions whenever fea¬ 
sible. He was trained in the classical and pre¬ 
paratory course of Williston Seminary and grad¬ 
uated from Amherst College in 1856, before his 
twentieth birthday. Following graduation he 


69 



Hitchcock Hitchcock 


became assistant to his father on the geological 
survey of Vermont (1857-61), and during the 
same period pursued theological studies at Yale 
for a year and at Andover Seminary for two 
years, with a view to entering the ministry. His 
geological field work seems, however, to have 
diverted his taste to another calling, and in 1861 
he was appointed state geologist of Maine. From 
1858 to 1866 he served also as curator of the 
museum at Amherst, and was lecturer on zool¬ 
ogy, 1858-64. He was non-resident lecturer for 
Lafayette College, Pennsylvania, from 1866 to 
1870, and in the decade 1860-70 served also in 
a private capacity as an expert for various min¬ 
ing interests in the Eastern states. During the 
year 1866-67 he studied at the Royal School of 
Mines in London and traveled in Europe, re¬ 
turning to receive the appointments of state 
geologist of New Hampshire (1868) and pro¬ 
fessor of geology and mineralogy at Dartmouth 
College. 

Facilities for detailed geological work in 
Maine were not such as to promote results of 
consequence, and it was not until the survey of 
New Hampshire was undertaken that Hitchcock 
had a reasonable opportunity to display his abil¬ 
ities as an administrator and geologist. This 
survey continued for ten years, or until 1878; 
and its results were given to the public—aside 
from the brief annual reports—in three quarto 
volumes, The Geology of New Hampshire 
(1874-78). The glacial geology of the state nat¬ 
urally received much attention. For a part of 
each year from 1870 to 1896 Hitchcock was lec¬ 
turer on geology at Mount Holyoke. In 1908, 
after forty years at Dartmouth, he retired as 
professor emeritus and took up his residence in 
Honolulu, H. I., devoting his attention thence¬ 
forth mainly to volcanic problems. His last pub¬ 
lication, Hawaii and its Volcanoes, a volume of 
314 pages with fifty plates, was issued in 1909. 
He died at Honolulu ten years later, having 
nearly reached the age of eighty-three. 

Hitchcock was married, June 19, 1862, to 
Martha Bliss Barrows of Andover, Mass., who 
died in February 1892, leaving him two sons 
and three daughters. On Sept. 4,1894, he mar¬ 
ried Charlotte Malvina Barrows, a sister of his 
first wife. 

[Memoir by Warren Upham in Bull. Geol. Soc . of 
America, vol. XXXI (1920), with full bibliography of 
Hitchcock’s publications; H. C. Graves, Hist, of the 
Class of 1856 of Amherst Coll. (1896); Pop . Sci. Mo., 
Dec. 1898; M. L. J. Hitchcock, The Geneal. of the 
Hitchcock Family (1894); Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 
Nov. 6, 1919; Pacific Commercial Advertiser, Nov. 7, 
* 919 .] G.P.M, 

HITCHCOCK, EDWARD (May 24, 1793- 
Feb. 27, 1864), geologist, educator, Congrega¬ 


tional clergyman, was the son of Justin and 
Mercy (Hoyt) Hitchcock and was born at Deer¬ 
field, Mass. His ancestry was English: the first 
of the family, Matthias Hitchcock, came from 
London to Boston on the bark Susan and Ellen 
in May 1635 and settled in East Haven, Conn., 
after a short stay in Watertown, Mass. Justin, 
the father of Edward, was fifth in line of descent 
from Luke Hitchcock, brother of Matthias, who 
took the freeman's oath in New Haven in July 
1644 an d afterward settled in Wethersfield. The 
family was in moderate circumstances and Ed¬ 
ward was to a large extent thrown upon his own 
resources and those of the public school for his 
education. Early developing scholastic tenden¬ 
cies, with a fondness for natural history and 
mathematics, he first attracted more than local 
notice through his discovery of numerous errors, 
which he corrected, in Blunt's Nautical Almanac. 
Between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-six 
he was principal of the Deerfield Academy, and 
through the influence of Amos Eaton [q.v.], then 
a free-lance lecturer, he became interested in 
botany and mineralogy. Choosing the ministry 
for his profession, he entered the theological 
school at New Haven. Here he was thrown in 
association with Prof. Benjamin Silliman [q.v.], 
with whom he formed a life-long friendship. 
From 1821 to 1825 he was settled over the Con¬ 
gregational church in Conway, Mass., and in the 
last-named year was at his own request dis¬ 
missed on account of poor health and appointed 
professor of chemistry and natural history in 
Amherst College. Twenty years later he became 
president of the college, holding that office for 
ten years and then resigning to assume a pro¬ 
fessorship of geology and natural theology. 

Through Hitchcock's efforts there was estab¬ 
lished in 1830 a geological survey of the state 
of Massachusetts, of which he was made the 
head. The work was continued for three years 
and was the first of its kind in America to be 
carried to completion. Its results were pub¬ 
lished in Report on the Geology, Mineralogy, 
Botany, and Zoology of Massachusetts (1833). 
In 1837 Hitchcock undertook a renewal of the 
survey under state auspices, bringing the work 
to completion in 1841 (Final Report on the Geol¬ 
ogy of Massachusetts, 2 vols., 1841). Mean¬ 
while, in 1836 he had been appointed geologist 
of the first district of the newly organized sur¬ 
vey of New York, but he resigned because the 
duties of the position were too heavy in addition 
to those he was already carrying. The matter 
which first brought him into public notice was 
the discovery made by James Deane and others 
of enormous birdlike tracks in the red sand- 


70 



Hitchcock 

stone of the Connecticut Valley. Deane sent 
these tracks to Hitchcock and thus started a se¬ 
ries of investigations in which Hitchcock al¬ 
ways remained the dominant figure. The tracks, 
while strongly resembling those of birds, were 
after years of study by the highest authorities of 
the day ascribed to a dinosauric origin. 

Hitchcock was the first chairman (1840) of 
the Association of American Geologists and 
Naturalists which in 1847 became the American 
Association for the Advancement of Science. 
In 1856, while continuing his connection with 
the college at Amherst, he assumed the proffered 
position of state geologist of Vermont, and in 
1861 presented his completed Report on the Geol¬ 
ogy of Vermont in the form of two quarto vol¬ 
umes, with thirty-six full-page plates and a geo¬ 
logical map. One of the observations of this 
survey which excited considerable interest at the 
time was the flattening and other distortion of 
quartz pebbles in conglomerates. This phenom¬ 
enon Hitchcock had first noted in Rhode Island 
in 1832, but it was not until 1861, and in con¬ 
nection with the Vermont survey, that he was 
able to establish beyond question the accuracy 
of his first observation. He early became inter¬ 
ested in the problems of the drift, though he 
never quite accepted Agassiz’s glacial theory. 
His paper on the river terraces of the Connecti¬ 
cut Valley, Illustrations of Surface Geology 
(1857), published by the Smithsonian Institu¬ 
tion, was for its time a classic. He was a prolific 
writer on a variety of subjects. He wrote five 
volumes and thirty-seven pamphlets and tracts 
on religious themes, the most notable being The 
Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences 
(1851); three volumes and as many tracts on 
temperance; fourteen volumes, five tracts, and 
some seventy-five papers on botanical, miner- 
alogical, geological, and physical subjects, and 
twenty-seven others, including a tragedy, Eman¬ 
cipation of Europe ; or the Downfall of Bona¬ 
parte (1815), which during his principalship of 
the Deerfield Academy was “acted with great 
success before his neighbors” (C. H. Hitchcock, 
post, 134, 139). His Elementary Geology, pub¬ 
lished in 1840, passed through thirty editions and 
was then revised. In 1863 he published Rem¬ 
iniscences of Amherst College . 

Hitchcock is pictured as the typical New Eng¬ 
land clergyman of his day, a trifle stem, digni¬ 
fied, and smoothshaven. His ability is. nowhere 
better shown than in his skilful handling of so 
delicate a question as that relating to geology 
and the Scriptures. Since he had nearly ruined 
both health and eyesight early in his career by 
overwork, it is remarkable that he did so much 


Hitchcock 

and did it so well. He was married in 1821 to 
Orra White of Amherst, an artist of ability who 
drew many of the illustrations for her husband’s 
works. Six of the children born to them lived 
to maturity, and two, Edward and Charles Henry 
[qq.v.'j, became distinguished in the fields of 
education and geology respectively. 

[Autobiographical notes in Hitchcock’s Reminis¬ 
cences of Amherst College ; memoir by J. P. Lesley in 
Nat. Acad. Sri. Biog. Memoirs, vol. I (1877) ; M. L. J. 
Hitchcock, The Geneal. of the Hitchcock Family 
(1894); C. H. Hitchcock, memoir, with excellent bibli¬ 
ography, in Am. Geologist, Sept. 1895; Pop. Sri. Mo., 
Sept. 1895; W. S. Tyler, Hist, of Amherst College 
(1873); J. M. Nickels, “Geol. Lit. on North America,” 
Bull. U. S. Geol. Survey, 746, 747 (1923-24); Boston 
Transcript, Feb. 29, 1864.] G.P.M. 

HITCHCOCK, EDWARD (May 23, 1828- 
Feb. 15,1911), educator, first professor of phys¬ 
ical education in an American college, was born 
at Amherst, Mass., of sturdy New England 
stock, a son of Professor, later President Ed¬ 
ward Hitchcock [q.v.], of Amherst College, and 
of Orra (White) Hitchcock, an educated and 
profoundly religious woman. Almost his entire 
life was spent in the beautiful valley about Am¬ 
herst and along the Connecticut River. He grew 
up a healthy, active youth, developed in body 
largely by the many chores required of him but 
fond of the simple sports of the times. The phys¬ 
ical benefits from these early years were evident 
in his vigorous, virile manhood. He had no pa¬ 
tience with effeminacy in young men. He at¬ 
tended Amherst Academy, Williston Seminary, 
and Amherst College, where he graduated in 
1849. After completing his medical course at 
Harvard in 1853, he taught natural sciences and 
elocution at Williston Seminary until i860, 
when, deciding to devote his life to the study of 
comparative anatomy, he went to England to 
become the private pupil of Sir Richard Owen 
of the British Museum. On his return to Amer¬ 
ica in 1861 he was unexpectedly called to the 
head of a recently organized “Department of 
Hygiene and Physical Education” at his alma 
mater, a position which he held for half a cen¬ 
tury. His acceptance of this call changed the 
whole course of his life. Credit for the origin 
of this department, which was put on an equal¬ 
ity with the others in the college, belongs to 
President Stearns, but the laying of the founda¬ 
tions of a department previously unknown in 
American colleges must be attributed to Hitch- 
cock. 

His precedents were the modem developments 
in popular, school, and military gymnastics in 
Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and England; the 
gymnastic program, of Charles Follen and 
Charles Beck [qq.v.'] in Cambridge, Mass., and 


71 



Hitchcock 

the “New Gymnastics” described by Dio Lewis, 
started in Boston in i860. His paramount ob¬ 
jectives were health and the development of all 
the bodily powers. The methods he outlined to 
gain these ends were, first, instruction in human 
anatomy, physiology, and the laws of health; 
and second, required physical exercise for four 
years for all students. The exercise consisted 
for a generation of marching and class calis¬ 
thenics, usually with light wooden dumb-bells. 
He early gave the students a share in his plan, 
allowing them to elect their own captains, who 
conducted the drills previously taught them by 
an instructor. The program later permitted 
other apparatus and more varied drills, and when 
athletics came in, work on teams was accepted 
as a substitute for required exercise. 

To determine the physical norms of college 
students in order to detect and correct abnormal 
variations, Hitchcock started examining and 
measuring the Amherst undergraduates in 1861. 
He devoted many years to anthropometry and 
his results, published in An Anthropometric 
Manual (1887), are valuable today. In 1885 he 
helped organize the American Association for 
the Advancement of Physical Education, of 
which he was president, 1885-88; and in 1897 he 
was a charter member of the Society of College 
Gymnasium Directors. He published but one 
book, Elementary Anatomy and Physiology , for 
Colleges ,, Academies and Other Schools (i860), 
prepared in collaboration with his father, but 
his contributions to the literature of physical 
education were numerous. Especially notable 
is his Report of Twenty Years’ Experience in 
the Department of Physical Education and Hy¬ 
giene in Amherst College (1881). From 1898 
to 1910 he was dean of the faculty of Amherst 
College, in 1898 being also chairman of the 
committee administering the college in the ab¬ 
sence of President Gates. He was also a trustee 
of many institutions. 

In middle life Hitchcock was a picturesque 
figure, broad-shouldered but spare, with a long 
white beard, strong features, and deep-set gray 
eyes, piercing but kindly. He spoke energetical¬ 
ly and in homely terms. He was understand¬ 
ing, human, sympathetic, yet eminently practi¬ 
cal, persistent, and endowed with common sense. 
His life centered near the Amherst campus; the 
interests of the college were his. He was deeply 
religious, the father confessor of generations of 
students in whose ultimate salvation he thor¬ 
oughly bdieved. He married on Nov. 30, 1853, 
Mary Lewis Judson, daughter of David Judson 
of Stratford, Conn. Seven of their ten children 
survived him* 


Hitchcock 

[Edward Hitchcock, Sr., Reminiscences of Amherst 
College (1863); Am. Phys. Educ. Rev., Mar. 1911; 
M. L. J. Hitchcock, The Geneal. of the Hitchcock Fam¬ 
ily (1894) ; W. S. Tyler, A Hist, of Amherst College 
(2nd ed., 1895); Obit. Record Grads. Amherst Coll, 
for the Academical Year Ending June 28,1911 (1911) ; 
F. E. Leonard, Pioneers of Modern Physical Training 
(1910), with additions in 2nd ed. (1915); Springfield 
Daily Republican, Feb. 16, 1911.] P. C.P. 

HITCHCOCK, ENOS (Mar. 7, 1744-Feb. 26, 
1803), Congregational clergyman, patriot, au¬ 
thor, a great-grandson of Luke Hitchcock who 
took the freeman's oath in New Haven in 1644 
and a son of Peletiah and Sarah (Parsons) 
Hitchcock, was born in Springfield, Mass. He 
graduated from Harvard in 1767, engaged in 
theological studies soon after, and on May 1, 
1771, was ordained as colleague of the super¬ 
annuated pastor of the Second Church in Bev¬ 
erly, Mass., a connection which he retained until 
Apr. 6, 1780, although from 1776 he was absent 
on service as chaplain with the Revolutionary 
army for a long period each year. During the 
winter of 1780-81 he preached occasionally in 
Providence, R. I.; and on Oct. 1, 1783, was in¬ 
stalled as pastor of the Benevolent Congrega¬ 
tional Church there, remaining until his death. 
His wife, whom he married Jan. 13, 1771, was 
Achsah (Upham) Jordan of Truro, Mass., 
daughter of Caleb and Priscilla (Allen) Upham. 
She died before him, as did iso a daughter 
Achsah; an adopted daughter survived him. 

Hitchcock's portrait shows a full face, thin 
lips, observant eyes, and a look of placid dignity. 
He was a practical, useful, agreeable man, not 
greatly gifted, but so firm in principle and con¬ 
sistent in practice, and withal so benevolent and 
public spirited, that he exerted a strong influ¬ 
ence wherever he was. His diaries reveal a 
well-ordered life, a steady sense of duty, and a 
sane enjoyment of physical comforts and social 
pleasures. He was inoculated against smallpox, 
shared the discomforts of the retreat from Ti- 
conderoga and the triumph of Burgoyne's sur¬ 
render, witnessed the execution of Andre. At 
West Point, in 1779* be dined frequently with 
Kosciuszko, preached to the Society of Free Ma¬ 
sons on the Feast of St. John, with Washington 
present, and was invited to Washington's head¬ 
quarters to dine and preach. He wrote often to 
“Reverend Willard” (Joseph Willard [ q.v .], 
afterward president of Harvard College), and 
lodged with Ezra Stiles [g.z>.], president of Yale, 
when passing through New Haven. 

As a Congregationalist minister, Hitchcock 
was distinctly on the way to Unitarianism. He 
simplified the catechism ( Catechetical Instruc¬ 
tions and Forms of Devotion for Children and 
Yauth, 1798), published a plain and rational in- 


72 



Hitchcock 

terpretation of the observance of the Lord’s Sup¬ 
per (1795), established open communion, healed 
a breach of forty years with another church, 
and worked for friendliness and candor among 
the different denominations. His own teaching 
aimed to instil a sense of dependence upon God 
and a love of universal goodness and benevo¬ 
lence; the orthodox doctrines of election, orig¬ 
inal sin, and imputed righteousness found no 
place in his sermons, which were methodical 
and well-digested, calculated “to improve the 
understanding and amend the heart.” He be¬ 
lieved that religion aids government, that well- 
supported churches make prosperous and happy 
communities, and that attendance at public wor¬ 
ship is “the best school of good manners.” These 
opinions, with his knowledge of men and affairs, 
sound business management, and liberal spirit, 
won the support of substantial families and 
brought lasting prosperity to his Providence 
church. He bequeathed $2,500 for the support 
of the ministry in the society. 

Hitchcock furthered his own ardent hopes for 
the success of the American government by un¬ 
tiring labors for the cultivation of public virtue 
and the education of youth. His Fourth of July 
orations to the Society of the Cincinnati (1786 
and 1793), Discourse on the Dignity and Excel¬ 
lence of the Human Character, Illustrated in 
the Life of General George Washington (1800), 
Discourse on Education (1785) advocating free 
public schools, and his two books, Memoirs of 
the Bloomsgrove Family ,. .. Containing Senti¬ 
ments on a Mode of Domestic Education (2 vols., 
1790), and The Farmer's Friend, or The His¬ 
tory of Mr. Charles Worthy (1793), have 
these ends in view, together with the teaching of 
sound political and economic doctrine. 

[Manuscript diaries of Enos Hitchcock in the R. I. 
Hist. Soc.; Gad Hitchcock, A Sermon Preached at the 
Ordination of the Rev. Mr. Enos Hitchcock . . . May 
ist,j77i (1771) ; David Tappan, A Funeral Discourse 
Delivered . . . after the Interment of Enos Hitchcock 
(1803) > “Diary of Enos Hitchcock, a Chaplain in the 
Revolutionary Army,” with a memoir by Wm. B. 
Weeden, in R. I. Hist. Soc. Pubs., n.s., vol. VII 
(1900); C. A. Staples, A Hist. Discourse Delivered on 
the 150th Anniversary of <the Organization of the First 
Congreg. Ch. in Providence , R. 1 . (1879) ; C. M. 
Young, A Hist. Retrospect of the First Congreg. Soc. 
in Providence, R. I. (1910) ; C. A. Staples, “A Chap¬ 
lain of the Revolution,” Unitarian Rev., Apr. 1891; 
M. L. J. Hitchcock, The Geneal. of the Hitchcock Fam¬ 
ily (1894); R. I. Lit. Repository, Sept. 1814; Provi¬ 
dence Gazette, Mar. 5, 1803.] E.M. S. B. 

HITCHCOCK, ETHAN ALLEN (May 18, 
1798-Aug. 5, 1870), soldier, author, was born 
at Vergennes, Vt. Descended from Luke Hitch¬ 
cock (1606-1659) of New Haven and Wethers¬ 
field, Conn., he was the son of Samuel Hitch¬ 
cock, a United States Circuit judge, and of Lucy 


Hitchcock 

Caroline (Allen) Hitchcock, a daughter of 
Ethan Allen [q.v.], the Revolutionary patriot. 
At the age of sixteen, on the death of his father, 
he obtained an appointment to the United States 
Military Academy at West Point where he grad¬ 
uated, July 17, 1817. He rose by the usual 
stages to the rank of captain on Dec. 31, 1824. 
From Jan. 31, 1824, until the spring of 1827 he 
acted as assistant instructor of infantry tactics 
at West Point. Meanwhile he had plunged into 
the study of philosophy in an effort to answer 
various doubts that troubled him on the subject 
of religion. He reached the satisfactory con¬ 
clusion that “The great Whole is one, and all 
the parts agree with all the parts”—a conclusion 
which he was to reaffirm, much later, in volume 
after volume. As a result of refusing to sit on 
a court of inquiry at West Point which, he held, 
contravened the 92nd Article of War, he was 
ordered to rejoin his company, then at Fort 
Snelling, but on his way West he stopped in 
Washington and laid the case before President 
Adams. When after investigation his conten¬ 
tion was found correct, he was, in 1829, returned 
to West Point as commandant of cadets. Most 
remarkably, he retained the friendship of the 
commanding officer whom he had opposed. Jef¬ 
ferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. John¬ 
ston, W. T. Sherman, and other officers of Civil 
War distinction, as well as the poet, Edgar Al¬ 
lan Poe, sat under his instruction. Toward the 
end of his stay at West Point he protested vig¬ 
orously against President Jackson’s interference 
with discipline, and in consequence found his 
promotion in the service less rapid than it might 
otherwise have been. 

In 1833 he declined the offer from the Amer¬ 
ican Colonization Society of the governorship of 
Liberia (an offer renewed and again declined 
in 1837). From 1833 till 1836 he served on fron¬ 
tier duty at Fort Crawford, Wis. During the 
brief “Florida War” he was acting inspector- 
general on the staff of Edmund P. Gaines. His 
testimony at a court of inquiry as to the rivalry 
between Gaines and Winfield Scott won him the 
dangerous enmity of Scott. From 1837 to 1840 
he was on Indian duty in the Northwest, where 
he administered the disbursing agency with an 
integrity which obtained well-merited recog¬ 
nition. On Sept. 28, 1841, he was sent by the 
War Department to investigate the frauds against 
the Cherokees; his report, however, proved so 
much more trenchant than was expected that the 
Department sought to suppress it and the diffi¬ 
culty experienced by Congress in obtaining it 
was one of the high points of the political season. 
During two more years in Florida, the 3 r< i 


73 



Hitchcock Hitchcock 


fantry, of which he was made lieutenant-colonel 
in January 1842, became under his guidance one 
of the crack regiments of the army and the first 
since the War of 18x2 to practise the evolution of 
the line. Transferred to Jefferson Barracks, St. 
Louis, in 1843, and to the Louisiana frontier in 
1844, his regiment became a part of General Tay¬ 
lor's army of occupation in 1845. After leave of 
absence on account of ill health, he returned in 
time for the Mexican War. A reconciliation with 
General Scott was followed by his appointment 
as inspector-general on the latter's staff. At the 
close of the war he was promoted colonel and 
given command of the Military Division of the 
Pacific. Stationed in San Francisco, he broke 
up Walker’s filibustering expedition into Mexico 
by his seizure of the brig Arrow. This act 
brought upon him the hostility of Secretary 
Davis, who refused Hitchcock's application for 
four months' leave of absence because of re¬ 
newed ill health. Hitchcock thereupon resigned 
from the army, Oct. 18, 1855. 

The outbreak of the Civil War found him liv¬ 
ing in St. Louis. He at once went to Washing¬ 
ton to offer his services to the Federal govern¬ 
ment, and after vexatious delays was appointed, 
through the influence of General Scott, major- 
general of volunteers. He rendered efficient aid 
to the War Department, becoming commissioner 
for exchange of prisoners of war on Nov. 15, 
1862, and commissary general of prisoners of 
war on Nov. 3,1865. His labors were not ended 
until Oct. 1, 1867, when he was among the last 
volunteers to be mustered out. In 1868 he mar¬ 
ried Martha Rind Nicholls of Washington, D. C. 
After the War he resided in the South for the 
sake of his health, living first in Charleston, S. 
C., and then in Sparta, Ga., whither he moved 
shortly before his death. 

Hitchock's first book, The Doctrines of Spi¬ 
noza and Swedenborg Identified (1846) pointed 
out numerous hitherto unnoticed parallels in the 
philosophy of the two but somewhat overstressed 
their importance. In Remarks upon Alchemy 
and the Alchemists (1857) he endeavored to 
prove that the leading alchemists were members 
of a vast secret society devoted to symbolic pres¬ 
entation of a liberal pantheistic philosophy under 
the disguise of other interests. In this society he 
enrolled the writers of the Gospels in Christ the 
Spirit (1851) ; Swedenborg in Swedenborg a 
Hermetic Philosopher (1858); Shakespeare in 
Remarks on the Sonnets (1865, 2n d ed., en¬ 
larged, 1867); Spenser, Sidney, Drayton, and 
Carew in Spenser's Poem Entitled Colin Clouts 
Come Home Againe Explained (1865); Dante 
in Notes on the Vita Nuova (1866). AJ 1 these 


laborious efforts are today only literary curi¬ 
osities, while Hitchcock's one really valuable 
literary work, his vivid autobiographical Fifty 
Years in Camp and Field (1909), he left unpub¬ 
lished. 

[E. A. Hitchcock, Fifty Years in Camp and Field 
(1909), ed. with biographical notes by W. A. Croffut; 
E. A. Hitchcock, A Traveler in Indian Territory 
(1930); G. W. Cullum, Biog. Reg. Officers and Grads . 
U. S. Mil. Acad. (3rd ed., 1891) ; The Asso. of Grads, 
of the U. S. Mil . Acad., Ann. Reunion, 1871; M. L. J. 
Hitchcock, The Geneal. of the Hitchcock Family 
(1894)*] E. S. B—s. 

HITCHCOCK, ETHAN ALLEN (Sept. 19, 
1835-Apr. 9,1909), secretary of the interior, was 
the son of Henry and Anne (Erwin) Hitchcock, 
and brother of Henry Hitchcock [ q.v He was 
born in Mobile, Ala., and, following the financial 
difficulties and sudden death of his father after 
the panic of 1837, was taken by his mother to 
Nashville, Tenn. There he received his early 
education, which was supplemented by study at 
an academy at New Haven, Conn. In the late 
fifties he joined his brother Henry in St. Louis, 
In i860 he went to China, entering the commis¬ 
sion business of Olyphant & Company at Hong 
Kong; he became a partner in 1866, and retired 
six years later, having amassed a fortune. He 
had married, Mar. 22,1869, Margaret D. Collier 
of St. Louis, whose sister was the wife of his 
brother Henry. 

Following several years of travel, Hitchcock 
returned to St. Louis, where from 1874 to 1897 
his career was that of a successful man of affairs 
in a period of capitalistic enterprise and expan¬ 
sion. He established near St. Louis the first suc¬ 
cessful American plate-glass manufactory; he 
had extensive interests in iron and steel, and was 
a director in other corporations. By tempera¬ 
ment and by conviction a Republican, he con¬ 
tributed to the party campaign funds. During 
the framing of the tariff of 1890 he assisted in 
the preparation of the glass schedule, at the re¬ 
quest of McKinley, with whom he formed a 
friendship. In 1897, the President appointed 
him minister to Russia, with the object of utiliz¬ 
ing his experience in advancing the interests of 
American trade. His creditable service in the 
diplomatic field was terminated in December 
1898, when he was named secretary of the in¬ 
terior. 

It was his fortune to occupy the secretaryship 
for a longer period than any of his predecessors 
and to be a leader in the conservation movement. 
Early in 1903, convinced that the government 
was being systematically robbed of valuable 
lands and other natural resources, he dismissed 
the commissioner of the General Land Office and 


74 



Hitchcock 

instituted sweeping* and relentless investigations 
which disclosed a far-reaching system of fraud 
in the administration of the public lands. The 
great difficulties confronting him in the prose¬ 
cution of the conspirators were accentuated by 
the elements of collusion, espionage, bribery, and 
falsification of the records, as well as by the po¬ 
litical influence of many against whom the de¬ 
partment was proceeding in civil and in criminal 
suits. President Roosevelt gave material assist¬ 
ance, however; incompetent and corrupt federal 
officials were removed, and experts were em¬ 
ployed to secure evidence. In this prosecution 
Hitchcock proved to be a man of iron will. He 
was bitterly opposed by Western politicians, who 
believed that the policies of the administration 
were designed to retard the development of their 
section. Pressure was exerted to stop him and 
unsuccessful appeals made to Roosevelt to ask for 
his resignation. So extensive were the investi¬ 
gations that 1,021 persons in twenty states were 
indicted for land and timber frauds, and con¬ 
victions numbered 126 when Hitchcock retired 
in 1907 {Annual Report of the Secretary of the 
Interior, 1906, pp. 18-30). The secretary was 
not satisfied with the results. "Efforts made to 
release it [the public domain] from the grip of 
its despoilers have met with every embarrass¬ 
ment that human ingenuity could devise,” he 
wrote (Ibid., p. 4). His administrative methods 
probably made his exacting task more difficult. 
He was cold and formal in manner, collected in 
speech, and utterly impervious to the persua¬ 
sions and influence of hard-headed men of af¬ 
fairs or of genial politicians. During the latter 
part of his term he developed, and with reason, 
a suspicious attitude toward many politicians 
which highly irritated party leaders ( Selections 
from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt 
and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1925, II, 76-77). 

Hitchcock fought successfully to preserve for 
the Indians of the Five Tribes their magnificent 
inheritance of oil and gas lands, and to prevent 
selfish corporate interests from acquiring, in vio¬ 
lation of the law, valuable mineral rights. He 
introduced many notable administrative improve¬ 
ments, especially in the procedure for leases, for 
the limiting of timber-cutting, and for the con¬ 
duct of Indian affairs. Important reclamation 
projects were initiated under the law of 1902. It 
seems certain that Roosevelt and Hitchcock were 
in entire accord in the sweeping executive or¬ 
ders of 1906-07 which enlarged the forest re¬ 
serves and withdrew the mineral lands from 
exploitation ( Messages and Papers of the Presi¬ 
dents, vol. X, 1912, pp. 7682-85). This vigor¬ 
ous policy aroused violent hostility among the 


Hitchcock 

anti-conservationists in Congress, led by Sena¬ 
tors Carter, Fulton, and Heyburn. During the 
last months of Hitchcock’s administration, an 
attack which threatened censure was launched 
against him, led by a group of Western senators 
(Congressional Record, 59 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 
1934 ff. and 1959 ff.). He maintained his usual 
silence; praise and blame were to him alike su¬ 
perfluous and distasteful. In 1903 and in 1905 
he had desired to resign but had remained in 
office at the earnest request of the President 
"Feeling that the very exhausting work he had 
engaged in for over eight years was wearing 
on him,” he left the cabinet in March 1907. His 
resignation, it was both alleged and denied, was 
not unwelcome to Roosevelt (Washington Her¬ 
ald, Apr. 10, 1909; Washington Evening Star, 
Apr. 9, 1909). After two years of retirement, 
Hitchcock died in Washington, recognized by the 
country as a devoted and courageous public ser¬ 
vant. 

[Collection of clippings and articles in the possession 
of Hitchcock’s daughter, Mrs. John F. Shepley, St. 
Louis; Fifty Years in Camp <md Field (1909) by Hitch¬ 
cock’s uncle, Gen. E. A. Hitchcock, ed. by W. A. Crof- 
fut; jM. L. J. Hitchcock, The Gened, of the Hitchcock 
Family (1894) J Who's Who in America, 1908-09; W. 
B. Stevens, St. Louis: the Fourth City (1911), vol. II; 
Annual Reports of the Secretary of the Interior, 1900- 
06; Cong. Record, 59 Cong., 2 Sess.; John Ise, U. S . 
Forest Policy (1920) ; Rev. of Revs . (N. Y.), Jan. 
1907; Outlook, Feb. 23, 1907.] T.S.B. 

HITCHCOCK, FRANK [See Murdoch, 
Frank Hitchcock, d. 1872]. 

HITCHCOCK, HENRY (July 3, 1829-Mar. 
18, 1902), lawyer, soldier, first dean of St. Louis 
Law School (now Washington University School 
of Law), was of English and Irish ancestry. 
Descended from Luke Hitchcock, freeman of 
New Haven, Conn., in 1644, Henry was a great- 
grandson of Ethan Allen, a nephew of Gen, 
Ethan Allen Hitchcock, and a brother of Ethan 
Allen Hitchcock [qq.v.'], secretary of the interior 
under President Roosevelt He was bom in Ala¬ 
bama, the son of Henry and Anne (Erwin) 
Hitchcock. His father, a Vermonter by birth 
and education, was a distinguished lawyer and 
chief justice of the Alabama supreme court 
Young Hitchcock graduated from the Univer¬ 
sity of Nashville (B.A. 1846) and from Yale 
(B.A. 1848). After a year’s experience as teach¬ 
er in a Massachusetts high school and two years 
as student in a Nashville law office, he went to 
St Louis in 1851 and was admitted to the bar. 
On Mar. 5, 1857, he was married to Mary Col¬ 
lier, who, with their two children, survived him. 

Hitchcock’s professional career was long, suc¬ 
cessful, brilliant, and marked by sensitiveness to 
public welfare. Opposed to the extension of slav- 


75: 



Hitchcock Hitchcock 


ery, he voted for Lincoln and was elected on the 
“unconditional union” ticket a delegate to the 
state convention which met in February 1861, 
authorized by the legislature “to consider the 
relation of Missouri to the union.” He was an 
active and somewhat radical member of the ma¬ 
jority group opposed to secession which even¬ 
tually assumed quasi-revolutionary powers when 
the governor and legislature defied federal au¬ 
thority. Hitchcock remained a trained lawyer 
in the convention until it finally adjourned in 
July 1863. Later, appointed assistant adjutant- 
general with rank of major, but actually legal 
adviser, he served on the staff of General Sher¬ 
man, who was his friend in St. Louis before the 
war, during the march to the sea and the cam¬ 
paign resulting in the surrender of Johnston. 
Returning to St. Louis, as a director of Wash¬ 
ington University Hitchcock organized the uni¬ 
versity’s law school, being dean for seven years 
without compensation and permitting his wife to 
give money for the school’s endowment. At the 
same time he was engaged until his death in a 
constantly increasing private practice, confined 
entirely to civil, as distinguished from criminal, 
law. In 1889-90 he was president of the Amer¬ 
ican Bar Association. 

Hitchcock’s publications show scholarship, in¬ 
dustry, idealism, and shrewd appreciation of cur¬ 
rent events. His pro-Union speech in the state 
convention, Mar. 15, 1861, is a plausible argu¬ 
ment for what is now the orthodox view of 
American federalism ( Journal and Proceedings 
of the Missouri State Convention, 1861). A more 
literary quality appears in his address, “The Su¬ 
preme Court and the Constitution,” at the cele¬ 
bration of the centennial of the United States 
Supreme Court (Hampton L. Carson, The Su¬ 
preme Court of the United States, vol. I, 1891). 
His American Bar Association address on cor¬ 
porations (published in the Association’s Report, 
1887) embodies a protest against the use of “emi¬ 
nent domain” for “private gain,” quoted with 
approval in Bryce’s American Commonwealth 
(1888), which also contains a quotation from 
Hitchcock’s American State Constitution (1887). 
The posthumous Marching with Sherman 
(1927), based upon campaign letters and diaries, 
ably edited by M. A. DeWolfe Howe, is vividly 
relevant to a controversial subject. Through 
Hitchcock’s effort the notable library on al¬ 
chemy collected by his uncle, Gen. Ethan Allen 
Hitchcock, on the latter’s death was acquired by 
the Mercantile Library, St. Louis. 

[In addition to references above, see: A. J. D. Stew¬ 
art, The Hist, of the Bench and Bar of Mo. (1898) ; 
Wm. Hyde and H. L. Conard, Encyc. of the Hist, of 
St. Louis (1899), vol. II; Who J s Who in America, 


1901-02; H. M. Colton, Statistics of the Class of 1848 
of Yale College (1869); sketch by John Green, in Proc. 
Am. Antiq, Soc n.s., XVII (1907) J Report . . . Am. 
Bar Asso . . . . 1902 (1902) ; M. L. J. Hitchcock, The 
Geneal . of the Hitchcock Family (1894); St. Louis 
Globe-Democrat, St. Louis Republic, Mar. 19, 1902; 
unpublished data at Washington Univ. and Mercantile 
Lib., St. Louis.] T. W. 

HITCHCOCK, JAMES RIPLEY WELL¬ 
MAN (July 3, 1857-May 4, 1918), art-critic, 
journalist, author, a descendant of Luke Hitch¬ 
cock of New Haven and Wethersfield, Conn., 
was born at Fitchburg, Mass., the son of Dr. Al¬ 
fred Hitchcock and Aurilla Phebe (Wellman) 
Hitchcock. He graduated (A.B.) from Harvard 
in 1877, and spent another year there in the 
study of art and philosophy. He next went to 
New York for a year’s work in medicine and 
surgery, thinking to give his father’s profession 
a trial. His taste did not run in that direction, 
however, and he began writing volunteer articles 
for newspapers and.magazines, achieving such 
success that in 1882 he joined the staff of the 
New York Tribune as art-critic. He filled this 
place with distinction for eight years, during 
which time he also made extended tours through 
the Northwest and in New Mexico, Arizona, 
California, and Mexico as staff correspondent of 
the Tribune . His letters were signed J. R. W. H. 
and were very nearly the last of his writings to 
bear his full name. Finding it too cumbersome, 
he dropped part of it, and was known thereafter 
only as Ripley Hitchcock. During this middle 
period of his life he lived for a number of years 
at Nutley, N. J., and was conspicuous among 
those who made that place a noteworthy center 
of literature and art. He was a man of compel¬ 
ling charm, both in his personal manner and in 
his writings, and had always a circle of friends 
and co-workers about him. At one time he or¬ 
ganized a historical pageant at Nutley—one of 
the first affairs of the kind in the United States 
—which comprised among other things jousting 
with lances by knights in armor. In 1890 he left 
the Tribune to become literary adviser for the 
publishing house of D. Appleton & Company, 
and there served for twelve years, during which 
time he was instrumental in introducing the writ¬ 
ings of Rudyard Kipling to the American public. 
In 1906 he became literary adviser and director 
for Harper & Brothers, then undergoing reor¬ 
ganization, and had much to do with restoring 
that company to its former high degree of pros¬ 
perity. He held this place until his death. 
Meanwhile he did much lecturing on literary 
and artistic subjects, took a large part in various 
reform movements in New York City, and wrote 
and edited many books. His works on art in¬ 
clude Etching in America (1886); Notable 


76 



Hitchcock 

Etchings by American Artists (1886); Ma¬ 
donnas by Old Masters (1888); Some American 
Painters in Water Colors (1890). In entirely 
different vein he wrote Thomas De Quincey, a 
Study (1899), also published as the introduction 
to an edition of Confessions of an English Opium 
Eater ; The Louisiana Purchase and the Ex¬ 
ploration, Early History and Building of the 
West (1903) ; and The Lewis and Clark Expe¬ 
dition (1905), the last two coinciding somewhat 
closely with the great expositions held in cele¬ 
bration of the anniversaries of those events. He 
edited and wrote descriptive matter for several 
volumes of art reproductions, the most note¬ 
worthy being The Art of the World, Illustrated 
in the Paintings, Statuary and Architecture of 
the World's Columbian Exposition (1894). In 
the course of his editorial career he prepared for 
the press The Life of an Artist (1890), by Jules 
Breton; The Last Words of Thomas Carlyle 
(1892); The Story of the West series (1895- 
1902), comprising The Story of the Indian, The 
Story of the Mine, The Story of the Cowboy, The 
Story of the Railroad, The Story of the Soldier, 
and The Story of the Trapper, each with an in¬ 
troduction by the editor; Recollections, Personal 
and Literary (1903), by Richard Henry Stod¬ 
dard; The Trail-Makers; a Library of History 
and Exploration (1904-05); Decisive Battles of 
America (1909), by Albert Bushnell Hart, 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and others; and 
the monumental Documentary Edition (1918) of 
Woodrow Wilson's History of the American 
People . At a dinner given by his father-in-law, 
Charles Sargent, to a visiting party of French 
soldiers on May 4, 1918, Hitchcock was stricken 
by heart failure and died within a few minutes. 
He was married twice: in 1883,to Martha Wol¬ 
cott Hall of Springfield, Mass., who died in 1903; 
and in 1914 to Helen Sanborn Sargent of New 
York, herself a prominent educator and art- 
worker, who survived him. 

[Who's Who in America, 1918-19; Harvard College 
Class of 1877, sixth and seventh reports (1902, 1917); 
M. L. J. Hitchcock, The GeneaL of the Hitchcock Fam¬ 
ily (1894); N. Y. newspapers of May 5, 1918; private 
sources.] A.F.H. 

HITCHCOCK, PETER (Oct. 19, 1781-Mar. 
4, 1853), Ohio jurist, the youngest son of Valen¬ 
tine Hitchcock and his wife Sarah, daughter of 
Henry Hotchkiss, was born at Cheshire, Conn. 
He was fifth in descent from Matthias Hitch¬ 
cock who came to Boston from London in 1635. 
Entering Yale at the age of seventeen and teach¬ 
ing at intervals to defray his expenses, Peter 
graduated in 1801. Following graduation he 
studied law, was admitted to practice in March 
1803 (20 Ohio Reports, Lawrence, v-vii), and 


Hitchcock 

opened an office in Cheshire. Attracted by the 
opportunities of the West, he took his wife, Nab- 
by Cook, whom he had married Dec. 12, 1805, 
and in June 1806 journeyed to the new state of 
Ohio in an ox-drawn wagon. Near Burton, 
Geauga County, he settled upon an unimproved 
farm which was thenceforth his home. Clearing 
the land and teaching in Burton Academy were 
his chief occupations for a time, but in such legal 
business as came to him he displayed a mind so 
accurate, logical, and resourceful that his cli¬ 
entele grew rapidly. These traits, together with 
simple honesty and modesty, made him a man of 
influence throughout the Western Reserve be¬ 
fore he had been five years in the state. 

In 1810 his neighbors sent him to the legis¬ 
lature, where he served, first in the lower house, 
then in the upper, until 1816. During his last 
session he presided over the Senate. In 1816 he 
was elected to Congress, but before the end of his 
term was chosen (1819) by the Ohio legislature 
as judge of the state supreme court. He sat 
upon the bench for four seven-year terms, failing 
of reelection in 1833 and 1842 because of the con¬ 
trol of the legislature by his political opponents. 
From 1833 to 1835 he was again in the Senate, 
and in 1845 he began his final term in the su¬ 
preme court, which he lacked a week of complet¬ 
ing when the new constitution, providing for 
popular election of judges, retired him. During 
six of the twenty-eight years, including the last 
three, he had been chief judge. 

Originally a Jeffersonian Republican, Hitch¬ 
cock became a Whig during Jackson's presidency 
through devotion to what he conceived to be the 
fundamentals of popular government. The trend 
of his thought is indicated by the fact that as a 
member of the constitutional convention of 1850 
he himself advocated the provision which de¬ 
prived him, a trifle prematurely, of his office; 
and also by his opposition to the executive veto 
as an unwarranted check upon the acts*of the 
people's representatives. Up to the time of his 
retirement from the bench he had enjoyed robust 
health and great physical and mental endurance, 
but early in 1853, as he returned from a visit to 
Columbus on professional business, he was seized 
with dysentery, and died at the home of a son in 
Painesville. Hitchcock exhibited the traditional 
virtues of his Puritan stock—sobriety, industry, 
and integrity. In middle life he united with the 
Congregational Church. As a jurist he ranks 
high among those who have served Ohio. His 
was the task of an original mind confronting the 
inchoate jurisprudence of a frontier community. 
He had little reverence for rules and precedents 
established under unlike conditions, but sought 


77 



Hitchcock 

to shape a system which would suit the needs of 
the people and at the same time would possess 
consistency and permanence. For these charac¬ 
teristics his associates sometimes likened him to 
John Marshall and Roger B. Taney. 

iPioneer and General Hist, of Geauga County 
(1880); Ohio Archaeol. and Hist. Quart., Jan. 1923; 
Henry Howe, Hist. Colls, of Ohio (1908), I, 687; C. 
B. Galbreatb, Hist, of Ohio (1925), vol. II; E. 0 . Ran¬ 
dall and D. J. Ryan, Hist, of Ohio (1912), vols. IV and 
V; F. B. Dexter, Biog. Sketches Grads. Yale Coll., vol. 
V (1911), which is in error as to date of death; M. L. 
J. Hitchcock, The Geneal. of the Hitchcock Family 
(1894); Ohio State Journal, Mar. 7 and 11, 1853; 
Painesville Telegraph, Mar. 9, 1853.] H. C.H. 

HITCHCOCK, PHINEAS WARRENER 

(Nov. 30, 1831-July 10, 1881), Nebraska pi¬ 
oneer and politician, was born in New Lebanon, 
Columbia County, N. Y., the son of Gad and 
Nancy (Prime) Hitchcock. His father, fourth 
in descent from Luke Hitchcock who came to 
New Haven about 1644, had fought in the War 
of 1812. Phineas was only a plain fanner's son, 
but he was accorded for the time excellent edu¬ 
cational advantages, and in 1855 he received his 
bachelor's degree from Williams College. There¬ 
after for two years he studied law in Rochester, 
N. Y., making a living by reporting for one of 
the local papers. In 1857, when the western 
boom was at its crest, he moved to Omaha, Ne¬ 
braska Territory, then a frontier village without 
even a railroad. Here he took up the practice of 
his profession, adding somewhat to his income 
as a lawyer by conducting also a real-estate and 
insurance business. A Republican of strongly 
anti-slavery tendencies, he participated in the 
work of organizing his party in the territory, 
aided in establishing the first Republican paper 
in Omaha, and went as delegate to the second 
Republican National Convention. This loyalty to 
party was rewarded in 1861 by an appointment 
as federal marshal for Nebraska Territory, in 
1864 by election as territorial delegate to Con¬ 
gress, and in 1867, when Nebraska became a 
state, by another federal appointment, this time 
as surveyor-general for the district of Nebraska 
and Iowa. 

In the rough-and-tumble combats of pioneer 
politics Hitchcock soon proved that he was not 
without skill. In 1871 he emerged the victor 
from a four-cornered contest for the United 
States senatorship, because twelve Democratic 
members of the legislature had preferred him to 
the “regular” candidate. As senator, however, he 
was thoroughly “regular,” and hardly distin¬ 
guished. Probably his most notable success came 
in 1872, when he carried through the Senate his 
pet measure, the timber-culture act He was 
much interested, also, in the ambitions of new 


Hitchcock 

territories to become states; but only in the case 
of Colorado was he identified with a measure of 
this kind that passed. In 1877, when he came up 
for reelection, he found the opposition to him in 
the legislature both bitter and strong. It was 
openly charged that bribery had won him his 
seat six years before, and that he was an obedi¬ 
ent tool of the railroads. Of the latter charge 
probably no prominent Nebraska politician of 
the time could have been fully cleared, but the 
bribery charge was not traced directly to any 
fault of Hitchcock himself, whatever others may 
have done for him. He was not reelected. 

Hitchcock was a forceful writer and speaker, 
tenacious of his opinions, much beloved by his 
friends, and cordially hated by his enemies. For 
several years he was interested in the Omaha 
Republican, both as part owner and as con¬ 
tributor. He did his share towards the shaping 
of political thinking in the state. Following his 
defeat for reelection to the Senate, he turned his 
attention to business, but not for long. He was 
devoted to his family, and family misfortunes— 
the death in 1877 of his wife, Annie (Monell) 
Hitchcock, whom he had married in 1857, soon 
after his removal to Nebraska, and in 1880 of his 
daughter Grace—left him a broken man. He 
died before he was fifty. Thirty years later his 
son, Gilbert M. Hitchcock, was elected to the 
United States Senate from Nebraska as a Demo¬ 
crat. 

[Sketch of Hitchcock by his son Gilbert, in Trans, 
and Reports Nebr. State Hist. Soc., vol. I (1885); J. 
S. Morton and Albert Watkins, Illus. Hist, of Nebr., 
I (1905), 49S-97J T. W. Tipton, “Forty Years of Ne¬ 
braska,” Proc. and Colls. Nebr. State Hist. Soc., 2 ser., 
IV (1902 ); A. C. Edmunds, Pen Sketches of Ne¬ 
braskans (1871); Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (192$); M, 
L. J. Hitchcock, The Geneal. of the Hitchcock Family 
(1894) ; Omaha Daily Herald, July 12, 1881.] 

J.D.H. 

HITCHCOCK, RAYMOND (Oct. 22,1865- 
Nov. 25,1929), actor, son of Charles and Celestia 
(Burroughs) Hitchcock, was one of a large 
number of stage performers who made them¬ 
selves, through the force of comic personality, 
the central figures in musical comedy, extrava¬ 
ganza, and other forms of miscellaneous enter¬ 
tainment that began to dominate the theatre in 
the last years of the nineteenth century. He was 
born in Auburn, N. Y., and after some attempts 
at amateur acting and a brief career in business 
as a shoe salesman and department-store clerk, 
he first entered the stage door of a theatre in 
1890 as a chorus singer with a popular organi¬ 
zation of that day known as the Carleton Opera 
Company. For a while he played minor char¬ 
acters in a considerable number of musical pieces, 
and now and then he was seen in speaking plays, 



Hitchcock Hitchcock 


notably in The Littlest Girl, We-iins of Tennes¬ 
see, The Galloper, and Charley's Amt . Some of 
his early appearances during the making of a 
reputation that finally led him permanently into 
the ranks of theatrical stardom were as Lamber- 
tuccio in Boccaccio, Lurcher in Dorothy, in A 
Dangerous Maid, Three Little Lambs, The Belle 
of Bridgeport, The Burgomaster, and conspicu¬ 
ous parts in numerous musical comedies of that 
era. 

His first notable success was in the title role 
of King Dodo, and his first bow to the public as 
a star was made at the Tremont Theatre, Bos¬ 
ton, Sept. 21,1903, as Abijah Booze in The Yan¬ 
kee Consul . With the exception of occasional 
ventures into the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, in 
which he played such principal parts as Sir Jo¬ 
seph Porter in H.MS. Pinafore and Ko Ko in 
The Mikado, and of a brief engagement in Eng¬ 
land in the spring of 1916, the story of his pro¬ 
fessional life thenceforth can be comprised in a 
list of some twenty musical comedies in which he 
was either featured or starred. Among these 
pieces were The Merry-go-round, The Man Who 
Owns Broadway, The Beauty Shop, A Yankee 
Tourist, and The Red Widow . Beginning in 
1917, he was the leading factor in the presenta¬ 
tion of a series of annual productions called 
Hitchy Koo —from his nickname of “Hitchy”— 
in which his antics vocal and physical, his whim¬ 
sicalities, his curtain speeches, and his patter 
singing formed the nucleus of an entertainment 
the parts of which were no more closely related 
than the turns of an entire evening’s program 
in a vaudeville theatre. For several seasons they 
were popular, and then the interest in them 
flagged. In 1921 he was a leading comedian in 
the Ziegfeld Follies. In 1924 he ventured into 
drama by playing Clem Hawley in The Old 
Soak, and during his last few years he was a 
participant in the making of motion-picture plays 
at Hollywood. His eccentric personality, his 
lanky figure, his grotesque and mobile features, 
his drawling speech, his shock of hair that fell 
over one side of his forehead, and an ingratiating 
manner that took the audience intimately into his 
confidence, formed his chief stock in trade as a 
comedian. At one time he owned a farm of sev¬ 
eral hundred acres in Dutchess County, N. Y., 
and he declared that off stage he dearly loved the 
life of a farmer. His wife, to whom he was mar¬ 
ried in 1905, was of Armenian ancestry. Her 
name was Izabelle Mangasarian and she was 
known on the stage as Flora Zabelle. After a 
period of invalidism, he died suddenly in an auto¬ 
mobile while returning from a morning drive 
with his wife to his home in Beverly Hills, Cal. 


[Musical Courier, Apr. 6,1898; N* Y. Dramatic Mir¬ 
ror, July 19, 1902, Aug. 5, 1905; Boston Herald , Sept. 
3 » 1911;. John Parker, Who's Who in the Theatre, 
1925; obituary notices in the New York Sun and Bos¬ 
ton Transcript, Nov. 25, 1929, and in the N. Y. Herald 
Tribune, Nov. 26, 1929.] E F E 

HITCHCOCK, RIPLEY [See Hitchcock, 
James Ripley Wellman, 1857-1918]. 

HITCHCOCK, ROSWELL DWIGHT 

(Aug. 15, 1817-June 16, 1887), Congregational 
clergyman, educator, sixth in descent from Luke 
Hitchcock who was a freeman of New Haven in 
1644 and later lived in Wethersfield, Conn., was 
born at East Machias, Me., the second son of 
Roswell and Betsey (Longfellow) Hitchcock. 
He attended the Washington Academy at East 
Machias, where he prepared for college, enter¬ 
ing Amherst as a sophomore in 1833 and grad¬ 
uating in 1836. Two years later, he entered An¬ 
dover Theological Seminary but left the next 
year to accept a tutorship at Amherst. Returning 
to Andover, after three years, as resident licen¬ 
tiate, he completed his studies in 1844, in the 
meantime occupying pulpits in Maine and Massa¬ 
chusetts. The years from 1844 to 1852 were 
spent partly in study in Halle and Berlin, partly 
as pastor of the First Congregational Church in 
Exeter, N. H. In 1852 he was appointed pro¬ 
fessor of natural and revealed religion in Bow- 
doin College and in 1855 was called to Union 
Theological Seminary, New York City, as pro¬ 
fessor of church history. Here he remained un¬ 
til his death in 1887, during the last seven years 
adding to his duties as professor that of president 
of the faculty. 

Hitchcock was notable as a teacher, not only 
for his effective manner of delivery but for a gift 
of epigram which few of his contemporaries 
equaled and none excelled. While his lectures 
were never published, examples of his style sur¬ 
vive in a posthumous volume of sermons edited 
under the title The Eternal Atonement (1888). 
He also published the following volumes: The 
Life, Writings, and Character of Edward Rob¬ 
inson (1863); Hitchcock's New and Complete 
Analysis of the Holy Bible (1870) ; Hymns and 
Songs of Praise (1874), in collaboration with 
Zachary Eddy and Philip Schaff; Socialism 
(1879); The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles 
(1884), in collaboration with F. Brown; and 
Carmina Sanctorum (1886), in collaboration 
with Zachary Eddy and L. W. Mudge. In his 
theological views he represented the liberal wing 
of New England Congregationalism. Although 
he was at first suspected of radicalism, his con¬ 
tact with German thought led him to react from 
the more extreme position common in liberal 
circles in that country, and his influence both as 


79 



Hite 

teacher and as president of the seminary was on 
the whole conservative. From 1863 to 1870 he 
edited the American Theological Review. In 
1869 he became a life trustee of Amherst College 
and in 1871 president of the Palestine Explora¬ 
tion Society, a post for which he had fitted him¬ 
self by a year of travel in Egypt and the Holy 
Land. His last official act was to preside at the 
dedication of the new buildings of the Union 
Theological Seminary, which under his leader¬ 
ship had removed from its original home in Uni¬ 
versity Place to its new home on Lenox Hill. It 
is an interesting commentary on the mutability 
of conditions in New York that President Hitch¬ 
cock in his address congratulated his colleagues 
and the students of the seminary on having se¬ 
cured a home which should be for all time. As a 
matter of fact the life of the building he dedicated 
proved to be just twenty-three years. 

Hitchcock married, on Jan. 2, 1845, Elizabeth 
Anthony Brayton, of Somerset, Mass., the third 
daughter of Israel Brayton of that town. They 
had three children. Hitchcock died at Somerset, 
in his seventieth year. 

[G. L. Prentiss, The Union Theological Seminary 
( 1 899) ; The New Schaff-Hersog Bncyc. of Religious 
Knowledge, vol. V (1909); W. G. T. Shedd and others, 
Addresses in Memory of R. D. Hitchcock (1887) ; Biog. 
Record of the Alumni of Amherst Coll. (1883); Gen. 
Cat. of the Theol. Sem. t Andover, Mass., 1808-1908 
(n.d.) ; Gen. Cat Bowdoin Coll . (1912) ; M. L. J. 
Hitchcock, The Geneal. of the Hitchcock Family 
(1894) ; N. Y. Tribune, June 18, 1887.] W. A. B. 

HITE, JOST (d. 1760), colonizer of the Shen¬ 
andoah Valley, was born in Strasbourg, Alsace. 
It is said that he was a wealthy Alsatian noble¬ 
man and that he migrated from France to Hol¬ 
land because of religious persecution. In 1710 
he sailed from Holland on his own vessel, the 
brigantine Swift Accompanying him, on that 
ship and on the schooner Friendship, were six¬ 
teen Dutch and German families. With them he 
settled in the vicinity of Kingston, N. Y. In 
America his name, originally Hans Jost Heydt, 
was subjected to various contortions, finally 
evolving into Jost Hite. He moved to Pennsyl¬ 
vania in 1716, settling first in the Pastorius colo¬ 
ny at Germantown, then at Skippack, and finally 
at the mouth of the Perkiomen (Schwenksville), 
where he built a mill and, in addition to farming, 
engaged in milling and weaving. On Aug. 5,1731, 
he purchased the Van Meter contracts for the 
settlement of 40,000 acres of land in western Vir¬ 
ginia, and on Oct. 21, 1731, he and Robert Mc¬ 
Kay obtained an additional contract from the 
governor and council of Virginia for the settle¬ 
ment of 100,000 acres. In 1732 Hite took six¬ 
teen families from Pennsylvania to the Opequon, 
near what is now Winchester, Va. During the 


Hitt 

next few years he colonized the Van Meter grant 
and in addition settled fifty-four families on the 
Hite-McKay tract, thus becoming entitled to the 
ownership of 94,000 acres. Thomas, sixth Lord 
Fairfax, entered a general caveat against the 
issuance of the patents, claiming the lands as 
within the bounds of the Northern Neck proprie¬ 
tary. Subsequent surveys proved this to be true 
and the colonial government recognized the sur¬ 
veys, Lord Fairfax promising to issue patents 
for lands granted by the Crown in the Northern 
Neck (1738). This arrangement was confirmed 
by the King in Council (1745). Fairfax later 
refused to issue Hite’s patents and gave patents 
to others for portions of the Hite grants. The 
controversy persisted for more than half a cen¬ 
tury and in 1786, after the death of both Hite 
and Fairfax, the courts finally decided in favor 
of Hite’s heirs. The litigation engendered a bit¬ 
terness that still persists. 

Hite was twice married: first, in Holland, to 
Anna Maria Du Bois, by whom he had numerous 
descendants; second, in 1741, to Maria Magda¬ 
lena Nuschwanger, widow of Christian Nusch- 
wanger. 

[Hite vs. Fairfax, 4 Call's Reports, 42-83; Revised 
Code of the Laws of Va. (1819), II, 344-47; photo¬ 
stats and copies of contemporary documents relative to 
the Hite-Fairfax controversy in the Manuscript Di¬ 
vision, Lib. of Cong.; Samuel Kercheval, A Hist, of 
the Valley of Va. (1833); H. C. Groome, “Northern 
Neck Lands,” in Bull. Fauquier Hist. Soc. (Warren- 
ton, Va.), Aug. 1921; W. Va. Hist. Mag., Jan., Apr. 
1903; Va. Mag of Hist, and Biog., Oct. 1905, Jan., 
Apr. 1906; Pa. German, July 1909 ; H. Schuricht, Hist, 
of the German Element in Va., vol. I (1898); J. W. 
Wayland, The German Element of the Shenandoah 
Valley of Va. (1907); G. N. Mackenzie, Colonial Fami¬ 
lies of the U. S . A., vol. IV (1914).] g £ 

HITT, ROBERT ROBERTS (Jan. 16, 1834- 
Sept 20, 1906), congressman, was born at Ur- 
bana, Champaign County, Ohio. His grandfa¬ 
ther, Martin Hitt, had moved from Kentucky to 
Ohio in order to emancipate his slaves; his fa¬ 
ther, Thomas Smith Hitt, was a Methodist min¬ 
ister; his mother was Emily John of Brookville, 
Ind. In September 1837 the Hitt family estab¬ 
lished themselves near Mount Morris in Ogle 
County, Ill. Robert studied at Rock River Semi¬ 
nary which his father had assisted in founding. 
He went to Indiana Asbury University, now De 
Pauw, in 1853, graduating in 1855. A year or 
two later he set up in Chicago as a shorthand 
reporter for court and newspaper work. At Lin¬ 
coln’s request he reported the Lincoln-Douglas 
debates for the Republican side, and he was of¬ 
ficial stenographer for the state legislature, 1858- 
60, reporting, among other things, the testimony 
as to the state-scrip frauds of Governor Matte- 
son. During the Civil War he accomplished 

80 



Hitt 

various tasks of reporting for the Federal side, 
notably that for the Davis-Holt commission sent 
to inquire into Fremont’s proceedings in Mis¬ 
souri. In 1871 he visited Santo Domingo with a 
commission to investigate its resources with a 
view to annexation. In 1872 he acted as re¬ 
porter for the Ku-Klux committee of both 
houses of Congress. On Oct. 28, 1874, he mar¬ 
ried Sallie Reynolds of Lafayette, Ind. Two sons 
were bom of the marriage. In December 1874 
he was appointed secretary of legation at Paris, 
a post which he filled for seven years. The train¬ 
ing in methods of diplomacy which he thus re¬ 
ceived was to prove a great assistance to him in 
his future career. He served as assistant secre¬ 
tary of state during Blaine’s tenure of the secre¬ 
taryship in 1881. In 1882 he was nominated and 
elected member of Congress from his district, 
being, also, elected to fill out the unexpired term 
of his deceased predecessor. He held his seat in 
Congress without a break until his death. 

Hitt’s most important service in Congress was 
on the Committee on Foreign Affairs, of which 
he became chairman when the Republicans 
gained control of the House in the Fifty-first 
Congress; and thereafter he was chairman of the 
Committee in the Congresses which the Repub¬ 
licans controlled—the Fifty-fourth to the Fifty- 
eighth. In this position, important as it was in 
the days of the United States’ rise to world pow¬ 
er, his services were very great but in a consider¬ 
able degree intangible. A few stand out: a ten- 
minute speech prevented unjustifiable action 
against Mexico in the Cutting case (Chicago 
Tribune , Aug. 11, 1886); he introduced resolu¬ 
tions, Feb. 2, 1894, stating the American policy 
in Hawaii and condemning Cleveland’s restora¬ 
tion of monarchy; he introduced the bill for pay¬ 
ing the expenses of the Venezuela boundary com¬ 
mission, Dec. 18, 1895; he reported resolutions 
recognizing Cuban belligerency, Apr. 3,1896, as¬ 
sisted in consummating the annexation of Ha¬ 
waii in 1898, and defended the recognition of 
Panama in 1903. He offered in the session of 
1883-84 the minority report on Chinese immi¬ 
gration (May 3, 1884), denouncing the bill as a 
treaty violation; to this subject he repeatedly 
recurred in later years. In the Forty-eighth and 
Forty-ninth congresses he offered bills to regu¬ 
late the exercise of extra-territorial jurisdiction. 
He was active in favor of Civil Service reform. 
In the session of 1887-88 he offered a bill to 
establish a commercial.union with Canada, re¬ 
curring to the subject in 1888-89 and 1890. In 
1891-92 he agitated the question of the loss of 
revenue by the importation of dutiable goods 
over Canadian railroads. He died at his sum- 


Hittell 

mer home, Newport, R. I., in 1906, having served 
in twelve successive Congresses. 

[Portr. and Biog. Album of Ogle County , III. (1886), 
pp. 183 ff., 259 ff.; J. M. Palmer, The Bench and Bar of 
III. (1899), vol. I; Newton Bateman and Paul Selby, 
Hist. Encyc. of III. and Hist, of Ogle County (2 vols., 
1909), containing appreciations of Hitt’s career by 
Theodore Roosevelt and Frank 0 . Lowden; Robert 
Roberts Hitt . . . Memorial Addresses (59 Cong., 2 
Sess,, 1907), and Cong. Record , 59 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 
3157 ft.; 3741 ff.; Legislative Hist, of Robert R. Hitt 
(1907)1 ed. by F. L. Davis, a collection of Hitt’s speech¬ 
es and resolutions ; obituaries in Providence Jour., Sept. 
21, 1906; Chicago Tribune, Sept. 21, 1906.] TCP 

HITTELL, JOHN SHERTZER (Dec. 25, 
1825-Mar. 8, 1901), journalist, author, statis¬ 
tician, was born in Jonestown, Lebanon County, 
Pa., the son of Dr. Jacob and Catherine (Shert- 
zer) Hittell. He was descended from Peter 
Hittell, who emigrated to America from Rhenish 
Bavaria in 1720. With the generation to which 
John and his brother Theodore [ q.v .] belonged, 
German ceased to be the mother tongue of the 
family. After practising medicine in Lebanon 
and Lehigh counties, Jacob Hittell removed his 
family in 1831 to Hamilton, Ohio, where he at¬ 
tained success as a surgeon and where Theodore 
and John were placed in school. In 1843 J°hn 
was graduated from Miami University, having 
followed a “Latin-Scientific” course. He then 
undertook to prepare himself for the law, study¬ 
ing it under a Hamilton lawyer, John Woods; 
but illness interrupted the effort, and he went 
away to work on a farm in Hake County, Ind. 
Later, when he was in Ottawa, Ill., he was seized 
with a desire to join the gold rush, and on May 1, 
1849, he set out in company with an oxtrain of 
fortune hunters. He walked some 1,200 miles of 
the distance to the Sacramento River, following 
the Platte, Sweetwater, and Humboldt rivers, 
and reached the gold fields in September. He 
spent the first winter in the mines of Reading’s 
Diggings, at a place later known as Horsetown, 
Shasta County, and then worked in diggings on 
Cottonwood Creek. After moderate successes he 
gave up the gold hunt in May 1850 and settled in 
Sonoma, where he pursued the study of Spanish, 
French, German, and Italian. In 1852 he moved 
to San Francisco, forming a connection in the 
following year with the Alta California > which 
lasted until 1880. 

In connection with this journalistic work Hit¬ 
tell became noted as a statistician, obtaining his 
information by personal visits to the scenes of 
the great industries and agricultural areas. He 
traveled eighteen months through Germany and 
then returned to San Francisco in 1884 to dedi¬ 
cate himself to authorship. Much of his work 
was on guide books and almanacs, but among the 



Hittell 

more serious works were: The Evidences against 
Christianity (2 vols., 1856); The Resources of 
California (1863), which went through several 
editions; The Commerce and Industries of the 
Pacific Coast (1882); A History of the Mental 
Growth of Mankind (4 vols., 1889-93) ; and The 
Spirit of the Papacy (1895). These works re¬ 
veal his practical, unorthodox spirit. He also 
dabbled in phrenology and published A New Sys¬ 
tem of Phrenology in 1857. As a friend of Jose 
Limantour, he espoused that adventurer’s spuri¬ 
ous claim to a large part of the pueblo lands of 
San Francisco, though he later repudiated his 
defense in an article in the Hesperian, June i860. 
Possibly his most valuable book, aside from his 
statistical studies, was A History of the City of 
San Francisco, and Incidentally of the State of 
California (1878). Much of his work was done 
for the publishing house of H. H. Bancroft. His 
final publication was Reform or Revolution? 
(1900), in which he lamented the decadence of 
government in the United States and proposed a 
reform of the Constitution. He was for many 
years historian of the Society of California Pi¬ 
oneers. He was never married. 

[Manuscript autobiography in the possession of the 
Society of California Pioneers; Quart, of the Soc. of 
Cal. Pioneers, Mar. 31, 1925 ; Who’s Who in America, 
1899-1900; Gen. Cat. of the Grads, and Former Stu¬ 
dents of Miami Vniv., 1809-1909.] H.I.P. 

HITTELL, THEODORE HENRY (Apr. 
S, 1830-Feb. 23, 1917), writer, lawyer, was bom 
at Marietta, Pa., the son of Dr. Jacob and Cath¬ 
erine (Shertzer) Hittell, and brother of John 
Shertzer Hittell [ q.v .]. His father moved to 
Ohio in 1831 and practised medicine at Hamil¬ 
ton for thirty-four years. Theodore’s early edu¬ 
cation was acquired in public and Catholic 
schools and in his father’s drug store. In 1845 
he entered Miami University but finished at Yale 
in 1849. From 1852 to 1855 he practised law in 
Hamilton, in the latter year following his brother 
John to California, where he began as a news¬ 
paper man in the turbulent San Francisco of the 
fifties. He soon joined the Bulletin , then edited 
by James King, upon whose death he became 
editor, so serving until i860. During part of 
Lincoln’s campaign he edited the San Francisco 
Daily Times as a stanch Unionist He had, on 
June 12, 1858, married Elise Christine Wiehe, 
whose father had served with Bliicher at Water¬ 
loo. She was active in the California Academy 
of Sciences, founder of the San Francisco Found¬ 
ling Asylum and of the Silk Culture Society of 
California, and a patron of manual-training 
schools and museums. She died in 1900. Sur¬ 
viving their parents were three of a family of 
four children. 


Hoadley 

Specializing in civil practice, Hittell was law 
partner of Elisha Cook from 1862 to 1867, and 
of John B. Felton until 1877, handling many 
famous land suits which made him an expert in 
California land titles and gave him penetrating 
knowledge of the history of the state. In 1879 
he was elected state senator from San Francisco, 
in which capacity (1880-82) he redrafted the 
code of civil procedure and was largely respon¬ 
sible for the statutes of 1880. He continued his 
law practice until 1906. Meanwhile, he pub¬ 
lished several books. His first, The Adventures 
of James Capen Adams (i860, 1911), told the 
entrancing story of the famous Sierra bear-hun¬ 
ter. Of four meritorious legal works the most 
widely known was The General Laws of Cali¬ 
fornia (1865, 1872). He also composed Stephen 
J. Field’s Personal Reminiscences of Early Days 
in California (dictated 1877, coypright 1893). 
But his reputation as an author rests most se¬ 
curely upon his History of California (4 vols., 
1885-97), the first serious and orderly statement 
of the subject. In this research he calendared or 
copied many priceless documents from the Cali¬ 
fornia archives, which were burned in the disas¬ 
ter of 1906. The value of the last two volumes is 
enhanced through the author’s having often been 
eye-witness or actor in the events recorded. The 
work is still the best-written history of the state, 
and is unchallenged for its authority upon legal 
questions involved. Hittell also wrote a “His¬ 
toric Account of the California Academy of Sci¬ 
ences, 1853-1903,” which was partly burned in 
1906 when it was in process of being printed. 
He rewrote the last part, bringing the narrative 
down to 1906. His other unpublished works in¬ 
clude a history of Hawaii, an account of Wil¬ 
liam Walker the filibuster, and his own remi¬ 
niscences, the latter uncompleted. Through his 
advice James Lick made the California Academy 
of Sciences and the Society of California Pi¬ 
oneers his residual legatees, and each institution 
thus received over half a million dollars. 

[G. W. Dickie, L. M. Loomis, Ransom Pratt, “In 
Memoriam: Theodore Henry Hittell/ 1 Proc. Cal Acad, 
of Sci., 4 ser., vol. VIII, no. I (1918); Who's Who in 
America, 1918-19; Record of the Graduated Members 
of the Class of 1849 of Yale Coll. (1884) ; Obit. Record 
of Yale Grads., 1916-17; San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 
24 , 1917*] H.I P 

HOADLEY, DAVID (Apr. 29, 1774-July 
1839), styled “the self-taught architect,” was 
bom at Waterbury, Conn., a son of Lemuel and 
Urania (Mallory) Hoadley, and a descendant of 
William Hoadley (or Hoadle) who settled in 
Branford, Conn., in 1668. His father was a 
fanner. Silas Hoadley, the clock-maker, was a 
kinsman. David began as a house-carpenter but 
with an aptitude for architectural design amount- 


82 



Hoadley 

ing to genius. With no schooling in that field 
and little schooling of any character, as early as 
1795 he was credited with designing the Con¬ 
gregational and Episcopal churches then build¬ 
ing in Waterbury, both of which were greatly 
admired at the time and became famed through¬ 
out the state. In 1800 he planned and built in 
Waterbury a beautiful mansion for Col. William 
Leavenworth, which stood until 1905. Between 
1800 and 1802 he designed and built the house 
of Judge William Bristol, facing New Haven 
Green. The front entrance of this house, now 
preserved in the Metropolitan Museum in New 
York, is an almost faultless design of its kind and 
shows that at the time it was built Hoadley had 
somehow, somewhere, become familiar with the 
principles of classical style. He was “self- 
taught,” but what books he got hold of and mas¬ 
tered are unknown. In 1805 he built in Water¬ 
bury a house for Judge John Kingsbury. In 
1814-15 he built in New Haven the North 
Church on New Haven Green, his master work. 
Any architect, wherever schooled, might be 
proud of this structure. Hoadley also designed 
churches in Bethany (1809), Orange (1810), 
Norfolk (1815), and Milford (1823), and 
churches in Southington, Cheshire, Monroe, and 
Huntington, Conn., are attributed to him. In 
New Haven he was the architect for the Bennett 
house, 86 Broadway (1805?), and the Nathan 
Smith (1816), David Curtis De Forest (1820- 
21), Kingsley (1824-25), Jonas Blair Bowditch 
(1815-20?), Rev. Nathaniel Taylor (1815?), 
Staples (1820-21), and Dexter houses. The two 
last, both on Church Street, are now gone, as 
well as the Ebenezer Johnson house, which stood 
on Chapel Street next to the Thomas Darling 
house, later the home of the Q u imupi ac Qub. 
For Col. Daniel Beecher he built at Naugatuck 
a great farmhouse, now demolished; for Darius 
Beecher he built in Bethany a house noted for 
its delicate paneling, mantelpieces, and ballroom. 
The Eli Terry house at Greystone, Conn., is also 
attributed to Hoadley. Between 1824 and 1827 
he built, and probably designed, the Tontine Ho¬ 
tel in New Haven, recently demolished. He is 
also credited by J. Frederick Kelly with design¬ 
ing the Huggins house, 32 Elm St., and the beau¬ 
tiful ballroom occupying the third floor of the 
house at 35 Elm St., New Haven. His last no¬ 
table design was the Samuel Russell mansion 
(1828) in Middletown, still unsurpassed in Mid¬ 
dlesex County for dignity and “grand air.” 
Hoadley broke down in middle life and returned 
to Waterbury, where he died in July 1839. It 
was said then of him: “He had a sound judgment, 
a well-balanced mind, a generous and honest 


Hoadley 

heart” (Bronson, post, p. 396). The late Fred¬ 
erick John Kingsbury, who as a boy knew Hoad¬ 
ley intimately, described him as a large fine- 
looking man. A slate tablet was erected to his 
memory in the vestibule of the North Church in 
1915 and in 1924 a tablet was placed in the Mat- 
tatuck Historical Society in Waterbury, where 
there is a comprehensive collection of photo¬ 
graphs of his designs. Hoadley's works show in 
every instance taste, refinement, invariable pro¬ 
priety, and the translation of the orders and clas¬ 
sical details from stone to wood in a manner 
amounting to genius. No man of his time sur¬ 
passed him in church and domestic architec¬ 
ture ; few equaled him. His North Church on 
New Haven Green in particular sustains the 
great tradition of so-called “colonial” architec¬ 
ture. Hoadley was married, about 1798, to Jane 
Hull. She died some months later and about 
1805 he was married to Rachel Beecher of Kent. 

[Henry Bronson, The Hist, of Waterbury, Conn. 
(1858); F. B. Trowbridge, The Hoadley Geneal. 
(1894) ; Jos. Anderson, The Town and City of Water¬ 
bury (1896); G. D. Seymour, “David Hoadley: The 
‘Self-Taught* Architect, 1774-1839,” Cat . Third Ann. 
Exhibition, the Architectural Club of New Haven 
(1922), and article in Art and Progress, Apr. 19x2; F. 
J. Kingsbury, A Narrative and Documentary Hist, of 
St. John's Protestant Episc. Ch.. ..of Waterbury Conn. 
(1907) ; Waterbury American, Apr. 19, 19x0; Saturday 
Chronicle (New Haven), Jan. 22, 1916; manuscript 
material in the possession of the author of this sketch.] 

G.D.S. 

HOADLEY, JOHN CHIPMAN (Dec. 10, 
1818-Oct. 21, 1886), civil engineer, mechanical 
engineer, manufacturer, was born at Martins- 
burg, Lewis County, N. Y., the son of Maj. Les¬ 
ter and Sarah (Chipman) Hoadley. He was de¬ 
scended from William Hoadley (or Hoadle) 
who emigrated from England to America before 
1663 and settled eventually in Branford, Conn. 
His father, a fairly well-to-do farmer, moved the 
family in 1824 to Utica, N. Y., where John grew 
up. He attended the common schools, spent two 
years in a machine and pattern shop in Utica, 
and after a few months as rodman on the sur¬ 
vey for the railroad between Utica and Bingham¬ 
ton, returned to the Utica Academy for a year of 
technical study. In 1836 he obtained work with 
the engineers surveying for the enlargement of 
the Erie Canal, and after progressing through 
the position of rodman, leveler, surveyor, and 
draftsman, he was put in charge of that section 
of the work between Utica and Rome, N. Y. 
His method of recording the location of the old 
and new lines of the canal was of such value in 
the settlement of claims against the state that he 
was retained until 1844, when he received an 
offer of seven hundred dollars a year from Hora- 



Hoadley Hoadly 

tio N. and Erastus B. Bigelow, textile manufac- of the British Association for the Advancement 
turers, to come to their plant near Lancaster, of Science. Papers presented before the Amer- 
Mass, With this firm he acted as civil engineer ican Society of Mechanical Engineers include: 
in charge of locating, constructing, and in- “A Tilting Water Meter for Purposes of Experi- 
stalling the new mills. The experience gained ment”; “High Ratios of Expansion and Distri- 
in this position in connection with the erection bution of Unequal Pressures in Single and Com- 
and installation of the power and mechanical pound Engines”; and “Use of the Calorimeter as 
equipment led him to turn away from the field of a Pyrometer for High Temperatures.” Hoadley 
civil engineering to that of mechanical engineer- was for one term a representative in the legisla- 
ing. Accordingly in 1848 he joined Gordon Me- ture of Massachusetts in 1858 and in 1862 was 
Kay [q.v.] at Pittsfield, Mass., to form the firm commissioned a captain in the Massachusetts 
of McKay & Hoadley, manufacturers and engi- militia and was sent on a four-months mission 
neers, in the construction of mill machinery, to England to inspect and report upon ordnance 
steam-engines, and water-wheels. After three for harbor defense for the state. He was a 
years in this connection he went to Lawrence, founder of the American Society of Mechanical 
Mass., as superintendent and later general agent Engineers, and an original trustee of the Massa- 
of the Lawrence Machine Shop, which construct- chusetts Institute of Technology, to which insti- 
ed textile and paper-mill machinery, water- tution he gave much equipment for the mechani- 
wheels, stationary steam-engines, and locomo- cal engineering laboratories. He was twice mar- 
tives. At the time it was one of the largest plants ried: on Aug. 24,1847, to Charlotte Sophia Kim- 
of its kind in New England. In the five years of ball, at Needham, Mass., and on Sept. 15, 1853, 
Hoadley’s direction of the works (1852-57), to Catherine Gansevoort Melville, at Pittsfield, 
more than one hundred locomotives were built. Mass. 

These were for many of the principal railroads [F. B. Trowbridge, The Hoadley Geneal. (1894); 
and were built according to designs furnished by j 

the purchasers. troduction; Boston Transcript, Oct. 22, 1886.] 

In 1857 the Lawrence Machine Shop failed F.A.T. 

and upon the strength of the reputation of the HOADLY, GEORGE (July 31, 1826-Aug. 
work turned out under his direction, Hoadley 26, 1902), Ohio jurist, governor, lawyer, was 
began the manufacture of portable steam-engines born in New Haven, Conn., the son of George 
on his own account. Except for locomotive en- Hoadly, a graduate of Yale College and at one 
gines, these engines were comparatively new time mayor of New Haven, and a descendant of 
machines at that time, and Hoadley is credited William Hoadley (or Hoadle) who emigrated 
with much of the improvement in design that to America before 1663 and settled ultimately at 
followed. His engine was the first of the single- Branford, Conn. His mother was Mary Ann 
valve automatics with the governor at the side Woolsey, a great-grand-daughter of Jonathan 
of the driving pulley and was noted for lightness, Edwards and a sister of Theodore D. Woolsey 
simplicity, durability, and efficiency. Hoadley [qq.v.]. About 1830 the famil y moved to Cleve- 
continued this business for twenty years during land, Ohio. George attended the public schools 
which time he devoted four years to the direction of Cleveland and Western Reserve College, then 
of the New Bedford Copper Company, and one studied law at Harvard for a year under Story 
year, 1868, in charge of construction with the and Greenleaf, completing his preparation for 
McKay Sewing Machine Association. After the bar in the office of Salmon P. Chase and his 
1873 he devoted most of his time to a consulting partner at Cincinnati. Admitted to practice in 
practice. He represented manufacturers or pur- August 1847, he began his judicial career in 
chasers at the tests of some of the most impor- 1851 as judge of the superior court of Cincin- 
tant mill machinery and water-works acceptance nati, and in the same year, on Aug. 13, he was 
tests in New England and was a respected expert married to Mary Burnet Perry, grand-daughter 
witness in many patent and damage litigations, of Judge Jacob Burnet. In 1855 he became city 
He was an organizer of the Clinton Wire Cloth solicitor, and the next year he declined Governor 
Company and served as president of the Archi- Chase’s proffer of a seat on the state supreme 
bald Wheel Company. The results of some of his bench. He was reelected judge of the superior 
investigations and tests were published in pam- court in 1859 and 1864 hut resigned in 1866 and 
phlet form, the best known of which are The formed the law firm of Hoadly, Jackson & John- 
Portaile Steam-Engine (1863), and Steam-En- son. Two years before he had become a profes- 
gtne Practice in the United States (1884), which sor in the Cincinnati Law School, and this con- 
he presented as a paper at the Montreal meeting nection continued, with interruptions, until 1887 

84 



Hoadly 

For a time he was also a trustee of the Univer¬ 
sity of Cincinnati. 

In youth Hoadly was a Democrat, but the 
slavery issue and his association with Chase 
drew him into the Republican party. Its recon¬ 
struction policy alienated him, however, and he 
shared in the Liberal-Republican movement. As 
a delegate to the convention of 1872 he disap¬ 
proved of the nomination of Greeley. He advo¬ 
cated the reelection of Grant as a “choice of 
evils/ 5 but he disliked the tariff policy of the Re¬ 
publicans, and in spite of his distaste for Green- 
backism he presently rejoined the Democratic 
party. At the request of the Democratic Com¬ 
mittee he served as counsel for Tilden in the 
presidential contest of 1877, presenting the claims 
of the Florida and Oregon electors of his party 
before the Electoral Commission. In 1880 he 
was temporary chairman of the National Con¬ 
vention. 

In 1883, as Democratic candidate for gov¬ 
ernor, he defeated Joseph B. Foraker. The state 
constitution forbade the licensing of saloons but 
granted to the legislature some regulatory pow¬ 
ers concerning them, and the Republicans had 
enacted a law taxing them. Hoadly, ill during 
the campaign, made few speeches, but the Ger¬ 
man Republicans, resenting the tax law, turned 
the vote in his favor. Several events of his 
term weakened his chances of reelection. The 
state supreme court, with a Democratic majority, 
held the tax law unconstitutional. The election 
of Henry B. Payne to the United States Senate 
gave rise to ugly rumors of corruption. Riots in 
Cincinnati and disturbances in the Hocking Val¬ 
ley mining districts required the use of militia, 
which the Governor employed so reluctantly that 
his course seemed hesitant to some. In the cam¬ 
paign of 1885 Foraker emphasized the necessity 
of regulating the liquor traffic and charged the 
Democrats with sacrificing the large revenue 
which the tax on saloons had yielded. Hoadly 
contended that no valid tax act could be passed 
under the existing constitution and appealed for 
the support of the liberal element. The contest 
resulted in Foraker's election. 

In 1884 Hoadly had been mentioned as a can¬ 
didate for the presidency. Disgusted by his de¬ 
feat in 1885, he withdrew from politics and re¬ 
sumed the practice of law. Cleveland, his inti¬ 
mate friend, in vain offered him a cabinet posi¬ 
tion during his second term. Despite a winning 
personality and convincing ability as a speaker, 
he was never a skilful politician. He was in his 
element as a lawyer. In 1887 he left the firm of 
Hoadly, Johnson & Colston, where his place 
was taken by Judson Harmon [q.v.] t and re- 


Hoag 

moved to New York City. There he established 
the firm of Hoadly, Lauterbach & Johnson. They 
became leading corporation lawyers, appearing 
as counsel in outstanding litigations. Hoadly 
personally was the legal representative of the 
Jefferson Davis estate, and of Mrs. Davis in her 
suit against the Bedford Publishing Company. 

Hoadly was a Scottish Rite Mason. His re¬ 
ligious views were not well defined, but he seems 
to have leaned towards Unitarianism. His char¬ 
acter is illustrated by his voluntary payment of 
$50,000 when a man whose bondsman he was 
defaulted. Pale and slender in youth, he was 
throughout his life wiry rather than rugged. 
The summer of 1902 he spent at Watkins, N. Y. 
The season was unusually cold, and he developed 
acute bronchitis, from which he died. 

[Hoadly’s name is sometimes incorrectly spelled with 
an “e” in the last syllable. The most careful biograph¬ 
ical sketch is that in C. T. Greve, Centennial Hist . of 
Cincinnati (1904), II, 17-26. See also F. B. Trow¬ 
bridge, The Hoadley Geneal. (1894); B. W. Dwight, 
The Hist of the Descendants of John Dwight (2 vols., 
1874); Henry Howe, Hist Coils, of Ohio (ed. 1908), 
vol. I, p. 839; C. B. Galbreath, Hist of Ohio (1925), 
vol. II; E. 0 , Randall and D. J. Ryan, Hist, of Ohio, 
vol. IV (1912); J. B. Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life 
(1916), vol. I; ike Green Bag, Dec. 1907; H. Y, Times 
and Cincinnati Enquirer, Aug. 27, 1902.] H.C.H. 

HOAG, JOSEPH (Apr. 22, 1762-Nov. 21, 
1846), Quaker preacher, was born in Oblong, 
Dutchess County, N. Y., the son of Elijah and 
Phebe Hoag, of excellent English stock. He was 
the fifth in descent from John Hoag who settled 
in Hampton, N. H. The family had for some 
generations been affiliated with the Society of 
Friends and Joseph was thus a birthright Quak¬ 
er. He was a delicate, sickly boy, shy and pecul¬ 
iar in his ways, and was in early youth subject 
to vivid dreams and waking visions. He expe¬ 
rienced before he was ten years old one striking 
night-vision which he always believed was later 
verified in a series of detailed events. He often 
found himself throughout his youth dropping 
into a mild trance, what he called a “muse,” and 
he was obviously psychically disposed to unusual, 
if not abnormal, experiences. This tendency to 
have visions and foresights of coming events 
characterized his entire life and gave him the 
reputation of being a seer. He finally became 
confirmed and established in faith and was rec¬ 
ognized as a minister of the Society of Friends. 
In 1782 he married Huldah Case, who also was 
a recognized Quaker preacher. A few years after 
their marriage he moved with his family to 
Charlotte, Vt., then a frontier settlement, and 
soon he became one of the most noted itinerant 
Quaker preachers in America. At first his trav¬ 
els were mainly in New England but in time he 



Hoar 

covered Nova Scotia and other British prov¬ 
inces, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Vir¬ 
ginia, North and South Carolina, Ohio, and In¬ 
diana. He went over the Quaker sections in 
these states and provinces many times, visiting 
all the meetings, and on some journeys all the 
families, of Friends. He traveled by horse and 
carriage and on one of his journeys he covered 
7,600 miles in twenty-one months. His preach¬ 
ing and his personal communications were 
marked by frequent insights into states and con¬ 
ditions of individuals and communities, and in¬ 
timations of events about to occur. But his rep¬ 
utation as a prophet rested particularly upon a 
unique vision which came to him in 1803. In this 
premonition he saw divisions occurring in the 
churches of America beginning in the Presby¬ 
terian denomination and going on through the 
other Protestant churches. The same dividing 
spirit split the Society of Friends and divided 
the United States, resulting in bloodshed and 
the final abolition of slavery in the Southern 
states. “Then a Monarchical power arose—took 
the Government of the United States—estab¬ 
lished a national religion” ( Journal , post, p. 
379). The veridical value of the earlier predic¬ 
tions is weakened for scientific students by the 
fact that the vision was not officially printed 
until 1861, though a slightly earlier printing oc¬ 
curred in 1854. When the divisions occurred in 
the Society of Friends Hoag was a stout oppo¬ 
nent of Elias Hicks, whose liberal preaching led 
to the so-called Hicksite separation of 1827-28. 
At the second separation, in 1845, Hoag sup¬ 
ported John Wilbur against the followers of Jo¬ 
seph John Gurney and allied himself with the 
small body of “Wilburites” in New York. He 
died the following year in his Vermont home. 

[Jour, of the Life of Jos. Hoag (Auburn, N. Y., 
1861); Albert J. Edmunds, The Vision, in 1803, of Jos. 
Hoag (1915) ; Friends* Intelligencer, Dec. 2 , 1854, con¬ 
taining an early printing of the “Vision’'; David Mar¬ 
shall, The Visions of Jos . Hoag and Daniel Barker 
(Carthage, Ind., 1889).] R.M.J. 

HOAR, EBENEZER ROCKWOOD (Feb. 
21, 1816-Jan. 31, 1895), jurist, congressman, 
attorney-general, was born in Concord, Mass., 
the son of Samuel Hoar and brother of George 
Frisbie Hoar Iqq.v.]. His mother was Sarah, 
daughter of Roger Sherman [q.v.]. He gradu¬ 
ated from Harvard College in 1833 (B.A.), 
taught a year, began to read law in his father’s 
office, and continued in the Harvard Law School, 
where he received the degree of LL.B. in 1839. 
He rapidly rose to eminence in practice, being 
.associated in various cases with Choate and with 
Webster. He entered politics in 1840 as a dele¬ 
gate to the Whig young men’s convention for 


Hoar 

Middlesex County. Five years later he was one 
of the organizers of an anti-annexation meet¬ 
ing at which was adopted a pledge written by 
himself and Henry Wilson to “use all practica¬ 
ble means for the extinction of slavery on the 
American Continent.” A few months later as an 
anti-slavery Whig he was elected to the Massa¬ 
chusetts Senate, where his declaration that he 
would rather be a “Conscience Whig” than a 
“Cotton Whig” gave the slogan to the anti-slav¬ 
ery movement, of which he became a leader. His 
call to the people of Massachusetts in protest 
against the nomination of Taylor for president 
led to the Free Soil convention at Worcester on 
June 28, 1848. 

In 1849 h e was appointed a judge of the court 
of common pleas. One of the notable features of 
his service on the bench was his charge to the 
grand jury in the trial of the men who attempted 
to free the fugitive slave, Anthony Burns [q.v.]. 
In 1855 he resigned to resume practice but in 
1859 he became an associate justice of the su¬ 
preme judicial court of Massachusetts, a position 
which he held for a decade. Then called by Presi¬ 
dent Grant to the post of attorney-general, he 
proved one of the most effective department 
heads. He exerted his influence against the rec¬ 
ognition of the Cuban insurgents as belligerents. 
When nine new circuit judgeships were created, 
Hoar’s sturdy insistence that these positions be 
filled by men of high character and fitness was 
keenly resented by many senators who wished to 
treat them as patronage. Accordingly, a few 
months later when the President nominated him 
for a seat upon the supreme bench, the Senate 
rejected the nomination, ostensibly because he 
did not live in the district to which he was to be 
assigned. “What could you expect from a man 
who had snubbed seventy Senators!” said Simon 
Cameron ( Proceedings of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, post, p. 304). The charge that 
Grant and Hoar connived to pack the Supreme 
Court so as to obtain a reversal of its stand upon 
the legal-tender issue has been conclusively re¬ 
futed (G. F. Hoar, The Charge against Presi¬ 
dent Grant and Attorney General Hoar of Pack¬ 
ing the Supreme Court, 1896; Storey and Emer¬ 
son, post, pp. 199-202). In 1870, with dignified 
loyalty to his chief, he retired from the cabinet 
when Grant sought to secure the support of some 
Southern senators who were demanding that the 
Attorney-General be displaced by a man from 
the South; but the next year he yielded to 
Grant’s request to serve as a member of the joint 
high commission which framed the Treaty of 
Washington to settle the Alabama claims. 

He served a single term in Congress (1873- 



Hoar 

75), where his brother, George F. Hoar, was one 
of his colleagues. Here he opposed the Sherman 
Resumption Bill and the Force Bill. He was a 
valuable member of the committee to which was 
referred the revision of the United States stat¬ 
utes and he served as a regent of the Smith¬ 
sonian Institution. At the end of his term he 
returned to Concord. In 1876 he was induced to 
enter the campaign as a candidate for Congress 
against Benjamin F. Butler [ q.v .], to whose in¬ 
fluence in national and in state politics he had 
for many years been the most vigorous opponent, 
but he was heavily defeated by that astute politi¬ 
cian. As a delegate to the Republican National 
Convention in 1876, he supported Bristow till 
the last ballot, when he voted for Hayes. In 
1884 he supported Blaine. In his later years he 
declined to reenter public service though urged 
to be a member of the commission to investigate 
governmental conditions in Louisiana and to act 
as counsel for the United States before the fish¬ 
ery commission. 

He was a devoted son of Harvard College, 
serving for nearly thirty years either as over¬ 
seer or as member of the corporation. In the 
American Unitarian Association he was a domi¬ 
nant force. At the bar he was noted for the close¬ 
ness of his reasoning and the keenness of his wit. 
He was a brilliant conversationalist and for near¬ 
ly forty years was a member of the Saturday 
Club, which numbered many of the brightest in¬ 
tellects in New England. On Nov. 20, 1840, he 
married Caroline Downes Brooks. Of their seven 
children, the youngest, Sherman Hoar, was elect¬ 
ed as representative to Congress in 1890, third 
of the family in direct descent to hold that po¬ 
sition. 

[Moorfield Storey and E. W. Emerson, E. R. Hoar 
(1911); G. F. Hoar, Autobiog. of Seventy Years (2 
vols., 1903) ; Proc. Mass. Hist . Soc., 2 ser., IX (1895) ; 
H. S. Nourse, The Hoar Family (1899); Boston Tran¬ 
script, Feb. 1, 1895.] G. H. H. 

HOAR, GEORGE FRISBIE (Aug. 29,1826- 
Sept. 30, 1904), lawyer, representative, senator, 
was bom in Concord, Mass., the son of Sarah 
(Sherman) and Samuel Hoar [q.v.] and the 
brother of E. Rockwood Hoar [q.v.]. He was 
educated in the academy at Concord, Harvard 
College (B.A. 1846), and the Harvard Law 
School (LL.B. 1849). In 1849 he began the 
practice of law in Worcester, where he continued 
to make his home for the rest of his life. His be¬ 
ginning in politics was in folding and directing 
the call, prepared by his father and brother, for 
the convention which launched the Free Soil 
oarty in Massachusetts. 

He was intimately associated with the plan¬ 
ning and the early organization of the Repub- 


Hoar 

lican party in the state and, for half a century, 
he gave to it service in many responsible posi¬ 
tions without, apparently, appreciating those 
social and economic developments which had 
changed the party of Abraham Lincoln to that 
of Mark Hanna and William McKinley. He 
presided over the Republican state convention in 
1871, 1877, 1882, and 1885. He was a delegate 
to its national convention from 1876 to 1888, 
and chairman of the one which nominated Gar¬ 
field. In 1852 he was elected to the state House 
of Representatives and five years later he served 
a term in the Senate. In 1869, during his ab¬ 
sence in England, he was elected as a Republican 
to Congress, and served in the House till 1877, 
when he was elected by the legislature to the 
Senate. Reelected four times, he continued to 
represent Massachusetts in the Senate until his 
death. 

During his seven years in the House his most 
congenial work was on the committee on the ju¬ 
diciary, He was one of the managers of the 
House in the impeachment of William Belknap 
[q.v.] and presented a vigorous argument for 
his conviction despite the plea that the Senate 
had no jurisdiction because the defendant was 
no longer in office as secretary of war. He was 
a member of the electoral commission which de¬ 
termined the outcome of the Hayes-Tilden con¬ 
troversy in 1877. In 1873 he was chairman of 
the special committee which investigated gov¬ 
ernmental conditions in Louisiana. 

In the Senate his most effective work was done 
upon measures of a professional or an adminis¬ 
trative character, rather than upon more popular 
political measures. In his own opinion his most 
important service to the country was on the com¬ 
mittee on claims, where he exercised great influ¬ 
ence in determining the doctrines which guided 
the Senate’s action on civil war claims of indi¬ 
viduals, corporate bodies, and states. For more 
than twenty-five years he served continuously on 
the committee on privileges and elections, and 
his opinions are cited as authoritative. For 
twenty years he was a member of the committee 
on the judiciary and during much of the time its 
chairman. At the request of this committee he 
waited upon President McKinley [q.v.] to pro¬ 
test against his practice of appointing senators 
upon commissions whose work was later to come 
before the Senate for approval. In character, in 
speech, and in bearing he upheld the highest tra¬ 
ditions of the Senate and was the author of two 
of its rules demanding decorum in debate. His 
speeches in opposition to the election of senators 
by popular vote were among the weightiest ar¬ 
guments on that side of the question. He was 

8 7 



Hoar 


Hoar 


the author of the law of 1887 which repealed the 
portion of the tenure-of-office act then in force, 
and of the presidential succession act of 1886, 
and he had a large part in framing bankruptcy 
and anti-trust legislation. 

Moral issues won his prompt and tireless sup¬ 
port. In the House he opposed the "salary grab” 
of 1873 and he turned over every penny of back 
pay which that brought to him to found a schol¬ 
arship in the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 
In the Senate he was the chief sponsor for laws 
to curb lotteries. His contempt for the bigotry 
of the "A. P. A.” nativist movement led him, 
against the advice of his friends, to write a scath¬ 
ing letter which helped bury that movement "in 
the ‘cellar* in which it was born” (Dresser, post , 
p. 7). Reckless of the possible political effect 
upon his future, he fought most strenuously 
against the Republican administration's Philip¬ 
pine policy. Although his stand upon this ques¬ 
tion was disapproved in Massachusetts, yet so 
great was the admiration for his sincerity that 
he was reelected in 1901 by a very large ma¬ 
jority. Devotion to the country's service in the 
House and Senate involved not only the renun¬ 
ciation of a rapidly increasing legal practice but 
also the declining of other high honors. Twice 
he was offered an appointment to the supreme 
judicial court of Massachusetts. Hayes and Mc¬ 
Kinley each offered to send him to represent the 
United States in England, where his friendships 
among judges and scholars and statesmen would 
have made his position exceptionally congenial, 
but his modest means did not permit him to 
accept 

His counsel was sought in behalf of many edu¬ 
cational and literary institutions. For twelve 
years he was an overseer of Harvard College. 
He helped establish in his home city the Worces¬ 
ter Polytechnic Institute and Clark University 
and was an influential trustee of both these in¬ 
stitutions from their organization until his death. 
He served as a regent of the Smithsonian Insti¬ 
tution and as president of the American An¬ 
tiquarian Society and of the American Historical 
Association. He was ever a student, accumu¬ 
lated for himself a choice library in history and 
in English and classical literature, and took an 
active interest in the development of the Library 
of Congress. He was instrumental in obtaining 
the return to the Commonwealth of Massachu¬ 
setts of the manuscript of Governor Bradford's 
History of Plymouth plantation. He was a for¬ 
midable debater, quick in repartee and in sus¬ 
taining his arguments by legal and historical 
precedents. He was often invited to address 
literary and historical associations. Though he 


had neither a pleasing voice nor a graceful pres¬ 
ence, he was an effective speaker possessed of a 
noble and dignified style. The stern puritan- 
ism to which he had been accustomed in child¬ 
hood was mollified in his later years. He was a 
liberal Unitarian, scrupulous in the support of 
his church and tolerant of the views of others. 
He delighted in the associations of the Saturday 
Club and in loyalty to his friends. 

He was twice married: to Mary Louisa Spurr 
in 1853, and to Ruth Ann Miller in 1862. He 
was survived by the two children of his first wife. 

[G. F. Hoar, Autobiog. of Seventy Years (2 vols., 
1903); Proc. Mass. Hist Soc., 2 ser., XVIII-XIX 
(1905-06); a critical estimate by T. W. Higginson 
in Proc . Acad, of Arts and Sci vol. XL (1905) ; F. F. 
Dresser, G. F. Hoar: Reprint from Reminiscences and 
Biog. Notices of Past Members of the Worcester Fire 
Soc . 1917 (1917); eulogy in Proc. Am. Antiquarian 
Soc., vols. XVI-XVII (1905-07); G. F. Hoar , Me¬ 
morial Addresses Delivered in the Sen . and H. of R. 
(1905 ); Talcot Williams, in Rev. of Rev. (N. Y.), 
Nov. 1904; M. A. DeW. Howe, Later Years of the 
Saturday Club (1927); Bradford's History of Plimoth 
Plantation . . . With a Report of the Proceedings In¬ 
cident to the Return of the MS. to Mass . (1899) ; H. 
S. Nourse, The Hoar Family (1899) ; Records of the 
Trustees of Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Boston 
Transcript, Sept. 30, 1904; Springfield Daily Repub¬ 
lican, Sept. 30, 1904.] G. H. H. 

HOAR, LEONARD ( c . 1630-Nov. 28, 1675), 
third president of Harvard College, was the son 
of Charles Hoare, brewer, stapler, and alderman 
of Gloucester, England, and his wife, Joanna 
Hinksman. Both were devoted to the Rev. John 
Workman, a victim of Archbishop Laud. The 
father died in 1638, after willing that Leonard be 
educated at Oxford (New-England Historical 
and Genealogical Register , October 1891, p. 
286); but within three years the mother took her 
young family to Braintree, Mass. Leonard en¬ 
tered Harvard College in 1647 and, after taking 
his master's degree in 1653, he sailed for Eng¬ 
land, where he was incorporated M.A. in the 
University of Cambridge, July 5, 1654 (Cam¬ 
bridge University Registry, Supplicats, 1651- 
56), and became rector of Wanstead, Essex. 
Ejected in 1662, he studied medicine and botany, 
became acquainted with the group of experi¬ 
mental philosophers who were organizing the 
Royal Society, and by royal mandate, obtained 
probably by his friend, Dr. Robert Morison, bot¬ 
anist and physician to Charles II, was created 
M.D. by the University of Cambridge on Jan. 20, 
1671 ( Calendar State Papers, Domestic Series, 
1671 , 1895, p. 10; Cambridge University Regis¬ 
try, Subscription Book). In 1668 he published 
an Index Biblicus (also 1669 and enlarged edition 
1672). Leonard Hoar married Bridget, daugh¬ 
ter of John Lisle, the regicide, and of the unfor¬ 
tunate Alicia. Returning with her to Boston in 


88 



Hoar 


Hoar 


July 1672, on a call from the Old South Church, 
he brought a letter signed by thirteen dissenting 
ministers of London recommending him to the 
expected vacancy in the Harvard presidency. 
Before his arrival the not unprayed for demise 
of the amiable but decrepit President Chauncy 
[q.v.] took place. Hoar was promptly chosen to 
the office, voted a salary of £150 (a fifty per cent, 
increase) by the General Court, and inaugurated 
Dec. 10,1672. 

Hoar found the college in a sad decline, but his 
ambition was high. His purpose to find a place 
for experimental science in the curriculum is 
shown by a letter to Robert Boyle of Dec. 13, 
1672, declaring that he hoped to obtain “a large 
well-sheltered garden and orchard for students 
addicted to planting; an ergasterium for me¬ 
chanic fancies; and a laboratory chemical for 
those philosophers, that by their senses would 
culture their understandings ... for readings 
or notions only are but husky provender” ( The 
Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, edited 
by Thomas Birch, 1772, VI, 653). He obtained 
funds for a new building and a new charter from 
the General Court, and published the first cata¬ 
logue of graduates in the form followed by the 
older American universities ever since. Yet the 
Hoar administration was a complete failure, and 
for what cause is still a matter of conjecture. 
Apparently the Rev. Urian Oakes of Cambridge 
expected the presidency himself, and conspired 
with other Fellows to thwart Hoar, encouraging 
the undergraduates “to Travestie whatever he 
did and said” says one of them, Cotton Mather 
(post, IV, 129), and accusing him of lying and 
immorality. In 1673 these and other charges 
were ventilated before the Board of Overseers, 
the General Court, and Governor Leverett, all of 
which sustained the president (Sibley, post, I, 
236; Massachusetts Archives, LVIII, 89). But 
by this time most of the students had left Cam¬ 
bridge, Hoar's health suffered, and he asked to 
be relieved. The General Court failed in a fresh 
effort to heal the breach, the students refused to 
return, and Hoar resigned the presidency on 
Mar. 15, 1675. “The Hard and III Usage, which 
he met withal,” says Cotton Mather, brought on 
“a Consumption, whereof he died,” Nov. 28, 
1675, hi Boston. John Hull [q.v.] the goldsmith, 
a connection of Hoar, wrote that if “those that 
accused him had but countenanced and encour¬ 
aged him in his work, he would have proved the 
best president that ever yet the college had” 
(Transactions and Collections of the American 
Antiquarian Society, III, 1857, p. 238). 

[J. L. Sibley, Biog. Sketches of Grads, of Harvard 
Univ., vol. I (1873) ; Albert Matthews, “The Harvard 


College Charter of 1672,” Colonial Soc. Mass. Pubs., 
vol. XXI (1920) ; H. S. Nourse, The Hoar Family 
(1899) J Cotton Mather, Magnolia Christi Americana 
(1702), Bk. IV, p. 129; Josiah Quincy, The Hist. of 
Harvard Univ . (2 vols., 1840); Hoar’s letter to his 
nephew on college education, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Colls., 
1 ser., VI (1800).] S.E.M. 

HOAR, SAMUEL (May 18, 1778-No v. 2, 
1856), lawyer, congressman, was born in Lin¬ 
coln, Mass,, the son of Susanna (Pierce) and 
Samuel Hoar, a lieutenant in the Revolutionary 
War, later a magistrate and member of the Mas¬ 
sachusetts House and Senate. He was a descend¬ 
ant of John, one of the brothers of Leonard Hoar 
[q.v.']. He was prepared for college by the Rev. 
Charles Stearns of Lincoln and was graduated 
from Harvard College (B.A.) in 1802. The next 
two years he spent as tutor in a private family 
in Virginia, where he developed a life-long ab¬ 
horrence of domestic slavery. He studied law in 
the office of Artemas Ward [q.v.] and in 1805 
began practice in Concord. He rose rapidly in 
his profession and for forty years was one of the 
eminent lawyers in the state, ranking in court 
practice with Webster and Choate. He was a 
conservative in the Massachusetts constitutional 
convention of 1820, served several terms in the 
state Senate, and at seventy-two was elected to 
the House of Representatives, where he was suc¬ 
cessful in defeating an attempt to abolish the 
corporation of Harvard College and to substitute 
a board to be chosen by the legislature. Har¬ 
vard's president declared: “Other men have 
served the College; Samuel Hoar saved it” (G. 
F. Hoar, Autobiography, I, 29). 

In politics he was first a Federalist, then a 
Whig. He was a representative in Congress, 
1835-37, and vigorously upheld the power of 
Congress to abolish slavery in the District of 
Columbia, and opposed the recognition of the in¬ 
dependence of Texas. He was a delegate to the 
convention which nominated Harrison for presi¬ 
dent. In 1848, believing that the nomination of 
Taylor marked the Whig party's abandonment of 
its opposition to the spread of slavery, he at once 
exerted himself to bring about united political 
action by men of all parties opposed to the nomi¬ 
nations of Cass or Taylor. He was the first to 
sign the call written by his son, E. Rockwood 
Hoar [q.v.], for the convention, over which he 
presided, at Worcester on June 28, 1848, and in 
the ensuing campaign his name headed the elec¬ 
toral ticket of the Free Soil party in Massachu¬ 
setts. In 1854 he led in the movement which, at 
the Worcester convention in September, first 
placed “Republican” candidates in nomination 
for state offices. The following year he was 
chairman of the committee which called the con- 


89 



Hoard 

vention that formally organized the Republican 
party in Massachusetts. 

In 1844 the governor, as authorized by the leg¬ 
islature, employed him to test the constitutionality 
of certain South Carolina laws under which many 
Massachusetts colored citizens, seamen on ves¬ 
sels touching at South Carolina ports, were seized 
on arrival, put in jail, and kept imprisoned till 
their vessel sailed or, if their jail fees were not 
then paid, sold as slaves. On the day of Hoar’s 
arrival in Charleston the legislature, only one 
member dissenting, by resolution requested the 
Governor to expel “the Northern emissary” from 
the state. Warned by the mayor and the sheriff 
that his life was in danger and urged to depart, 
he replied that he was too old to run and that he 
could not return to Massachusetts without an ef¬ 
fort to perform the duty assigned him. Under 
threat of violence from the mob that surrounded 
his hotel, at the earnest request of a committee 
of seventy leading citizens, he consented to walk 
—instead of being dragged—to the carriage 
waiting to convey him to the boat. The indignity 
to which this venerable citizen of Massachusetts 
had been subjected produced hot indignation 
throughout the North. 

After he had retired from active practice of 
the law, for nearly twenty years he devoted his 
energies to the service of the church, of temper¬ 
ance, and of various organizations for the pro¬ 
motion of peace, colonization, and education. He 
was an overseer of Harvard College but not less 
interested and conscientious in his duties as a 
member of the Concord school committee. He 
was a Unitarian, strict in observance of the Sab¬ 
bath, and for many years teacher and superin¬ 
tendent in the local Sunday school. He was of 
imposing appearance, of great courtesy especially 
to women and little children, and tender to all 
who were the victims of injustice. He married 
(Oct. 13, 18x2) Sarah, daughter of Roger Sher¬ 
man of Connecticut. Six children were 

born to them. Four of his descendants followed 
him in service in the national House of Repre¬ 
sentatives : his sons, E. Rockwood and George F. 
Hoar [1 q.v .]; and two grandsons, Sherman and 
Rockwood Hoar. 

[G. F. Hoar, Autobiog. of Seventy Years (1903), 
vol. I; G. F. Hoar, in Memorial Biogs. New Eng . Hist. 
Gened . Soc vol. Ill (1883); Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1 
ser., vol. V (1862) ; Barzillai Frost, A Sermon Preached 
in Concord (1856) ; Joseph Palmer, Necrology of Alum¬ 
ni of Harvard College (1864) ; H. S. Nourse, The Hoar 
Family (1899) ; R. W. Emerson, in Putnam’s Monthly 
Mag., Dec. 1856; Boston Transcript , Nov. 3, 1856.] 

G.H.H. 

HOARD, WILLIAM DEMPSTER (Oct. 10, 
1836-Nov. 22, 1918), editor, promoter of dairy 
farming, governor of Wisconsin, was born in 


Hoard 

Munnsville, Madison County, N. Y., the eldest 
son of a poor Methodist circuit rider, William 
Bradford Hoard, and his wife, Sarah Katherine 
White. He was a descendant of Hezekiah Hore, 
of Norman ancestry—the name having originally 
been Le Hore—who came to America in 1637. 
After a time the spelling of the name was changed 
to Hoar, and in 1760 the “d” was added by 
Hoard’s great-great-great-grandfather. As a 
child, William spent many days on the farm of 
his grandfather, a shrewd judge of cows. It was 
there the boy first learned facts about dairying 
and the good points of a dairy animal. At six¬ 
teen, he was hired as a helper to Waterman Si¬ 
mons, a nearby dairyman, who taught him butter 
and cheese making and the care and feeding of 
cattle, and insisted on his spending an hour each 
day in reading the best farm papers and books of 
the time. The lure of Horace Greeley’s “West” 
took Hoard to Wisconsin in 1857. He received 
a license to be an exhorter in the Methodist 
Church, but because he differed with some of its 
doctrines he finally burned the license and went 
to cutting wood. The three years following, he 
taught singing school and gave violin lessons in 
many southern Wisconsin towns. In i860 he 
married Agnes Elizabeth Bragg of Lake Mills, 
who encouraged him in all his undertakings and 
bravely shared the poverty of his young man¬ 
hood. He enlisted in 1861 for service in the 
Civil War and was with General Butler at the 
capture of New Orleans. 

Hoard’s work as founder of the modern dairy 
industry is closely linked with his work as editor. 
In 1870 he started at Lake Mills the Jefferson 
County Union, a weekly newspaper in which he 
voiced his ideas of what dairying might do for 
the wheat-weary soil, and how the dairy cow 
might be made more profitable. In 1885 he es¬ 
tablished Hoard's Dairyman at Fort Atkinson, 
a paper which before long was circulating in 
every state of the Union and in most foreign 
countries. In 1871 he started the Jefferson 
County Dairyman’s Association, and through his 
editorial influence he was able in 1872 to found 
the Wisconsin State Dairyman’s Association 
which in 1890 was partly responsible for the es¬ 
tablishment of the dairy school at the University 
of Wisconsin. In 1872 also he helped to or¬ 
ganize the Northwestern Dairyman’s Associ¬ 
ation, and the next year the Watertown dairy 
board of trade. Through his direct efforts in 1873 
low rates were secured for the first time to take 
the state’s yearly output of millions of pounds of 
cheese to the Atlantic Coast in refrigerator cars. 
It was Hoard who introduced alfalfa into Wis¬ 
consin; he was one of the first to use the tuber- 


90 



Hoban 

ctilin test for cattle; and he was among the few 
who early recognized the value of the silo and 
urged its use to solve the dairyman’s feeding 
problems. At his request in 1884 the legislature 
established farmer’s institutes. 

As the "Jersey Cow candidate” he was elected 
governor of the state in 1888. During his term 
of office he secured a law creating a dairy and 
food commission. His lifelong interest in edu¬ 
cation led him to sign an act compelling all 
schools to give instruction in the English lan¬ 
guage. This law, known as the Bennett law, 
created a furor, especially among the foreign¬ 
speaking classes, and among the Lutherans and 
Catholics, who regarded it as an attack on the 
parochial schools; and it cost Hoard his second 
term as governor. In 1907 he was appointed to 
the University board of regents of which he be¬ 
came president the following year. It was while 
serving on this board that he helped to make pos¬ 
sible the state soil survey. His death occurred at 
Fort Atkinson, in his eighty-third year. 

[G. W. Rankin, William Dempster Hoard (1925); 
E. N. Wentworth, A Biog. Cat . of the Portrait Gallery 
of the Saddle and Sirloin Club (1920); L. S. Ivins, 
and A. E. Winship, Fifty Famous Farmers (1924) ; W. 
E. Ogilvie, Pioneer Agricultural Journalists (1927); 
files of Hoard’s Dairyman, especially the memorial is¬ 
sue of Dec. 6, 1918; Who’s Who in America, 1918—19; 
Wis. State Jour. (Madison), Nov. 22, 1918; N. Y. 
Times, Nov. 23, 1918.] W.A. S. 

HOBAN, JAMES (c. 1762-Dec. 8, 1831), ar¬ 
chitect, builder, was bom in Callan, County Kil¬ 
kenny, Ireland, the son of Edward and Martha 
(Bayne) Hoban. As the parish registers are not 
preserved, the dates for his year of birth are con¬ 
flicting. The latest comports best with the years 
he studied in schools of the Dublin Society. Here 
Thomas Ivory gave instruction in drawing to 
boys who generally entered at from twelve to 
fourteen years of age. On Nov. 23, 1780, it was 
resolved that several boys deserved medals. In 
the school for drawing in architecture Hoban 
was awarded the second premium for drawings 
of “brackets, stairs, roofs, &c.” He was next 
concerned, probably as an artisan, in several 
Dublin buildings: the Royal Exchange, finished 
soon after; the bank of Glendower, Newcomen 
& Company, built in 1781; and the Custom 
House, begun in the same year. He speaks of 
himself later as “universally acquainted with men 
in the building line in Ireland.” 

After the Revolution Hoban emigrated to 
America, and on May 25, 1785, he advertised in 
Philadelphia that “Any Gentleman Who wishes 
to build in an elegant style, may hear of a person 
properly calculated for that purpose, who can 
execute the Joining and Carpenter’s business in 
the modern taste” (Prime, post, p. 275). He 


Hoban 

next appears in South Carolina where he re¬ 
mained until 1792. There he designed the state 
Capitol at Columbia, completed in 1791. For the 
front, with its central portico and high basement, 
he followed the suggestion of L’Enfant’s design 
for the Federal Hall in New York, which had 
been reproduced widely in American magazines 
of 1789. The Capitol stood until it was burned in 
1865. From Carolina, Hoban moved north in 
1792 with letters of introduction from Henry 
Laurens and others, and after seeing Washing¬ 
ton in Philadelphia he went to the Federal City 
to take part in the competition for the proposed 
public buildings. None of his drawings for the 
Capitol is preserved, but for the President’s 
House—later to be called the White House—he 
produced a design which on July 17 was award¬ 
ed the first premium, consisting of a lot in the 
city and the sum of five hundred dollars. The 
elevation is preserved by the Maryland Histori¬ 
cal Society; the plan, which later came into the 
hands of Jefferson, is with his drawings in the 
Coolidge collection deposited with the Massa¬ 
chusetts Historical Society. The front is acade¬ 
mic, and was based on a plate in James Gibbs’s 
Book of Architecture (London, 1728, plate 51). 
Certain modifications of this design suggested 
the influence of Leinster House in Dublin, gen- 
erically similar, and gave rise to the legend that 
the White House was copied from this building 
of Hoban’s native place. 

Hoban was retained to supervise the construc¬ 
tion of the building at three hundred guineas a 
year. At the laying of the corner-stone by Presi¬ 
dent Washington, Sept. 13, 1793, Hoban assisted 
as master of the Federal Masonic Lodge, which 
he had helped to organize on Sept. 6. He con¬ 
tinued in charge until it was occupied, still un¬ 
finished, by Adams and Jefferson in 1800 and 
1801. Meanwhile he was also employed as one 
of the superintendents at the Capitol, where he 
was active at intervals until Latrobe was ap¬ 
pointed surveyor of public buildings in 1803. 
Quiet and conciliatory, but self-respecting and 
capable of firmness when occasion demanded, 
Hoban was the only personage connected with 
the Federal City who remained continuously 
identified with it from its inception. His knowl¬ 
edge, abilities, and probity were called on in 
many other enterprises in Washington. He de¬ 
signed and built the Great Hotel (1793-95), con¬ 
ceived as the first prize in the Federal Lottery, 
and built the Little Hotel (1795). Architectural 
practice was not yet established on an exclusive¬ 
ly professional basis and was not considered to 
preclude activity as a contractor for the erection 
of buildings from the designs of others. Thus 



Hobart 

Hoban appears in 1798 as one of the bidders for 
the erection of the old Executive Offices, later 
restricted to the Treasury. During the admin¬ 
istration of Jefferson, he was little employed by 
the government, but by this time he was no longer 
dependent on his calling, having large holdings 
of city lots. In 1799 he was captain of the Wash¬ 
ington Artillery. On the incorporation of the 
city in 1802, he was elected to the city council 
and remained a member until his death. After 
the destruction of the public buildings by the 
British in 1814, he rebuilt the White House, 
completed in 1829. The State and War Offices, 
begun in 1818, were both designed and erected by 
him. Hoban had married, in January 1799, Su¬ 
sannah Sewell, and had ten children. He was a 
solid citizen and patriarch of the city, and at his 
death, in 1831, he left an estate valued at $60,000. 
His son James, who died Jan. 19, 1846, was a 
United States district attorney. 

[M. J. Griffin, “James Hoban, the Architect and 
Builder of the White House/’ Am. Cath . Hist, Re¬ 
searches, Jan. 1907; Fiske Kimball, Thos. Jefferson 
and the First Monument of the Classical Revival in 
America (1915), Thos. Jefferson, Architect (1916), and 
“The Genesis of the White House,” Century Mag., Feb. 
1918; “Restoration of the White House,” Senate Doc. 
J 97 t 5 7 Cong., 2 Sess.; W. B. Bryan, A Hist of the 
Nat . Capitol (2 vols., 1914-16) ; Glenn Brown, Hist, of 
the U. S . Capitol ( 2 vols., 1900-03); A. C. Prime, The 
Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia (1929) ; Nat. Intelli¬ 
gencer (Washington, D. C.), Dec. 9, 1831; the Star 
(Washington, D. C.), Feb. 24, 1918; documents and 
drawings, Md. Hist. Soc., Baltimore, Office of Pub. 
Buildings and Grounds, Washington; Coolidge collec¬ 
tion, Mass. Hist. Soc„ Boston; information as to cer¬ 
tain facts from descendants of Hoban and from W. G. 
Strickland, Dublin, Ireland.] F.K. 

HOBART, GARRET AUGUSTUS (June 3, 
1844-Nov. 21, 1899), vice-president of the 
United States, 1897-99, was born at Long 
Branch, N. J., the son of Addison Willard and 
Sophia (Vanderveer) Hobart, of English, Dutch, 
and Huguenot ancestry. The head of the family 
was Edmund Hobart, of Hingham, Norfolk, 
England, who emigrated to Massachusetts in 
1633, settling at Charlestown and later at Hing- 
ham. Sixth in descent from Edmund were John 
Henry Hobart and John Sloss Hobart \_qq.v ."\. 
Another descendant, Addison Hobart, was born 
in New Hampshire but moved to Marlboro, Mon¬ 
mouth County, N. J., where he taught school and 
married Sophia Vanderveer. In 1841 they moved 
to Long Branch. Here Garret was born and 
here he passed an uneventful childhood marked 
only by his mental precocity and by his ability 
to make friends. He entered the sophomore 
class at Rutgers College in his sixteenth year, 
and in 1863 he was graduated with honors in 
mathematics and English. 

After a short interval of school-teaching, young 

92 


Hobart 

Hobart went to Paterson, N. J., where he entered 
the law office of Socrates Tuttle, an old friend of 
his father. He was licensed to practise law on 
June 7, 1866, became a counselor at law in 1871, 
and was made a master in chancery in 1872. On 
July 21, 1869, he was married to Jennie Tuttle, 
the daughter of his law partner. They had two 
children, Fannie Beckwith Hobart, who died at 
Bellagio in 1895, and Garret Augustus Hobart, 
Jr. Hobart soon rose to prominence in business, 
law, and politics. In 1871 he was chosen city 
counsel of Paterson; in 1872 and 1873 he was 
elected a member of the Assembly; and in 1874, 
at the age of thirty, he was chosen as its speaker. 
Elected state senator in 1876 by the largest ma¬ 
jority ever given in his district, he was reelected 
three years later by a still greater majority, and 
in the sessions of 1881-82 he was chosen presi¬ 
dent of the Senate. From 1880 to 1891 he was 
chairman of the state Republican committee, and 
in 1884 he was elected a member of the national 
committee, but failed of election to the United 
States Senate. He was also delegate at large 
from New Jersey to five successive Republican 
conventions. His rapid advancement in politics 
he owed to business sagacity, legal ability, and a 
genial personality. He once remarked that he 
made politics his recreation; his main interests 
were business and law. He was one of the re¬ 
ceivers for the New Jersey Midland Railroad, 
the First National Bank of Newark, N. J., and 
many other concerns which he helped to reor¬ 
ganize on a profitable basis. In 1885 he became 
president of the Passaic Water Company, which 
had taken over water rights of the Society for 
Useful Manufactures, an organization founded 
with the aid of Alexander Hamilton. He was a 
director of several banks and is said to have been 
connected at one time with sixty corporations. 
With Jacob D. Cox and James I. Goddard he was 
named as an arbitrator in the settlement of a dis¬ 
pute relating to traffic, passenger, and express 
rates, between thirty railways of the great trunk 
lines forming the Joint Traffic Railroad Asso¬ 
ciation, but he resigned in the first year of his 
vice-presidency. 

By 1895 Hobart had accumulated a fortune 
and was regarded as the leading Republican of 
northern New Jersey. In that year he secured 
the Republican nomination for governor for his 
friend John W. Griggs \_q.vi] who was elected. 
He managed the Griggs campaign, thus helping 
to make New Jersey Republican for the first time 
in many years. At the state convention of his 
party in 1896 his name was brought forward for 
the nomination for vice-president on a ticket with 
William McKinley, but at the suggestion of Gen. 



Hobart Hobart 


William Joyce Sewell [q.v.], the delegates went 
to the national convention at St. Louis without 
specific instructions. When the nomination of 
McKinley was assured, the New Jersey delega¬ 
tion led the movement to nominate Hobart for 
vice-president. The main issues of the campaign 
were obviously to be the tariff and the currency. 
The Democratic party would of course advocate 
the recognition of silver on the basis of sixteen to 
one. No Republican was more outspoken in up¬ 
holding the gold standard than was Hobart; and 
his attitude toward this issue, together with the 
desire of the party to carry a traditionally Demo¬ 
cratic state, was largely responsible for his nomi¬ 
nation. In his speech of acceptance Hobart said: 
“An honest dollar, worth ioo cents everywhere, 
cannot be coined out of 53 cents of silver, plus a 
legislative fiat” (Magie, post, p. 275); and later, 
at Newark, he remarked: “When the result of 
the election is finally and fully known, the great¬ 
est lesson in political morality will be taught that 
was ever taught in America” (Ibid., p. 100). 
During his two years at Washington, Hobart 
presided over the Senate with such ability that 
Senator Lodge of Massachusetts declared that he 
had “restored the Vice-Presidency to its proper 
position” (Congressional Record, 59 Cong., 1 
Sess., p. 743). He cast the deciding vote in the 
Senate against the bill to grant the Filipinos in¬ 
dependence. He was an intimate friend of Presi¬ 
dent McKinley, who frequently consulted with 
him on affairs of state. Although Hobart lacked 
oratorical ability, he possessed a pleasing voice 
and disarmed even his opponents by his genial 
manner. He made friends readily, and his home 
in Washington was the scene of many brilliant 
social gatherings. When his health broke down 
in the spring of 1899, he went to Long Branch to 
recuperate. Failing to improve, he returned to 
his home in Paterson, where he died the follow¬ 
ing November. President McKinley and many 
representatives of the government attended his 
funeral. He was buried at Cedar Lawn Ceme¬ 
tery in Paterson. In 1903 the citizens of Pater¬ 
son erected a bronze statue of Hobart next to 
that of Alexander Hamilton on the plaza of the 
City Hall. 

[David Magie, Life of Garret Augustus Hobart , 
Twenty-fourth Vice-President of the U. S. (1910 ); 
memorial addresses in Cong. Record, 56 Cong., 1 Sess., 
pp. 737-46, 1229-36 ; W. E. Sackett, Modern Battles, of 
Trenton (2 vols., 1895-1914); newspaper obituaries, 
including those in the Evening Star (Washington), and 
the Newark Evening News, Nov. 21, 1899.] J. E. F. 

HOBART, JOHN HENRY (Sept. 14, 1775 - 
Sept. 12, 1830), bishop of the Protestant Epis¬ 
copal Church, was born in Philadelphia, the son 
of Enoch and Hannah (Pratt) Hobart and a 


descendant of Edmund Hobart who came from 
Hingham, England, in 1633 a &d was one of the 
founders of Hingham, Mass. Enoch, a captain 
in the merchant marine, died a year after John 
Henry’s birth, and the latter was brought up by 
his mother who by economy and self-denial af¬ 
forded him an excellent education. Having re¬ 
ceived his preparation at a school conducted by 
a Mr. Leslie in Philadelphia and at the Episcopal 
Academy there, he entered the University of the 
State of Pennsylvania in 1788 but after two or 
three years transferred to the College of New 
Jersey, from which he graduated in 1793. He 
then entered the counting-house of his brother- 
in-law, Robert Smith, in Philadelphia, where he 
remained until 1795. The following year he re¬ 
turned to the College of New Jersey as a tutor, 
studied for the ministry, and received the degree 
of A.M. in 1796. On June 3, 1798, he was or¬ 
dained deacon by Bishop William White and 
took charge of churches in Oxford and Perkio- 
men, Pa. In May 1799 he accepted charge of 
Christ Church, New Brunswick, N. J., and a 
year later of the church in Hempstead, L. I. On 
May 6,1800, he married Mary Goodin Chandler 
of Elizabethtown, N. J., daughter of Rev. Thomas 
B. Chandler [q.v.]. From Hempstead Hobart 
was called to be an assistant in Trinity Parish, 
New York, and was ordained priest in 1801 by 
Bishop Samuel Provoost. 

His abilities, energy, and devotion to Episco- 
palianism soon made him a leader of the Church. 
He was elected secretary of the Diocesan Con¬ 
vention in 1801; deputy to the General Conven¬ 
tions of 1801, 1804, and 1808; and secretary of 
the House of Deputies in 1804. Through his per¬ 
sonal influence and through his writings he did 
much to awaken loyalty and a sense of responsi¬ 
bility in clergy and laity and to strengthen the 
Church, which had suffered greatly during the 
Revolution and the constructive period of the 
United States. Forcible as a preacher, he was 
first of all an evangelist, striving always to stir 
the conscience. “My banner,” he wrote, “is 
Evangelical Truth and Apostolic Order.” Fervid 
in religious piety, he felt that the natural outlet 
for Christian faith and action was through the 
doctrines and observances of the Church which 
had come down in unbroken descent from apos¬ 
tolic times. These views led him into many in¬ 
tellectual combats. He became a formidable op¬ 
ponent and was active in the defense of his 
positions against all comers. In his desire to 
train the young as well as the mature in the ways 
of the Church he compiled, or wrote, many books 
for their instruction. He republished William 
Stephens’ Treatise on the Nature and Consti - 



Hobart 


Hobart 


iution of the Christian Church (1803), and pre¬ 
pared in 1804 A Companion for the Altar. These 
were followed by The Companion for the 
Festivals and Fasts of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church (1805) and The Clergyman’s Companion 
(1806). The trend of his thought and the argu¬ 
ments used in his many controversies are indi¬ 
cated in A Collection of Essays on the Subject 
of Episcopacy (1806), and An Apology for Apos¬ 
tolic Order and its Advocates (1807). Soon 
after he was installed as assistant minister at 
Trinity Church, he was elected a member of 
the board of trustees of Columbia College and 
served in this capacity for many years, becoming 
a leader in the expansion of this educational in¬ 
stitution. Early in his career he established the 
Protestant Episcopal Theological Society (1806) 
for the training of young men for the ministry: 
this developed into the General Seminary. He 
founded the Bible and Common Prayer-Book So¬ 
ciety of New York (1809), and edited the 
Churchman’s Magazine after its removal from 
New Haven to New York. 

In 1811, when he was thirty-six years old, Ho¬ 
bart was elected assistant bishop of New York, 
and on May 29 he was consecrated. The condi¬ 
tion of Bishop Moore’s health was such that prac¬ 
tically all the work of his office fell to his assist¬ 
ant, and upon Moore’s death in February 1816 
Hobart became diocesan. He had continued his 
duties as assistant minister at Trinity unti l 1813 
when he was made assistant rector, and on Mar. 
11, 1816, he was inducted as rector. His own 
diocese was large in area and its demands exact¬ 
ing, but until 1815 when John Croes was elected 
bishop of New Jersey, Hobart performed episco¬ 
pal duties in that state and for an interval, 1816- 
19, in Connecticut In 1821 he also became pro¬ 
fessor of pastoral theology and pulpit eloquence 
in the General Theological Seminary. Notwith¬ 
standing the multiplicity of his activities he re¬ 
organized his diocese and put new life into the 
churches, visiting the various parishes and es¬ 
tablishing new missions. He believed in very 
definite instruction in matters of faith. Indefi¬ 
niteness of conviction was to him a cause of in¬ 
security of character. He saw dangers in liberal¬ 
ism; and these drove him to conservatism and 
orthodoxy as a stronghold against free thinking. 
In 1810 he founded the Protestant Episcopal 
Tract Society and in 1817 the Protestant Epis¬ 
copal Press. By publishing many sermons and 
The Christian’s Manual of Faith and Devotion 
(1814) he continued his work of training the 
people. The formation of the New York Sunday 
School Society (1817) was the accomplishment 
of a cherished idea of the bishop for the better 


schooling of children in the doctrines of the 
Church. In the first quarter of the nineteenth 
century, when religion in the United States was 
in a more or less inchoate state, friend and foe 
alike bore testimony to Hobart’s sincerity and 
welcomed his activity in the cause of religious 
stability. Many may have considered his teach¬ 
ing unwise, but his energy and enthusiasm made 
a positive contribution to the upbuilding of his 
Church and the leading of men into spirit ual cer¬ 
tainties. 

Never strong physically, he suffered from peri¬ 
odic illness, and in September 1823 went abroad 
where he remained about two years. Returning 
in the fall of 1825, he resumed his work with his 
accustomed energy. His death occurred five 
years later in Auburn, N. Y., while he was on a 
visitation to the western part of his diocese, and 
he was buried beneath the chancel of Trinity 
Church, New York. 


[J. F. Schroeder, Memorial of Bishop Hobart (1831) • 
The Posthumous Works of the Late Rt. Rev. John 
Henry Hobart (vols. II, III, 1833; vol. I, containing 
memoir by Wm Bernan, 1833); John McVicar, The 
Early Life and Professional Years of Bishop Hobart 
(? 8 3 8 ); W. B. Sprague, Annals of the Am. Pulpit, vol. 
v (1859); The Correspondence of John Henry Hobart 
(6 vols., 1911-12).] D.D.A 


HOBART, JOHN SLOSS (May 6,1738-Feb. 
4 j 1805), Revolutionary leader, judge, son of 
Rev. Noah and Ellen (Sloss) Hobart, was of 
New England stock. Descended from Edmund 
Hobart and his son, Rev. Peter Hobart, emi¬ 
grants from Hingham, England, who settled in 
1635 at Hingham, Mass., he was bora in Fair- 
field, Conn., where his father had a lifelong ca¬ 
reer as settled minister. From his mother’s fam¬ 
ily he inherited Eaton’s (now Gardiner’s) Neck 
in the town of Huntington, Long Island, and his 
public career was connected with the province 
and state of New York. In 1757 he was grad- 
uatea from Yale College. For some time after- 
ward he was in New York City, where, in June 
1764, he married Mary Greenill (or Grinnell), a 
resident of the city. At some time prior to the 
outbreak of the Revolution they moved to Hunt- 
ingtom Hobart was prominent in revolutionary 
activities in Suffolk County, serving as a mem¬ 
ber of the Committee of Correspondence in 1774. 
He was also deputy from that county to the 
provincial convention of 1775 and to the four 
provincial congresses of 1775-77. In the fourth 
congress (July 1776-May 1777), which assumed 
the style of Convention of Representatives of 
the State of New York,” he was a member of the 
committees to prepare a form of government and 
to report a plan for organizing that government. 
He was also a member of the first Council of 


94 



Hobbs 

Safety, and in May 1777 was appointed justice 
of the supreme court, an office which he held for 
nearly twenty-one years. 

His experience with the peculiarly difficult 
conditions in Revolutionary New York, together 
with his unquestioned devotion to the patriot 
cause, his absolute integrity, and a reputation for 
sound common sense, made a combination of pub¬ 
lic qualities which caused his services to be much 
in demand. He was a delegate to the interstate 
convention at Hartford, Conn., in 1780, called 
“to give Vigour to the governing Powers, equal 
to the present Crisis,” and to the Poughkeepsie 
convention in 1788, called to act on the draft of 
the new Constitution for the United States. These 
same traits of public character, considered in con¬ 
nection with the fact that under the new con¬ 
stitution of the state of New York the judiciary 
had great political power, may help to account 
for the apparent anomaly of a justice of the su¬ 
preme court who, according to his own state¬ 
ment, had not been bred to the profession of law. 
The age-limit set by this constitution would have 
compelled his retirement shortly, when, on Jan. 
11, 1798, he was elected United States senator. 
This office he held only until Apr. 12 of that year, 
when he was appointed United States district 
judge for the district of New York, in which 
capacity he served until his death in 1805. 
Though not a lawyer, he is said to have been 
partly responsible, during twenty years, for giv- 
ingthe decisions of the New York supreme court 
such strength and character as they had before 
the days of Chancellor Kent (D. D. Barnard, 
quoted by Charles Warren, post, p. 293), and 
Kent himself said of Hobart that he was a “faith¬ 
ful, diligent and discerning judge.” 

[F. B. Dexter, Biog. Sketches Grads. Yale Coll, vol. 
II (1896) ; E. H. Schenck, The Hist . of Fairfield, Fair- 
field County, Conn., vol. II (1905); J. D. Hammond, 
The Hist, of Pol. Parties in the State of N. Y. (1842), 
vol. I; Charles Warren, A Hist, of the Am. Bar (1911); 
F. G. Mather, Refugees of 1776 from L. I. to Conn. 
(1913); L. S. Hobart, Wm. Hobart, His Ancestors and 
Descendants (1886); New-Eng. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., 
Apr. 1856; Peter Force, Am. Archives, 5 ser. I and II 
(1848-51); Journals of the N. Y. Assembly; E. A. 
Werner, Civil List . . . of N. Y. (1889); Am. Citizen 
and Morning Chronicle, both of N. Y., Feb. 6,1805.] 

C.W. s. 

HOBBS, ALFRED CHARLES (Oct.7,1812- 
Nov. 5, 1891), lock expert, manufacturer, and 
mechanical engineer, was born at Boston, Mass. 
When he was but three years old his father died 
and Alfred grew up with opportunity to attend 
school only between attempts to earn small sums 
toward the support of the family. At the age of 
ten he entered die home of a fanner in Westfield, 
Mass., remaining there until he was fourteen, 
when he returned to Boston to be a clerk in a 


Hobbs 

dry-goods store. Connected with this occupation 
for but a short time, he tried in quick succession 
the trades of wood-carving, carriage-body build¬ 
ing, harness making, tinsmithing, and coach¬ 
trimming. Finally he drifted into an apprentice¬ 
ship in the glass-cutting works of the Boston & 
Sandwich Glass Company, at Sandwich, Mass. 
Completing this apprenticeship in 1836, he es¬ 
tablished himself in Boston as a glass-cutter. 
Glass doorknobs were a staple product of his 
trade, and in connection with the cutting of these 
he invented and patented a method of fastening 
them into the sockets by which they were at¬ 
tached to the door locks. This invention brought 
him into contact with lock makers and led him 
to enter the business of manufacturing locks as 
junior partner in the firm of Jones & Hobbs. 
The enterprise was not a success, the partnership 
was dissolved, and Hobbs went to New York to 
sell locks and fireproof safes for Edwards & Hol¬ 
man. This company he left to become salesman 
for Day & Newell, bank-lock makers of New 
York. Finding it necessary to prove to bankers 
that their locks were insecure before they would 
buy new ones from him, he would pick the locks 
of his competitors as often as opportunity afford¬ 
ed and soon became known as the most accom¬ 
plished lock expert in the country. In 1851 he 
accompanied the Day & Newell exhibit to the 
international industrial exhibition in London, 
where he immediately attracted attention by open¬ 
ing the best locks of Chubb, the leading English 
maker of the period. When he followed this feat 
with a successful attack upon the famous Bramah 
lock, which had defied picking for forty years, he 
not only won a prize of two hundred guineas but 
became conspicuous in the press of the day. The 
wide publicity given to his achievements created 
doubt as to the security of the best British locks 
and brought the American products into favor. 
Taking advantage of this condition, Hobbs 
formed a partnership known as Hobbs, Ashley, 
& Company, for the manufacture of locks at 
Cheapside, London. The firm introduced machine 
methods and enjoyed a prosperous business. In 
i860 Ashley died and Hobbs welcomed the op¬ 
portunity to withdraw and return to the United 
States, although the firm continued under the 
name of Hobbs, Hart & Company. While in Eng¬ 
land he became a member of the Society of Arts, 
and was elected an associate member of the In¬ 
stitution of Civil Engineers, which awarded him 
its highest honor, the Telford Medal, for his pa¬ 
per “On the Principles and Construction of 
Locks.” In i860 he engineered the building and 
equipping of a factory for Elias Howe, Jr., manu¬ 
facturer of sewing machines, and superintended 


95 



Hobson 


Hobson 


the running of the works after they were com¬ 
pleted. In 1866 he became superintendent and 
mechanical engineer for the Union Metallic Car¬ 
tridge Company, at Bridgeport, Conn. In this 
position he patented many improvements in car¬ 
tridge-making machinery and designed some of 
the best machine tools of the period. His ability 
in the manufacturing part of the business is said 
to have contributed as much to its success as the 
sales and organizing ability of the owners. 
Hobbs remained with the company until 1890, 
and died at Bridgeport, the following year, sur¬ 
vived by a wife and two children. 

[Minutes of the Proc. of the Inst . of Civil Engineers, 
London, vol. XIII (1854) > Trans. Am . Soc. Mech. En¬ 
gineers, vols. V (1884), VI (1885), XIII (1892); 
George Price, A Treatise on Fire and Thief-Proof De¬ 
positories and Locks and Keys (1856) ; The Standard’s 
Hist. of Bridgeport (1897) ; New Haven Evening Reg¬ 
ister, Nov. 6, 1891 ; information from Remington Arms 
Co -3 F. AT. 

HOBSON, EDWARD HENRY (July n, 
1825-Sept. 14,1901), Union soldier, was the son 
of Capt. William Hobson and Lucy (Kirtley) 
Hobson, of Greensburg, Ky. His father was well 
established both as an owner of steamers on 
Green River and as a merchant. Young Hobson 
attended the common schools of Greensburg and 
Danville, and entered upon a business career 
with his father at the age of eighteen. He went 
to Mexico as second lieutenant of Company A, 
2nd Kentucky Infantry, starting from Louisville 
by steamer in June 1846. For heroism at Buena 
Vista he became first lieutenant. He was mus¬ 
tered out in June 1847, an d returning home, re¬ 
sumed his commercial life. On Oct. 12, 1847, he 
married Kate, daughter of Alexander and Eliza¬ 
beth Adair and niece of Gov. John Adair [q.v.]. 
He rose steadily in commerce and banking, be¬ 
coming a director of the Greensburg Branch 
Bank of Kentucky in 1853 and president in 1857. 
In 1861, when the Confederates under Gen. S. B. 
Buckner [ q.v .] were threatening western Ken¬ 
tucky, Hobson with five companions carried the 
bank's funds to Louisville. He was promptly 
recognized in the call to arms, as colonel of the 
2nd Kentucky Infantry; he subsequently recruit¬ 
ed the 13th Infantry and as its colonel was mus¬ 
tered into service, Jan. 12, 1862, receiving the 
rank of brigadier-general of volunteers on Nov. 
29, 1862. Under Gen. J. T. Boyle [q.v.] he de¬ 
fended several posts during the Confederate at¬ 
tacks of 1862. He fought well in the center at 
Shiloh. On Dec. 25,1862, he drove part of Mor¬ 
gan’s forces out of Munfordville, where his com¬ 
mand included Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan 
units besides his original 13th Kentucky. 

His most noteworthy exploit was his pursuit 
in 1863 of the Confederate leader, Gen. John H. 


Morgan [q.v.]. From Marrowbone, Ky., he fol¬ 
lowed his enemy for nearly 900 miles, being in 
the saddle with very little rest for twenty-one 
days. Overtaking his foe at Buffington, Ohio, 
on July 19, with the aid of General Judah’s troops 
he captured five guns, “enough equipment to load 
a steamboat/’ and 575 men. He did not, how¬ 
ever, receive the surrender of Morgan, nor of all 
his command. In 1864, after a brief campaign on 
the Cumberland River, he led an expedition 
against Saltville, Va., but was checked by the 
counter attacks of Morgan, who had returned to 
the Confederate service after his imprisonment 
at Columbus. In minor battles at Mount Ster¬ 
ling, Lexington, and Keller’s Bridge (Cynthi- 
ana), Morgan won victories. Hobson, approach¬ 
ing Cynthiana with a relief force, June 11, 1864, 
was surprised and defeated; and he himself, 
wounded in the arm, was sent by Morgan to Cin¬ 
cinnati under a pledge, which he declared was not 
a parole, to be exchanged for a Confederate of¬ 
ficer of equal rank. During his absence Union 
troops under Stephen Gano Burbridge [q.v.] re¬ 
captured Cynthiana, released the Union prison¬ 
ers, and scattered Morgan’s forces the next day 
(June 12). Thus the pledge to General Morgan 
was nullified, and Hobson was detained by the 
War Department for technical violation of his 
parole. (See a full account of this episode in 
the Official Records, 1 ser., XXXIX, pt. 1, pp. 
32-36.) 

After the war, Hobson was the unsuccessful 
Radical candidate for clerk of the court of ap¬ 
peals in the election of August 1866, against Al¬ 
vin Duvall. In 1869 President Grant appointed 
Hobson collector of internal revenue in the 
fourth district. He held various offices in the 
Grand Army of the Republic, being commander 
of the department of Kentucky in 1892-93. He 
was active in the Republican party, serving as 
vice-president of the National Convention in 
1880. In his home community he promoted the 
construction of the railroad from Greensburg to 
Lebanon, and was president of the Cumberland 
& Ohio (later absorbed by the Louisville & 
Nashville), southern division. He engaged in 
enterprises of various types, including lumber¬ 
ing, real estate, and merchandise, until his death 
at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1901, during the G. A. R. 
encampment. 


IBiog. Cyc. of the Commonwealth of Ky. (1896); 
War of the Rebellion: Official Records, 1 ser. X (pt. 
4). XX (pt. 1), XXIII (pt. 1), XXXIX (pts. I and 2); 
E. M. Coulter. Civil War and Readjustment in Ky. 
(1926) ; Lewis and R. H. Collins, Hist, of Ky. (2 vols., 
*874) J Who’s Who in America, 1901—02 j Courier-Jour¬ 
nal (Louisville, Ky.), Sept. 15, 1901 ; information as 
to certain facts from Hobson’s son, John A. Hobson,] 

E.T. 


96 



Hoch 

HOCH, AUGUST (Apr. 20, 1868-Sept. 23, 
1919), psychiatrist, son of Theodor and Valerie 
(Schneider) Hoch, was born at Basel, Switzer¬ 
land, where his clergyman father was director of 
the City and University Hospital. Educated at 
the local gymnasium, he chose the United States 
for his medical training and matriculated at the 
University of Pennsylvania in 1887. Here he 
seems to have come under the influence of Wil¬ 
liam Osier [g.z/.], whom he followed to Johns 
Hopkins. He took his degree in medicine at the 
University of Maryland in 1890 and became an 
assistant at the neurological clinic of Johns Hop¬ 
kins, under Dr. Harry Thomas. In 1893 he ob¬ 
tained a post at the McLean Hospital, Waverley, 
Mass., with the title of psychologist and pathol¬ 
ogist of the Cowles Research Laboratories. In 
the same year he published an English transla¬ 
tion of a textbook by Ludwig Hirt under the title 
The Diseases of the Nervous System, to which 
Osier contributed a special preface. He was al¬ 
lowed leave of absence for post-graduate study 
abroad and was accompanied on his tour by Dr. 
Simon Flexner. He studied brain anatomy un¬ 
der Schwalbe, experimental psychology under 
Wundt, and clinical psychiatry under Kraepelin. 
In July 1894 he married Emmy Munch of Basel. 
By 1895 he was back at Waverley but two years 
later made a second trip to Europe, where he 
studied again under Kraepelin and also took 
courses under Nissl in brain histology. In 1905 
he resigned from the McLean Hospital to accept 
the position of assistant physician to Blooming- 
dale Asylum, White Plains, N. Y. He also be¬ 
came instructor in psychiatry in the Cornell 
Medical School. In 1908 he undertook a third 
journey to Europe, where he studied under Swiss 
masters; brain anatomy under Von Monakow, 
psychiatry under Bleuler, and psychology and 
psychoanalysis under Jung. Upon his return, 
having now received a full training in the mod¬ 
ern scientific school of psychiatry, he was ap¬ 
pointed successor to Adolf Meyer in the chair of 
psychiatry at the Cornell Medical School and 
director of the Psychiatric Institute of the New 
York State Hospitals, Ward’s Island. He re¬ 
mained active in these two posts until 1917 when 
by reason of ill health he resigned and removed 
to Montecito, Cal. He had developed a family 
malady, arteriosclerosis, with renal complica¬ 
tions. His death, which took place from renal 
failure at the University Hospital, San Fran¬ 
cisco, was untimely, for his career had not come 
to a full fruition and numerous plans were cut 
short. He had done editorial work and consid¬ 
erable writing for periodical literature but the 
only approach to a major contribution was a 


Hodge 

posthumous volume, Benign Stupors (1921). 
His journal articles include: “Deliriums Pro¬ 
duced by Drugs” ( Review of Neurology and 
Psychiatry, February 1906); “Psychogenic Fac¬ 
tors in the Development of Psychoses,” ( Psycho¬ 
logical Bulletin, June 15, 1907) ; “Constitutional 
Factors in the Dementia Prsecox Group,” (Re¬ 
view of Neurology and Psychiatry, August 
1910) ; “Some of the Mental Mechanisms in De¬ 
mentia Prsecox” ( Journal of Abnormal Psychol¬ 
ogy, January 1911); “Personality and Psy¬ 
chosis” ( American Journal of Insanity, January 
1913) ; “Dementia of Cerebral Arteriosclerosis” 
(Psychiatric Bulletin, July 1916). Other sub¬ 
jects dealt with were general paralysis, involu¬ 
tional melancholia, loss of the reality sense, ac¬ 
tion of tea on the mind, histology of the brain in 
various diseases. From 1912 to 1915 he was 
editor of the New York State Hospital Bulletin 
and of its continuation, the Psychiatric Bulletin, 
from 1916 to 1917. 

He is described as a man of charming per¬ 
sonality and open mind, who could adapt new 
and revolutionary teachings to old dogmas and 
avoid becoming either ultra-radical or ultra-con¬ 
servative. 

[Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, Nov. 1, 
1919; Boston Medic, and Surgic. Jour., Nov. 27, 1919 ; 
Jour. Am. Medic. Asso., Oct. 4, 1919; Mental Hygiene, 
Apr. 1920; State Hospital Quart., Nov. 1919; Who’s 
Who in America, 1918-19; N . Y. Times, Sept. 25 1 
I 9 I 9-1 E.P. 

HODGE, ARCHIBALD ALEXANDER 

(July 18, 1823-Nov. 11, 1886), teacher of the¬ 
ology, was born at Princeton, N. J., the eldest 
son of Charles Hodge \_q.v!\ and Sarah (Bache) 
Hodge. He graduated in 1841 from the College 
of New Jersey (Princeton), where he studied 
particularly under the physicist Joseph Henry. 
During his four years in the Princeton Theolog¬ 
ical Seminary he was an ardent disciple of his 
father, a reverential devotion to whom largely 
moulded his life. In 1847 he married Elizabeth 
B. Holliday, of Winchester, Va., and they went 
to Allahabad, India, for missionary service, 
which was terminated three years later by their 
impaired health. Returning to America, Hodge 
served as pastor of Presbyterian churches: four 
years in the country parish of Lower West Not¬ 
tingham, Md.; six in Fredericksburg, Va.; and 
three in Wilkes Barre, Pa. As a preacher he de¬ 
veloped a rare faculty of popular theological 
exposition. In 1864 he became professor of 
theology in Western Seminary, Allegheny, Pa. 
During most of his time there he was also pastor 
of the North Presbyterian Church. He went to 
the seminary at Princeton in 1877 as associate to 
his father, and soon after the latter’s death the 


97 



Hodge 

next year, he succeeded him as professor of the¬ 
ology. During his nine years at Princeton he 
did his strongest and most characteristic work. 

Hodge's books give little indication of the per¬ 
sonal qualities which made him an inspiring in¬ 
fluence on his students and others. He won con¬ 
fidence and affection by his honesty, frankness, 
generosity, and beaming good-nature. His co¬ 
pious talk abounded with lively humor, audaci¬ 
ties of thought and phrase, and gleams of imagi¬ 
nation by turns brilliant and quaint. In his 
teaching and writings he upheld with conviction 
his father's Calvinistic theology, prolonging its 
reign at Princeton and its power in American 
religious life. His Outlines of Theology (i860, 
1879), which had extensive long-continued use 
as a textbook, is a dry precise statement of the 
elder Hodge's doctrine, clearly analytical and 
dogmatically positive. The theology in his teach¬ 
ing, however, especially at Princeton, was not 
what it was in his scholastic and severely ortho¬ 
dox writing. Less learned than his father, he 
was broader, because of more varied experi¬ 
ence, wider reading, and richer human sympa¬ 
thies. In his theological discussions there was 
considerable speculative originality, with flashes 
of mystical insight, the issue of his fervid per¬ 
sonal religion. Thus his teaching had a peculiar 
freedom and quickening power. His most mem¬ 
orable quality, however, was his extraordinary 
gift of illustration, bringing into play his wealth 
of mind and nature. Suggestions of his quality 
as a teacher appear in his Popular Lectures on 
Theological Themes (1887). Among his other 
books are The Atonement (1867), A Commen¬ 
tary on the Confession of Faith (1869), and The 
Life of Charles Hodge (1880). He also served 
as an editor of the Princeton Review . In 1862 
he married as his second wife Mrs. Margaret 
McLaren Woods. 

[W. M. Paxton, Address Delivered at the Funeral of 
A . A . Hodge (1886) ; F. L. Patton, A Discourse in 
Memory of A. A. Hodge (1887) ; C. A. Salmond, 
Princetonia: Charles and A . A. Hodge (1888) ; gen¬ 
eral catalogues of Princeton Univ. and Theol. Sem.; 
Necrological Report of Princeton Theol . Sem. for 1887 
(1887) ; M. W. Jacobus and G. T. Purves, Addresses at 
the Unveiling of the Tablet in Memory of Archibald 
Alexander Hodge and Caspar Wistar Hodge (1901) ; 
Daily True American (Trenton, N. J.), Nov. 13, 1886.J 

R.H.N. 

HODGE, CHARLES (Dec. 27,1797-June 19, 
1878), theologian, long a leader in the Presby¬ 
terian Church, was born in Philadelphia. He 
was the son of Hugh Hodge, a surgeon in the 
Continental Army and afterward in Philadel¬ 
phia, and a grandson of Andrew Hodge who 
emigrated from the north of Ireland to America 
about 1730. Hugh Lenox Hodge [q.v.] was 
Charles's brother. Their mother was Mary 

98 


Hodge 

Blanchard of Boston, who was of Huguenot de¬ 
scent. The father died, a victim of overwork, 
during the yellow-fever epidemic of 1797 and in 
spite of financial difficulties the mother succeed¬ 
ed in affording her sons excellent schooling. 
Charles was educated at Princeton, graduating 
from the college in 1815 and the theological sem¬ 
inary in 1819. His training in theology, espe¬ 
cially that which he received from Archibald 
Alexander [ q.v .], determined his thought and 
lifework. Becoming instructor in the seminary 
in 1820, he taught there all his life, except for 
two years of study in France and Germany 
(1826-28). He was professor of Oriental and 
Biblical literature from 1822 to 1840, and then 
of theology. 

In the lives of his three thousand students he 
held a place of unique authority. His teaching 
had many elements of power—solid learning, ac¬ 
quaintance with contemporary thought, living 
interests, strong certainty, clear analytical state¬ 
ment, and skill in awakening minds. Even more 
influential, however, was his personal religion, 
evinced especially in his famous Sunday after¬ 
noon conference addresses. His real and strong¬ 
ly emotional piety, the heart of which was vital 
apprehension of the love of God in Christ, 
wrought his most characteristic work upon his 
students. His theology was mainly Calvinism 
as stated by the Westminster divines. He drew 
also from other scholastic Calvinists, notably 
Turretin. On all subjects his thought was pro¬ 
foundly Biblical, governed by a high doctrine of 
verbal inspiration and infallibility; and he sted- 
fastly maintained that his theology was only the 
teaching of the Bible. This theology and the 
scriptural interpretation supporting it he held 
unchanged with the strength of religious convic¬ 
tion throughout his life. His most-quoted saying 
was uttered at his semi-centennial as professor: 
“a new idea never originated in this seminary." 
While Calvinism was disintegrating in Ameri¬ 
can thought, and criticism was altering concep¬ 
tions of the Bible, and the evolutionary idea was 
beginning to exert power, Hodge unvaryingly 
affirmed his teaching. The theology which he 
established at Princeton was a powerfully con¬ 
servative force in the thought of the Presby¬ 
terian Church and of other churches. His writ¬ 
ing carried his influence beyond the reach of his 
teaching. He started the Biblical Repertory in 
1825, later known as the Biblical Repertory and 
Theological Review and after 1836 as the Bib¬ 
lical Repertory and Princeton Review , and edited 
it for more than forty years. To it he contributed 
essays and reviews which would fill ten volumes, 
treating subjects in theology, Biblical criticism, 



Hodge 

philosophy, ethics, politics, ecclesiastical polity, 
and the affairs of the Presbyterian Church. 
These were widely read on both sides of the At¬ 
lantic. In them he waged vigorous yet imper¬ 
sonal controversy for the Princeton theology, 
especially against that of Andover. His first 
book, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Ro¬ 
mans (1835; 19th edition 1880) brought him 
high repute. Among his later books were The 
Constitutional History of the Presbyterian 
Church in the United States of America (2 vols., 
1839-40), commentaries on other Pauline epis¬ 
tles, The Way of Life (1841), and finally his 
Systematic Theology (3 vols., 1872-73), which 
had extensive circulation. Posthumously ap¬ 
peared Discussions in Church Polity (1878), a 
book of much importance, and Conference Pa¬ 
pers (1879). His writings gave Hodge distin¬ 
guished standing among Scottish theologians. 

In the Presbyterian Church he held a com¬ 
manding position, through active participation 
in church business and through his articles in 
the Review. He was moderator of the General 
Assembly (Old School) in 1846, and a promi¬ 
nent member of the missionary and educational 
boards. In the controversy which divided the 
church in 1837 he contended against the New- 
School views of doctrine and polity, and favored 
the division. Though opposed to the institution 
of slavery, he strongly deprecated the policy of 
the Abolitionists, and contended that slave-hold¬ 
ing was not necessarily a sin (see his articles in 
E. N. Elliott’s Cotton Is King, i860, pp. 811- 
76). During the Civil War, he resisted the 
church’s declaring itself on the question of po¬ 
litical allegiance, but he supported the Federal 
government in the Review, thereby extending 
his influence. Although rigid in his views, he 
was tender-hearted and affectionate and given 
to strong emotions. His goodness and kindli¬ 
ness made him universally beloved. In 1822 he 
married a great-grand-daughter of Benjamin 
Franklin, Sarah, daughter of Dr. William Bache 
and Catharine Wistar of Philadelphia. Two of 
their eight children, Archibald Alexander [q.v.] 
and Caspar Wistar, became professors in Prince¬ 
ton Seminary. His first wife died in 1849, and 
in 1852 he married Mrs. Mary (Hunter) Stock- 
ton. 

[A. A. Hodge, The Life of Charles Hodge (1880) ; 
C. A. Salmond, Princetonia: Charles and A. A. Hodge 
(1888) ; Proc. Connected with the Semi-Centennial 
Commemoration of the Professorship of Rev. Charles 
Hodge (1872) ; general catalogues of Princeton Univ. 
and Theol. Sem.; Necrological Report of Princeton 
Theolog. Sem. for 1879 (1879) ; E. H. Gillett, Hist, of 
the Presbyt. Ch. in the U. S. A. (2 vols., 1864.) ; R. E. 
Thompson, A Hist, of the Presbyt. Churches in the 
U. S. (1895) ; Discourses Commemorative of the Life 
and Work of Charles Hodge, D.D., LL.D. (1879) ; L. 


Hodge 

H. Atwater, A Discourse Commemorative of the Late 
Dr. Charles Hodge (1878) ; Phila. Inquirer, June 20, 
l8 ? 8 d R.H.N. 

HODGE, HUGH LENOX (June 27, 1796- 
Feb. 26, 1873), obstetrician, was born in Phila¬ 
delphia, the son of Dr. Hugh and Mary (Blan¬ 
chard) Hodge, and a brother of Charles Hodge 
[ q.v .]. He received his early education in board¬ 
ing schools in New Jersey and entered the soph¬ 
omore class of the College of New Jersey in May 
1812, graduating in 1814. .He began the study 
of medicine under Dr. Caspar Wistar and grad¬ 
uated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1818, 
the subject of his thesis being “Digestion,” Af¬ 
ter graduation he took the position of surgeon 
on a ship for two years during which time he 
gained considerable experience but little in the 
way of financial reward, so that his plan of 
studying in Europe had to be given up. He be¬ 
gan practice in Philadelphia and was soon given 
dispensary positions. His first opportunity to 
teach was as a substitute for Professor William 
E. Homer [q.v.], in his anatomy class at the Uni¬ 
versity of Pennsylvania. Later he was appointed 
a lecturer in surgery in the summer school of 
Nathaniel Chapman [ q.v .]. In 1835 William P. 
Dewees [q.v.] was compelled to resign from the 
chair of obstetrics in the University of Pennsyl¬ 
vania and was succeeded by Hodge after a stren¬ 
uous contest in which his rival was Charles D. 
Meigs [q.v.], In connection with his work in 
obstetrics, as was natural, he became interested 
in the allied subjects, of die diseases peculiar to 
women, and devoted more and more attention to 
them. A condition which may result from child¬ 
bearing is some form of displacement or prolapse 
of the uterus. Before the days of modern sur¬ 
gery the treatment of these conditions was diffi¬ 
cult and mechanical contrivances which gave 
support were welcome aids. Hodge devised cer¬ 
tain very ingenious pessaries, by one of which 
his name is kept in remembrance. He also in¬ 
troduced valuable modifications in obstetrical 
forceps and other instruments. As a result of 
his long experience and special devotion to gyne¬ 
cology and obstetrics he produced two works of 
importance: On Diseases Peculiar to Women 
(i860), and The Principles and Practice of Ob¬ 
stetrics (1864). The latter must be regarded as 
the more important and exercised a wide influ¬ 
ence on obstetrical thought and practice at a time 
when this subject was less developed than many 
others in the medical field. 

He had been compelled to give up his desire 
to practise surgery on account of difficulty with 
his sight. This affliction compelled him to de¬ 
liver his lectures entirely from memory, but hi$ 


99 



Hodgen 

teaching in consequence was clear and concise in 
style. The impairment of vision gradually pro¬ 
gressed so that in 1863 he was compelled to re¬ 
sign from the chair of obstetrics. He faced his 
affliction with courage; much of his later writ¬ 
ing, including his work on obstetrics, had to be 
dictated, but he continued to publish articles 
until his death. He influenced obstetrical prac¬ 
tice particularly in advocating the more fre¬ 
quent use of forceps, and also wrote extensively 
on the wrong of criminal abortion. He was asso¬ 
ciated with the Pennsylvania Hospital, being 
appointed physician in charge of the lying-in 
department in 1832. This department had a 
somewhat unfortunate experience with puerperal 
fever and after having been closed for some time 
was finally ' 1 -udoned in 1854. Hodge married, 
Nov. 12, 1828, Margaret E. Aspinwall, daugh¬ 
ter of John Aspinwall of New York, and a sister 
of William Henry Aspinwall [q.vJ\. He was a 
Fellow of the College of Physicians and a mem¬ 
ber of the American Philosophical Society. 
Death came to him suddenly from angina pec¬ 
toris. 

[Standard Hist, of the Medic. Profession of Philo,. 
(1897), ed. by F. P. Henry; William Goodell, Biog. 
Memoir of Hugh L. Hodge, M.D. (1874); R. A. F. 
Penrose, A Discourse Commemorative of the Life and 
Character of Hugh L. Hodge (1873); T. G. Morton 
and Frank Woodbury, The Hist. of the Pa. Hospital 
(1895); Phila. Inquirer, Feb. 27, 1873; H. A. Kelly 
and W. L. Burrage, Am. Medic. Biogs . (1920).] 

T.M. 

HODGEN, JOHN THOMPSON (Jan. 29, 
1826-Apr. 28, 1882), surgeon, was born in 
Hodgenville, Ky., the son of Jacob and Frances 
Park (Brown) Hodgen. He received his pri¬ 
mary education in the county school of Pittsfield, 
Ill., later attending Bethany College, in what is 
now West Virginia, and finally, in March 1848, 
graduating from McDowell's College of Medi¬ 
cine in St. Louis, which institution subsequently 
became the medical department of the Univer¬ 
sity of the State of Missouri. After graduation, 
he served first as assistant resident physician and 
then as resident physician of the St. Louis City 
Hospital until June 1849, an d later was demon¬ 
strator of anatomy in the Missouri Medical Col¬ 
lege, advancing to the grade of professor of anat¬ 
omy in 1854. He held this chair until 1858, and 
those of anatomy and physiology from 1858 to 
1864. On Mar. 28, 1854, he married Elizabeth 
Delphine Mudd. During the Civil War he 
served as surgeon-general of the Western Sani¬ 
tary Commission, and as surgeon-general of 
Missouri (1862-64). In 1864 he was called to 
the chair of physiology in the St Louis Medical 
College, where he also filled the chair of anat¬ 
omy. The following year he became dean of 


Hodges 

the school, holding this office for the remainder 
of his life. He also taught surgery at the City 
Hospital of St. Louis, from 1864 until his death. 
He was elected president of the American Medi¬ 
cal Association in 1881 and was one of the 
charter members of the American Surgical As¬ 
sociation. His death was occasioned by acute 
peritonitis, following perforation of the gall blad¬ 
der. 

Hodgen was by instinct and inclination me¬ 
chanical, and probably the most noteworthy and 
lasting contribution that he made to surgery 
was the splint which still carries his name. It is 
a modification of the Nathan R. Smith anterior 
suspension splint for fractures of the femur. 
Hodgen, by an arrangement consisting of a sim¬ 
ple steel-bar frame with pulleys and a suspension 
cord, developed a device that secures traction 
and permits suspension, flexion, and rotation, 
making it possible not only to attain unusually 
admirable results in the treatment of fracture of 
the femur, but also to furnish the patient an in¬ 
credible degree of comfort during the stage of 
healing. In addition to this splint, he devised a 
tracheal foreign-body forceps, a wire suspension 
splint for fractures of the arm, and a hairpin di¬ 
lator for tracheotomy wounds. He published nu¬ 
merous pamphlets, most of them reprints of arti¬ 
cles that appeared in the St. Louis Medical and 
Surgical Journal. Among them are On Frac¬ 
tures (1870); On the Treatment of Fractures of 
the Femur (1871); Treatment of Oblique and 
Compound Fractures of the Leg (1871); A 
Modification of the Usual Operation for “Lac¬ 
erated Perineum” (n.d.); Cell or Skin Grafting 
(1871). 

[Medic. Mirror (St. Louis), Jan. 1, 1890; A. van 
Meter, “John Thompson Hodgen; an Appreciation/ 1 
Medic. Herald (St. Joseph), Feb. 1907; St. Louis 
Medic. Rev., Supp., May 11, 1907; Trans. Am. Medic. 
Asso vol, XXXIII (1882); St. Louis Globe Demo¬ 
crat, Apr. 29, 1882; H. G. Mudd, “John Thompson 
Hodgen,” Surg. Gyn., and Obstet., Apr. 1926.] 

M.G. S. 

HODGES, GEORGE (Oct. 6, 1856-May 27, 
I 9 I 9), Protestant Episcopal clergyman and au¬ 
thor, son of George Frederick and Hannah (Bal¬ 
lard) Hodges, was born in Rome, N. Y. He was 
a descendant of William Hodges, a sea-captain 
who came to Boston from Taunton, England, as 
early as 1633, and in 1643 settled in Taunton, 
Mass. George Hodges received his early educa¬ 
tion in the public schools of his native town and 
graduated from Hamilton College in 1877. After 
teaching for a year in Hellmuth College, Lon¬ 
don, Ontario, he began his studies for the min¬ 
istry in St. Andrew's Divinity School, Syracuse, 
N. Y. Finding the instruction here inadequate, 
he transferred the next year to the Berkeley Di- 


IOO 



Hodges 

vinity School, Middletown, Conn., where he 
spent two years, and upon completing his course 
in 1881 was ordained a deacon. During his last 
year in the seminary, he ministered to a small 
parish in South Glastonbury, Conn. After leav¬ 
ing Berkeley he became assistant minister in 
Calvary Church, Pittsburgh, Pa., where he was 
ordained priest in 1882. In Pittsburgh, he was 
put in charge of a new mission church, St. Ste¬ 
phen^, where he displayed such gifts of preach¬ 
ing, organization, and leadership, that in 1887 he 
was promoted to associate minister of Calvary, 
and became its rector on Jan. 25,1889. The next 
five years were crowded with diversified activi¬ 
ties. Influenced by Kingsley and Maurice, and 
inspired by his own quick human sympathies, he 
became devoted to the “social gospel” and, with 
his church behind him, became a power for so¬ 
cial betterment in the city. With tireless energy 
he started and carried forward many philan¬ 
thropic agencies, the most notable of which was 
a social settlement named Kingsley House, which 
he established in 1893 with the cooperation of 
various communions, from Unitarian to Roman 
Catholic. His sermons also, short, pithy, spar¬ 
kling, rich in saving common sense, were eagerly 
heard and widely read. In the full stream of his 
success in Pittsburgh, he was elected, in June 
1893, bishop coadjutor of Oregon, an honor 
which he declined, but a few months later he ac¬ 
cepted an invitation to become dean of the Epis¬ 
copal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., 
and assumed his new duties on Jan. 6, 1894. 

In this new position his powers of leadership 
were less conspicuous than they had been in 
Pittsburgh, partly, perhaps, because the office 
of dean did not call for them in the same degree. 
Then, too, the philanthropic activities of Boston 
and vicinity were already organized under effi¬ 
cient leaders. Furthermore, the social move¬ 
ment was entering upon a new phase. Organ¬ 
ized labor with its demands for social justice pre¬ 
sented a quite different problem from that of in¬ 
dividual families in need of help. The changed 
conditions demanded a more thorough training 
in economic principles than Hodges possessed, 
and he was too busily engaged in literary work to 
make good his deficiencies. As a writer he was 
extraordinarily prolific. Thirty-four books with¬ 
in thirty-five years, innumerable essays and mag¬ 
azine articles, and two sets of school readers 
prepared in collaboration with others, flowed 
from his facile pen. He expressed his thought 
in terse, crisp sentences suffused with humor 
and lighted up with flashing wit. He was not a 
scholar, but he had a true eye for scholarship in 
others and also a gift of putting the results of 


Hodges 

research into a captivating form for popular 
comprehension and appreciation. In the best 
sense of the word, he was an apt popularizer of 
theological learning. 

Catholicity was a marked trait in his character 
and a prominent feature of his work. This trait 
may have been due, in part, to his early religious 
associations. His mother was a devoted Episco¬ 
palian of the evangelical type; his father was an 
upright, God-fearing man, although without 
church connections. After his mother’s death, 
in 1862, her place in the household was taken by 
his father’s unmarried sister, and with her 
George often attended afternoon service in a 
Presbyterian or Methodist church. His father’s 
second wife was a Baptist, and George went to 
a Baptist Sunday school. Amid all these di¬ 
verse religious influences, the boy remained loyal 
to his mother’s church, in which he was baptized 
and confirmed. With unfailing devotion to his 
own communion, his comprehensive and gen¬ 
erous personality won for him growing influ¬ 
ence in Cambridge, Boston, New England, and, 
through graduates of the school, all over the 
country. He was twice married: on Oct. 18, 
1881, to Anna Jennings, daughter of one of his 
professors in St. Andrew’s School, who died in 
1897; on Apr. 10, 1901, to Julia Shelley, in 
Cambridge, Mass. 

[Julia Shelley Hodges, George Hodges (1926), con¬ 
tains a full list of his publications; see also: A. D. 
Hodges, Jr., Geneal. Record of the Hodges Family of 
New England (1896) ; P. R. Frothingham, All These 
(1927), a chapter reprinted from Proc . Mass. Hist. 
Soc., vol. LIII (1920).] W.W.F. 

HODGES, HARRY FOOTE (Feb. 25,1860- 
Sept. 24, 1929), military engineer, descended 
from William Hodges who came from England 
to New England about 1633,was born' m Boston, 
Mass., the son of Edward Fuller and Anne Fran¬ 
ces (Hammat) Hodges. He received his pre¬ 
paratory education at the Boston Latin School 
and Adams Academy, Quincy, Mass., and enter¬ 
ing the Military Academy at West Point, July 
1,1877, graduated four years later, fourth in his 
class. Assignment to the Corps of Engineers 
followed, with staff service at Willett’s Point, 
and several years as assistant to Col. 0 . M. Poe 
[g.z>.], who was then in charge of the canal at 
Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. On Dec. 8,1887, Hodges 
married Alma L’Hommedieu Reynolds. He 
served as an assistant professor of civil and 
military engineering at West Point, 1888-92, 
and thereafter supervised important engineering 
works on the Ohio, Missouri, and Upper Mis¬ 
sissippi Rivers, becoming a captain of engineers, 
May 18, 1893. With the declaration of war 
against Spain, he was commissioned lieutenant- 


IOI 



Hodges 

colonel and later colonel o£ the ist United States 
Volunteer Engineers, and during 1898-99, was 
engaged in the construction and repair of roads, 
bridges, reservoirs, refrigerating plants, and de¬ 
fensive works in Porto Rico. Then he had charge 
of engineering projects on the upper Ohio River 
until May 1901, when he was designated chief 
engineer, Department of Cuba, under Major- 
General Leonard Wood. From 1902 to 1907, he 
was assistant to the chief of engineers at Wash¬ 
ington, and a member of many important boards 
and commissions. In September 1905, he was 
delegate to the Tenth International Navigation 
Congress, at Milan, Italy. 

In 1907 he became general purchasing officer 
for the Isthmian Canal Commission; and the 
following year was made a member of the com¬ 
mission and assistant chief engineer of the Pan¬ 
ama Canal, in charge of the design of locks, 
dams, and regulating works. For this service 
his river-and-harbor experience, especially his 
work on the Poe lock at Sault Ste. Marie, had 
peculiarly fitted him. Col. Goethals referred to 
him as "my right bower,” and stated that “the 
canal could not have been built without him” 
(Scribner’s Magazine, May 1915, p. 544; Bish¬ 
op, post., p. 216). Hodges was engineer of main¬ 
tenance of the canal in 1914-15. The Panama 
period embraced his most important engineering 
achievements, and for his services he received 
the Thanks of Congress, Mar. 4, 1915, and was 
advanced to the grade of brigadier-general. He 
commanded Fort Totten and the Middle-Atlan- 
tic Coast Artillery District, 1915-17, and with 
the advent of the World War was appointed 
major-general, National Army, Aug. 5, 1917. 
He commanded and trained the 76th Division at 
Camp Devens, Mass., during the remainder of 
the year 1917; was an observer in France during 
the first half of 1918; and saw service with his 
division overseas, up to December 1918. On his 
return to the United States, he was in command 
of Camp Sevier, S. C., Camp Travis, Tex., and 
the North Pacific and 3rd Coast Artillery Dis¬ 
trict. On Dec. 21,1921, he was advanced to the 
grade of major-general, United States Army, 
and the day following was, at his own request, 
retired from active service. Thereafter, until 
his death, he made his home at Lake Forest, Ill. 
For his services during the World War, Hodges 
was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal; 
he had already earned service medals for the 
Spanish-American War, Army of Cuban Pacifi¬ 
cation, and the Panama Canal. He was the au¬ 
thor of Roster of Service with Engineer Troops 
of the United States Army, and a Brief Histor¬ 
ical Sketch of Their Organization (1885); and 


Hodgkinson 

of Notes on Mitering Lock-Gates (1892). His 
wife had died in 1926, and he was survived by a 
son and two daughters. The interment, with sim¬ 
ple religious and military honors, was at Grace- 
land Cemetery, Chicago. 

[War Department records ,* certain details including 
the spelling of family names from Hodges’ son, Duncan 
Hodges, who is the author of a memoir of his father in 
Trans. Am. Soc . Civil Engineers , vol. XCIY (1930); 
information from the secretary, Asso. Grads., U. S. 
Mil. Acad.; Who's Who in America, 1928-29; A. D. 
Hodges, Jr., Geneal. Record of the Hodges Family of 
New England (1896); Canal Record, July 15, 1908; 
G. W. Goethals, “The Building of the Panama Canal,” 
Scribner's Mag., Mar .-June, 1915; J. B. Bishop, The 
Panama Gateway (1913); G. W. Cullum, Biog. Reg. 
Officers and Grads . U. S. Mil. Acad. (3rd ed., 1891), 
and supplements; Army and Navy Jour., Sept. 28, 
1929; Chicago Daily News, Sept. 25, 1929; N. Y . 
Times, Sept. 25, and editorial Sept. 29, 1929.] 

C.D.R. 

HODGKINSON, JOHN (c. 1767-Sept. 12, 
1805), actor, theatrical manager, was the son of 
a small English farmer of the name of Meadow- 
croft (or Meadowcraft). When the father set 
up a public house in the neighboring town of 
Manchester, John was pressed into service as 
potboy. After the elder Meadowcroft’s death, 
his widow remarried, and the boy was appren¬ 
ticed to a silk weaver. Having an unusual voice, 
he sang in the choir of one of the Manchester 
churches. As a further exercise of his talents 
he formed a cellar theatre among the boys of his 
acquaintance and was highly gratified with the 
result until his master, discovering the secret, 
violently broke up the organization. John there¬ 
upon ran away from Manchester and, for pur¬ 
poses of concealment, took his mother’s family 
name of Hodgkinson. At this time he was ap¬ 
parently in his fifteenth year. Reaching Bristol, 
he decided to try for the stage, and, after display¬ 
ing his vocal ability before the local manager, he 
was engaged to sing in the chorus and perform 
other small offices about the theatre. Subse¬ 
quently he was connected with two important 
provincial circuits and was soon recognized as 
one of the most promising actors of his day. In 
1789 he ran off with the nominal wife of Mun- 
den, his employer, and appeared for a time at the 
Exeter theatre. A year later he became a mem¬ 
ber of the company at Bath and Bristol and 
played numerous leads both tragic and comic. 
He was now in line for one of the London thea¬ 
tres, but at this juncture he applied for and ob¬ 
tained a position in the principal company of 
the United States. His reasons for this step are 
not clear, but the fact that he left the so-called 
Mrs. Hodgkinson at Bath and arrived in Amer¬ 
ica in company with Miss Brett, a young actress, 
whom he married on reaching this country, may 
throw some light on his motives. The Hodgkin- 


102 



Hodgkinson 

sons made their American debut at Philadelphia, 
Sept. 26, 1792, and created a highly favorable 
impression. At New York, where the company 
opened in January 1793, Hodgkinson was ac¬ 
cepted in a short time as the most gifted and ver¬ 
satile actor the American stage had ever known. 
Tall and strong, with a face of manly comeliness 
and a melodious voice of great range, he was 
well equipped physically for his profession. He 
possessed also an astonishingly rapid and accu¬ 
rate memory and an extraordinary combination 
of sympathetic and imitative faculties. Low 
comedy was his peculiar province, but he was 
almost equally capable in high comedy and trag¬ 
edy, while his remarkable singing powers made 
him a prime favorite in opera. Moreover, his 
industry was indefatigable; it is said that he 
could perform a greater number of characters 
well than any other actor in the memory of man. 
Though he could rant in tragedy and his com¬ 
edy was sometimes too broad, his age regarded 
him as a marvel. Bernard wrote: “When I asso¬ 
ciate this actor with Garrick and Henderson 
(the first of whom I had often seen, and the lat¬ 
ter played with) I afford some ground for think¬ 
ing he possessed no common claims. I do not 
hesitate to say, that had he enjoyed their good- 
fortune ... he would have risen to the rank of 
their undoubted successor. ... I doubt if such 
a number and such greatness of requisites were 
ever before united in one mortal man” (post, pp. 
256-57). His wife too was a performer of dis¬ 
tinction. The youthful charm of her delicate face 
and figure was particularly appealing in the roles 
of young girls, and also in some tragic parts, 
especially Ophelia. But because of her sweet 
and powerful singing voice, her forte was opera. 

Hodgkinson soon proved to be a man of inor¬ 
dinate vanity and self-seeking. He quickly be¬ 
came the dictator of the company and ruthless¬ 
ly seized all the best characters for himself and 
his wife. John Henry, joint director with Lewis 
Hallam, and Mrs. Henry were the special vic¬ 
tims of his plundering, which finally became so 
unbearable that in 1794 Henry sold out to Hodg¬ 
kinson, precisely as the latter intended he 
should. Hodgkinson now began to practise his 
arts against Hallam and his wife, and the result 
was deep enmity that sometimes led to violent 
eruptions. In 1796 William Dunlap was per¬ 
suaded to buy half of Hodgkinson’s property, 
but he was unable to restrain his greedy asso¬ 
ciate, whose demands for more parts and more 
salary went on unabated. A year later Hallam 
withdrew from the management, and Hodgkin¬ 
son assumed a greater dominance than before. 
By his efforts to maintain a summer company at 


Hodgkinson 

Hartford and Boston and another at New York, 
contrary to Dunlap’s advice, he contrived to lose 
large sums of borrowed money. He had already 
given his partner cause for complaint when, 
shortly before this, he appropriated a one-act 
play of Dunlap’s and expanded it into a three-act 
drama, The Man of Fortitude; or, the Knight’s 
Adventure (printed 1807), without acknowledg¬ 
ing his indebtedness. 

In the spring of 1798 Hodgkinson retired from 
the New York theatre in order to accept the 
managership at Boston—taking with him con¬ 
siderable property that he had already sold to 
Dunlap. A year at Boston brought upon him 
such heavy debts that he offered to return to the 
Park Theatre, and Dunlap accordingly engaged 
him and his wife. Presuming on his popularity 
with the public, he again began demanding and 
obtaining more parts and more pay, but when he 
insisted on an equal voice in the direction of the 
theatre, his employer called a halt. As Dunlap 
and other writers have demonstrated, it is easy to 
represent Hodgkinson as a grossly and wilfully 
dishonest man, but it must be remembered that 
his early training was not favorable to the de¬ 
velopment of a rigid moral sense. He was prob¬ 
ably seldom if ever conscious of wrong-doing. 

In September 1803, Mrs. Hodgkinson died of 
tuberculosis. She was, according to Dunlap, “an 
amiable woman and a good wife” (post, p. 100). 
This summer Hodgkinson again broke his con¬ 
nection with New York and went to Charleston 
for two successful seasons. In the spring of 
1805, Dunlap having become bankrupt, Hodg¬ 
kinson obtained the lease of the Park Theatre. 
In preparation for the coming season he started 
south to secure actors and also to fulfil an en¬ 
gagement at Washington. On the way he was 
seized with yellow fever and died at a tavern 
near Bladensburg, Md. He was survived by two 
young daughters, Fanny and Rosina, who oc¬ 
casionally enacted juvenile characters. After 
Hodgkins on’s death benefits for them were given 
in several cities. 

[The details of Hodgkinson’s life in England are 
known chiefly from his own statements, not always re¬ 
liable, recorded in an unsigned biography by S. C. Car¬ 
penter in the Mirror of Taste, Mar.-Nov. 1810. The 
main authorities for his American career are Hodgkin¬ 
son’s Narrative of his Connection with the Old Am. 
Company (1797) ; Wm. Dunlap, A Hist . of the Am. 
Theatre (1832) ; W. B. Wood, Personal Recollections 
of the Stage (1835) ; W. W. Clapp, A Record of the 
Boston Stage (1853) ; John Bernard, Retrospections of 
America (1887); and Charles Durang, “The Philadel¬ 
phia Stage,” published serially in the Philadelphia Dis¬ 
patch from 1854 to i860. See also G. 0 . Seilhamer, 
Hist, of the Am. Theatre , vol. Ill (1891) ; and G, C. D. 
Odell, Annals of the N . Y. Stage, vols. I and II (1927).] 

o.s.c. 


103 



Hoc Hoe 


HOE, RICHARD MARCH (Sept. 12, 1812- 

June 7,1886), inventor, manufacturer, was bom 
in New York City, the eldest son of Robert Hoe 
[q.v .] and Rachel (Smith) Hoe. After obtain¬ 
ing a common school education, he entered his 
father's press-building establishment at the age 
of fifteen, about the time that his father was ex¬ 
perimenting with cylinder presses. On the re¬ 
tirement of the elder Hoe in 1830, Richard and 
his cousin Matthew Smith were given the full 
responsibility of the establishment. The former 
became intensely interested in the experimental 
and manufacturing phases of the business and 
developed the same mechanical ingenuity which 
had distinguished his father. About the time 
that young Hoe assumed the management, the 
single small cylinder press embodying improve¬ 
ments on Napier's inventions made by the elder 
Hoe and Sereno Newton, was being made and 
sold by the Hoe Company. While the capacity 
of this press was 2,000 impressions an hour, the 
demand for greater speed of output prompted 
Hoe to concentrate on improvements to meet this 
demand, and in 1837 the double small cylinder 
press was perfected and introduced. During this 
same decade, too, he designed and put into pro¬ 
duction the single large cylinder press, the first 
flat bed and cylinder press ever used in the 
United States. Hundreds of these machines were 
made in subsequent years and used for book, job, 
and woodcut printing. In 1845 and 1846 Hoe 
was busily engaged in designing and inventing 
presses to meet the increased requirements of the 
newspaper publishers. The result was the con¬ 
struction of the Hoe type-revolving machine 
based on Hoe's patents. The basis of these in¬ 
ventions was an apparatus for securely fastening 
the forms of type on a central cylinder placed in 
a horizontal position. Around this central cyl¬ 
inder from four to ten impression cylinders, ac¬ 
cording to output required, were grouped. The 
first of these machines was installed in 1847 in 
the office of the Public Ledger , Philadelphia. It 
had four impression cylinders, and, with one boy 
assigned to each of the cylinders to feed blank 
paper, printed 8,000 papers an hour. A revolu¬ 
tion in newspaper printing took place almost im¬ 
mediately, and for twenty-five years thereafter 
Hoe's rotary press continued supreme through¬ 
out the world. In 1853 Hoe introduced the stop 
cylinder press, patented in France by Dutartre, 
and improved it in subsequent years for use in 
lithographic and letter-press work. The perfec¬ 
tion in 1861 of the curved stereotype plate and 
the construction by William Bullock [q.v.] in 
1865 of the first printing machine to print from a 
continuous web or roll of paper, indicated the 


direction for further improvements in newspaper 
presses. In 1871, therefore, Hoe with Stephen 
D. Tucker, one of his partners, began experi¬ 
menting and designed and built a web press. 
The first of these machines used in the United 
States was installed in the office of the New York 
Tribune . At its maximum speed this press print¬ 
ed on both sides of a sheet and produced 18,000 
perfect papers an hour. Four years later Tucker 
patented a rotating folding cylinder which fold¬ 
ed papers as fast as they came from the press, 
and in 1881 the Hoe Company devised the trian¬ 
gular former folder, which, when incorporated 
in a press together with twenty-odd additional 
improvements, brought into existence the mod¬ 
ern newspaper press. With its introduction, of 
course, the type-revolving press of 1847 was en¬ 
tirely superseded. Under Hoe's masterful man¬ 
agement the company grew at a rapid rate. In 
1859 it purchased the Isaac Adams Press Works 
in Boston, and shortly after the Civil War a new 
and larger plant covering an entire block was 
erected on Grand Street, New York, and the 
original establishment on Gold Street was aban¬ 
doned. The company's foreign business had kept 
pace, too, with that in America, and between 
1865 and 1870 a large manufacturing branch was 
established in London. This plant in operation 
employed six hundred people. Throughout his 
life Hoe continued to be the dominating influence 
in the company. He was considered the most 
charitable of employers, devoting much time, 
thought, and money to the welfare of his em¬ 
ployees. Early in his career he established an 
evening school for his factory apprentices where 
free instruction was given in those branches 
likely to be of the most practical use. He was for 
years addressed by the title of “Colonel,” which 
he had won from an early service in the Na¬ 
tional Guard. His home, “Brightside,” in West¬ 
chester County, N. Y., above Harlem, contained 
a large collection of art treasures and books. He 
died suddenly in Florence, Italy, while on a com¬ 
bined health and pleasure trip with his wife and 
a daughter. Hoe was twice married: first, to 
Lucy Gilbert of Salem, N. Y., and second, to 
Mary Gay Corbin of Philadelphia, who, with 
their three daughters and two by his first mar¬ 
riage, survived him. He was succeeded as head 
of the Hoe company by his nephew Robert Hoe 
[q.v.]. 

[Robert Hoe, A Short Hist. of the Printing Press 
(190 2) ; W. W. Pasko, Am. Diet, of Printing and Book¬ 
making (1894); J. L. Bishop, A Hist, of Am. Manu¬ 
factures (2 vols., 1864); S. D. Tucker, “Hist, of R. 
Hoe & Company, N. Y(MS. in Lib. of Cong.); N. Y . 
Tribune, and N. Y. Times, June 9,1886.] C. W. M. 


104 



Hoe Hoe 


HOE, ROBERT (Oct. 29,1784-Jan. 4,1833), 
manufacturer, was born in the hamlet of Hoes, 
Leicestershire, England, the son of Thomas and 
Elizabeth Hoe. The family was of Saxon origin, 
their residence in the county of Leicester dating 
from the year 1581. Hoe’s father was a fanner. 
After obtaining a rather meager education in the 
village school, Robert was apprenticed to a local 
carpenter. At the age of nineteen, before com¬ 
pleting his apprenticeship, he was attracted by 
reports of the conditions of the working man in 
America, and, purchasing the remainder of his 
apprenticeship, he emigrated to the United 
States, landing in New York in September 1803. 
At that time the yellow fever was raging in New 
York, and after walking penniless through the 
plague-stricken city looking for work he applied 
in desperation to a seedsman. He was given a 
job, but in a week contracted the fever and would 
have died except for the kind attentions of the 
seedsman and his wife. Upon his recovery he 
obtained through his employer work in building 
a bridge in Westchester County, N. Y. There 
he met Matthew Smith, Jr., and his brother 
Peter, who were manufacturing printer’s type 
cases and wooden frame hand printing presses 
after Peter’s patented design. Upon the com¬ 
pletion of the bridge in 1805, the Smith brothers, 
appreciating Hoe’s ability and desiring his help, 
established a carpenter shop in New York City 
under the firm name of Smith, Hoe & Company. 
They specialized in wooden hand presses and 
printer’s equipment and in the succeeding fifteen 
years built up a profitable business, their great¬ 
est contribution to the printing art being, prob¬ 
ably, the change from the wooden to cast-iron 
frame for presses and the adoption of the toggle- 
joint principle instead of the screw for pressure. 
After the death of Matthew Smith in 1820 and 
Peter in 1823, Hoe continued the business under 
the name of R. Hoe & Company. In 1827 he 
purchased Samuel Rust’s patent for increasing 
the strength of presses by using wrought iron in 
the upright frame and incorporated it with his 
own improvement in a new press called the 
“Washington.” This proved very popular and 
continued to be made in great numbers long after 
Hoe’s death. As early as 1819 Smith, Hoe & 
Company began experimentation with steam- 
power presses, which Hoe continued with rather 
indifferent success. Around 1830, however, he 
acquired the rights to Isaac Adams’ patented 
power press and began its manufacture. In 1829 
there was imported into the United States from 
England one of Napier’s cylinder presses. It 
was held at the port of New York because of the 
inability of its purchaser to pay for it. The sur¬ 


veyor of the port called in Hoe to assemble it and 
permitted him to make models and drawings of 
its parts. Hoe quickly appreciated that this, the 
first cylinder press, was far better than anything 
then known in America, and began building 
presses like it. He sent one of his employees, 
Sereno Newton, to England to study the Napier 
Press and upon his return Hoe and his son made 
so many improvements on the original Napier, 
that their cylinder press soon displaced all of the 
English machines used in the United States. 
About 1830 Hoe’s health began to fail as a result 
of overwork, and the business passed into the 
hands of his eldest son, Richard March Hoe 
[q.v.~\, and his nephew, Matthew Smith. Hoe’s 
wife was Rachel Smith, daughter of Matthew 
and Rachel (Mead) Smith and sister of his busi¬ 
ness partners, Matthew and Peter Smith, She 
with three sons survived him. 

[J. L. Ringwalt, Am. Encyc. of Printing (1871); W. 
W. Pasko, Am. Diet, of Printing and Bookmaking 
(1894) ,* Walter Gillis, “Robert Hoe,” in N . Y. Gened, 
and Biog. Record , Apr. 1910; Robert Hoe, third, A 
Short Hist of the Printing Press (190 2); Waldemar 
Kaempffert, A Popular Hist of Am. Invention (1924), 
vol. I; S. P. Mead, Hist and Gene at of the Mead 
Family (1901); N. Y. Standard , Jan. 7, 1833.] 

C.W.M. 

HOE, ROBERT (Mar. 10, 1839-Sept. 22, 
1909), manufacturer, bibliophile, was bom in 
New York City, the son of Robert Hoe, second, 
and Thirza (Mead) Hoe. He was a grandson 
of Robert Hoe [q.vJ], founder of the firm of R. 
Hoe & Company, and a nephew of Richard 
March Hoe [ q.v .], the foremost inventor of the 
family. After attending the city schools, young 
Robert entered the firm of R. Hoe & Company 
when he was about seventeen, while the Hoe 
company was busily engaged in manufacturing 
its type-revolving press and stop cylinder press. 
In the succeeding twenty-eight years he learned 
the business thoroughly, working in all depart¬ 
ments. Each succeeding year, as his uncles grew 
older, he assumed greater responsibility, and fol¬ 
lowing the retirement of Peter Smith Hoe and 
the death of Richard March Hoe in 1886, he be¬ 
came the head of the firm, continuing in that ca¬ 
pacity until his death. His many years of ex¬ 
perience had developed in him not only a keen 
business sense but an unusual ability to select 
persons with the right kind of genius to carry 
into execution the improvements which he him¬ 
self believed valuable. Accordingly, he never 
received patents in his own name for improve¬ 
ments in the printing-press. He bent his en¬ 
ergies first toward meeting the demand of news¬ 
paper publishers for greater speed of production. 
After many efforts, and the failure and destruc¬ 
tion of several machines, the Hoe double supple- 


105 



Hoe 

ment press was produced, the first one being pur¬ 
chased by James Gordon Bennett, of the New 
York Herald, and put to work in the office of that 
paper. This press was capable of printing four-, 
six-, eight-, ten-, and twelve-page papers at the 
rate of 24,000 an hour, the odd pages in every 
case being accurately inserted and pasted in and 
the papers cut at the top and delivered folded. 
The double supplement press was introduced 
early in the eighties, and a short time thereafter, 
in 1887, a still faster press known as the quad¬ 
ruple newspaper press was constructed by the 
Hoe company and placed in the office of the New 
York World . It was capable of printing 48,000 
eight-page papers in an hour. Although it was 
thought that the limit of printing capacity in one 
machine had been reached in this new invention, 
demands for greater capacities resulted in the 
design of the sextuple machine in 1889. Eigh¬ 
teen months were required to complete it and it 
was composed of 16,000 pieces. The first one 
completed was installed in the New York Herald 
office in 1891. This press printed, cut, pasted, 
folded, counted, and delivered 72,000 eight-page 
papers, using about fifty-two miles of paper the 
ordinary width of the Herald, in an hour. Under 
Hoe’s direction the company did not stop even 
at this machine, but continued to make improve¬ 
ments and in 1895 constructed the first sixty- 
four-page newspaper press, which was followed 
in 1901 by a ninety-six-page press. Besides the 
developments which took place under Hoe’s 
guidance in straight newspaper-press construc¬ 
tion, there was developed in 1881 the rotary type 
endless sheet perfecting press. This did even 
faster work than the regular newspaper press 
and was designed especially for late afternoon 
editions. There was also introduced in 1888 a 
three-page-wide press, and in 1886 the com¬ 
pany designed and constructed a perfecting press 
similar in principle to the newspaper press to 
do the plain forms of printing of periodicals. 
The first of these was built for the printer of the 
Century Magazine . In 1890 a rotary art press 
was perfected, adapted for printing the finest 
kind of illustrations. During the first part of the 
twentieth century Hoe turned his attention par¬ 
ticularly to the art of color printing, and the Hoe 
company constructed color presses, almost simul¬ 
taneously installed by the New York Herald and 
New York World . The most extensive presses 
of this type and the largest printing machine 
constructed during Hoe’s life was the color press 
made by his company for the New York Journal 
and used in printing portions of the Sunday edi¬ 
tions of that paper. Hoe was also the guiding 
spirit in die development of web presses for do- 


Hoecken 

ing the finest half-tone work for magazines. 
Apart from business, he was a lover of books 
and an expert on the history of printing. His 
collection of old and rare volumes was cata¬ 
logued tinder 20,962 titles and at the time of his 
death was valued at a million dollars. He was 
the founder and first president of the Grolier 
Club in New York, before which he delivered 
A Lecture on Bookbinding as a Fine Art pub¬ 
lished in 1866, and was one of the founders of 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1902 he 
published A Short History of the Printing Press . 
He married, Aug. 12,1863, Olivia Phelps James, 
daughter of Daniel James of New York, who 
with two sons and three daughters survived him 
at the time of his sudden death in London. 

[Who's Who in America, 1908-09; Scientific Amer¬ 
ican, Oct. 2, 1909; Inland Printer, Oct. 1909; Walter 
Gillis, in N. Y. Geneal and Biog. Record, Apr. 1910; 
Printing Trade News, Oct. 1909; Am. Printer, Oct. 
1909; British Printer, Oct.~Nov. 1909; 0 . A. Bier- 
stadt, The Library of Robert Hoe (1895) ; Catalogue 
of the Library of Robert Hoe of New York (8 vols. in 
4, 1911-12); S. D. Tucker, “History of R. Hoe & Com¬ 
pany, New York” (MS. in Lib. of Cong.); S. P. Mead, 
Hist, and Geneal. of the Mead Family (1901); N. Y. 
Times and N. Y. Tribune, Sept. 23, 1909; London 
Times, Sept. 23, 1909.] C.W.M. 

HOECKEN, CHRISTIAN (Feb. 28, 1808- 
June 19, 1851), Jesuit missionary, was bom at 
Tilburg, North Brabant, where he joined the 
Society of Jesus. He was raised to the priest¬ 
hood Mar. 29,1832, and started for America the 
same year, arriving in Missouri in November. 
His faculties, given by Bishop Rosati, were dated 
Nov. 6, 1833, His first priestly labors were ex¬ 
ercised in the villages of Florissant, St. Charles, 
and Dardenne. In May 1836 he joined Father 
Van Quickenborne in the Kickapoo Mission, 
eight miles north of Leavenworth, which had 
been established by the Society of Jesus at the 
request of Gen. William Clark, then superin¬ 
tendent of Indian affairs in the West. Hoecken 
made rapid progress in acquiring the Kickapoo 
language, of which he eventually composed a 
grammar and a dictionary. He built a school, 
which received some government aid, and taught 
the children. The Indians were astonished at the 
fluency and correctness of his speech; they af¬ 
fectionately called him “the Kickapoo Father.” 
The Catholic services, mass, sermon, and bene¬ 
diction, appealed to the Indians at first; their at¬ 
tendance was regular and respectful. One of 
their number, called the Prophet, stirred up 
strife and opposition among them, however, and 
like the children they were in everything save 
age and innocence, the Kickapoos grew tired of 
attending the mission house. Their passion for 
strong drink completed the work of devastation; 


106 



Hoen 

the mission was closed in 1839; and Father 
Hoecken, after a brief stay at the Novitiate, 
turned to the Potawatomi Mission, which had 
been established by Father Pierre-Jean De Smet 
[, q.v .] near Council Bluffs, Iowa, in 1838. Here, 
also, drunkenness was the main obstacle to mak¬ 
ing converts. In August 1841, Council Bluffs 
was abandoned by the missionaries, and Hoecken 
took charge of the large band of Catholic Pota- 
watomis, on the headquarters of the Osage River 
in Kansas. A temporary chapel was raised on 
Potawatomi Creek, but on May 10 the entire 
multitude of the faithful removed to the river 
called Sugar Creek. Father Hoecken on three 
occasions visited Council Bluffs, 1842, 1844, 
1846; but in 1848 all the Catholic Potawatomi 
were brought together in the Mission of St. 
Mary's, Kan. Three years later, in 1851, while 
on a journey with Father De Smet to the Indians 
at the headwaters of the Missouri, Hoecken was 
taken with cholera and died. His remains were 
buried on the Nebraska shore of the river, near 
the mouth of the Platte, but after a short while 
were taken to St, Charles and reinterred in the 
cemetery of St. Stanislaus Novitiate, Florissant. 

Archbishop Kenrick wrote of Hoecken: “The 
qualities that most distinguished him amid his 
labors and privations were his admirable frank¬ 
ness, his simplicity, his sound judgment and ever 
joyous and peaceful disposition of mind and 
heart, and an imperturbable contentment, which 
the author of this notice has never found to the 
same degree in any individual" (De Smet, post, 
pp. 67-68). Hoecken has to his credit a series 
of prayerbooks and catechisms in the Potawat¬ 
omi language (published at Cincinnati, 1844; 
and Baltimore, 1846), a Peoria and Potawatomi 
Prayerbook (Baltimore, 1846) and the Abece - 
darium Potawatomicum (St. Louis, n.d.). 

[Four letters of Christian Hoecken appeared in the 
Precis Historiques (Brussels, 1853-58), and were given 
in English by Father De Smet in his Western Missions 
and Missionaries (copyright 1859), pp. 262-73. The 
Woodstock Letters, vol. XXVI, No. 3 (Nov. 1897), 
contains a sketch of Hoecken by Father Walter H. Hill, 
S-M J.E.R. 

HOEN, AUGUST (Dec. 28, 1817-Sept. 20, 
1886), lithographer and map-printer, was born 
in Hohn, Duchy of Nassau, Germany, the son 
of Martin and Eliza (Schmidt) Hoen. His fa¬ 
ther, who was a farmer and the burgomaster of 
the village, had fought under Bliicher against 
Napoleon at Waterloo. August attended the 
higher school at Dillenburg, the local center. In 
1835 his family, consisting of his father and 
mother (who died on the way over) and eight 
younger brothers and sisters, emigrated to the 
United States. With them went his mother's 


Hoen 

family, the Schmidts, and that of his cousin, Ed¬ 
ward Weber. As a young man Weber had ac¬ 
quired a good knowledge of the then new art of 
lithography, and he took with him the equipment 
necessary for its practice. Soon after his arrival 
in Baltimore he established a lithographic busi¬ 
ness on a small scale under the name of E. Weber 
& Company, and associated young Hoen with 
himself. In 1839 the firm produced what are 
said to be the first show cards printed in colors 
in the United States. In the forties came their 
first major cartographic undertaking. They lith¬ 
ographed the maps illustrating Fremont's expe¬ 
ditions to the West, among which noteworthy 
achievements are: the “Map of an Exploring 
Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 
1842 and to Oregon and North California in the 
Years 1843-44," on the scale of 1:2,000,000, ac¬ 
companying Fremont's report (1845) with a 
similar title ( Senate Executive Document 174 , 
28 Cong., 2 Sess.); the “Map of Oregon and 
Upper California,” 1:3,000,000, accompanying 
his Geographical Memoir upon Upper Califor¬ 
nia (1848; Senate Miscellaneous Document 148 , 
30 Cong., 1 Sess.) ; and the detailed, seven-sheet 
Topographical Map of the Road from Missouri 
to Oregon Commencing at the Mouth of the 
Kansas in the Missouri River and Ending at the 
Mouth of the Wallah Wallah in the Columbia, 
1:633,600, separately published in 1846. These 
maps and the other plates in the Fremont reports 
represent a very early, if not the earliest, appli¬ 
cation of lithography to the reproduction of il¬ 
lustrations in congressional and government-bu¬ 
reau reports, a field which was henceforth to 
comprise the major activity of the firm and in 
which they were soon and for many years to 
share the laurels with the firm established in the 
fifties in New York by Julius Bien [q.z/.]. 

In 1848 Weber died, and the firm's name was 
changed to A. Hoen & Company. Among those 
associated with August Hoen was his younger 
brother, Ernest, but it was August who was pri¬ 
marily the expert in technical matters. While 
not trained as a chemist he had a practical 
knowledge of the application of chemistry to 
lithography. His appreciation of the value to his 
business of scientific groundwork led him to pro¬ 
vide his establishment with a small research lab¬ 
oratory and photographic process rooms. During 
his long tenure as head of the firm he perfected 
and introduced a number of important improve¬ 
ments and new processes in the industry. Among 
his improvements in reproduction processes was 
the method, patented Apr. 24, i860, under the 
name of “Lithokaustic,” whereby the tone effects 
were produced by etching, more or less deeply, 


107 



Hoen 


Hoenecke 


lines mechanically cut through a ground of var¬ 
nish to the surface of the stone. A modification 
of this process played a conspicuous role in the 
work of the firm up to the introduction of photo¬ 
lithography. 

In the technique of map symbolism Hoen made 
a contribution of much importance in the sci¬ 
entific representation of formations on geological 
maps by devising a logical system of rulings and 
patterns in each of the several colors, so that, 
from the standpoint of printing, the number of 
impressions could be reduced, it being possible 
to differentiate subdivisions of the geological pe¬ 
riods within the group horizon while showing by 
the group color the period relationship. The first 
application of this symbolism was made in the 
maps, printed by A. Hoen & Company, which 
accompanied R. D. Irving's The Copper-Bearing 
Rocks of Lake Superior (Monographs of the 
United States Geological Survey, vol. V, 1883), 
Shortly after the publication of this work the 
same principle was embodied in the United States 
Geological Survey's patterns and color conven¬ 
tions for geological maps (carried to its full 
fruition on the “Geologic Map of North Amer¬ 
ica," 1:5,000,000, engraved and printed by the 
Geological Survey; see Bailey Willis, Index to 
the Stratigraphy of North America, United 
States Geological Survey Professional Paper 71, 
1912). 

In the more than thirty years since Weber's 
death the establishment had steadily grown in 
size. In 1882 a large building was erected on 
Lexington, Holliday, and North Streets. In 1901 
this was destroyed by fire, after which the plant 
was removed to its present situation at Chester, 
Chase, and Biddle Streets. Nearness to the to¬ 
bacco and cotton industries led to the founding 
in the eighties of a branch in Richmond, Va., for 
the printing of labels. The Baltimore plant num¬ 
bered about 200, the Richmond branch about 
125 employees. On the death of Hoen in 1886 
his son Albert Berthold Hoen took over the car¬ 
tographic activities of the firm. 

The outstanding traits of Hoen's character 
were idealism, enthusiasm, and appreciation of 
the good in others. His tastes ran to the fine 
arts, music (he played the violoncello himself), 
and horticulture. He took a lively interest in 
the suburban village of Waverly, of which he 
was one of the first settlers. He appreciated the 
advantages of city planning and, through the 
County Commissioners, had surveys made of the 
metropolitan district of Baltimore to provide 
for the laying out of boulevards and for the 
growth of the city. In February 1849 he mar¬ 


ried Caroline (Muth) Weber, the widow of his 
former associate. 

IThe Biog. Cyc. of Representative Men of Md. and 
the District of Columbia (1879) ; biography of F. N. 
Hoen, a nephew, in Baltimore: Its Hist, and Its People 
(1912), II, 120-22; Baltimore American and Sun (Bal¬ 
timore), Sept. 21, 1886; certain information from Al¬ 
bert Berthold Hoen.] W. L. G.J. 

HOENECKE, GUSTAV ADOLF FELIX 
THEODOR (Feb. 25,1835-Jan. 3, 1908), Lu¬ 
theran clergyman, theologian, was bom at Bran¬ 
denburg, Germany, the son of Wilhelm and Ame¬ 
lia Hoenecke. He graduated from the Branden¬ 
burg Gymnasium, studied theology at Halle, and 
became a tutor in Bern, Switzerland. He was 
ordained Nov. 18, 1862, and sent by the Berlin 
Missionary Society to Wisconsin, where he be¬ 
gan work at Farmington, near Watertown, in 
1863. In 1865 h e was married to Mathilda Hess, 
daughter of the Rev. Rudolf Hess of Hochstetten, 
Canton Bern, Switzerland. The following year 
he was made professor and director of the theo¬ 
logical seminary of the Wisconsin Synod at Wa¬ 
tertown, but in 1870, when the school was com¬ 
bined with Concordia Theological Seminary, St. 
Louis, Hoenecke declined, on a plea of poor 
health, the call to St. Louis. Instead, he accept¬ 
ed a call to St. Matthew's Church, Milwaukee. 
In 1878 the Wisconsin seminary was brought 
back and located at Milwaukee, chiefly to permit 
the pastor of St. Matthew's to serve as director 
and professor of homiletics and dogmatics. In 
1890 he resigned from St. Matthew's, and on 
Sept. 17, 1893, the Evangelical Lutheran Sem¬ 
inary, as it was called, moved into its permanent 
quarters at Wauwatosa, a suburb of Milwaukee. 
This seminary was but the lengthened shadow of 
its great president and professor. 

As a preacher and homiletician he ranks high. 
His lectures and sermons were brilliant and stir¬ 
ring expositions of the Gospel. For the general 
reader he issued the Gemeindeblatt, and in 1903 
he founded the Theologische Quartalschrift in 
which appeared his numerous articles and the 
sermon outlines later republished as Predigt - 
Entwurfe iiber die Altkirchlichen Evangelien 
und Episteln nebst einigen Freitexten (1907). 
The only other book issued during his lifetime 
was the sermon collection, Wenn ich nur Dich 
habe . His sons, Walter and Otto, edited at the 
request of the Wisconsin Synod his lenten medi¬ 
tations, Ein Ldmmlein Geht und Trdgt die 
Schuld: Zwei Reihen Passionspredigten (1910), 
and his great Dogmatik (vols. I, II, and IV, 
1909; vol. Ill, 1912; index volume, 1917). 

As theologian and dogmatician Hoenecke 
showed a high-minded conservatism. At a time 
when furious doctrinal battles were raging on 


108 



Hoff 

all fronts, he stressed a positive love of truth, 
saying that the rest would take care of itself. 
He disapproved of the bitter journalism of the 
day, and over against the citation-theology then 
in vogue he placed his clear Gospel proofs. On 
this basis, also, was his Dogmatik written. As a 
churchman he showed marked ability. Con¬ 
fronted by the question of what affiliations his 
synod should make, Hoenecke returned to the 
study of the old dogmaticians and became con¬ 
servative in his views. This influence was soon 
felt at the seminary, and in protest against 
unionism the Wisconsin Synod severed its con¬ 
nections with the Berlin and Langenberg mis¬ 
sion societies. Hoenecke ably disputed the “open 
questions” of the Iowa Synod, though he sided 
with Iowa in its dispute with the General Coun¬ 
cil concerning the “four points” (chiliasm, mixed 
communion, pulpit fellowship, and secret socie¬ 
ties). With the Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and 
Norwegian synods the Wisconsin Synod formed 
the Synodical Conference in 1872. When the 
Ohio Synod and the Norwegians withdrew in 
1882, Wisconsin remained in the Conference, 
largely through Hoenecke's noble devotion to 
principle. In the internal affairs of his synod 
he always took a lively interest, and his opinion 
was sought on all important problems of the 
church, though he kept himself modestly in the 
background so that the proper officials could act 
without restraint. 

[J. Schaller, memoir in Hoenecke’s Dogmatik, vol. 
IV (1909); J. P. Koehler, obituary, Theologische 
Quartcdschrift, Jan. 1908; article in Concordia Cyc. 
(1927 ); J. L. Neve, A Brief Hist of the Luth . Ch. in 
America (1916).] J.M.R. 

HOFF, JOHN VAN RENSSELAER (Apr. 
11, 1848-Jan. 14, 1920), medical officer in die 
United States Army, was born at Mount Morris, 
N. Y., the son of Dr. Alexander Henry Hoff and 
Ann Eliza, daughter of Gen. John Sanders Van 
Rensselaer of New York. Alexander Henry 
Hoff served in the volunteer army throughout 
the Civil War, and at its close joined the medical 
corps of the Regular Army. His son graduated 
from Union College in 1871 and received the 
M.D. degree from Columbia College in 1874. 
The same year he was appointed an acting as¬ 
sistant surgeon and served in the field against 
the Sioux until he was commissioned assistant 
surgeon in the Regular Army and sent to Omaha 
Barracks. Several subsequent years of service 
at various posts were notable for the uniformity 
with which his work received commendation. 
More interested in the military than in the medi¬ 
cal aspect of his duties, he took a leave of absence 
in 1886 and spent a year in studying the sanitary 
organizations of various European armies. In 


Hoff 

1887 he organized the first detachment of hos¬ 
pital corps and company bearers at Fort Reno 
and drew up drill regulations. In 1889, at Fort 
Riley, he recommended the organization of field 
hospitals and later planned and organized the 
first company of instruction of the hospital corps. 
From November 1890 to January 1891 he was 
on duty with the 7th Cavalry during the Sioux 
campaign, and at the battle of Wounded Knee he 
commanded the first detachment of the hospital 
corps to undergo the trial of battle. He and his 
detachment behaved with gallantry and received 
high commendation, and in 1925 he was awarded 
posthumously the Distinguished Service Cross. 
Through years when army doctors were expect¬ 
ed to have neither knowledge of nor interest in 
military matters, he insisted on a recognition of 
his own and his department's military status, de¬ 
manding the military title, the salute, and pre¬ 
cedence for himself and his corps on the basis of 
military rank and usage. By so doing he brought 
upon himself some ridicule, but his dignity, effi¬ 
ciency, and high character enabled him to rise 
above it, and he lived to see it die out and his 
object attained. This achievement was one of 
his great services. 

The outbreak of the Spanish-American War 
found the country unprepared. All war plans 
had to be improvised and Hoff assisted in for¬ 
mulating a field organization for the Medical 
Department. In May 1898 he was appointed Sur¬ 
geon of Camp George A. Thomas, at Chicka- 
mauga Park. There he organized Sternberg 
General Hospital to care for a part of the great 
number of typhoid cases. In September 1898 
he was sent to Porto Rico as chief surgeon, 
where he inaugurated a campaign of vaccina¬ 
tion, which virtually freed the island from small¬ 
pox. From 1903 to 1905 he was surgeon at 
Fort Leavenworth and taught “Care of Troops” 
in the General Service and Staff College. In 
1905 he was a military observer in the Russo- 
Japanese War. From 1907 to 1912, when he 
was retired because of age, he was in turn chief 
surgeon of the Department of Luzon, of the 
Philippines Division, of the Department of the 
Lakes, and of the Department of the East. In 
1916 he was assigned to active duty in the sur¬ 
geon general's office and accepted the editor¬ 
ship of the Military Surgeon . In this periodical, 
July 1918, he published an editorial criticizing 
the General Staff for failure to utilize properly 
the military experience of medical officers and 
he was summarily relieved from active duty and 
his editorship, by command of the Chief of Staff. 
In December 1919, however, he was exonerated 
of all wrong-doing, by a letter from the Secre- 


109 



Hoffman 

tary of War. His death, shortly after, followed 
an operation for disease of the gall bladder. He 
published numerous articles on matters relating 
principally to medico-military administration, 
and he is regarded as a pioneer in bringing med¬ 
ical officers into military grace and favor. He 
was married, June 22, 1875, to Lavinia Day, 
daughter of Gen. Hannibal Day. 

[Autobiog. notes (MS.), in Army Medic. Lib.; 
Matinsell Van Rensselaer, Annals of the Van Rens¬ 
selaer s in the U. 5 *. (1888) ; Who’s Who in America, 
1918-19; Mil. Surgeon, Feb. 1920; Jour, of the Am. 
Medic. Asso.j Jan. 31, 1920; Evening Star, Washing¬ 
ton, Jan. 15, 1920.] P.M.A. 

HOFFMAN, CHARLES FENNO (Feb. 7, 
1806-June 7, 1884), editor, poet, novelist, was 
born in New York City, the son of Josiah Ogden 
Hoffman [ q.v.~\ and his second wife, Maria 
Fenno. As a boy of eleven, he was injured in an 
accident in which his right leg was so crushed 
that it had to be amputated above the knee. At 
fifteen he entered Columbia College, where he 
studied for three years. His academic standing 
was low, but in spite of his physical handicap he 
was prominent in student activities. Leaving 
without graduating, he went to Albany, studied 
law with Harmanus Bleecker, and at the same 
time contributed articles to the local papers. At 
twenty-one he was admitted to the New York 
bar. He continued to be interested in writing, 
however, and after three years' practice of the 
law in New York City, during which time he 
sent anonymous contributions to the columns of 
the New-York American, he definitely abandoned 
the law and joined Charles King for a time in 
the editorship of the American . On Jan. 1,1833, 
he accepted the editorship of a new magazine, the 
Knickerbocker (so spelled to accord with the 
original Dutch), but he remained as editor only 
a few months, for in October 1833 he left to tour 
the northwestern country on horseback. To de¬ 
fray the expenses of his trip, he wrote long let¬ 
ters to the American descriptive of the country 
and his experiences. On his return in June 1834, 
he collected these letters and published them in 
a two-volume book appearing simultaneously in 
New York and London, entitled A Winter in the 
West (1835). 

In 1835 Hoffman became editor of the Amer¬ 
ican Monthly Magazine, to which in the year 
1837 he contributed rambling and incomplete 
chapters of a romance, “Vanderlyn, or the For¬ 
tunes of an Adventurer." At the close of 1837 he 
severed his connection with the magazine, and 
his story came to an untimely end. He had 
meanwhile, in the spring of 1837, undertaken the 
editorship of the New-York Mirror, in which 
appeared several articles under the heading, 


Hoffman 

"Scenes and Sources of the Hudson." Some of 
these were later collected for publication in Wild 
Scenes in the Forest and Prairie (London, 1839; 
New York, 1843). In 1838 and 1839 Hoffman's 
literary efforts were mainly concentrated on a 
novel, Greyslaer: a Romance of the Mohawk, 
published in 1839. The story was based on the 
murder in 1828 by Colonel Beauchamp, of Ken¬ 
tucky, of Colonel Sharp, who had seduced Beau¬ 
champ's wife before their marriage. Two edi¬ 
tions of the novel were exhausted in New York, 
one in Philadelphia, and one in London, during 
the first year, and on Aug. 3, 1840, a dramatiza¬ 
tion of the story began a successful run at the 
Bowery Theatre in New York. 

For three months in 1840 Hoffman became 
associate editor with Horace Greeley of the New- 
Yorker, but he was seeking some position which 
would assure him an adequate and regular in¬ 
come, and on May 6,1841, he accepted a position 
as third chief clerk in the office of the surveyor of 
customs of the Port of New York at a thousand 
dollars a year. On Jan. 26, 1843, he became dep¬ 
uty surveyor at an increased salary and remained 
until July 3, 1844, when his resignation was 
forced by politics. These positions gave him time 
for his literary work. In 1842 he collected his 
verse into a volume, The Vigil of Faith, and 
Other Poems, four editions of which were ex¬ 
hausted in three years. This was followed in 
1844 by The Echo: or Borrowed Notes for Home 
Circulation, a second volume of poetry, and in 
1847 by Love's Calendar, Lays of the Hudson 
and Other Poems. Hoffman had been announced, 
on Mar. 3, 1845, as a member of the editorial 
staff of the new Evening Gazette . On May 8, 
1847, he assumed the editorship of the Literary 
World . He conducted the latter with marked 
success but toward the end of 1848 his health 
failed and in January 1849 he was being treated 
by a specialist in mental disorders. A few months 
later he was discharged as cured and accepted 
appointment as clerk in the consular bureau of 
the State Department, but before the close of the 
year 1849 he was again forced to give up his 
work. Admitted to the state hospital at Harris¬ 
burg, Pa., he remained there for the rest of his 
life, "his physical buoyancy not broken down, 
living amid a great host of illusions; his mind 
placid, but distraught" (Mitchell, post, p. 118). 

Perhaps the best description of Hoffman is 
that written by Edgar Allan Poe, who said of 
him: "He is chivalric to a fault, enthusiastic, 
frank without discourtesy, an ardent admirer of 
the beautiful, a gentleman of the best school—a 
gentleman by birth, by education, and by instinct; 
His manners are graceful and winning in the ex- 


IIO 



Hoffman 

treme—quiet, affable, and dignified, yet cordial 
and degages” (post, p. 158). Hoffman had a 
distinct poetic gift. His verse is light and deli¬ 
cate, with a musical lilt Some of his lyrics, such 
as “Rosalie Clare,” “Sparkling and Bright,” “The 
Myrtle and Steel,” “'Tis Hard to Share her 
Smiles with Many,” and one of his ballads, 
“Monterey,” long enjoyed a merited popularity, 
but more recently extracts from his work have 
been included only in extensive anthologies of 
American verse. 

[H. F. Barnes, Chas. Fenno Hoffman (1930); The 
Poems of Chas. Fenno Hoffman (1873), collected and 
edited by bis nephew, Edward Fenno Hoffman; D. G. 
Mitchell, Am. Lands and Letters: Leather-Stocking to 
Poe's “Raven” (1899); E. A. Poe, “The Literati,” in 
Godey’s Mag., May-Nov. 1846; E. C. Stedman and E. 

M. Hutchinson, Lib. of Am. Lit., vol. VI (1888) ; E. 
A. Hoffman, Geneal. of the Hoffman Family (1809): 

N. Y. Herald, June 9, 1884.] L. H.H 

HOFFMAN, DAVID (Dec. 24, 1784-Nov. 
11, 1854), lawyer, teacher, historian, was the 
eleventh of the twelve children of Peter and 
Dorothea Stierlin (Lloyd) Hoffman. He was 
born in Baltimore, Md., where he was also edu¬ 
cated, attending St. John's College, of which he 
was later patron, visitor, and governor. He 
early became one of the prominent members of 
the Maryland bar. In 1816 he was appointed 
professor of law in the University of Maryland, 
the establishment of which he had been very ac¬ 
tive in promoting, but he did not begin to lecture 
until 1823. Meanwhile, he published his Course 
of Legal Study, which was designed to show the 
interrelations of the departments of the law, with 
bibliographies and historical aids for each. Judge 
Joseph Story pronounced it “by far the most per¬ 
fect system for the study of the law which has 
ever been offered to the publick” (North Amer¬ 
ican Review, November 1817, p. 76). His uni¬ 
versity lectures, which continued daily until 1832, 
followed the same generous plan. The course, 
however, was poorly patronized. 

Hoffman's views upon legal education were 
notable for the background of social and outly¬ 
ing legal knowledge which he advocated: his in¬ 
sistence upon study of statutes and of legal forms 
and pleadings; his appreciation of Bentham and 
codification; and his strong recommendation of 
genuine practice courts in place of the less ef¬ 
fective moot courts of his day. Such ideas were 
far in advance of the practice of his time. His 
Course seemingly gave overwhelming emphasis 
to reading and knowledge, but in fact he dis¬ 
paraged any dependence upon memory and in¬ 
sisted upon the importance of “the general and 
pervading principles of the science.” His bibli¬ 
ographies, showing an extraordinary knowledge 


Hoffman 

of foreign literature, were designed, primarily, 
to insure systematic reading. He emphasized 
also the ethics of the profession, and his “Reso¬ 
lutions in Regard to Professional Deportment” 
anticipated most of the present canons of conduct 
of the American Bar Association. 

When Hoffman began teaching his practice 
was large and remunerative; but it suffered 
greatly. According to him, while he received no 
salary whatever for four years, he had paid vari¬ 
ous debts of the university and had invested in 
the law school alone $20,000. When he refused 
to relinquish his library and furniture, which he 
had sold to the university but which had not been 
paid for, an acrimonious dispute resulted and he 
suspended his course and went to Europe (1833- 
34). In 1836 he offered his resignation and al¬ 
though it was not accepted by the trustees, he 
returned for another two years to Europe. His 
teaching ceased in 1839. When he finally re¬ 
signed, in 1843, be received the thanks of the 
trustees for his services. He then removed to 
Philadelphia and was admitted to the bar at the 
end of that year. In 1847 he went again to Eu¬ 
rope to gather materials for his Cartaphilus, 
which was intended to be a history of the world 
in the Christian era. While he was abroad he 
published in the London Times a series of ar¬ 
ticles on political, social, and economic condi¬ 
tions in the United States. He returned in 1853 
and was on the eve of departing again for Eng¬ 
land when he died of apoplexy in New York 
City. At the time of his death he had received 
honorary degrees from the universities of Mary¬ 
land, Oxford, and Gottingen. His published 
works include: A Course of Legal Study (1817, 
2nd ed., 2 vols., 1836) ; Syllabus of a Course of 
Lectures on Law (1821) ; An Address to Stu¬ 
dents of Law in the United States (1824); To 
the Trustees of the University of Maryland in 
Relation to the Law Chair (1826), containing 
autobiographical material; Legal Outlines 
(1829), less important than the Course ; Intro¬ 
ductory Lectures and Syllabus of a Course of 
Lectures Delivered in the University of Mary¬ 
land (1837), a collection of previously printed 
pamphlets; Miscellaneous Thoughts on Men, 
Manners, and Things (1837-1841), by “An¬ 
thony Grumbler”; A Peep into my Note-Book 
(1839), a discussion of law, religion, and litera¬ 
ture, criticising American radical tendencies; 
Legal Hints (1846), on professional deportment; 
and Chronicles Selected from the Originals of 
Cartaphilus, the Wandering Jew (3 vols., 1853- 
54). Hoffman was married, on Jan. 8, 1816, to 
Mary McKean of Philadelphia, grand-daughter 
of Gov. Thomas McKean [q.v- 1 , and a woman of 


III 



Hoffman 

beauty and charm. She bore him three children 
of whom a daughter survived him. 

[Address of the Trustees of the Univ. of Md. to the 
Public (1823); B. C. Steiner, Hist. of Educ. in Md. 
(1894); E. F. Cordell, Univ. of Md., 1807-1907, I 
(1907), 338-48; The Centennial Celebration of the 
Foundation of the Univ. of Md. (1908) ; E. A. and G. 
L. Duyckinck, Cyc. of Am. Lit. (ed. 1875), I, 758-6° J 
Md. Hist. Mag., Dec. 1906, pp. 358-62; “The Diary of 
Robt. Gilmor,” Ibid., Sept.-Dee. 1922; Roberdeau 
Buchanan, Geneal. of the McKean Family of Pa. 
(1890) ; N. 7 . Tribune and the Sun (Baltimore), Nov. 
.*3,1854.] F.S.P. 

HOFFMAN, DAVID MURRAY (Sept. 29, 
1791-May 7, 1878), jurist, was born in New 
York City, the second son of Martin and Beulah 
(Murray) Hoffman. His first ancestor in Amer¬ 
ica was another Martin Hoffman, bom at Revel, 
on the Gulf of Finland, who emigrated to New 
York in 1657. His father was a prominent New 
York merchant and auctioneer, and a brother of 
Josiah Ogden Hoffman [q.i/.]. Murray Hoff¬ 
man, as he came to be known, attended Columbia 
College, where he was graduated in 1809, pur¬ 
sued the study of law, and was admitted to the 
bar two years later. While the state reports tes¬ 
tify to the extent of his practice and his breadth 
of scholarship, it was not as a lawyer but as a 
jurist and legal commentator that he attained 
greatest distinction. In the fields of equity, mu¬ 
nicipal law, and canon law he produced a large 
number of scholarly treatises, including texts, 
commentaries on practice, and digests which 
were regarded as standard authorities. His ef¬ 
forts, both as jurist and commentator, in the field 
of chancery procedure and practice in New York, 
were especially successful. His first volume, The 
Office and Duties of Masters in Chancery and 
Practice in the Master's Officej which appeared 
in 1824, received the enthusiastic indorsement 
of Chancellor Kent and Thomas Addis Emmet, 
and revealed an extensive knowledge of English 
legal history. This work was supplemented ten 
years later by A Treatise upon the Practice of 
the Court of Chancery (3 vols., 1834-40), in 
which the author, confessing his admiration for 
the work of Lord Redesdale, aimed to produce a 
volume, more extensive than a mere digest, and 
founded upon current judicial practice. Therein 
Hoffman emphasized the obligation of resorting 
to the English chancery authorities in cases not 
provided for by statute or by the written rules of 
the court. This inclusive interpretation of the 
"common law of England” was to have a pro¬ 
found influence upon the course of chancery 
practice in New York. While looking to the Eng¬ 
lish system for precedents, Hoffman neverthe¬ 
less favored judicial reforms which would elimi¬ 
nate many attendant evils. In his Provisional 
Remedies of the Code of Procedure (1862), and 


Hoffman 

The Law and Practice as to References, and the 
Powers and Duties of Referees (1875), he con¬ 
tributed pioneer commentaries on the New York 
code revision. 

Hoffman's appointment in 1839 as assistant 
vice-chancellor, which office he held until 1843, 
was well merited. Ten years later he was made 
judge of the superior court of New York City, 
remaining on that bench until 1861. One of the 
most important decisions which he rendered in 
that capacity was in People vs. Hoym (20 How¬ 
ard's Practice Reports, 76), where, reviewing 
colonial and state legislation in relation to Sab¬ 
bath observance, he ruled that the statutory Sab¬ 
bath restrictions rested "upon the principle of 
the preservation of good order and the public 
morality and peace.” In 1853, supplementing the 
work of Kent in this field, Hoffman published A 
Treatise upon the Estate and Rights of the Cor¬ 
poration of the City of New York as Proprietors, 
which he prefaced with a careful account of the 
historical origin of the municipal institutions, 
including a defense of the validity of the Mont¬ 
gomerie Charter of 1732. As an active layman 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church he devoted 
much time to a study and analysis of its law, 
which bore fruit in a Treatise on the Law of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States 
(1850), containing a valuable survey of the prob¬ 
lem of the Anglican episcopate in the American 
colonies; Ecclesiastical Law in the State of New 
York (1868) ; and The Ritual Law of the Church 
(1872). Hoffman died in Flushing, N. Y. He 
was twice married and was the father of nine 
children. His first wife, Frances Amelia Bur- 
rall, whom he married on Dec. 16,1817, was the 
mother of Wickham Hoffman [q.v.]. She died 
in 1833 and on Apr. 18, 1837, he was married to 
Mary Murray Ogden. 

[E. A. Hoffman, Geneal. of the Hoffman Family 
(1899) > M. A. Hamm, Famous Families of N. Y. 
(1902), I, 180; D. McAdam, Hist, of the Bench and 
Bar of N. Y., vol. I (1897) \ Am. Law Rev., Jan. 1873, 
July 1878; Albany Law Jour., May 18, 1878; the 
Churchman, May 18,1878; N. Y. Times, May 8, 1878.] 

R.B.M. 

HOFFMAN, EUGENE AUGUSTUS (Mar. 
21, 1829-June 17, 1902), Protestant Episcopal 
clergyman, educator, was born in New York 
City, the son of Samuel Verplanck Hoffman and 
Glorvina Rossell Storm of Dutch, Swedish, and 
Huguenot ancestry. Through his father he was 
descended from Martin Hoffman who emigrated 
to America from Revel, on the Gulf of Finland, 
in 1657. Graduating from Rutgers College in 
1847, he went to Harvard, chiefly for graduate 
study in mathematics. The prevailing Unitarian- 
ism of the place and period weighed heavily upon 
him—he compared New England piety unfa- 


112 



Hoffman 

vorably with that of the church in which he had 
been bred—and before the year ended he had 
determined to enter the ministry. He received 
the degree of A.B. from Harvard in 1848, joined 
Agassiz’s party which went around Lake Su¬ 
perior in birch-bark canoes in the following sum¬ 
mer, then devoted himself to his theological 
training. Graduating from the General Theo¬ 
logical Seminary in New York in 1851, he was 
ordained deacon in the same year and priest in 
1853. For the next twenty-six years he held pas¬ 
torates at Christ Church, Elizabeth, N. J., 1853- 
63; St. Mary’s, Burlington, N. J., 1863-64; 
Grace Church, Brooklyn Heights, 1864-69; and 
at St. Mark’s, Philadelphia, 1869-79. Through 
his efforts, also, St. Stephen’s Church in Mill- 
burn, N. J., was built and the old church at 
Woodbridge was rebuilt. 

In 1879, after having twice refused the posi¬ 
tion, Hoffman became dean of the General Theo¬ 
logical Seminary and remained at the head of the 
institution until his death. When he entered upon 
his duties he found the seminary poorly equipped 
and burdened by a large debt. Soon in place of 
six professors and seventy-five students there 
were ten fully-endowed professorships, a dean- 
ship, three instructorships, five fellowships, and 
one hundred and fifty students. Then came the 
library, chapel, deanery, and dormitories. Hoff¬ 
man took no salary during his entire encum- 
bency. Bom to immense wealth, he gave gener¬ 
ously of his own money and induced others to 
give. He was primarily an administrator, and 
his management of the seminary showed a char¬ 
acteristic attention to detail, extending to such 
matters as menus for the refectory and the sav¬ 
ing of candle-ends. He also kept himself in¬ 
formed of each student’s standing. Aside from 
his seminary work he was several times a dele¬ 
gate to the General Convention, was a trustee of 
St. John’s Cathedral, president of the New York 
Historical Society, and a fellow of the American 
Museum of Natural History. 

Hoffman was reticent in expression and some¬ 
what austere in manner, but his warmth of heart 
was apparent to those who were closely asso¬ 
ciated with him. Theologically he was a High- 
churchman. He was deeply affected by the Ox¬ 
ford movement and was a leader in the renewed 
emphasis upon sacramentalism and ritualism in 
the American church. Always conservative in 
thought, he found the historical church the center 
of cohesion, necessary to safeguard religious 
belief and practice. He was not a leader in in¬ 
tellectual life or in social movements, though he 
was by no means indifferent to the intellectual 
standing of the seminary or to the philanthropic 


Hoffman 

work of the church. A genuine booklover, he 
gratified his taste for books by collecting them 
for others rather than for himself. His gifts to 
the seminary included a Gutenberg Bible and 
(with Cornelius Vanderbilt) a collection of 
Latin Bibles, eleven hundred in number. He 
himself published A Collection of Articles on 
Free Churches (1857) The Weekly Eucha¬ 
rist (1859), and compiled the Genealogy of the 
Hoffman Family (1899). Hoffman was mar¬ 
ried, on Apr. 19, 1852, to Mary Crooke Elmen- 
dorf of New Brunswick, N. J. They had nine 
children. 

[In addition to the Geneal. of the Hoffman Family, 
see: T. M. Riley, A Memorial Biog. of the Very Rev. 
Eugene Augustus Hoffman ( 2 vols., 1904); Morgan 
Dix, “In Memoriam Eugenii Augusti Hoffman,” Church 
Eclectic, Aug. 1902; F. T. Russell, “Reminiscences of 
the Very Rev. Dean Hoffman,” N. Y. Geneal and Biog . 
Record, Oct. 1902; W. R. Huntington, Address Com¬ 
memorative of Eugene Augustus Hoffman (N. Y. Hist. 
Soc., 1903); Harvard Grads.* Mag., Sept. 1902; 
Churchman, June 28, 1902; N. Y. Times, June 18, 

I902 - ] A.M.F. 

HOFFMAN, JOHN THOMPSON (Jan. 10, 
1828-Mar. 24, 1888), lawyer, politician, mayor 
and governor of New York, was bom in Sing 
Smg (later Ossining), N. Y., the son of Adrian 
Kissam Hoffman, a physician, and Jane Ann 
Thompson, daughter of Dr. John Thompson of 
Saratoga County. He was descended from Mar¬ 
tin Hoffman who emigrated to New York in 
1:657. He entered Union College, Schenectady, 
N. Y., and graduated with high honors in 1846, 
with a reputation for debating and oratory. Re¬ 
turning to Sing Sing, he studied law with Gen. 
Aaron Ward and Judge Albert Lockwood and 
interested himself in politics. In 1848 he was 
elected to the state central committee by the 
“Hard-Shell Democracy” and took the stump for 
Lewis Cass for president. He was admitted to 
the bar in January 1849 and in the following 
autumn moved to New York City and formed a 
law partnership with Samuel M. Woodruff and 
Judge William M. Leonard. Five years later he 
accepted membership on the Young Men’s Tam¬ 
many Hall General Committee. In 1859 he 
joined the Tammany Society, was elected to its 
general committee, and was its candidate for 
United States district attorney. His youth pre¬ 
vented his appointment by President Buchanan. 
The following year, i860, he was Tammany can¬ 
didate for recorder and was elected. His dili¬ 
gence, ability, and judgment, especially in trying 
and sentencing men involved in the Draft Riots 
of 1863, gained him prominence, and as candidate 
for reelection, he was indorsed by both Repub¬ 
licans and Democrats and was returned to office 
by an almost unanimous vote. His reputation 


11 3 



Hoffman 

and platform presence made him an asset for the 
“Tweed ring,” and he, believing that Tammany 
could best advance his political ambitions, threw 
in his lot with the regular organization. In 1865 
he was nominated for mayor and elected by 1,200 
majority. He was reelected in 1867, having 
meanwhile been defeated for the governorship 
by Reuben E. Fenton. 

Hoffman’s personal popularity served as a 
screen for the machinations of the organization 
which supported him, and although no evidence 
has been revealed that Hoffman himself profited 
by Tammany graft, he was in intimate contact 
with its members and must have known that 
gross irregularities existed. His political am¬ 
bition blinded him to the fraud of his colleagues. 
He was Grand Sachem of Tammany from 1866 
to 1868, and in 1867 he appointed Peter B. Swee¬ 
ney, one of the inner circle of the ring, to the 
office of comptroller. In 1868 he was again nomi¬ 
nated for governor and by flagrant frauds in 
New York City was elected by a majority of 10,- 
000. Tweed himself was elected state senator at 
the same time and assumed leadership in the 
legislature. With Hoffman as governor and 
Tweed as legislative leader, Tammany not only 
had New York City at its mercy but aspired to 
control the state also. When in 1870 Hoffman 
was reelected to the governorship, predictions 
were confidently made of his nomination for the 
presidency. Meanwhile, however, public opinion 
began to run high against Tammany and Hoff¬ 
man himself began to show signs of breaking 
with the organization. In defiance of the attempt 
of Tammany authorities in New York City to 
prevent a parade of the Orangemen in July 1871, 
Hoffman called out five regiments of militia to 
protect the paraders. And a few months later, in 
his last message to the legislature, he openly 
repudiated the “Tweed ring” (Journal of the 
Senate of the State of New York , 1872, p. 24). 
But by that time he was a politically ruined man. 
Finishing his term as governor, he returned to 
his law practice. Near the end of his life, his 
health failed, and he traveled abroad in search 
of a cure. He died at Wiesbaden, Germany. In 
spite of his mistakes, he had been a courteous, 
dignified, and accomplished gentleman. His mar¬ 
riage in 1854 to Ella Starkweather, the daughter 
of Henry Starkweather of New York City, began 
a domestic life which was unusually tranquil and 
happy. In person, he was tall, carried himself 
well, and gave the impression of physical poise 
and strength. In his latter years, the conscious¬ 
ness of failure affected him deeply; his vigor and 
strength were gone, and lassitude and disappoint¬ 
ment were marked in his bearing. 

I 


Hoffman 

[Hiram Calkins and De Witt Van Buren, Bxog. 
Sketches of John T. Hoffman and Allen C. Beach 
(1868); “Report of the Special Committee . . . Ap¬ 
pointed to Investigate the ‘Ring’ Frauds, together with 
the Testimony,” Docs, of the Board of Aldermen of the 
City of N. Y., No. 8, 1877; M. R. Werner, Tammany 
Hall (1928); Public Papers of John T. Hoffman 
(1872); Chas. F. Wingate, “An Episode in Municipal 
Government,” North Am. Rev., Oct., 1874, Jan., July 
1875; A. B. Paine, Thos. Nast, His Period and His 
Pictures (1904) ; E. P. Oberholtzer, A Hist, of the U. 
S. since the Civil War, vol. II (1922); J. F. Rhodes, 
Hist, of the U. S., vol. VI (1906); De Alva S. Alex¬ 
ander, A Pol. Hist . of the State of New York, vol. Ill 
(1909) ; E. A. Hoffman, Geneal. of the Hoffman Family 
(1899); N. Y. Tribune, July 10-17, 1871, Mar. 25. 
1888; N. Y. Observer, Mar. 29,1888.] l H. H. 

HOFFMAN, JOSIAH OGDEN (Apr. i 4 , 
1766-Jan. 24,1837), lawyer, the son of Nicholas 
and Sarah (Ogden) Hoffman, was born in New¬ 
ark, N. J. He was descended from Martin Hoff¬ 
man, born at Revel, on the Gulf of Finland, who 
emigrated to New York in 1657. Coming from 
a family which had been Loyalist in sympathy 
during the War for Independence, he naturally 
attached himself as a young man to the Federal¬ 
ist party in politics, and, in the practice of the 
law, he was associated with the Loyalist aristoc¬ 
racy, becoming a law partner of Cadwallader 
David Colden. His law practice just begun, 
Hoffman launched into an active political career, 
serving in the New York state legislature from 
1791 to 1795, and again in 1797. As leader of the 
Federalist party in the Assembly, he was a bitter 
opponent of Gov. George Clinton and effected 
the establishment of the new council of appoint¬ 
ment, which was a stunning blow to the gover¬ 
nor. In 1798 he became attorney-general of the 
state of New York, serving until the hecatomb 
of office-holders in 1801. Seven years later he 
was chosen recorder of the city of New York 
and continued in that office until 1815. Mean¬ 
while, during the War of 1812, he led in oppos¬ 
ing the ordering of the armed forces of the state 
beyond its boundaries and was hostile to the 
continuance of the conflict. He actively support¬ 
ed DeWitt Clinton for president in 1812 and 
looked for restoration to public office when Clin¬ 
ton came to power in New York in 1817. But 
though the governor professed his gratitude for 
Hoffman’s services, he failed to reward him with 
an appointment. Hoffman thereupon became a 
party to the coalition between the Federalist mal¬ 
contents and the sachems of the Tammany so¬ 
ciety (W. A. Duer, Reminiscences of an Old 
New Yorker, 1867, pp. 27-28), of which organi¬ 
zation he had been made third Grand Sachem in 
1791. 

As a lawyer Hoffman was adroit, energetic, 
and eloquent. Joseph Story, in ranking the bar 
of New York in 1807, rated him just below the 

4 


k 



Hoffman 

great Thomas Addis Emmet (W. W. Story, ed., 
Life and Letters of Joseph Story, 1851, 1 , 146). 
His state-wide practice was one of the most ex¬ 
tensive of his day and he was particularly suc¬ 
cessful in handling problems relating to maritime 
and commercial law. He was also called upon 
frequently to act as referee and special counsel 
for the city of New York. In the federal courts 
Hoffman was counsel in a number of notable 
cases. In the famous case of The Nereide in the 
Supreme Court in 1815 (9 Cranch, 388), Hoff¬ 
man, associated with Emmet against Dallas and 
Pinckney, argued for the first time the negative 
of the proposition that neutral property forfeits 
its character and neutrality by being put on board 
an armed ship of the enemy, and in this he was 
sustained by a majority of the court. His open¬ 
ing argument was regarded by his contempo¬ 
raries as a splendid specimen of forensic learning 
and eloquence (Charles Warren, The Supreme 
Court in United States History, 1922, I, 431, 
432). Three years later in Gelston vs. Hoyt (3 
Wheaton, 246), Hoffman, associated with David 
B. Ogden, successfully maintained against the 
arguments of Attorney-General Rush the cardi¬ 
nal principle of the Anglo-Saxon legal system 
that government officials are not above the law. 
He rounded out his legal career as associate 
judge of the New York superior court, retaining 
his seat from 1828 until his death. 

Hoffman was a member of the Federalist land- 
holding coterie, and as early as 1792 he pur¬ 
chased extensive tracts of land in St. Lawrence 
County. His real-estate transactions in New 
York City in this period were on a large scale. 
Like others of this Federalist gentry, he was a 
man of fashion, “a court of last resort in the 
quiddities of minuets and precedence at table” 
(D. R. Fox, The Decline of Aristocracy in the 
Politics of New York, 1918, pp. 113, 114). He 
was twice married. By his first wife, Mary, 
daughter of David and Ann Colden, whom he 
married on Feb. 16, 1789, he had four children, 
among them Ogden [q.v.], who pursued with 
even greater distinction his father's profession, 
and Matilda, who died shortly after her betrothal 
to Washington Irving. By his second wife, 
Maria, daughter of John and Mary Curtis Fen- 
no, whom he married on Aug. 7, 1802, he had 
three children, the eldest being Charles Fenno 
Iq.v.]. 

[E. A. Hoffman, GeneaL of the Hoffman Family 
(1899) ; C. E. Fitch, Encyc. of Biog. of N. F. (1916), 
1 ,285; M. A. Hamm, Famous Families of N. F. (1902), 
I, 177-78; D. McAdam, Hist of the Bench and Bar of 
N. Y., vol. I (1897) ; Minutes of the Common Council 
of the City of N. Y., 1784-1831 (1917), IV, 581, 638, 
657, VI, 125, 206, 347, XIII, 436, 437, 463-65 r F - B. 
Hough, A Hist of St Lawrence and Franklin Coun¬ 
ties, N. F. (1853); I. N. P. Stokes, The Iconography 

I 


Hoffman 

of Manhattan Island, vol, VI (1928) ; iV.-F. Daily Ex¬ 
press, Jan. 25,1837 ; Hoffman letters among the Duane, 
Gates, King, and Leake MSS. in the N. Y. Hist. Soc.] 

R.B.M. 

HOFFMAN, OGDEN (May 3, 1793-May 1, 
1856), lawyer, member of Congress, came of an¬ 
cestors distinguished in the law and in public 
life. His father, Josiah Ogden Hoffman [g.v.], 
was a leader of the New York bar, and his moth¬ 
er, Mary Colden, was the grand-daughter of 
Cadwallader Colden iq.v.'], Loyalist lieutenant- 
governor of New York on the eve of the Revo¬ 
lution. Ogden Hoffman has repeatedly been 
styled the “American Erskine,” and some as¬ 
pects of the careers of the two are strikingly 
parallel. Both entered the navy in their youth 
and attained the rank of midshipman, resigned 
their positions and entered the legal profession, 
where by matchless eloquence, intuitive acute¬ 
ness, and erudition they attained great distinc¬ 
tion. Despite the Loyalism of both his father's 
and mother's families during the War for Inde¬ 
pendence, and in the face of the pronounced hos¬ 
tility of his father, a Federalist, to the second war 
with Great Britain, Hoffman, upon his gradu¬ 
ation from Columbia College in 1812, joined 
the navy and was warranted a midshipman in 
1814, being attached to the command of Com¬ 
modore Decatur. When the President was cap¬ 
tured off Long Island in 1815, he was taken to 
Bermuda and remained there for some months 
until an exchange of prisoners of war effected 
his release (John Jay, Memorials of Peter A . 
Jay, 1929, p. 59). After peace was declared, he 
sailed with Decatur and engaged in the Algerine 
naval conflict. Upon Hoffman's resignation from 
the service in 1816, Decatur, whose aide he had 
become, is reputed to have said: “I regret that 
young Hoffman should have exchanged an hon¬ 
orable profession for that of a lawyer.” 

Hoffman took up the study of the law in Goshen, 
Orange County, N. Y., where he was admitted 
to the bar. In 1823 he was made district attor¬ 
ney of the county and in 1825 was elected to the 
state legislature. In the following year he re¬ 
moved to New York City, where he practised in 
partnership with Hugh Maxwell, then district 
attorney, and was associated prominently in the 
prosecution of Henry Eckford, Jacob Barker, 
and others who were indicted for conspiracy to 
defraud the public (Minutes of the Common 
Council of the City of New York, 1784 - 1831 , 
1917, XVI, 494; Monthly Law Reporter, June 
1856, pp. 117-19). In 1828 he was in the legis¬ 
lature again as a Tammany assemblyman. As a 
member of the judiciary committee of the As¬ 
sembly, he was actively identified with the adop¬ 
tion of the revised statutes, and, more especially, 

■s 



Hoffman Hoffman 


with the criminal code. On the expiration of his 
term of office, he was made district attorney of 
the city and county of New York by the common 
council. This position he filled with distinction 
from 1829 until 1835. During this period he be¬ 
came alienated from the ranks of Tammany and 
the Jackson party, because of the “destruction- 
ist” policy of President Jackson with regard to 
the Bank of the United States, and joined his 
friends among the National Republicans. 

Elected as a Whig to the Twenty-fifth and 
Twenty-sixth congresses (1837-41), Hoffman 
served on the committee of foreign affairs. In 
his first year in Congress he distinguished him¬ 
self by his eloquence in opposing the Sub-Treas¬ 
ury Bill {Register of Debates in Congress, 25 
Cong., 1 Sess., col. 1407). In one oratorical 
skirmish he created a tremendous impression. In 
the course of a debate, Cambreleng chided him 
with changing sides and alluded to his having 
served in the navy where he learned to “tack and 
veer.” According to Hone, “this attack brought 
a reply from Hoffman, in which the ‘Commercial 
Representative’ was absolutely annihilated. It is 
said to have been one of the most searching pieces 
of eloquence ever heard on that floor” (Bayard 
Tuckerman, ed., The Diary of Philip Hone, 1889, 
I, 274; Register of Debates in Congress, 25 
Cong., 1 Sess., col. 1631). Adams told Hoffman 
that he had himself intended to reply to Cam¬ 
breleng, but that it was futile to attack a dead 
man {Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, IX, 
1876, 406). Hoffman's later career in Congress 
was not especially brilliant and he appears to 
have confined his activities principally to local 
issues. When General Harrison became presi¬ 
dent, Hoffman was appointed United States dis¬ 
trict attorney in the southern district of New 
York, which position he held until 1845. His 
last public office was that of attorney-general of 
the state (1853-55), to which office he was elect¬ 
ed as the Whig candidate after a preliminary 
convention struggle with young Roscoe Conk- 
ling. 

Hoffman was the outstanding criminal lawyer 
of his generation and one of the most popular 
and best beloved figures in the public life of New 
York. In person slightly above the medium 
height, well-proportioned and erect, with blithe 
countenance and laughing eyes, he possessed a 
voice of magic eloquence and a court manner, 
polished, suave, and courteous. He was general¬ 
ly regarded as one of the great orators of his 
generation. Hone, referring to an address which 
Hoffman delivered in 1832 before the alumni of 
Columbia College, stated that he had “never heard 
a production of more taste, purity, and appropri¬ 


ateness, or one delivered with greater grace and 
eloquence” (Tuckerman, Diary, I, 52). Among 
his most sensational criminal trials was the Rob¬ 
inson case in 1836, in which the defendant, in¬ 
dicted for murder, was acquitted, owing wholly 
to Hoffman's eloquence and tact, the evidence 
against him being apparently overwhelming. 
That forensic success brought him immediate re¬ 
tainers. For the next twenty years he was with¬ 
out a peer as a nisi prius persuadent, was widely 
respected for his skill at direct and cross exami¬ 
nation, and was frequently employed as a trial 
lawyer by other attorneys. Notable among such 
instances were the famous trial of Munroe Ed¬ 
wards, indicted for forgery (F. L. Wellman, The 
Art of Cross-Examination, 1924, p. 89), and the 
Navy-Yard trial in the Spencer mutiny plot of 
1842, where he acted as judge-advocate in charge 
of the prosecution (Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary 
of Philip Hone, 1927, II, 640). His last great effort 
was in the famous contest over the will of Henry 
Parish, a keen legal struggle involving questions 
of incapacity and undue influence. His intimates 
believed that his exhausting labors in that law¬ 
suit contributed to his final illness. While Hoff¬ 
man is not distinguished as a profound jurist, his 
arguments in banc were coherent and logical. 
Sketches of his briefs given in the state and fed¬ 
eral reports between 1830 and 1855 provide tes¬ 
timony to the fulness of his learning. 

Despite his extensive legal practice, he was 
constantly hampered with debts and harassed by 
creditors, owing to the special combination of 
the qualities of generosity and of indolence which 
he possessed. At his death his family was left in 
comparative poverty. “But for indolence,” said 
Horace Greeley, “Hoffman might have been gov¬ 
ernor or cabinet minister ere this. Everybody 
likes him and he always runs ahead of his ticket” 
{New York Tribune, Oct. 6,1853). A few days 
after Hoffman's death in New York City, Joseph 
H. Choate wrote to his mother: “There has hard¬ 
ly been an important criminal case here for twen¬ 
ty years in which he did not appear on one side 
or the other. But he was a notoriously lazy man 
and an extravagantly high liver, but for which 
he would have won a still more brilliant 8c more 
extended fame” (E. S. Martin, Life of Joseph 
Hodges Choate, 1920, 1 ,186). Hoffman married 
twice. His first wife was Emily Burrall, whom 
he married on June 27, 1819. Their second son, 
Ogden, became a federal district judge in Cali¬ 
fornia. His second wife was Virginia E. South¬ 
ard, daughter of Samuel L. Southard, acting 
vice-president of the United States when Tyler 
succeeded Harrison. 

[Sources include: E. A. Hoffman, Geneal. of the 


11.6 



Hoffman 

Hoffman Family (1899) ; Ogden Hoffman, 1793-1856: 
A Coll, of Tributes from the Daily Journals of May, 
1856 (n.d.) ; A. Oakey Hall, “Ogden Hoffman/’ Green 
Bag, July 1893 ; Am. State Trials, vol. XII (1919), ed. 
by J. D. Lawson; Biog. Dir . Am. Cong . (1928) ; C. E. 
Fitch, Encyc. of Biog. of N. Y. (1916), I, 277-78; D. 
McAdam, Hist, of the Bench and Bar of N. Y., vol. I 
(1897) ; L. B. Proctor, Bench and Bar of N.-Y. (1870) ; 
M. A. Hamm, Famous Families of N. Y. (1902), I, 
181-82; N. Y. Times, May 2,1856. A few of Hoffman’s 
letters are in the N. Y. Hist. Soc., including two legal 
opinions in the Verplanck collection.] R. B M 

HOFFMAN, RICHARD (Mar. 24, 1831- 
Aug. 17,1909), concert pianist, composer, teach¬ 
er, was the son of Richard Hoffman Andrews, an 
English composer, and his wife, Helen Harries. 
He was born in Manchester, England, and ap¬ 
peared in public at the age of six, playing the 
piano, violin, and concertina. After studying 
with his father and with Leopold de Meyer, he 
came to New York in 1847 and as a boy of six¬ 
teen made his debut in the Old Broadway Taber¬ 
nacle in a program of bravura numbers including 
Leopold de Meyer's “Senuramis." Shortly af¬ 
terward he played Mendelssohn's G minor con¬ 
certo with the New York Philharmonic Society. 
In 1848 he undertook a concert tour through the 
upper part of the state and into Canada, with 
Burke, the Irish actor-violinist, and on his re¬ 
turn to New York in 1850 he was engaged by P. 
T. Barnum to serve as accompanist and solo art¬ 
ist for Jenny Lind in her first series of concerts 
in America. After this tour he established him¬ 
self in New York as a concert pianist, composer, 
and teacher, his attainments soon securing his 
election to honorary membership in the Philhar¬ 
monic Society. For years he was an outstand¬ 
ing figure among New York pianists and was 
associated with some noteworthy events in the 
musical history of the city. He played with Louis 
Moreau Gottschalk, when the latter appeared in 
New York during his concert tour of 1853; and 
in 1875 he played with von Biilow, Bach's 
“Triple concerto’' in D minor. For many years 
he appeared regularly in the Philharmonic con¬ 
certs. On Dec. 1, 1897, he was tendered a testi¬ 
monial concert at Checkering Hall to celebrate 
the fiftieth anniversary of his first appearance 
in New York. He was undoubtedly a pianist of 
distinction, and his playing, while it had the 
brilliance of his virtuoso teachers, was always 
marked by fastidious good taste. In his last 
years he gradually gave up playing in public, 
though he continued his teaching, at which he 
was very successful. Like his playing, his teach¬ 
ing reflected the most valid traditions of his 
earlier period. The same might be said of his 
compositions, of which there were many. Aside 
from various piano transcriptions, a set of “Cuban 
Dances," and some part songs and anthems, he 


Hoffman 

wrote nearly a hundred salon compositions, typi¬ 
cal of the virtuoso age at its best. Hoffman was 
married, on Mar. 29, 1869, to Fidelia Marshall 
Lamson. He died at Mt. Kisco, N. Y. His 
reminiscences were posthumously published un¬ 
der the title Some Musical Recollections of Fifty 
Years (1910). 

[There is a biographical sketch of Hoffman by his 
wife in the Introduction to Some Musical Recollections 
of Fifty Years. A sketch of Hoffman’s father appears 
in J. D. Brown, British Musical Biog . (1897). See 
also Musical America, Aug. 28, 1909, and the N. Y. 
Times, Aug. 19, 1909.] F.H.M. 

HOFFMAN, WICKHAM (Apr. 2, 1821- 
May 21, 1900), army officer, diplomat, was born 
in New York City, the son of David Murray 
Hoffman [q.v.J, eminent jurist, and Frances 
Amelia (Burrall) Hoffman. After an excellent 
early education, he entered Harvard in 1837 and 
graduated in 1841. Shortly afterward he was 
admitted to the bar of New York and practised 
law there until the outbreak of the Civil War. 
He was then appointed aide-de-camp to Gov¬ 
ernor Morgan and was ordered to Fortress Mon¬ 
roe to inspect the New York troops in 1861. 
Commissioned assistant adjutant-general in the 
United States volunteer service m March 1862, 
he was assigned to the staff of Brig.-Gen. Thom¬ 
as Williams and in this capacity served through 
the expedition which captured New Orleans and 
later went with Williams to assist in the opera¬ 
tions at Vicksburg. On the expedition to Baton 
Rouge, he was with General Williams until the 
latter was killed. He was then ordered to the 
staff of Gen. W. T. Sherman as assistant ad¬ 
jutant-general, serving until late in 1863, when 
he went with Maj.-Gen. W. B. Franklin in the 
expedition to Sabine Pass, Tex., to Opelousas, 
La., and through the Red River campaign. Fol¬ 
lowing this service he was on the staff of Major- 
General Gillmore in Virginia until his appoint¬ 
ment by General Butler in 1864 as assistant ad¬ 
jutant-general of the district of Eastern Virginia 
and North Carolina. In March 1865 Gen. W. T. 
Sherman applied for him, and he was ordered to 
duty in New Orleans. There he served as adju¬ 
tant-general and chief of staff to Major-General 
Canby, who commanded the department of Loui¬ 
siana and Texas, extending from Florida to 
Texas and from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico. 
For gallant and meritorious service during the 
war he was commissioned colonel of volunteers 
on Mar. 13, 1865. 

On June 8, 1866, Hoffman was mustered out 
of the service and in October of the same year, 
upon the warm recommendation of General 
Canby, he was appointed assistant secretary of 
the legation at Paris by Secretary Seward. With 


117 



Hoffmann Hoffmann 


this appointment he began a diplomatic career 
which continued until his retirement only a few 
years before his death. Appointed first secretary 
of the legation in 1867, he served in Paris in that 
capacity for seven years, being resident there 
through the siege by the Prussians in 1870 and 
during the days of the Commune. In December 
1874 he was transferred to London as secretary 
of the legation, and in 1877 he was ordered to St. 
Petersburg. After some six years in Russia he 
was appointed, in February 1883, United States 
minister to Denmark, and from this position he 
retired to private life in 1885. Meanwhile he 
had written two volumes of memoirs. The first, 
Camp , Court, and Siege (1877), was a per¬ 
sonal account of his experiences in the Civil War 
and in France under the Empire and through the 
siege of 1870. In 1883 he published Leisure 
Hours in Russia, a chatty narrative of his ob¬ 
servations and experiences in the East. He died 
at Atlantic City, N. J. He had married, in Bos¬ 
ton, May 14, 1844, Elizabeth Baylies, daughter 
of Edmund Baylies of Taunton, Mass., and 
grand-daughter of Hodijah Baylies, an officer in 
the Continental Army. 

[E. A. Hoffman, Geneal. of the Hoffman Family 
(1899) ] Harvard Grads * Mag,, Sept. 1900 ; F. B. Heit- 
man, Hist. Reg. and Diet, of the U. S . Army (1903), 
vol. I ; N. Y. Times, N. Y. Herald, May 22, 1900.] 

L H H 

HOFFMANN, FRANCIS ARNOLD (June 
5) 1822-Jan. 23, 1903), clergyman, lieutenant- 
governor of Illinois, agricultural writer under 
the name Hans Buschbauer, was born at Her- 
ford, Westphalia, the son of Frederick William 
and Wilhelmina (Groppe) Hoffmann. After at¬ 
tending the schools of Herford, he fled to Amer¬ 
ica to escape conscription. Reaching Chicago in 
1840, he served for a time as a hotel bootblack; 
then became the teacher of the pastorless Lu¬ 
theran church at Dunkley’s Grove (now Addi¬ 
son) , Ill. The following year he studied for the 
ministry in Michigan. Returning after ordina¬ 
tion, he was given charge of the Lutherans of 
northeastern Illinois. On Feb. 22, 1844, he mar¬ 
ried Cynthia Gilbert, an American of English 
ancestry. While zealously ministering to his 
scattered flock and insisting on the exclusive use 
of German in his home, he soon mastered the 
English language and became active in public 
affairs as town clerk, postmaster, member of the 
school board, and contributor to the Chicago 
Democrat and the Prairie Farmer. In 1847 he 
was elected representative from Du Page County 
to the River and Harbor Convention held in Chi¬ 
cago. The same year he became pastor of the 
church at Schaumberg, Ill. In 1851 he quit the 
ministry, moved to Chicago, studied law, and 

I 


was admitted to the bar. He also engaged suc¬ 
cessfully in the real-estate and insurance busi¬ 
ness and was the first editor of the Illinois Stoats 
Zeitung . In 1852 he was elected to the city coun¬ 
cil. By organized efforts he attracted German 
immigrants to Chicago and Illinois, and, being 
entrusted with their money, as well as with capi¬ 
tal from abroad for investment, he started a bank 
in 1854 with immediate success. He was appoint¬ 
ed consul for several German states and in rec¬ 
ognition of the services rendered his countrymen 
he was decorated by the Duke of Saxe-Coburg- 
Gotha. 

When Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska Bill made 
the extension of slavery the dominant issue in 
politics, Hoffmann and his countrymen, thereto¬ 
fore Democrats, immediately protested. This 
was followed by an immense demonstration, Feb. 
8, 1854, at which he took the leading part, his 
sensational speech predicting the defection of the 
Germans should the measure pass. When the bill 
became a law, he proved a strong factor in win¬ 
ning an Anti-Nebraska majority in the legisla¬ 
ture which elected Lyman Trumbull to the 
United States Senate in 1855. A friend of Lin¬ 
coln, he was one of the organizers of the Repub¬ 
lican party in Illinois and in 1856 was unani¬ 
mously nominated for lieutenant-governor, but 
he proved ineligible because not yet of constitu¬ 
tional age. He spoke and wrote effectively, both 
in English and German, in 1856, 1858, and in 
i860, when he was again nominated for lieu¬ 
tenant-governor and duly elected, serving with 
credit for four years. After the outbreak of the 
Civil War his bank failed owing to the repudia¬ 
tion of the bonds of the Southern states. Later, 
when he became commissioner of the Foreign 
Land Department of the Illinois Central Rail¬ 
road, settling thousands of persons on their grants 
in the state, he used his large earnings mainly 
to liquidate obligations incident to the bank fail¬ 
ure. In 1866 he established the International 
Bank, which soon took a leading place in busi¬ 
ness affairs. After the great fire of 1871, Hoff¬ 
mann was chairman of the committee of bankers 
through whose efforts the banks were promptly 
reopened, thereby averting a panic. He was like¬ 
wise prominently active in restoring Chicago's 
necessary business establishments. 

His health failing, Hoffmann retired in 1875 to 
his estate on Rock River near Jefferson, Wis. 
He had been an assiduous student of agriculture 
and horticulture since boyhood, and he devoted 
the rest of his life to the instruction of his coun¬ 
trymen in farm economy. He became editor of 
Der Haus und Bauernfreund, an agricultural 
supplement to Die Germania of Milwaukee; Die 

18 



Hofman 

Deutsche Warte of Chicago; and the Deutsches 
Volksblatt of Buffalo. He assumed the pen name 
of Hans Buschbauer for these papers and for the 
books he wrote on agricultural subjects. Attain¬ 
ing great popularity and influence in his new 
field, he was urged to reenter politics but de¬ 
clined, continuing his literary activities and idyl¬ 
lic life at his home, “Tusculum ” until his death. 

[J. H. A. Lacker, “Francis Arnold Hoffmann of Ill. 
and Hans Buschbauer of Wis.," Wis. Mag. of Hist., 
June 1930; Wis. Farmer, Dec. 29, 1893; F. I. Herriot, 
“The Germans of Chicago and Stephen A. Douglas in 
1854,” Deutsch-Amerikanische Geschichtsblatter. lahr- 
buch der D eutsch-A merik anischen Historischen Gesell- 
schaft von III Jahrgang 1912, vol.XII (1913); D. I. 
Nelke, ed., The Columbian Biog. Diet. ... of the Rep¬ 
resentative Men of the U. S., Wis. Vol. (1895), PP* 
540-48; The Bench and Bar of Chicago (n.d.), pp. 465- 
69 ; Who's Who in America, 1901-02; Milwaukee Jour., 
Jan. 23, 1903; Milwaukee Sentinel, Jan. 24, 1903.] 

J.H.A.L. 

HOFMAN, HEINRICH OSCAR (Aug. 13, 
1852-Apr. 28, 1924), metallurgist, was the son 
of Prof. Carl Hofman of Heidelberg and Sophia 
Proctor, an English woman. Born into an aca¬ 
demic atmosphere he turned naturally to the 
scholarly rather than the practical aspects of 
metallurgy. By personal contact and correspond¬ 
ence, however, he kept in close touch with the 
metallurgists who were determining prevailing 
practice, and he thus became the recognized au¬ 
thority in his particular field of lead-smelting 
and refining. In his student days at Heidelberg 
and at the Mining Academy at Clausthal, from 
which he was graduated with honors in 1877, 
and also as a mining and metallurgical engineer, 
he maintained a companionship with such emi¬ 
nent German teachers as Kirchoff and Bunsen. 
After four years of practical work in Germany, 
he emigrated to America and was, for the next 
four years, employed for brief periods successive¬ 
ly at Mine La Motte; the Kansas City Smelt¬ 
ing & Refining Company; the Delaware Lead 
Works, Philadelphia; the Grand View Smelting 
Company, Rice, Col.; and the Carmen Mining 
Company in Mexico. In 1886 he was invited to 
deliver a course of lectures at the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, where for one year he 
was lecturer on metallurgy. In 1887 he became 
professor of metallurgy and assaying at the 
South Dakota School of Mines, returning in 
1889 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technol¬ 
ogy as assistant professor of mining and metal¬ 
lurgy. Upon the retirement of Prof. R. H. Rich¬ 
ards in 1915, Hofman was made head of the de¬ 
partment, and in 1922 upon his automatic re¬ 
tirement, became emeritus professor. He was 
by nature a profound student and was endowed 
with remarkable power of concentration and an 
unlimited capacity for work, so that little in the 


Hogan 

current scientific and technical literature escaped 
his notice and discriminating consideration. He 
thus had instant command of this great store of 
knowledge, whether in the lecture room, in sim¬ 
ple friendly converse with congenial friends 
from the metallurgical field, or in the compilation 
of the manuscripts for his publications. His first 
book, The Metallurgy of Lead and the Desilveri - 
zation of Base Bullion , was published in 1892 and 
ran through several editions, becoming an ac¬ 
cepted standard. It was entirely rewritten in 
1918. He also wrote An Outline of the Metal¬ 
lurgy of Iron and Steel (1904); General Met¬ 
allurgy (1913); Metallurgy of Copper (1914) ; 
Metallurgy of Zinc and Cadmium (1922); and 
an unpublished study on the metallurgy of gold 
and silver and of minor metals. In addition, he 
furnished annually, from 1892 until 1919, notes 
on current progress in the metallurgy of lead for 
Mineral Industry. Hofman was married in 1883 
to Josephine Loughead, of Philadelphia, whose 
acquaintance he had made during his student 
days in Germany. It was largely through her 
encouragement and assistance that he wrote Met¬ 
allurgy of Lead in English. She lived, however, 
only a few years after their marriage, and on 
Aug. s, 1902, Hofman married Fannie E. How¬ 
ell of Boston, who with one son and one daughter 
survived him. He was a persistent worker, al¬ 
lowing himself but short vacations, his principal 
relaxation being music. 

^Engineering and Mining Journal-Press, May 3, 
1924; Trans. Am. Inst. Mining and Metallurgical En¬ 
gineers, vol. LXX (1924) ; Who's Who in America, 
1922-23; Technology Rev., July 1924; Boston Tran¬ 
script, Apr. 29, 1924; personal acquaintance; informa¬ 
tion as to certain facts from Hofman’s associates at 
the Mass. Inst, of Technology.] q q _^ 

HOGAN, JOHN (Jan. 2, 1805-Feb. 5, 1892), 
Methodist preacher, business man, congressman, 
was bom at Mallow, County Cork, Ireland, the 
son of Thomas and Mary (Field) Hogan. His 
mother died in Ireland when he was ten years 
old. He and his father came to Baltimore in 1816, 
where the latter died a year later. As a youth, 
he was apprenticed to James Hance, manufac¬ 
turer of boots and shoes, and from him and 
another apprentice he learned to read. At the 
age of sixteen he became a Methodist convert 
and within five years was granted a license to 
preach. For several years he served as an itin¬ 
erant preacher, part of the time as companion to 
Bishop Soule, with whom he left Baltimore for 
the West and traveled more than eight hundred 
miles on horseback; the rest of the time he was 
engaged on the St. Louis Circuit, which com¬ 
prised the territory along the south bank of the 
Missouri River from St. Louis to Boonville. In 


“9 



Hogan 

August 1830, his health impaired by the expo¬ 
sures incident to his work, he gave up the min¬ 
istry. He then became a dealer in general mer¬ 
chandise at Edwardsville, Ill., as partner to his 
brother-in-law, Edward M. West. They after¬ 
wards moved to Alton, establishing there a 
wholesale grocery. In 1835 Hogan became the 
president of the Alton branch of the State Bank 
of Illinois. The following year he was elected to 
the Illinois legislature from Madison County on 
the Whig ticket and in 1838 was an unsuccessful 
candidate for Congress from the southern dis¬ 
trict of Illinois. Subsequently President Har¬ 
rison appointed him land commissioner for that 
state, in which office he served from 1841 to 
1844. The year following he removed to St. 
Louis, entering the grocery house of Edward 
J. Gay as a partner. In 1853 he was made vice 
president of the Missouri State Mutual Fire and 
Marine Insurance Company and in 1854 organ¬ 
ized the Dollar Savings Institution. 

Hogan became conspicuous in 1853 by reason 
of a series of articles published in the Missouri 
Republican > in which he set forth the natural ad¬ 
vantages of St. Louis. These articles became so 
popular that they were subsequently published 
in book form under the title, Thoughts About the 
City of St Louis (1854), and circulated in Ger¬ 
many and Ireland. The result was a great and 
continuous German and Irish immigration to 
that city. Hogan was also the author of “His¬ 
tory of Methodism in the West,” published in 
the Christian Advocate (St Louis) in i860. He 
again entered politics in 1854, when he was de¬ 
feated for mayor in a close vote. In 1857 he was 
appointed postmaster of St. Louis by President 
Buchanan. During his term of office the build¬ 
ing at Third and Olive Streets was erected, and 
the Civil War began. When Hogan was notified 
that the government was short of funds and that 
no appropriation would be made for paying the 
salaries of his men, he paid them from his own 
private funds. Ever afterwards he was known 
as “Honest John Hogan.” In i860 he was a 
delegate to the National Democratic Convention 
at Charleston, S. C. He was the first to bring to 
President Lincoln’s attention, in a letter of re¬ 
monstrance, Secretary Stanton’s order of Nov. 
30, 1863, instructing the generals commanding 
the departments of Missouri, Tennessee, and the 
Gulf to turn over to Bishop E. R. Ames [q.v .~\, 
of the Methodist Church, North, all churches in 
their departments belonging to the Methodist 
Church, South, in which loyal ministers appoint¬ 
ed by a loyal bishop did not officiate. On Feb. 
13, 1864, Lincoln wrote Hogan, informing him 
that the War Department had modified the order 


Hoge 

and that it would not include Missouri. Hogan 
was elected to Congress in 1864, where he was 
known as a friend of the waterways. 

He married in 1830 Mary Mitchell West. 
They had five children, of whom two survived 
infancy. After her death in 1845, he married, 
May 18, 1847, Harriet Gamier, grand-daughter 
of Auguste Conde, a French army surgeon sta¬ 
tioned at St. Louis. Four children were bom of 
this marriage. 

[Sophia H. Boogher, Recollections of John Hogan 
by His Daughter (1927) ; William Hyde and H. L. 
Conard, Bncyc. of the Hist. of St. Louis f vol. II (1899); 
W. B. Stevens, St. Louis, the Fourth City, 1764*1911, 
vol. II (1911) ; War of the Rebellion: Official Records 
( Army ), vol. XXXIV, pt. 2, vol. XLI, pt. 3; Edward 
McPherson, The Political Hist, of the U. S. A. During 
the Great Rebellion (2nd ed., 1865) ; T. M. Finney, The 
Life and Labors of Enoch Mather Marvin (1880), pp. 
544 ff.; W. W. Sweet, The M. E. Ch. and the Civil War 
(1912) ; Sf. Louis Republic, Feb. 6,1892.] <5 

HOGE, MOSES (Feb. 15,1752-July 5 > 1820), 
Presbyterian clergyman, educator, was bom at 
Cedargrove, Frederick County, Va., the son of 
James Hoge and his second wife, Nancy Grif¬ 
fiths. James Hoge was a man of robust intellect 
and a self-taught theologian, adhering strictly to 
the Westminster Confession. About the close of 
the seventeenth century his father, William, had 
emigrated to America on account of the religious 
persecutions under the Stuarts, and had married 
Barbara Hume, who had come over in the same 
ship and for the same reason. They settled first 
in New Jersey, moved into Delaware, and thence 
into the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania 
where their children were born. About 1735, the 
family removed to Frederick County, Va. Here 
William gave land for a church, a school, and 
burying ground. Moses Hoge was sent to 
Liberty Hall Academy, which later developed 
into Washington College, now Washington and 
Lee University, Lexington, Va., then under the 
charge of William Graham. A year as a volun¬ 
teer in the War of the Revolution interrupted his 
studies. After his academic training he studied 
under Dr. Graham and also under James Wad¬ 
dell [q.z>.] in preparation for the ministry. He 
was licensed to preach by the Hanover Presby¬ 
tery in November 1781, and on Dec. 13, 1782, 
was ordained at Augusta, in what is now Hamp¬ 
shire County, W. Va. In this county he spent 
five years in missionary work, and for twenty 
years he was pastor at Shepherdstown, Jeffer¬ 
son County. In April 1806 the Presbytery of 
Hanover had decided to establish at Hampden- 
Sydney College a complete theological library 
for the benefit of students in divinity, and to em¬ 
ploy a teacher, or teachers. Under the joint ac¬ 
tion of the Presbytery of Ha&pver and the board 


J20 



Hoge 

of trustees of the college, Hoge was elected as 
president of the college, with the understanding 
that he should teach theology in addition to at¬ 
tending to his administrative duties. In October 
1807 he was inaugurated. His teaching was the 
beginning of Union Theological Seminary in 
Virginia, for his work was so successful that at 
the time of his death in 1820, sufficient funds had 
been collected and a sufficient number of students 
enrolled to justify the inauguration of a school 
of theology entirely separate from, and inde¬ 
pendent of, the college. 

Hoge was the author of two publications, no 
longer read, but attracting favorable attention 
at the time: one, a criticism of Rev. Jeremiah 
Walker's pamphlet, The Fourfold Foundation of 
Calvinism Examined and Shaken, and the other 
“The Sophist Unmasked/' in a work entitled 
Christian Panoply (1797), a reply to Thomas 
Paine. After his death Sermons Selected from 
the Manuscripts of the Late Moses Hoge (1821) 
appeared. While adhering strictly to the sys¬ 
tem of Calvinism, Hoge’s general character and 
unworldliness were such that he impressed upon 
the Virginia ministry of his church the moder¬ 
ate type of evangelical Calvinism that has dis¬ 
tinguished it from his day. John Randolph of 
Roanoke once said that there were only two 
men who could bring quiet to a certain court 
green on court day—“Patrick Henry by his 
eloquence, and Dr. Hoge by simply passing 
through” (P.'H. Hoge, post , p. 10). He mar¬ 
ried, Aug. 23, 1783, Elizabeth Poage of Augusta 
County, Va., the mother of all his children. 
Moses Drury Hoge [ q.v .] was their grandson. 
A second wife was Mrs. Susan (Watkins) Hunt, 
whom he married Oct. 25, 1803. 

[See P. H. Hoge, Moses Drury Hoge: Life and Let¬ 
ters (1899) ; J. B. Hoge, “Biog. of Moses Hoge” (MS ; ), 
in library of Union Theol. Sem. in Va .; manuscript 
biography and five letters in MSS. Div., Lib. of Cong.; 
Gen. Cat .... of Union Theol. Sem. in Va., 1807-1924 
(1924); “Centennial Address by the Hon. H. B. Grigs¬ 
by,” Bull, of Hampden-Sidney Coll., Jan. 1913? A. J. 
Morrison, The Coll . of Hampden-Sidney : Calendar of 
Board Minutes, 1776-1876 ( 1912), and Coll, of Hamp¬ 
den Sidney: Diet, of Biog., 1776-1825 (1921) ; W. B. 
Sprague, Annals Am. Pulpit, vol. Ill (1859); J. W. 
Alexander, The Life of Archibald Alexander (1854); 
H. A. White, Sou. Presbyt. Leaders (1911). The spell¬ 
ing of the college name has recently been changed from 
Hampden-Sidney to Hampden-Sydney.] J.D.E. 

HOGE, MOSES DRURY (Sept. 17, 1819- 
Jan. 6,1899), Presbyterian clergyman, was born 
at Hampden Sydney, Va., the son of Samuel 
Davies Hoge, Presbyterian minister, and his 
wife, Elizabeth Rice Lacy. He was a grandson 
of Moses Hoge, president of Hampden-Sydney 
College (1807-20), and of Drury Lacy [q.v.], 
vice-president and acting president (1789-97). 


Hoge 

He graduated with distinction from that insti¬ 
tution in 1839; spent one year in teaching; grad¬ 
uated at the Union Theological Seminary in 
Virginia, in 1843 J an d became the assistant of 
William S. Plumer , pastor of the First 
Presbyterian Church, Richmond, Va, In Febru¬ 
ary 1845 he was installed as first pastor of the 
Second Presbyterian Church, Richmond, the di¬ 
rect fruits of his work. Under his charge it grew 
to be numerically the largest church in the Synod 
of Virginia, and one of great influence in the 
Presbyterian Church of the United States. 
Though receiving many calls elsewhere, he re¬ 
mained pastor of the Second Church until his 
death. At least two other large Presbyterian 
churches in Richmond were also the outgrowth 
of his labors. During the first year of the Civil 
War he was volunteer chaplain in the camp of 
instructions at Richmond and preached to the 
Confederate soldiers at least twice a week, while 
carrying on his own church work. In 1862 he 
ran the blockade from Charleston, S. G, and 
went to England to obtain Bibles and religious 
books for the Confederate army. He received 
from the British and Foreign Bible Society 10,- 
000 Bibles, 50,000 Testaments, 250,000 portions 
of the Scriptures, and a large supply of miscel¬ 
laneous religious books, which reached Rich¬ 
mond after running the blockade. He was a del¬ 
egate to the conference of the Evangelical Alli¬ 
ance, which was held in New York in 1873, and 
made an address which attracted wide attention 
and discussion. In 1875 he was unanimously 
elected moderator of the Presbyterian General 
Assembly. He was a delegate to the Alliance of 
Reformed Churches, which met in Edinburgh 
(1877), and attended the meeting of the Evan¬ 
gelical Alliance at Copenhagen (1884). His ad¬ 
dress there “On Family Religion” was the occa¬ 
sion of an invitation to visit the Crown Princess 
of Denmark at the palace. He was sent as com¬ 
missioner to the Alliance of Reformed Churches 
which convened in London in 1888, and made 
one of the principal addresses. He was a mem¬ 
ber of the conference of the Evangelical Alliance 
for the United States, held at Boston in 1889, 
again delivering one of the addresses; and of the 
Alliance of the Reformed Chuiches at Glasgow, 
in 1896. By invitation of the Virginia legisla¬ 
ture, he delivered the oration at the unveiling of 
the Stonewall Jackson statue presented to Vir¬ 
ginia by some English gentlemen in October 
1875. For five years he was co-editor of the 
Central Presbyterian of Richmond. 

On the forty-fifth anniversary of his pastorate 
he was proclaimed the first citizen of Richmond 
by the people of Richmond, regardless of race or 


I2X 



Hogg 

creed. He was married, Mar. 20,1844, to Susan 
Morton Wood of Prince Edward County, Va. 

[P. H. Hoge, Moses Drury Hoge: Life and Letters 
(1899); Union Seminary Mag., Mar.-Apr., 1898; H. A. 
White, Sou. Presbyt . Leaders (1911); Richmond Times, 
Jan. 6, 1899.] J.D.E. 

HOGG, GEORGE (June 22, 1784-Dec. 5, 
1849), manufacturer, merchant, pioneer in the 
field of chain stores, was born in Cramlington, 
Northumberland County, England, the only son 
of John and Mary (Crisp) Hogg. While a youth 
in England he was apprenticed to an iron worker 
but later came to the United States with his par¬ 
ents and settled in Licking County, Ohio. Just 
what his activities were at this time is unknown, 
but in view of his remarkable career later, he 
must have received some business training dur¬ 
ing this period. In 1804, at the suggestion of his 
uncle, William Hogg, a successful merchant who 
had begun his career as a peddler, he went to 
Brownsville, Pa. In the following years he es¬ 
tablished a number of commercial enterprises 
both with his uncle and with others. In partner¬ 
ship with his brother-in-law, James E. Breading, 
he founded a large wholesale drygoods business 
in Pittsburgh under the name of Breading & 
Hogg, and a huge wholesale grocery known as 
Dalzell, Taylor & Company. As his business 
grew he established a chain of fifteen merchan¬ 
dise and commission houses in Ohio, a forward¬ 
ing house at Sandusky, Ohio, and sixty-one 
stores in Pennsylvania and New York. In con¬ 
junction with his depot at Sandusky he main¬ 
tained a fleet of vessels on Lake Erie as well as 
a line of boats on the Ohio Canal with headquar¬ 
ters at Newark, Ohio. He was thus undoubted¬ 
ly among the first, if not the first, to develop the 
chain store system. In addition to his commer¬ 
cial interests he was engaged in the manufacture 
of glass, having built the Brownsville Glass Fac¬ 
tory in 1828. With the exception of one year, 
1829, he supervised its work until 1847. He aid¬ 
ed in the building of a bridge over the Mononga- 
hela River at Brownsville and Bridgeport and 
was one of the founders and managers of the 
Monongahela Navigation Improvement Com¬ 
pany, which carried coal to New Orleans. He 
also purchased coal mines and large tracts of 
land from the government. 

Although he spent practically all his mature 
years in the United States, Hogg never gave up 
the English customs which he remembered from 
his youth. His two outstanding characteristics 
seem to have been deep religious feeling and 
fair dealing. In May of 1843 he moved to Alle¬ 
gheny City, which is now the Northside district 
of Pittsburgh, where in 1849 he died. He mar- 


Hogg 

ried, Mar. 7, 1811, Mary Ann, oldest daughter 
of Judge Nathaniel Breading of Fayette County, 
Pa., and became the father of six children. 

[F. Ellis, Hist, of Fayette Co., Pa. (1882) ; Hist, of 
Allegheny County, Pa. (1889); J. W. Jordan and James 
Hadden, Geneal. and Personal Hist . of Fayette and 
Greene Counties, Pa. (1912), vol. I; Pittsburgh Daily 
Gazette, Dec. 7, 1849.] a. I. 

HOGG, JAMES STEPHEN (Mar. 24, 1851- 
Mar. 3,1906), governor of Texas, was of Scotch- 
Irish extraction, descended from ancestors who 
had moved in successive generations from Vir¬ 
ginia to South Carolina and then to Alabama. 
His parents, Joseph Lewis and Lucanda (Mc- 
Math) Hogg, migrated to Texas from Alabama 
in 1839, an d James was born at the family estate, 
“Mountain Home,” near Rusk, Cherokee County. 
His father, a prominent planter and a member of 
the state legislature, became a brigadier-general 
in the Confederate army and died in a Southern 
camp at Corinth, Miss., in 1862. His wife sur¬ 
vived him only a year, and James was left an im¬ 
poverished orphan at the age of twelve. First as 
farm hand, next as typesetter on a village news¬ 
paper, then as a country editor in East Texas, 
Hogg earned his own living, and in 1871 began 
the study of law. Two years later, he commenced 
his political career as justice of the peace for 
the Quitman precinct in Wood County. On Apr. 
22,1874, he married Sallie Stinson. Admitted to 
the bar in 1875, he was elected county attorney 
for Wood County in 1878, and two years later 
district attorney for the 7th judicial district. In 
this position, which he held for two terms, he 
gained a state-wide reputation as a fearless pros¬ 
ecutor of criminals and an opponent of mob law. 
When he took office as attorney general of the 
state in January 1887, he was expected to “help 
curb the abuses of corrupt corporations, long un¬ 
disturbed in Texas.” His election on such a plat¬ 
form and his career as attorney general and as 
governor of Texas mark the important transi¬ 
tion from the older politics of the Civil War and 
Reconstruction to the newer economic issues 
which in time came to be called progressive. The 
age of the “Confederate Brigadiers” had passed. 

During his four years as attorney general, 
Hogg brought suits against fraudulent insurance 
companies, and secured the return to the state of 
almost two million acres of railroad lands. With 
his magnetic personality and unrivaled capacity 
as a stump speaker, he was the natural champion 
of the idea of a state railway commission to reg¬ 
ulate rates and conditions of service on Texas 
railways. It was the same plan which was being 
urged in the national legislature by his fellow 
Texan, John H. Reagan. On this issue, in 1891, 
Hogg became governor of Texas. In his first 


122 



Hogue 

term he secured the passage of the desired law 
and appointed a commission under the influen¬ 
tial leadership of Reagan, who had resigned from 
the Senate to give weight to the experiment 
Two years later, in spite of bitter opposition 
which destroyed the traditional unity of the 
Democratic party, Hogg was successful in his 
campaign for reelection. In 1894 he had the sat¬ 
isfaction of having his favorite measure declared 
constitutional by the Supreme Court. Among 
other measures passed through his influence were 
a stock-and-bond law, intended to check the issue 
of securities beyond the value of corporate prop¬ 
erty, a municipal-bond law to limit the extrava¬ 
gant expenditures of cities, and a law to prevent 
the creation of great land-holding corporations. 

Hogg retired from active politics in 1895. At 
this time, according to his own statement, he 
was a poor man with “only fifty dollars in cash,” 
and he desired to earn a competence for himself 
and his family. At the time of his death in 1906, 
partly through his law practice and partly 
through the fortunate discovery of oil on lands 
which belonged to him, he was the master of a 
substantial fortune. His wife died in 1895. He 
was survived by three sons and one daughter. 
In national affairs, he was a critic of Cleveland, 
a close friend of Bryan, and, though a Democrat, 
an admirer of Roosevelt. 

[See Speeches and State Papers of James Stephen 
Hogg (1905), ed. by C. W. Raines, with a biographical 
sketch; L. E. Daniell, Personnel of the Texas State 
Govt. (1892) ; F. W. Johnson, E. C. Barker, E. W. 
Winkler, A Hist, of Texas and Texans (1914), I, 601 
ff.; Houston Daily Post, Mar. 4, 1906. Abundant ma¬ 
terials are scattered through the newspapers of the day. 
Hogg’s public papers are in the Texas State Library at 
Austin and his private papers in the possession of the 
family in Houston.] R. Q. C. 

HOGUE, WILSON THOMAS (Mar. 6, 
1852-Feb. 13, 1920), clergyman of the Free 
Methodist Church, educator, author, was born 
in Lyndon, N. Y., and was a son of Thomas P. 
Hogg, a native of Scotland, and Sarah Ann Car¬ 
penter. The family name was afterward changed 
to Hogue. Wilson’s boyhood was spent at the 
district school and in labor on his father’s farm. 
At eighteen he entered the Ten Broeck Free 
Academy at Franklinville, N. Y., where he took 
the classical preparatory course, earning his way 
by book canvassing and by teaching country 
schools one term each year. He was unable to 
go to college, but later, in the midst of the activi¬ 
ties of middle life, pursued non-resident courses 
in the Illinois Wesleyan University and received 
the degrees of Ph.B. in 1897, A.M. in 1899, and 
Ph.D. in 1902. Influenced by the atmosphere of 
his Methodist home, his thoughts were early 
turned toward the ministry, and during his days 


Hogun 

at the academy he began theological reading. In 
1873 he united with the Genesee Conference of 
the Free Methodist Church and commenced the 
work of the pastor at Jamestown, N. Y. On Dec. 
29, of the following year, he married Emma 
Luella Jones of that town. Having completed 
the course of study prescribed by the Conference, 
he was ordained elder in 1877 and for the next 
fifteen years held important charges in New 
York State, nine of these years being spent in 
Buffalo. From 1892 to 1904 he was president 
of Greenville College, Greenville, Ill., the only 
college of his denomination. During his presi¬ 
dency he held the office of general superinten¬ 
dent, or bishop, of the Free Methodist Church 
for one year, 1893-94, and was from 1894 to 1903 
editor of the Free Methodist . Under his man¬ 
agement it had a broad, scholarly, and dignified 
character. He was again elected bishop in 1903 
and continued in this office till 1919. He was 
also editor of the Earnest Christian , 1908-09. 

His first book, Handbook of Homiletics and 
Pastoral Theology (1887), an outgrowth of his 
ministerial experience, became widely used as a 
textbook in his own and in other denominations. 
He subsequently published Revivals and Revival 
Work (1904); Hymns That Are Immortal 
(1906), and The Class Meeting as a Means of 
Grace (1907). His last work of importance, 
written after he was partially disabled by paraly¬ 
sis, was a History of the Free Methodist Church 
of North America (2 vols., 1915). He was the 
chief promoter of the Free Methodist Publishing 
House, and from boyhood was a contributor to 
the various publications of the denomination, 
nearly all of which were at various times under 
his supervision. He had a strong personality 
and a Scotch tenacity of conviction coupled with 
marked openness of mind. His ability as an ad¬ 
ministrator, his skill as a parliamentarian, and 
his exceptional capacity for work made him well 
adapted for the functions of denominational lead¬ 
ership, which were continued even during his 
latter days of partial physical disability. His 
wife and three daughters survived him. 

[The III Wesleyan Mag . for July 1897 contains a 
good account of his earlier years and public life to that 
date, and the Hogue memorial number of the Free Meth¬ 
odist, Mar. 23, 1920, contains a portrait and apprecia¬ 
tions and estimates from fifty contributors. See also 
Who's Who in America, 1918-19 .1 F.T.P. 

HOGUN, JAMES (d. Jan. 4, 1781), Revolu¬ 
tionary soldier, a native of Ireland, settled about 
1751 in Halifax County, N. C. In 1774 he 
was a member of the Halifax County Safety 
Committee. He represented that county in the 
provincial congresses of Aug. 20, 1775, Apr. 4, 
1776, and Nov. 12,1776, his interest being chiefly 


123 



Hogun 

in military affairs. The provincial Congress of 
April 1776 elected him (Apr. 22) first major of 
the Halifax militia; at the November congress 
he served on a committee to report upon the or¬ 
ganization of the militia, and on Nov. 26, he was 
elected colonel of the 7th Regiment of the North 
Carolina Continental Line. He promptly organ¬ 
ized his regiment and in July 1777 joined Wash¬ 
ington’s army in time to participate in the bat¬ 
tles of Brandywine and Germantown. In 1778 
Congress called upon North Carolina for four 
new regiments of Continentals, and Hogun was 
ordered home to help raise and organize them. 
He was assigned to the command of the first 
regiment to be organized and with it joined the 
Continental Army at White Plains in August 
1778. In November he was sent to West Point 
and remained there at work on the fortifications 
until the middle of December, when he was or¬ 
dered to Philadelphia. 

On Jan. 9,1779, the Continental Congress en¬ 
tered upon the election of two brigadier-generals 
of the North Carolina Continental Line. The 
state’s delegates in Congress, obeying instruc¬ 
tions from the legislature, nominated and sup¬ 
ported Col. Jethro Sumner, the senior colonel, 
and Col. Thomas Clark; but Congress, taking 
note of the fact that Hogun not only ranked 
Clark but had behaved well in his several assign¬ 
ments and had conducted himself “with distin¬ 
guished intrepidity” at Germantown, disregard¬ 
ed the state’s recommendation and elected Sum¬ 
ner and Hogun. Sumner was sent south to the 
defense of Georgia and Hogun was assigned to 
the command of the North Carolina brigade in 
Washington’s army. On Mar. 19, 1779, Bene¬ 
dict Arnold, who had been in command of the 
garrison at Philadelphia, was relieved at his own 
request, and Washington assigned Hogun to the 
command of the city. He retained command 
there until Nov. 22, when he was relieved to 
enable him to march his brigade to join General 
Lincoln in the defense of Charleston, S. C. Gen¬ 
eral Lincoln reported to the president of Con¬ 
gress that Hogun’s arrival at Charleston, Mar. 
3, 1780, gave “great spirits to the Town and 
confidence to the Arm/’ (State Records, XIV, 
799). His troops bore an active part in the un¬ 
successful defense of the city and upon its sur¬ 
render became prisoners of war. They were sent 
to Haddrell’s Point on Sullivan’s Island, where 
they underwent great hardships. The British 
offered Hogun a parole, but feeling that he ought 
to share the fate of his men and fearing the effect 
of his absence on the efforts of British recruiting 
officers to enlist them for service in the West 
Indies, he declined it. His health broke under 


Hohfeld 

the strain and he died at Haddrell’s Point, Jan. 
4, 1781. 

Hogun married Ruth Norfleet, member of a 
prominent North Carolina family, and by her 
had one child, Lemuel, who survived him. 

[Nothing is known of Hogun’s life beyond the bare 
official records. These are printed in The Colonial Rec¬ 
ords of N. C., vols. IX and X (1890), ed. by W. L. 
Saunders, and in The State Records of N. C., vols. XI- 
XXII (1895-190;), ed. by Walter Clark. There is an 
inadequate sketch by Clark in S. A. Ashe, Biog. Hist . of 
N. C., vol. IV (1906), pp. 196-202, which is reprinted 
in abridged form in the N. C. Booklet, Oct. 1911.] 

R.D.W.C. 

HOHFELD, WESLEY NEWCOMB (Aug. 
8,1879-Oct. 21,1918), professor of law and legal 
scholar, was born in Oakland, Cal., the fifth 
child of a piano teacher, Edward Hohfeld, a na¬ 
tive of Germany, and of Rosalie Hillebrand who 
was related to Ernst Haeckel, the German phi¬ 
losopher, and to William Francis Hillebrand 
[q.v ,]. At fifteen, as a grammar-school graduate, 
he received the superior scholarship medal and 
three years later led the graduating class of the 
Boys’ High School of San Francisco. Gradu¬ 
ating from the University of California in 1901, 
he was awarded the university gold medal for 
distinguished scholarship, after having received 
the highest possible mark in every subject taken 
during his entire course. One of the few per¬ 
sons who had previously equalled this brilliant 
scholastic record was Hohfeld’s sister, Lily, who 
won the medal in 1899, having as her closest 
competitor her twin sister, Rose. Each of these 
sisters had perfect marks in more courses than 
were required for graduation. 

Hohfeld matriculated in the Harvard Law 
School in 1901 where his intellectual brilliance 
again brought him honors in the form of selec¬ 
tion as one of the editors of the Harvard Law 
Review and graduation in 1904 cum laude . As 
a law student he was especially attracted to John 
Chipman Gray, who, because of his high regard 
for Hohfeld’s ability, engaged him to assist in 
the briefing of an important case in which Gray 
was counsel. He then entered the San Francisco 
law office of Morrison, Cope & Brobeck, where 
after only a year he was offered a partnership. 
This offer he declined, however, to accept an in¬ 
vitation to join the law faculty of Stanford 
University. He preferred the quiet and scholar¬ 
ly environment of the university with its oppor¬ 
tunity for unbiased study to the usually hurried 
and partisan intellectual pursuits of a busy law 
office. He was on the Stanford law faculty from 
1905 until 1914, when he was called to Yale, 
Here he remained until his death. It was during 
his tenure at these schools that he wrote and 
published a series of monographs posthumously 



Hohfeld 

published in a volume entitled Fundamental Le¬ 
gal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reason¬ 
ing (1919, rev. ed., 1923), setting forth the ideas 
on legal analysis which later became known as 
the “Hohfeld system.” In these articles he point¬ 
ed out the confusion in legal reasoning that had 
resulted from the use of legal terms connoting 
indefinite or multiple concepts and urged the ne¬ 
cessity of a more precise and accurate terminol¬ 
ogy as a basis for legal analysis. He then set 
forth in the form of a table a system of eight 
terms arranged according to their connotations, 
each term expressing a fundamental legal con¬ 
cept. The table follows: 

Correlatives right privilege power immunity 

duty no-right liability disability 

Opposites right privilege power immunity 

no-right duty disability liability 

For some time the significance of Hohfeld's 
ideas seemed not to be understood and it was 
not until his Yale colleagues, Professors Walter 
Wheeler Cook and Arthur L. Corbin, had es¬ 
poused his cause that the “system” began to take 
root. After Hohfeld's death his views became the 
subject of much discussion and controversy 
among law teachers and scholars and the influ¬ 
ence of the “system” gradually widened. Many 
teachers, writers, and a growing circle of judges 
now acknowledge the utility of the Hohfeldian 
concepts in legal thinking and expression. The 
American Law Institute has adopted the Hohfeld 
terminology in substance for use in the restate¬ 
ment of the law, and John R. Commons has 
adapted it to the field of economics. Before 
Hohfeld, others had urged more precision in the 
use of the terms right, duty, and power, but 
Hohfeld was the first to point out the necessity 
of other terms in an adequate system of analysis, 
and the first to provide a complete set of satis¬ 
factory terms arranged and described in such a 
way as to show their fundamental relation to 
each other. 

In his teaching Hohfeld did not lecture. His 
method was to lead the student from point to 
point by well-conceived questions and hypothet¬ 
ical cases. At the beginning of the class hour 
he would briefly restate the problem under dis¬ 
cussion at the last recitation, and from that point 
proceed with the development of the subject 
slowly, meticulously, irresistibly. Day after day, 
almost monotonously, the treatment would con¬ 
tinue in this fashion. Frequently, many days 
would be spent in discussion of a single hypo¬ 
thetical case. His thoroughness and incisive 
logic swept all opposition before them. He re¬ 
spected neither persons nor principles in select¬ 
ing the target of his intellectual thrusts. Indeed 


Hoisington 

his complete lack of reverence for accepted legal 
dogma sometimes formed the basis for critical 
comment among students. He sometimes mani¬ 
fested irritation at indifference or inattention on 
the part of students but displayed an unusual de¬ 
gree of patience with those who showed interest 
and seriousness of purpose. He was considerate 
and courteous to students who sought his advice 
and seemed never to tire of discussing difficult 
legal problems with them. 

Hohfeld was of medium height, with a rather 
swarthy complexion, large, penetrating, brown 
eyes, and an abundance of black hair. His only 
recreation was walking. He was a lover of good 
music and highly appreciative of art. He never 
married. In February 1918 he had a heart lesion 
from which endocarditis developed. In July fol¬ 
lowing he was taken to the home of his sister in 
Alameda, Cal., where after lingering for three 
months, he passed away at the age of thirty-nine, 

[Sources include: Yale Law Jour., Dec. 1918, June 
1919; Cal. Law Rev., Nov. 1918; Stanford Illustrated 
Rev., Nov. 1918; San Francisco Chronicle, May 15, 16, 
1901, Oct. 22 , 1918; Argonaut (San Francisco), May 
27, 1901 ; Das Silberne Buck der Familie Sack, vol. II 
(Wiesbaden, 1926); information as to certain facts 
from Hohf eld’s brother, Edward Hohfeld, Jr. For crit¬ 
icisms of the Hohfeld system see Albert Kocourek, 
Jural Relations (1927), Appendix; for an adaptation 
of the system in the economic field see John R. Com¬ 
mons, Legal Foundations of Capitalism (1924).] 

G.W.G. 

HOISINGTON, HENRY RICHARD (Aug. 
23,1801-May 16, 1858), Congregational clergy¬ 
man, missionary, author, was bom at Vergennes, 
Vt., the son of Job and Sarah Hoisington. A 
printer by trade, practising in Utica, N. Y., and 
New York City, he became eager for an educa¬ 
tion and fitted himself at Bloomfield Academy 
(N. J.) for Williams College, from which he 
graduated in 1828. He then went to Auburn 
Theological Seminary, graduating in 1831, was 
ordained in the Congregational ministry, and 
settled in Aurora, N. Y. On Sept. 21, 1831, he 
married Nancy Lyman. In response to a call 
for missionaries to Ceylon by the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 
he offered himself for the work and sailed in 

1833, reaching Jaffna, Ceylon, Oct 28. His first 
appointment was Manepy (1834). On July 31, 

1834, he was one of two missionaries of the 
American Board to reach the holy city of Ma¬ 
dura, on the mainland of India, and to open a 
mission there. In 1835, back in Ceylon, he was 
appointed instructor in the English language in 
Batticotta Seminary. In 1836 he became prin¬ 
cipal and proceeded to develop the institution, 
believing that “the Seminary need no longer be 
a school of infants, graduating mere children” 
(Missionary Herald , August 1837), He con- 


125 



Hoke Hoke 


tinued as principal until July 3, 1841, when in 
broken health he sailed for America by way of 
Madras and St. Helena. His younger daughter 
died at sea. In 1844 Hoisington returned to 
Batticotta and resumed the principalship. By 
1849 his health was again broken, but not be¬ 
fore he had completely transformed the Sem¬ 
inary, won the confidence of the non-Christians 
who sent their sons in numbers, and the deep 
gratitude of all those who had graduated from 
the course. “Your name is dear to us,” they 
wrote, “and we shall not forget to hand it down 
to our next generation. It shall outlive the deso¬ 
lations of time and death” (Ibid., November 
1849) • He returned to America where, with im¬ 
proved health, he became an agent of the Amer¬ 
ican Board, visiting the churches of southern 
New England. In 1854 he severed his connec¬ 
tion with the Board, and till 1856 supplied the 
Congregational church in Williamstown, Mass., 
and lectured on Hinduism to the students of 
Williams College. In 1857 was installed as 
pastor of the Congregational church in Center- 
brook, Conn., where he died suddenly in 1858. 

Hoisington published in 1848, The Oriental 
Astronomer: Being a Complete System of Hindu 
Astronomy, a translation. He translated three 
of the Tamil religious texts into English: the 
Tattuva-Kattalei, the Siva-Gnana-Potham, and 
the Siva-Pirakasam, under the title, Treatises on 
Hindu Philosophy (1854), with introduction and 
notes. Of this translation he wrote, “The provi¬ 
dence of God threw into my hands a key by which 
I began to unlock these dark receptacles of hu¬ 
man thought. This key consisted in the discov¬ 
ery of the import of the mystic number five and 
of a concurrence of circumstances favoring the 
investigation by the aid of native scholars.” In 
such study he was seeking the esoteric doctrines 
of Hinduism. In 1852 he published an essay on 
the “Origin and Development of the Existing 
System of Religious Belief in India.” His re¬ 
ports to the Board frequently contained descrip¬ 
tions of Hindu customs. He was in general sus¬ 
picious of Hinduism, though he taught the ethics 
of the “Cural” to his Seminary boys. He called 
it “one of the most eminent moral poems of In¬ 
dia .. . the highest Tamil classic,” adding “It 
is taught only under my immediate inspection, 
when everything is examined in the light of re¬ 
vealed truth” (Missionary Herald, March 1837). 

EE. W. Bliss, The Encyc. of Missions (1891), vol. I ; 
reports of the American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions, 1833-49; Bibliotheca Sacra, Apr. 
1852; Missionary Herald, 1835-55; Am. Congreg. 
Year-Book, 1859-] 0 . M. B. 

HOKE, ROBERT FREDERICK (May 27, 
1837-July 3, 1912), Confederate soldier, the son 


of Michael and Frances (Burton) Hoke, was 
born in Lincolnton, Lincoln County, N. C., of 
Alsatian, Swiss, and English ancestry. His fa¬ 
ther, a lawyer and orator of note, was Demo¬ 
cratic candidate for governor in 1844 and died 
from disease contracted during the campaign. 
After some years at school in Lincolnton and at 
the Kentucky Military Institute, Robert Fred¬ 
erick at seventeen began the management of the 
family's varied local manufacturing interests. 
These included a cotton-mill established by one 
great-grandfather and iron-works established by 
another. Entering the Civil War in 1861 as sec¬ 
ond lieutenant of Company K of the “Bethel 
Brigade” (1st North Carolina Volunteers), he 
was commended by D. H. Hill for “his great 
coolness, judgment, and efficiency” as an engi¬ 
neer officer, became major and then lieutenant- 
colonel of the 33rd North Carolina Regiment, 
and led it valiantly in the many Virginia battles 
from Hanover Court House to Second Manassas, 
and also at Sharpsburg. In August 1862 he was 
commissioned colonel of the 21st North Carolina 
and the following January was made brigadier- 
general for most effective service in command of 
a brigade at Fredericksburg. Through the win¬ 
ter of 1862-63 he was with Lee and won his high 
esteem, but was wounded at Chancellorsville and 
thus missed action at Gettysburg. In the fall of 
1863 he worked in the piedmont section of the 
Carolinas on the serious problem of desertion 
and outlawry (War of the Rebellion: Official 
Records, Army, 4 ser., II, 768,786,1071). Then, 
in early 1864 he was sent into tidewater North 
Carolina to check through military operations 
the serious political disaffection. Compelled, it 
is said, to follow a plan which he did not approve, 
he failed signally; then, given a free hand, he 
succeeded so brilliantly that in April 1864 he was 
made major-general on the battle-field (Ibid., 1 
ser. LI, pt. 2, p. 874). Recalled from his un¬ 
finished task, he aided in “bottling up” Butler 
near Richmond and, conspicuously, in the bloody 
repulse of Grant at Cold Harbor. Back in North 
Carolina, his regiment bore the brunt of the fight 
at Bentonville and surrendered with Johnston, 
Apr. 26, 1865. Bidding his men teach their chil¬ 
dren that “the proudest day in all your proud 
careers was that on which you enlisted as South¬ 
ern soldiers” (Ashe, Biographical History, I, 
320), he stolidly returned to inconspicuous pri¬ 
vate pursuits. According to Samuel A. Ashe 
(Biographical History, I, 320, 309), Hoke was 
“Lee's best general” in the late days of the war 
and “the most distinguished soldier of North 
Carolina”; but this writers later belief (History 
of North Carolina, II, 951) that he was Lee’s 


126 



Holabird 

choice as his successor seems to rest on evidence 
(News and Observer, July 4-6, 1912) that is 
historically inadequate. For summary handling 
of deserters in his tidewater campaign he was 
threatened with punishment by the Federal gov¬ 
ernment ; but Grant, knowing the circumstances, 
intervened. Public honors he consistently re¬ 
fused, except for a directorship for the state in 
the North Carolina Railroad Company, urged 
upon him by Governor Vance. On Jan. 7, 1869, 
he married Lydia Van Wyck, by whom he had 
six children. He was buried with military hon¬ 
ors from the Church of the Good Shepherd (Epis¬ 
copal), Raleigh, of which he was a member. 

[S. A. Ashe, Biog. Hist, of N. C., vol. I (1905), and 
Hist of N. C., vol. II (1925) ; War of the Rebellion: 
Official Records (Army) ; H. E. Bromwell, Fullinwider 
Notes (1920); G. E. Swope, Hist, of the Swope Family 
and Their Connections (1896); Confed. Veteran 
(Nashville), Sept. 1912; Carolina and the Southern 
Cross, May 1913 ; News and Observer (Raleigh, N. C.), 
July 4-6, 1912.] C.C.P. 

HOLABIRD, WILLIAM (Sept, n, 1854- 
July 19,1923), architect, the son of Gen. Samuel 
Beckley Holabird, United States Army, and of 
Mary Theodosia (Grant) Holabird, was born at 
Amenia Union, N. Y. After graduating from 
high school he entered the United States Mili¬ 
tary Academy at West Point and remained there 
from 1873 to 1875. Angered by being disciplined 
for breaking a camp rule to aid a sick comrade, 
he resigned. Shortly afterward, Dec. 27, 1875, 
he married Maria Ford Augur, daughter of Gen. 
C. C. Augur, United States Army. He moved 
to Chicago in 1875 and applied for a position as 
an engineer in the architectural office of William 
Le Baron Jenney [g.z/.], who employed him as a 
draftsman. In 1880 young Holabird j oined forces 
in independent practice with 0 . C. Simonds and 
a little later with Martin Roche, the firm being 
known as Holabird, Simonds & Roche. After 
1883 and the abandonment of architecture for 
landscape gardening by Simonds, the firm was 
called Holabird & Roche. In 1896 Edward A. 
Renwick became a member. 

Holabird’s courage, energy, commanding pres¬ 
ence, and personal popularity united to the gen¬ 
tler graces and rare artistic ability of Martin 
Roche made a combination that put the firm in 
the vanguard of Chicago architects. In 1886 
Wirt D. Walker of Chicago commissioned them 
to design a high building, no feet long and 25 
feet in width, on the northeast corner of LaSalle 
and Madison Streets. In endeavoring to retain 
a profitable floor area on so narrow a lot the 
architects recalled a suggestion of Samuel Lor- 
ing, a manufacturer of terra cotta, to the effect 
that a building might be constructed with a skel- 


Holabird 

eton of iron on which thin terra cotta walls and 
tile floors could be supported. Holabird's former 
employer, W. L. Jenney, had tried out a scheme 
in 1884-85 in the major portion of his Home In¬ 
surance Building in Chicago, which consisted 
in enclosing iron columns in brick masonry 
piers with iron lintels and spandrel girders sup¬ 
ported by brackets on the columns. In the Ta¬ 
coma Building this primitive arrangement was 
improved by the addition of brackets for the di¬ 
rect support of the masonry (terra cotta) pier 
facings. Holabird & Roche made complete plans 
for a building on this principle. The foundations 
were laid in May 1886 for the 25 x no building, 
twelve stories high. Shortly afterward addi¬ 
tional property was acquired and the drawings 
were made for the Tacoma Building. The work 
was started in May 1887 and the building was 
ready for occupancy in July 1888. It was the first 
office building in the world to utilize throughout 
its faqades the principles of skeleton construc¬ 
tion. The building created nation-wide comment 
and established the use of skeleton construction 
for high buildings. 

Another important contribution to architec¬ 
tural engineering by Holabird & Roche was their 
introduction of the multiple deep basement and 
the necessary devices to make it possible, first 
used in the original Tribune Building. In addi¬ 
tion to the Tacoma, the firm produced between 
1883 and 1923 an imposing number of buildings, 
of which the most important in Chicago and its 
vicinity were the following: United States Mili¬ 
tary Post at Fort Sheridan, Ill. (1885), Caxton 
(1890), Pontiac (1891), South end of Monad- 
nock Block (1892), Old Colony (1893), Mar¬ 
quette (1894), Atwood (1896), old Tribune 
Building (1901), Cook County Building (1906), 
Congress Hotel (1902-07), Boston Store (1907- 
16), Hotel Sherman (1909-12), Hotel LaSalle 
(1909), University Club (1909), City Hall 
(1910), Monroe (1911), Mandel Brothers store 
(1911), Otis (1911), John Crerar Library 
(1919), Illinois Life (1921). 

The invention of the skeleton steel skyscraper 
demanded revolutionary improvements in all of 
the structural arts and sciences, and resulted in 
the most brilliant era of structural engineering 
the world has ever known. In this era Holabird 
was one of the pioneers and throughout his life 
a conspicuous leader. He was a fellow of the 
American Institute of Architects; a 32nd Degree 
Mason, and a member of a great many social, 
civic, and professional organizations. With his 
family, he made his home in Evanston, III, where 
he died in his sixty-ninth year. 

[Who’s Who in America, 1922-23; Jour. Ill State 


127 



Holbrook 

Hist. Soc., Apr.-July 1923; Arch. Record, Apr. 1912, 
June 1923; Jour. Am. Inst. Arch., Aug. 1923; J. Moses 
and J. Kirkland, Hist, of Chicago, III. (1895), vol. I; 
Am. Architect, Aug. 11, 1920, Aug. 1, 1923 ; T. E. Tall- 
madge, The Story of Architecture in America (1927) ; 
Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago Daily News, July 20, 
1923.] T.E.T. 

HOLBROOK, ALFRED (Feb. 17, 1816- 
Apr. 16,1909), pioneer in the professional train¬ 
ing of teachers in the Middle West and a leader, 
as was his father, Josiah Holbrook [g.z/.], in the 
nineteenth-century movement for the democrati¬ 
zation of higher education, was born in Derby, 
Conn. His mother, Lucy (Swift) Holbrook, 
died when he was two years old. Alfred’s school 
career closed at the age of fourteen, after a three- 
year sojourn at Groton Academy; his further 
education was acquired through independent 
study while employed in his father’s factory and 
elsewhere. To this training he ascribed much of 
his success as an educational pioneer. While he 
was fitting himself to become a civil engineer, his 
health failed and he removed to the Western Re¬ 
serve in Ohio, where at the invitation of John 
Baldwin he became teacher of the school 
at Berea which was the forerunner of Baldwin 
Institute. On Mar. 24, 1843, he married his 
cousin, Melissa Pierson, by whom he had six 
children. In 1855 he was appointed by the South¬ 
western Normal School Association as principal 
of the normal school to be established at Lebanon, 
Ohio. The school was opened Nov. 24,1855, un¬ 
der the auspices of the Association, but after the 
first year was conducted by Holbrook as a pri¬ 
vate enterprise. Reacting to the social and eco¬ 
nomic conditions existing then in the Middle 
West, he developed one of the most noteworthy 
innovations of his time, the National Normal 
School (later National Normal University, and 
still later Lebanon University), which, together 
with other institutions which followed its ex¬ 
ample, including the Ohio Northern and Val¬ 
paraiso universities, brought college education 
within the reach of thousands of the poorer 
classes. Through a system of self-boarding and 
boarding clubs, living expenses were reduced 
one half. Special examinations were required 
neither for admission nor for graduation—an 
arrangement which, though opening the doors of 
the school to a greater number, resulted inevi¬ 
tably in lowering the standard of scholarship. By 
“using fifty weeks in the year and more hours in 
the day” the time required for completing the col¬ 
lege course was reduced from four to two years. 
No rules of conduct were prescribed. Equal 
rights and privileges were afforded women and 
men. Notwithstanding a steady growth in en¬ 
rollment, increasing financial difficulties forced 
Holbrook’s school into a receivership in 1893. 


Holbrook 

After serving a year as salaried president of the 
school he had founded he removed to Tennessee 
where he attempted to develop similar institu¬ 
tions. His efforts proved unsuccessful, how¬ 
ever, and he returned to Lebanon, where he died. 
On Aug. 31, 1892, after the death of his first 
wife, he was married to Eason Thompson at Hot 
Springs, Ark. 

Holbrook’s Normal: or Methods of Teaching 
the Common Branches (1859), had previously 
appeared in quarterly instalments and was widely 
read. It was followed by his School Manage¬ 
ment (1871), Reminiscences of the Happy Life 
of a Teacher (1885), and by some textbooks in 
grammar and rhetoric. His independence of 
thought, his energy and industry, the magnetism 
and forcefulness of his personality achieved for 
him success not only as an executive but also as 
a teacher. During his last years, former students 
from Cincinnati and elsewhere were accustomed 
to meet at Lebanon on his birthday, which was 
sometimes celebrated jointly with that of Lin¬ 
coln. 

[Holbrook’s Reminiscences (1885) ; Samuel Orcutt 
and Ambrose Beardsley, The Hist, of the Old Town of 
Derby, Conn. (1880); The Hist, of Warren County, 
Ohio (1882) ; J. J. Bums, Educ. Hist, of Ohio (1905) ; 
K. J. Kay, Hist, of the National Normal Univ. (1929) ; 
files of the Western Star, Republican Record, and Leb¬ 
anon Patriot, all of Lebanon, Ohio; records of Na¬ 
tional Normal Univ. preserved at Wilmington Coll., 
Wilmington, Ohio.] L.F.A. 

HOLBROOK, FREDERICK (Feb. 15,1813- 
Apr. 28, 1909), governor of Vermont, was bom 
at Warehouse Point, near East Windsor, Conn., 
the son of John and Sarah (Knowlton) Hol¬ 
brook of Brattleboro, Vt. He studied in the com¬ 
mon schools of Brattleboro, to which place his 
parents returned soon after his birth, and in the 
Berkshire Gymnasium at Pittsfield, Mass., and 
secured employment for a time in a bookstore in 
Boston. After a year spent in Europe, he re¬ 
turned to Brattleboro, where he married in Janu¬ 
ary 1835 Harriet Goodhue, daughter of Col. 
Joseph Goodhue, and engaged in farming. He 
had read and studied much concerning scientific 
farming and was invited to write for agricultural 
journals. He entered into a contract to furnish 
a leading article each month for the Albany Cul¬ 
tivator and the New England Farmer of Boston, 
wrote editorials for the Country Gentleman, and 
contributed articles on agriculture to the Brattle¬ 
boro newspapers. For many years he served as 
president of the Vermont State Agricultural So¬ 
ciety, and in 1849-50 was a member of the Ver¬ 
mont Senate. 

In 1861 he was nominated for governor by the 
Republican convention and was elected by a large 
majority. One of his first acts as chief executive 


128 



Holbrook 

was to suggest the payment of half the state Civil 
War expenses by a direct tax, and the issuing of 
bonds for the remainder of the indebtedness. 
When the opinion was expressed by a state of¬ 
ficial that a bond issue to the amount of $1,500,- 
000 could not be floated at face value, Holbrook 
offered to negotiate the sale. The legislature ac¬ 
cepted the financial plan proposed, the Governor 
called a Boston banker, who was a personal 
friend, to Brattleboro, explained Vermont's abil¬ 
ity to pay the obligations of the commonwealth, 
and in two weeks all the bonds were sold at a 
premium. In 1862, Holbrook wrote to Presi¬ 
dent Lincoln suggesting that the loyal governors 
unite in recommending the calling of 500,000 
volunteers. The President responded in a tele¬ 
gram of 1,800 words, and sent General Draper, 
provost marshal, to Brattleboro for a conference 
with Holbrook, at which a statement was pre¬ 
pared for the signatures of governors of loyal 
states. The adoption of this plan resulted in 
President Lincoln's call for 300,000 men to serve 
for nine months and 300,000 to serve for three 
years. Two of Holbrook's three sons entered the 
Federal service. He was reelected in 1862. 
Visiting Washington in December of that year 
to discover some way to reduce the mortality of 
Vermont soldiers from the effects of wounds and 
disease, he appealed to the United States authori¬ 
ties to establish a military hospital in Vermont 
for the care of sick and wounded soldiers. Since 
he proposed to utilize the barracks on the Brat¬ 
tleboro camp ground, fitting them up for hospital 
patients at the expense of the state, Secretary 
Stanton reluctantly consented to try the experi¬ 
ment. Accordingly, the Brattleboro military hos¬ 
pital was ready for use in February 1863. It was 
accepted by the United States authorities and by 
the end of the summer it was filled with Vermont 
soldiers brought from many camps and battle¬ 
fields. From 1,500 to 2,000 men were treated 
here at certain periods. 

In 1867 a plow for stubble land designed and 
demonstrated by Holbrook received a gold medal 
from the New York State Agricultural Society. 
He was president of the Vermont Savings Bank 
of Brattleboro for thirty-nine years, was a trus¬ 
tee of the Brattleboro Retreat (an institution for 
the insane) from 1852 until his death, and for 
fifty years had charge of the music in the Centre 
Congregational Church of Brattleboro. He was 
a man of commanding presence and courteous 
manner and was held in high esteem by the peo¬ 
ple of Vermont. Retaining his interest in public 
affairs to the last, he lived to the age of ninety- 
six years, dying at his Brattleboro home. 

Who's Who in America, 1908-09; M. R. Cabot, An- 
%als of Brattleboro, vol. II (1922); W. H. Crockett, 


Holbrook 

Vermont, vols. Ill, IV (1921) ; A. M. Hemenway, Vt. 
Hist. Gazetteer, vol. V (1891) ; J. G. Ullery, Men of Vt . 
(1894) ; Report on the Trial of Plows, Held at Utica, 
by the N. Y. State Agric. Soc. (1867); Burlington 
Daily Free Press, Apr. 29, 1909.] W.H C 

HOLBROOK, JOHN EDWARDS (Dec. 
30, 1794-Sept 8, 1871), zoologist, son of Silas 
and Mary (Edwards) Holbrook, was born at 
Beaufort, S. C., the home of his mother's family, 
but was soon taken by his parents to the Hol¬ 
brook family home at Wrentham, Mass. There 
he received his early education, being prepared 
for Brown University, where he graduated in 
1815. Selecting medicine for a profession, he 
went to Philadelphia and in 1818 received the 
degree of M.D. from the University of Penn¬ 
sylvania. The next four years he spent in travel 
and graduate study in Europe, largely in Edin¬ 
burgh and Paris. In the latter city he became 
attracted to the great museum in the Jar din des 
Plantes and there established life-long friend¬ 
ships with several eminent French zoologists, 
especially Valenciennes, Dumeril, and Bibron. 
Since the chief interest of this group was the 
study of reptiles, Holbrook was naturally drawn 
to investigations of the same class, and when he 
returned to America in 1822, he made the reptiles 
of this country the object of his zoological stud¬ 
ies. He settled at Charleston, S. C., and entered 
upon his career as a physician. Two years later, 
he cooperated with some of the leading doctors of 
the city in establishing the Medical College of 
South Carolina and was himself chosen to be the 
professor of anatomy, a position which he held 
for over thirty years. He was soon recognized 
as a lecturer and teacher of very unusual talent, 
and he inspired his students with profound re¬ 
spect for their chosen profession. As a practising 
physician, too, he rapidly gained great popu¬ 
larity, but his tenderness of heart and distaste 
for seeing suffering led him to refuse all cases of 
childbirth and surgical cases involving serious 
operations. In matters outside his profession, he 
is reported to have been “a careless man who 
never took care of anything," but he was uni¬ 
versally liked and trusted. 

Soon after his settlement at Charleston, Hol¬ 
brook determined to undertake the work of pre¬ 
paring a monograph on the reptiles and batra- 
chians of the United States, a purpose in which 
he was encouraged by his French correspondents. 
Having adequate financial means, he engaged an 
Italian artist, J. Sera, to make colored figures 
from living: specimens of all the American rep¬ 
tiles he could procure. These handsome plates 
with the necessary text were bound in the order 
in which they were completed; the first volume, 
with the title North American Herpetology, was 


129 



Holbrook 

issued in 1836 and two more in 1838. Realizing 
the inconvenient and unscientific nature of such 
a method of publication, Holbrook changed his 
plans, and in 1842, five quarto volumes appeared 
under the same title, with both plates and text 
arranged in a systematic sequence. The com¬ 
pleted work comprised 147 plates. It at once 
took its place as one of the most valuable works 
upon reptiles published during the nineteenth 
century, receiving notable recognition in Eu¬ 
rope, where Holbrook was regarded as the lead¬ 
ing American zoologist of his day. Turning from 
his work on reptiles, which he considered fin¬ 
ished, he planned a somewhat similar monograph 
on the fishes of the Southern states, but owing 
to the death of his artist and the difficulty of get¬ 
ting living specimens from which to make the 
illustrations, he finally decided to confine his 
work to the fishes of South Carolina. One vol¬ 
ume, Ichthyology of South Carolina, containing 
twenty-seven colored plates, was issued in 1855 
and a revised edition of the same volume ap¬ 
peared in i860. The outbreak of the Civil War 
put an end to Holbrook's scientific activities. All 
of his publications are rare and many of the vol¬ 
umes issued are incomplete. 

During the war he served as a medical officer 
in the Confederate army, acting as head of the 
examining board of surgeons in South Carolina. 
In 1863 his wife, Harriott Pinckney Rutledge, 
whom he had married in May 1827, died at Co¬ 
lumbia, S. C. Since there were no children, 
Holbrook was left quite alone. Most of his for¬ 
tune was gone and his books and collections were 
lost or destroyed. Discouraged by his misfor¬ 
tunes and recognizing that a new order was com¬ 
ing in, he ceased to undertake or to plan for sci¬ 
entific work. He renewed his custom of spending 
his summers in Massachusetts, where he had 
many relatives and friends, and there, at his sis¬ 
ter's house in Norfolk—formerly North Wrent- 
ham—he died of apoplexy. 

[Louis Agassiz, "Dr. John E. Holbrook of Charles¬ 
ton, S. C.” in Proc. Boston Soc . of Natural Hist,, 1870— 
71 (1872) ,* T. L. Ogier, A Memoir of Dr, John Ed¬ 
wards Holbrook (published anonymously, Charleston, 
S. C., 1871) ; Theodore Gill, "Biographical Memoir of 
John Edwards Holbrook, 1794-1871,” in Nat. Acad. 
Set. Biog. Memoirs , vol. V (1905); Brown Univ. Ne¬ 
crology, in Providence Daily Journal, June 26, 1872.] 

H.L.C. 

HOLBROOK, JOSIAH (1788-June 17, 
1854), educational reformer, descended in the 
fourth generation from John Holbrook, an emi¬ 
grant from Derby, England, was born in -Derby, 
Conn. He was the son of Col. Daniel Holbrook, 
a prosperous farmer with a large family of chil¬ 
dren, and of Anne (Hitchcock) Holbrook. Grad¬ 
uating from Yale College in 1810, he returned to 


Holbrook 

Derby and opened a private school. In 1813-17, 
he rode regularly from Derby to New Haven to 
attend the lectures of Professor Benjamin Silli- 
man. In May 1815 he married Lucy Swift, 
daughter of the Rev. Zephaniah Swift of Derby. 
Possessing the instincts of the teacher and a cer¬ 
tain amount of business enterprise, Holbrook 
about 1819 opened an industrial school on his fa¬ 
ther's farm, in which he attempted to combine 
manual training and farm work with instruction 
drawn from books. This short-lived venture was 
followed (1824-25) by the establishment of an 
Agricultural Seminary. Although the latter proj¬ 
ect was soon abandoned, Holbrook never gave 
up the underlying idea, reviving it later in con¬ 
nection with other educational enterprises. By 
1826 he had become an itinerant lecturer on sci¬ 
entific subjects and in this connection he launched 
a new project which he outlined in an article, 
“Associations of Adults for Mutual Education,” 
in the American Journal of Education for Oc¬ 
tober 1826. The scheme, which came to be known 
as the American Lyceum, had a triple aim: to 
afford adults the opportunity for mutual im¬ 
provement through study and association; to 
stimulate an interest in the schools and con¬ 
tribute to the training of teachers in service; and 
to disseminate knowledge by the establishment 
of museums and libraries. In the same year Hol¬ 
brook organized at Millbury, Mass., “Millbury 
Lyceum No. 1, Branch of the American Lyceum,” 
the first of many such groups which in the next 
half century were a typical feature of American 
community life. 

Conceiving the idea of supplying the lyceums 
and schools with mathematical and scientific ap¬ 
paratus, Holbrook offered for this purpose cer¬ 
tain devices of his own manufacture such as an 
arithmometer, geometrical apparatus, and an as¬ 
tronomical orrery. For a time he maintained a 
factory in Boston. In 1830 he commenced to 
publish a series of pamphlets, issued semi-month¬ 
ly, under the title Scientific Tracts Designed for 
Instruction and Entertainment and Adapted to 
Schools, Lyceums and Families. He turned this 
work over to others soon after he began in 1832 
to edit a weekly newspaper, the Family Lyceum, 
which ceased publication at the end of a year. 
As corresponding secretary of the School Agents' 
Society, formed in 1831, he encouraged the or¬ 
ganization of town lyceums throughout New 
England, in the middle states, and in various 
parts of the South and West; these were fol¬ 
lowed by county and state organizations, and the 
American Lyceum Association. 

In 1837, with the financial support of John 
Baldwin and at the invitation of Baldwin 


130 



Holcomb 

and others, he attempted to establish a Lyceum 
Village at Berea, Ohio, where until 1852 he was 
engaged in the manufacture of globes for class¬ 
room use. The Lyceum Village collapsed after 
a few years, however, and plans for a “central 
Lyceum Village” in the neighborhood of New 
York failed to materialize. Holbrook resided in 
New York, 1842-49, as secretary of a central 
bureau, part of his original lyceum scheme, 
through which lecture courses were arranged 
and cabinets of minerals and other scientific 
specimens and illustrations of the work of chil¬ 
dren in the schools were exchanged. From 1849 
until his death his home was in Washington, D. 
C., where he continued to labor for the promotion 
of the Lyceum system. Throughout his career he 
carried on an extensive correspondence and was 
a prolific writer of tracts and pamphlets. While 
on an excursion to collect specimens of minerals 
and plants in the vicinity of Lynchburg, Va., he 
was drowned in Blackwater Creek. Two sons 
survived him, one of whom, Alfred [q.v.], mani¬ 
fested his enthusiasm for popular education in 
the development of the National Normal Uni¬ 
versity (later Lebanon University) at Lebanon, 
Ohio. 

[The chief sources for Holbrook’s life and work are 
his many writings in pamphlet form, particularly the 
Self Instructor and Journal of the Universal Lyceum 
for March 1841 and The American Lyceum or Society 
for the Improvement of Schools and Diffusion of Uni¬ 
versal Knowledge (1829). Biographies somewhat at 
variance as to dates may be found in F. B. Dexter, 
Biog. Sketches Grads. Yale Coll., vol. VI (1912) ; and 
Henry Barnard’s Am. Jour. Educ., Mar. i860. See also 
Am. Jour. Educ., Jan .-Feb. 1829; Autobiog. of Rev . 
Charles Nichols, a Series of Letters to his Grand¬ 
daughter (1881); J. J. Bums, Educ. Hist, of Ohio 
(1905); Alfred Holbrook, Reminiscences (1885) J 
Samuel Orcutt and Ambrose Beardsley, The Hist, of 
the Old Town of Derby, Conn. (1880 ); John S. Non¬ 
singer, Correspondence Schools, Lyceums, and Chau- 
tauquas (1926) ; Lynchburg Virginian, June 22, 1834; 
National Intelligencer (Washington, D. C.), June 23, 
i8 54 ~] D.C.K. 

HOLCOMB, AMASA (June 18, 1787-Feb. 
27, 1875) > instrument maker, descended from 
Thomas Holcomb who came to Dorchester, 
Mass., in 1630, was born at Granby, Conn, (now 
Southwick, Mass.), the son of Elijah and Lucy 
(Holcomb) Holcomb. Elijah Holcomb, a farm¬ 
er and cooper, was able to afford his son only the 
scantiest education in the common school, but 
the family came into possession of the extensive 
library of an uncle who was lost at sea, and 
Amasa with this help was able to gain a working 
knowledge of the mathematical sciences. He ap¬ 
plied himself so intensively that at fifteen he 
obtained the position of teacher in the district 
school at Suffield, Conn. Continuing his study of 
mathematics and astronomy, in which he was 
particularly interested, he observed the solar 


Holcomb 

eclipse in 1806, with apparatus of his own manu¬ 
facture, and a year or two later undertook the 
computation and publication of a series of alma¬ 
nacs. He subsequently took students into his 
home for instruction in advanced studies and for 
a time supplemented this work with surveying to 
gain a livelihood. To supply the needs of his stu¬ 
dents as well as to equip himself, he entered 
upon the making of compasses, dividers, scales, 
and other instruments as a business, and soon 
enjoyed more than a local reputation for the 
quality of his products. Some time after 1825 he 
began the manufacture of telescopes, first for his 
own and his students’ use, and later, as his repu¬ 
tation grew, for general sale. Up to this time 
most of the precision and optical apparatus in 
use in America was made in Europe, and of tele¬ 
scopes very few, if any, were of domestic manu¬ 
facture. In the American Journal of Science and 
Arts of January 1833, Prof. Benjamin Silliman 
of Yale announced that Holcomb was making 
spyglasses of every description, and achromatic 
and reflecting telescopes. These latter were of 
the type perfected by Sir William Herschel. 
They were from eight to twelve feet in focal 
length, and would “perform more than the im¬ 
ported instruments of the same prices.” Profes¬ 
sor Olmsted, also of Yale, lent his name to the 
announcement. In the same Journal for 1835, 
Silliman added that Holcomb had “prosecuted 
his enterprise with great diligence and ingenuity,” 
and had brought his instruments “to a degree of 
perfection, which enables them to sustain a very 
honorable comparison with the large telescopes 
imported from abroad.” The simple mounting 
was especially remarked. In the same year Hol¬ 
comb submitted two telescopes to the Franklin 
Institute of Philadelphia for examination. The 
committee on science and the arts reported them 
very favorably, commended the mounting, and 
recommended Holcomb for an award and medal 
from the John Scott legacy fund. The following 
year the same committee reported upon a tele¬ 
scope made by Holcomb for Delaware College. 
This instrument, which had a focal length of 
fourteen feet, was described as superior to any 
that Holcomb had hitherto made, and as having 
“every attribute of excellence which the best 
optical skill could give to an instrument of these 
dimensions” ( Journal of the Franklin Institute , 
November 1836, p. 312). With the introduction 
of the Daguerreotype, Holcomb experimented in 
photography and added cameras to the instru¬ 
ments which he made. He was active in public 
affairs, serving many terms after 1816 as a se¬ 
lectman and assessor of Southwick, Mass. In 
1832-33 he represented the town in the Massa- 


131 



Holcomb Holcombe 


chusetts House, and from 1834 until his death he 
served as justice of the peace for Hampden Coun¬ 
ty. Holcomb was married in November 1808 to 
Gillett Kendall, by whom he had seven children. 
After her death in 1861, he married Maria Hol¬ 
comb. He died at Southwick. 

[Jesse Seaver, “The Holcomb(e) Genealogy ,, (1925), 
mimeographed copy, in Lib. of Cong.; Am. Jour. Sci., 
Jan. 1833, Jan. 1835 l Jour, of The Franklin Inst., Sept. 
1834, July 1835, Aug. 1836, Nov. 1836; Frank Leslie's 
Chimney Corner, July 27, 1867.] F. A.T. 

HOLCOMB, SILAS ALEXANDER (Aug. 
25, 1858-Apr. 25, 1920), lawyer and Populist 
politician, was born in Gibson County, Ind., the 
son of John C. and Lucinda Reavis (Skelton) 
Holcomb. His early life was that of the normal 
farmer’s boy, involving hard work, especially in 
summer, and country or village school in winter. 
As a youth he taught school for four years, but he 
never realized his ambition to attend college, for 
in 1878 his father’s death left him the family 
breadwinner. The next year, accompanied by his 
mother and his brothers and sisters, he emigrated 
to Nebraska, settling on a farm in Hamilton 
County. In 1881 he began to read law with a 
Grand Island law firm, and in 1883 opened a 
law office of his own in Broken Bow. He was 
married on Apr. 13, 1882, to Alice Brinson of 
Mills County, Iowa. In the course of his prac¬ 
tice as a country lawyer his sympathy with the 
debt-ridden pioneer farmers developed rapidly, 
and in 1891 he was nominated and elected dis¬ 
trict judge on a third-party ticket. Two years 
later the Populist party, now strongly organized 
in the state, named him for the state supreme 
court; and in a lively three-cornered fight he 
demonstrated his ability as a public speaker and 
a vote-getter, although he lost the election. In 
1894 Populists and Democrats, brought together 
by their common devotion to the cause of free 
silver, made Holcomb their joint nominee for 
governor, and with the help of the normally Re¬ 
publican Omaha Daily Bee , he won a remarkable 
triumph, considering the fact that otherwise this 
was a distinctly Republican year. 

Nebraska, like other frontier states, was a 
debtor community. It had been developed almost 
entirely with capital borrowed in the East; and, 
afflicted now by low prices and crop failures, its 
people found their financial obligations exceed¬ 
ingly difficult to meet. Indeed, extremists among 
Holcomb’s supporters were not averse to schemes 
savoring of debt repudiation. Conservative busi¬ 
ness men in the state were much exercised, there¬ 
fore, lest the election of Holcomb should be in¬ 
terpreted as the beginning of a war on outside 
investors that would make future borrowing im¬ 
possible* When in 1896 the Fusionists were able 


to reelect him and to choose a legislature upon 
which he could depend for support, the anxiety 
of the business interest knew no bounds. As it 
turned out, however, Holcomb proved to be the 
conservative leader of a radical party. No legis¬ 
lation calculated to demoralize business was al¬ 
lowed to pass; but instead the administration of 
the state institutions and the state lands was 
greatly improved, dishonesty in the handling of 
the state’s finances was relentlessly prosecuted, 
and generally sounder financial policies were 
adopted. 

When Holcomb retired from office as gover¬ 
nor in 1899, he was promptly elected to the state 
supreme court, on which he served creditably for 
six years. He then resumed the practice of law, 
but in 1913 accepted appointment as member of 
the Board of Commissioners of State Institu¬ 
tions, a place which he held until 1920, when the 
failure of his health made it necessary for him to 
resign. With his powerful physique bent and 
broken by disease, he went to live with a daugh¬ 
ter in Bellingham, Wash., where he died shortly 
afterwards. 

[A. E. Sheldon, in Nebr. State Jour. (Lincoln), Apr. 
27, 1920; Albert Watkins, Hist, of Nebr., Ill (1913), 
540; messages to the legislature, Nebr. Senate Jour., 
1895, 1897, 1899 J T. W. Tipton, Forty Years of Nebr. 
(1902) ; “In Memoriam, Silas Alexander Holcomb/* 
104 Nebr. Reports; Who's Who in America, 1920-21.] 

J. D.H. 

HOLCOMBE, CHESTER (Oct. 16, 1844- 
Apr. 25, 1912), missionary and diplomat, a de¬ 
scendant of Thomas Holcomb who came to Dor¬ 
chester, Mass., in 1630, and the eldest son of the 
Rev. Chester Holcombe, a Presbyterian minis¬ 
ter, and Lucy (Tompkins) Holcombe, was bom 
in Winfield, N. Y. His father, born in Sand 
Lake, N. Y., served a number of churches in his 
native state. Young Chester’s mother, who had 
intended to be a foreign missionary and before 
his birth had consecrated her son to that career, 
taught him to look forward to it as his life work. 
He attended Union College, from which he was 
graduated at the early age of seventeen with Phi 
Beta Kappa honors. For several years after his 
graduation he taught in the high school at Troy, 
N. Y., in a normal school at Hartford, Conn., in 
Norwich, Conn., and in a normal school in 
Brooklyn, N. Y. In the meantime he read the¬ 
ology, and in 1867 was licensed to preach by the 
Presbytery of Lyons, N. Y. During 1868 he 
traveled in Georgia as a missionary of the Amer¬ 
ican Sunday School Union, and in that year was 
ordained. The year following with his wife, 
Olive Kate Sage, and his brother Gilbert, he 
sailed for China as a missionary of the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 
arriving in Peking in the spring. His brother 


I32 



I 


Holcombe 

did not long remain in China, but Chester Hol¬ 
combe continued in Peking, making one of his 
principal activities the conduct of a school for 
boys, and also doing some literary work in Chi¬ 
nese—preparing a mental arithmetic (1873) and' 
a life of Christ (1875). In 1871, though he still 
kept up his missionary work, he became an in¬ 
terpreter for the legation of the United States in 
Peking. In 1876, when Samuel Wells Williams 
[q.v.] retired from the secretaryship of the lega¬ 
tion, Holcombe resigned his position with the 
American Board and succeeded him, formally 
taking over duties which he had apparently been 
performing during Williams' frequent absences. 
He served as secretary of the legation until 1885, 
and three times during that period was charge 
d’affaires. He assisted in drafting the Amer- 
ican-Chinese treaty of 1880, which dealt with the 
question of Chinese immigration to the United 
States, and in negotiating the first American 
treaty with Korea, in 1882. While in Peking, he 
declined an appointment to the United States 
legation in Colombia. After retiring from the 
legation, he continued to devote much of his at¬ 
tention to China and Chinese affairs, at one time 
working out a project for a large Chinese gov¬ 
ernment loan (1896), and at another, detailed 
plans for the construction, financing, and man¬ 
aging of about three thousand miles of railway. 
He hoped for, but was disappointed in obtaining, 
appointment as American minister to China. Af¬ 
ter his return to America he eked out a some¬ 
what precarious living by dealing in Chinese 
curios, and by lecturing and writing on Chinese 
subjects. He was a Lowell Institute lecturer in 
1902. Among his numerous books were The 
Practical Effect of Confucianism upon the Chi¬ 
nese Nation (1882), A Catalogue and Handbook 
of Antique Chinese Porcelains (1890), The Real 
Chinaman (1895), and The Real Chinese Ques¬ 
tion (1899), revised and republished as China's 
Past and Future (1904). None of these was es¬ 
pecially notable or made any very great contri¬ 
bution to Western knowledge of China. In his 
last years Holcombe made his home at Rochester, 
N. Y. His first wife having died during his 
residence in Peking, he was married a second 
time. Mar. 21, 1906, to Alice Reeves. He had 
no children. 

[Jesse Seaver, “The Holcomb(e) Genealogy” (19^5), 
mimeographed copies in N. Y. Pub. Lib. and Lib. of 
Cong.; Ann. Reports of the Am . Board of Commission¬ 
ers of Foreign Missions, 1869-77 ; MSS. in files of the 
Am. Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; 
Who's Who in America, 1912-13; Congregationalism 
May 4, 1912; Union Alumni Bull., May 1912; Demo¬ 
crat and Chronicle (Rochester, N. Y.), Apr. 26, 1912; 
fetters from acquaintances and relatives.] K.S.L. 


Holcombe 

HOLCOMBE, HENRY (Sept. 22,1762-May 
22, 1824), Baptist minister, the son of Grimes 
and Elizabeth (Buzbee, or Busby) Holcombe, 
was born in Prince Edward County, Va., and 
died in Philadelphia. His ancestor, Andrew Hol¬ 
combe, came to Virginia from England by way 
of Barbados, and his father left Virginia and 
settled in South Carolina while Henry was still 
a boy. There, Henry later said of himself, "at 
eleven years of age he completed all the educa¬ 
tion he ever had from a living preceptor" (Camp¬ 
bell, post, p. 185). He enlisted early in the Revo¬ 
lutionary army and is said to have become an 
officer by the time he was twenty-one. About 
then he was converted to Baptist doctrines, and, 
failing in a search of the Bible undertaken with 
his father to find sanction for the baptism he had 
received as a child, he did not rest till he had 
been baptized again and given a license to preach. 
It is said that soon, mounted on horseback, he 
pronounced fervid homilies among his troops. In 
1785 he took charge of Pike Creek Church in 
South Carolina, the first of a series of small 
churches with which he was occupied for ten 
years. In April 1786 he married Frances Tan¬ 
ner of North Carolina, and a few months later 
baptized her, her brother, her mother, and his 
own father, who under the force of his son's 
argument had relinquished his Presbyterianism. 
In 1788, he was a member of the South Carolina 
convention which adopted the federal Constitu¬ 
tion. In 1795 he went to Savannah and for five 
years preached acceptably before a congregation 
so non-exclusively Baptist that the meeting¬ 
house, owned by Baptists, was rented to Presby¬ 
terians. After 1800, that inchoate state of affairs 
was remedied, the church was regularly consti¬ 
tuted, and he was able to preach to his own people 
exclusively. In 1800 the College of Rhode Island 
(Brown University) conferred upon him the de¬ 
gree of doctor of divinity. About that time he 
published an address designed to show that re¬ 
ligion and civic interest are not incompatible 
and, as if by way of illustrating his thesis, he 
founded in 1801 the Savannah Female Asylum, 
an orphanage, and launched schemes which re¬ 
sulted in ameliorating the state's penal code. He 
belligerently opposed deism and the theatre, but 
he conducted in Savannah a partly literary, part¬ 
ly religious magazine, the Georgia Analytical 
Repository, and he was instrumental in estab¬ 
lishing and sustaining near Augusta a school 
called the Mount Enon Academy. Many of the 
Baptists "entertained a prejudice against edu¬ 
cation and took no interest in institutions of 
learning except to oppose them" (R. J. Massey 
in Northen, post, 1 ,165), and when ill health in 


133 



Holcombe Holcombe 


1810 incapacitated the tutelary genius of all these 
works, they spontaneously collapsed. In the 
meantime, he had published A Sermon on Isaiah 
liiij 1 , containing a Brief Illustration and De¬ 
fence of the Doctrines Commonly Called Calvin- 
istic (1791), and A Sermon Occasioned by the 
Death of Lieutenant General George Washing¬ 
ton (1800). Three pastorates awaited him when 
he had recovered his health, one in Beaufort, one 
in Boston, and one in Philadelphia. Choosing 
Philadelphia, he settled there in 1812. The rest 
of his career was less active. He published The 
First Fruits (1812) and The Whole Truth Rela¬ 
tive to the Controversy betwixt the American 
Baptists (1820); and he distressed many who 
were anxious to admire him by his reputed an¬ 
tipathy to foreign missions and by his avowed 
antipathy, from 1822 onward, toward the whole 
principle of war, which he could not believe was 
Christian. 

[J. H. Campbell, Ga. Baptists (1874) ; W. J. North¬ 
ern, Men of Mark in Ga. } vol. I (1907) ; W. B. Sprague, 
Annals Am. Pulpit , vol. VI (i860) ; Hist. Cat. Brown 
Univ. 1764-1894 (1895) ; Jesse Seaver, “The Hol¬ 
comb (e) Genealogy" (1925), mimeographed, in Lib. of 
Cong.; Poulson’s Am. Daily Advertiser , May 24, 1824.] 

J.D.W. 

HOLCOMBE, JAMES PHILEMON (Sept. 
20, 1820-Aug. 22, 1873), lawyer, Confederate 
agent, educator, brother of William Henry Hol¬ 
combe [g.t/.], belonged to an intellectual Virginia 
family. His great-grandfather, Philemon, grand¬ 
son of Andrew Holcombe who was transported 
from England to Barbados for his part in Mon¬ 
mouth’s Rebellion, aided in the founding of the 
academy which became Hampden-Sidney Col¬ 
lege ; his grandfather, also Philemon, was a ma¬ 
jor on the staff of Lafayette in the Virginia cam¬ 
paign, and in the War of 1812 was commissioned 
lieutenant-colonel; his father, Dr. William James 
Holcombe, graduated in medicine at Philadelphia 
in 1818 and married Ann Eliza Clopton the fol¬ 
lowing year. He later freed all his slaves, aiding 
the emigration of several to Liberia, and, remov¬ 
ing to free soil, settled in Indiana in 1843. James 
Philemon, the eldest of six sons, was bom in 
Powhatan County, Va. For a time his studies 
were guided by John Cary, a noted teacher of 
that day; in 1837-38 he was registered as a 
sophomore at Yale, and the following September 
registered at the University of Virginia, but ap¬ 
parently did not complete the work for a degree. 
On Nov. 4,1841, he married Anne Selden Watts, 
daughter of Col. Edward and Elizabeth (Breck¬ 
inridge) Watts. For a short time he practised 
law at Fincastle, Va., near the Breckinridge an¬ 
cestral home. About 1844 he went to Cincinnati, 
where he published, among other works on legal 
subjects. An Introduction to Equity Juris¬ 


prudence , on the Basis of Story’s Commentaries 
(1846); A Selection of Leading Cases upon 
Commercial Law (1847) ; Digest of the Dicisions 
of the Supreme Court of the United States from 
Its Organization to the Present Time (1848); 
The Merchants 3 Book of Reference for Debtor 
and Creditor , in the United States and Canada 
(1848); and, with W. Y. Gholson [q.vf], an 
edition of John William Smith’s Compendium 
of Mercantile Law (1850). While at Cincinnati 
he became an earnest student of Swedenborg. 
Removing to Alexandria, Va., to use the nearby 
Library of Congress in further professional writ¬ 
ing, he was elected (1851) to join Prof. John B. 
Minor [q.v.] as adjunct professor of law at the 
University of Virginia. In 1854 he was made 
full professor. 

Meantime he had become a stanch defender of 
state rights. Among his published addresses of 
this period were: Sketches of the Political Issues 
and Controversies of the Revolution (1856); An 
Address Delivered before the Seventh Annual 
Meeting of the Virginia State Agricultural So¬ 
ciety (1858), “on the Right of the State to In¬ 
stitute Slavery”; and The Election of a Black 
Republican President an Overt Act of Aggres¬ 
sion on the Right of Property in Slaves (i860). 
Although he was a secessionist, he was one of 
the first to propose a conference of representa¬ 
tives of each section with a view to settlement 
without war. Early in 1861 he resigned his pro¬ 
fessorship to become a candidate for the Virginia 
secession convention and was elected. He was 
an accomplished orator, and his brilliant speeches 
exerted considerable influence in bringing about 
the withdrawal of the state from the Union. He 
was one of the signers (Apr. 24) of the conven¬ 
tion between Virginia and the Confederacy. 
Later he was elected to the Confederate Congress, 
and served from Feb. 20, 1862, to Feb. 13, 1864. 

On Feb. 19, 1864, he was accredited by Presi¬ 
dent Davis as special commissioner to the North 
American colonies of Great Britain, with in¬ 
structions to go to Nova Scotia to defend the 
men who without Confederate commissions had 
captured the United States vessel Chesapeake on 
the high seas, and to claim the vessel as a Con¬ 
federate prize—instructions which were with¬ 
drawn on Apr. 20. Arriving at Halifax near the 
close of March, he found the case had been de¬ 
cided, but while there he enjoyed the hospitality 
of colonial sympathizers with the South. From 
Halifax he went to Upper Canada to join 
Clement Claiborne Clay and Jacob Thompson 
[qq.v.’], Confederate secret agents. At Niagara 
in July he cooperated with Clay in opening with 
the unsuspecting Horace Greeley [q.vl] an unau- 


*34 



Holcombe 


Holcombe 


thorized correspondence, apparently looking to¬ 
ward peace negotiations but really designed to 
foster the Northern anti-Administration move¬ 
ment and to aid Confederate efforts to secure 
foreign recognition. After his return from Can¬ 
ada and the reelection of Lincoln, Holcombe 
made a report to Secretary Benjamin (Nov. 16), 
advising further encouragement of disaffection 
in the North and the use of money and talent 
without stint with the hope of promoting anarchy 
and the separation of the Northwest from the 
United States (Pickett Papers, Library of Con¬ 
gress: New York Herald, July 31, 1872). 

On Jan. 2, 1863, seeking to benefit his health 
and desiring to provide a home and employment 
for valuable slaves which his wife had inherited, 
he had purchased a farm of 600 acres at Bellevue, 
Bedford County. Settling here at the close of 
the war, he edited Literature in Letters, a vol¬ 
ume of selections which was published in 1866, 
and in that year opened a private school which 
attracted students from prominent Southern 
families. The attendance increased from forty- 
three students in 1866-67 to 101 in 1869-70, but 
decreased thereafter because of Holcombe’s fail¬ 
ing health and his natural ineptitude for business. 
He died at Capon Springs, W. Va., and was 
buried in the Presbyterian cemetery, Lynchburg, 
Va, beside his parents. He was survived by his 
wife and six children. 


[Alumni Bull., Univ. of Va., Feb. 1897; J. S. Patton, 
Jefferson, Cabell, and the Univ. of Va. (1906) ; P. A. 
Bruce, Hist, of the Univ. of Va., vol. Ill (1921); J°nr. 
of the Acts and Proc. of a Gen. Conv. of the State of 
Va. . . . 1861 (1861); Jour, of the Cong, of the C. S. 
A., 1861-65 (1904-05), vols. I, III, V, VI; J. D, Rich¬ 
ardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of 
the Confederacy (1905), vol. II; J. M. Callahan, The 
Diplomatic Hist, of the Southern Confederacy (1901); 
J. W. Headley, Confed. Operations in Canada and N. Y. 
(1906); Confed. diplomatic correspondence in the 
Pickett Papers, Lib. of Cong.; M. C. Cabell, Sketches 
and Recollections of Lynchburg (1858) ; Jesse Seaver, 
“The Holcomb(e) Genealogy” (1925), mimeographed 
copy in Lib. of Cong.; certain information from mem¬ 
bers of the Holcombe family.] , J. M. C. 


tered the medical department of the University 
of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 
1847. He remained with his father for three 
years, and then removed to Cincinnati, where he 
practised from 1850 to 1852. During this pe¬ 
riod he observed the excellent results of home¬ 
opathy in the treatment of cholera and became 
a convert to that system of therapeutics. In 
1852 he married Rebecca Palmer and settled in 
Natchez, Miss., where he was associated in prac¬ 
tice with Dr. F. A. W. Davis. In 1853, he and 
Dr. Davis were appointed to the staff of the Mis¬ 
sissippi State Hospital. Their appointment en¬ 
countered such a storm of indignation on the 
part of the general medical profession that the 
state legislature investigated the action of the 
trustees, which was approved when it was shown 
that they had proceeded because of the supe¬ 
rior results obtained by the homeopathists Davis 
and Holcombe in the yellow-fever epidemics 
and in other diseases. In 1855 Holcombe re¬ 
moved to Waterproof, La., but in 1862 returned 
to Natchez and two years later settled in New 
Orleans which was his home thereafter. Al¬ 
though his parents had been pronounced expo¬ 
nents of emancipation, he came to believe in 
negro slavery as a just and necessary institution. 
After the election of Lincoln he published a pam¬ 
phlet, The Alternative: A Separate Nationality, 
or the Africanization of the South (i860), in 
which he advocated the secession, peaceably if 
possible, of the Cotton States. 

As a medical man, Holcombe’s national repu¬ 
tation was gained through his large experience 
and great success in the management of yellow- 
fever epidemics, which were altogether too fre¬ 
quent and widespread in those days. One of his 
most significant writings on this subject ap¬ 
peared in the Special Report of the Homeo¬ 
pathic Yellow Fever Commission, of which he 
was chairman, formed under the auspices of the 
American Institute of Homeopathy. The report 


HOLCOMBE, WILLIAM HENRY (May 
29,1825-Nov. 28,1893), homeopathic physician, 
author, was born at Lynchburg, Va., third son 
of Dr. William James Holcombe and Ann Eliza 
(Clopton) Holcombe, and brother of James 
Philemon Holcombe [q.vJ]. His early educa¬ 
tion was obtained at Washington College, now 
Washington and Lee University. He had just 
prepared to enter the junior class at Yale when 
his parents liberated their slaves and rejected a 
large property in slaves left them by a childless 
uncle. This procedure, so contrary to local pub¬ 
lic sentiment, forced the removal of the family 
to Indiana. Holcombe at once prepared himself 
in his father’s office to study medicine and en¬ 


was presented to Congress in 1879 and published 
the same year. In 1874, at Niagara Falls, Hol¬ 
combe was elected to the presidency of the Amer¬ 
ican Institute of Homeopathy, but illness pre¬ 
vented him from serving at the session of 1875. 
His medical writings include: The Scientific 
Basis of Homoeopathy (1852), On the Nature 
and Limitations of the Homoeopathic Law 
(1858), What is Homoeopathy (1864), and How 
1 Became a Homoeopath (1869). 

In addition to his professional interests, he 
was active in the study of Swedenborgianism, to 
which he had become a convert in 1852, He pub¬ 
lished Our Children in Heaven (1868), The 
Sexes Here and Hereafter (1869), and The 





Holden 

Other Life (1869), all of which passed through 
many editions and were reprinted in England; 
The End of the World, with New Interpreta¬ 
tions of History (1881) ; Aphorisms of the New 
Life (1883); Letters on Spiritual Subjects 
(1885) ; Helps to Spiritual Growth (1886) ; and 
Condensed Thoughts about Christian Science 
(1887). In the field of general literature he pub¬ 
lished Poems (i860) ; Southern Voices (1872), 
another volume of verse, which was translated 
into German; Song Novels (1873) ; and A Mys¬ 
tery of New Orleans; Solved by New Methods 
(1890). He died in 1893 at the residence of his 
son-in-law, in New Orleans. 

[T. L. Bradford, “Biographies of Homeopathic Phy¬ 
sicians,” vol. XVI, in Lib. of Hahnemann Medic. Coll., 
Phila.; Trans. Am. Inst, of Homeopathy , 1894; U. S. 
Medic . Jour., Jan. 1894; T. L. Bradford, Homeopathic 
Bibliog. of the U. S. (1892) ; Jesse Seaver, “The Hol- 
comb(e) Genealogy” (1925), mimeographed copy in 
Lib. of Cong.; Times-Democrat (New Orleans), Nov. 
29,1893.] C.B. 

HOLDEN, EDWARD SINGLETON (Nov. 
5, 1846-Mar. 16, 1914), astronomer, librarian, 
descended from Justinian Holden who came with 
his brother Richard from England to America in 
1634 and died at Cambridge, Mass., in 1691, was 
born in St. Louis, Mo. His parents were Ed¬ 
ward (originally Jeremiah Fenno) Holden and 
Sarah Frances (Singleton) Holden. After the 
death of his mother when he was three years old 
he lived with relatives in Cambridge, Mass., 
where he attended private schools. He was ac¬ 
customed to say that his interest in astronomy 
was aroused during visits to the Harvard Col¬ 
lege Observatory where his cousin, George P. 
Bond [q.z/.], was an observer. In 1860-62 he 
was a student at the Academy of Washington 
University, St. Louis, and he graduated with the 
degree of B.S. at Washington University in 
1866. He had studied under Prof. William 
Chauvenet [g.y.] in whose family he lived dur¬ 
ing a part of his college career. 

Entering West Point in 1866, he graduated 
third in his class in 1870. On May 8, 1871, he 
married Mary Chauvenet During the year fol¬ 
lowing he was second lieutenant in the 4th Artil¬ 
lery; then for two years he was an instructor in 
the Military Academy. In 1872 he published a 
treatise on The Bastion System of Fortifications, 
Its Defects and Their Remedies . In March 1873 
he resigned his commission and accepted a posi¬ 
tion at the Naval Observatory, where he was as¬ 
signed to the transit circle as assistant to Wil¬ 
liam Harkness [g.z>.]. After the completion of 
the 26-inch refractor in November 1873 he was 
transferred to this instrument to assist Simon 
Newcomb [q.vf]. The material for Holden’s 
Monograph on the Central Parts of the Nebula 


Holden 

of Orion (1882) was gathered during this pe- 
riod. In 1876 he was sent by the government to 
London to study and report on possible improve¬ 
ments in the instrumental equipment of the Ob¬ 
servatory. In 1879, he was relieved, in part, 
from technical duty and appointed librarian, a 
position for which he was admirably fitted by his 
great familiarity with astronomical literature. 
Besides cataloguing the library, he prepared bib¬ 
liographies of special subjects, wrote annual re¬ 
ports of the progress of astronomy, and popular 
articles; with Newcomb, wrote Astronomy for 
High Schools and Colleges (1879), and pub¬ 
lished Sir William Herschel, His Life and Works 
(1881). In 1881 he resigned his post to become 
director of the Washburn Observatory at the 
University of Wisconsin. Here he instituted the 
series of Publications of the observatory, and is¬ 
sued the first four volumes, which contain his 
observations and discussions. He was placed in 
charge of the expedition organized by the Na¬ 
tional Academy of Sciences to observe the solar 
eclipse of May 6, 1883, in the Caroline Islands, 
and his report has always been regarded as a 
model in form and completeness. 

Newcomb and Holden had sketched out plans 
for the Lick Observatory in 1874 and during the 
following years had given freely of their counsel. 
Holden made several trips to Mount Hamilton, 
and as early as 1877 had been selected as the fu¬ 
ture director. In 1885 he was elected president 
of the University of California and director of 
the Lick Observatory, to serve in the former ca¬ 
pacity until the observatory was completed. He 
assumed active charge of the observatory on 
June 1, 1888. Here he at once showed remark¬ 
able judgment by associating with himself 
younger men whom he regarded as promising— 
E. E. Barnard, J. M. Schaeberle, James E. 
Keeler [qq.v.], and W. W. Campbell. S. W. 
Burnham [g.z/.] was older, with a well-estab¬ 
lished reputation. ‘These men were assigned to 
carefully selected lines of research and given 
great liberty of action and the privilege of pub¬ 
lishing over their own signatures. Newcomb 
said, “I know of no example in the world in 
which young men, most of whom were begin-, 
ners, attained such success as did those whom 
Holden collected around him” ( Reminiscences 
of an Astronomer, 1903, p. 190), “The evidences 
of Professor Holden’s organizing ability and 
energy are written all over the Lick Observa¬ 
tory,” says Dr. Campbell (post, p. 353 )- He 
edited three volumes of the Publications and five 
of the Contributions of the observatory; sent out 
five eclipse expeditions; founded the Astronom¬ 
ical Society of the Pacific and solicited money 


136 



Holden 

to provide medals to be bestowed by the Society. 
During his administration the photographic cor¬ 
recting lens for the 36-inch telescope, the D. 0 . 
Mills spectrograph, and the Crossley reflector 
were all secured and installed, and an electric 
plant was built. What little time was left from 
his administrative duties for personal research 
was devoted largely to the photography of the 
moon. After his resignation in 1897 he spent 
four years in literary work. In 1901 he pre¬ 
pared for publication the fourth volume of Cul- 
lum’s Biographical Register of the Officers and 
Graduates of the United States Military Acad¬ 
emy, and from November of that year until his 
death he was librarian of the Military Academy. 
Some 30,000 volumes were added, the library 
catalogued, and complete bibliographies pre¬ 
pared on every military subject. In 1902 he pub¬ 
lished a Centennial History of the United States 
Military Academy . His interests were very wide 
and during his career he wrote on many subjects. 
“His conversation was entertaining to the point 
of brilliancy,” says Campbell; “his hearers did 
not always agree with his point of view, which 
he defended with vigor and skill, but no one 
could be found to deny that Professor Holden 
had made the subject seem alive” {post, p. 357). 

[W. W. Campbell, in Nat. Acad. Sci. Biog. Memoirs, 
vol. VIII (1919) ; Proc. Am. Acad. Arts and Sci., vol. 
LI (1916) ; Astron. Soc. Pacific Pubs., vol. XXVI 
(1914) ; Forty-sixth Ann. Reunion, Asso. Grads. U. S. 
Mil. Acad. (1915) ; Who's Who in America, 1912-13; 
Eben Putnam, The Holden Geneal . (2 vols., 1923-26) ; 
N. Y. Times, Mar. 17, 1914.] R. S.D. 

HOLDEN, LIBERTY EMERY (June 20, 
1833-Aug. 26, 1913), financier, journalist, was 
bom in Raymond, Me., the son of Liberty and 
Sarah Cox (Stearns) Holden; and the eldest of 
their eleven children. Both his parents were de¬ 
scended from Puritan immigrants who settled at 
Watertown, Mass., his father, from Richard 
Holden of Suffolk, England, who came to Amer¬ 
ica in 1634. Young Holden’s early life was cast 
in a rugged region, where the inhabitants were 
of necessity hardy, independent, and adventur¬ 
ous. The lessons in thrift learned in his New 
England home never left him. He attended the 
district school, and an academy at Bethel, Me. 
At sixteen he began teaching school, in order to 
enter college. By teaching, doing odd jobs, and 
practising the utmost economy he obtained his 
college education at Waterville College (Colby) 
and at the University of Michigan, where he re¬ 
ceived the degree of A.B. in 1858, and that of 
A.M. in 1861. He started out in life as an edu¬ 
cator, becoming assistant professor of English 
and history at Kalamazoo College in 1858 and 
serving as superintendent of schools at Tiffin, 


Holden 

Ohio, from 1861 to 1862. At Kalamazoo, Aug. 
14, i860, he married Delia Elizabeth Bulkley, 
daughter of Henry G. Bulkley. 

He escaped from his first profession through 
studying law, first by himself, and later in a 
Cleveland law office. He was admitted to the 
bar but never entered upon the practice of law. 
In Cleveland he rapidly developed a successful 
real-estate business, and steadily extended his 
business connections. In 1873 he became inter¬ 
ested in iron mines in the Lake Superior region; 
the following year, in Utah silver mines. In 1876 
he removed to Utah. While a resident there he 
founded the Salt Lake Academy. Four years 
later he returned to Cleveland. In 1884 he pur¬ 
chased the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the fol¬ 
lowing year the Cleveland Herald, and combined 
them in the morning and evening editions of the 
Plain Dealer . A partial explanation of his news¬ 
paper ventures was revealed when the editorial 
columns of the Plain Dealer espoused the cause 
of free silver. He was the first chairman of the 
executive committee of the National Bimetallic 
League and it was under his direction that much 
of its literature was prepared. President Cleve¬ 
land’s free-trade message alarmed him, and his 
only published address, delivered before the 
workingmen of Cleveland, Feb. 17,1888, was an 
attempt to show from history the failure of the 
free-trade policy. This address was published 
by the Cleveland Leader, the rival Republican 
newspaper. Holden was a shrewd and far-see¬ 
ing business man, and amassed a fortune from 
silver mines, the Hollenden Hotel in Cleveland, 
and the Plain Dealer Company. The last-named 
became in time the most fortunate financial en¬ 
terprise. His only qualifications for a success¬ 
ful newspaper man were ability to select able 
executives and courage and vision to support 
them through dark days. During his later years 
public interests absorbed his attention. He was 
a delegate at large to the Democratic National 
Conventions in 1888 and in 1896. His chief pub¬ 
lic service was as a member of the Cleveland 
Park Commission which planned the city’s park 
and boulevard system. His homestead of forty- 
three acres adjacent to Wade Park was pur¬ 
chased for the Case School of Applied Science 
and Western Reserve University. He was one 
of the founders, a trustee, and president (1901- 
07) of the Western Reserve Historical Society, 
chairman of the building committee of the Cleve¬ 
land Museum of Art, and a trustee of Western 
Reserve University, to which he left a consider¬ 
able portion of his estate. Contradictory senti¬ 
ments and emotions made his personality an 


137 



Holden Holden 


enigma to his associates; but pluck and perse¬ 
verance were his outstanding traits. 

[Eben Putnam, The Holden Genealogy (2 vols., 
1923-26); C. E. Kennedy, Fifty Years of Cleveland 
(copr. 1925) ; Western Reserve Hist. Soc., Tract No. 
94, Nov. 1914; Who's Who in America, 1912-13; 
Cleveland Plain Dealer, Aug. 27, 1913.] E.J. B. 

HOLDEN, OLIVER (Sept. 18,1765-Sept. 4, 
1844), carpenter, minister, musician—the com¬ 
poser of the tune “Coronation,” was the fourth of 
the six children of Nehemiah and Elizabeth Hol¬ 
den and was born at Shirley, Mass. He was de¬ 
scended from Richard Holden who emigrated 
from Suffolk, England, to America in 1634. For 
a year (1782-83) he served as a marine on a 
frigate first called the Dean, and later the Hague . 
This vessel sailed for the West Indies in August 
1782 and captured a British prize, which was 
sent back to Boston with a prize crew of which 
he was a member. On account of this service he 
was granted a pension on Feb. 16, 1836, at the 
rate of forty dollars per annum. About 1787 he 
moved to Charlestown, Mass., which had been 
burned by the British during the war, and as a 
carpenter helped to rebuild it. His extensive pur¬ 
chases of land in the town began in 1787 and the 
number of his tradings exceeds that of any other 
resident of the town in his day. He also owned 
land in Hillsboro, N. H. When Washington 
visited Boston in 1789, he was greeted at the 
old State House by a chorus of men who sang 
under the leadership of Holden the “Ode to Co¬ 
lumbia’s Favorite Son,” and on the last day of 
the year 1799, when services were held in the 
church in Charlestown in memory of the re¬ 
cently deceased George Washington, the music 
was directed by this same leader. Holden was 
married to Nancy Rand on May 12, 1791, and 
had six children. His mansion, built about 1800, 
stood at the head of Salem Street, and later came 
to be used by the city of Boston as a kindergarten 
known as the Oliver Holden School. Holden 
was a justice of the peace, was one of the in¬ 
corporators of the Andover turnpike in 1805, an d 
in 1836 urged the annexation of Charlestown to 
the city of Boston, an event which did not take 
place, however, until 1875. He was admitted as 
a Freemason to King Solomon’s Lodge in 1795 
and served as an active member for ten years, 
after which he took an honorary status. Many 
stories are told in the records of the Lodge of the 
entertainments which he contributed. He kept 
a music store and taught music for many years. 
He connected himself first with the Congrega¬ 
tional Church, then later with one known as the 
Puritan Church, which worshipped in a building 
erected by himself on land which he had given, 
and in which he officiated as preacher throughout 


its entire existence. The services of this body 
were simple, the communion was administered 
every Sunday, and the Bible was taken as the 
only necessary rule for religious or civil life. He 
represented Charlestown in the state House of 
Representatives in 1818, 1825, 1826, and from 
1828 to 1833. He was both a writer of hymns 
and a composer of music and is known to have 
written at least twenty-one hymns which ap¬ 
peared over the initial “H” in a small book pub¬ 
lished in Boston before 1808. The one in most 
common use begins, “All those who seek a throne 
of grace,” although it is more frequently changed 
to begin, “They who seek a throne of grace.” 
The tune “Coronation,” by far his best-known 
hymn, was first published in Volume I of his 
Union Harmony (1793) which contains in its 
two volumes forty of his tunes. In addition to 
this work he contributed the following books— 
though not all bore his name—to the literature 
of music: The American Harmony (1792); The 
Massachusetts Compiler (1795), with Hans 
Gram and Samuel Holyoke; The Worcester Col¬ 
lection (1797); Sacred Dirges, Hymns and An¬ 
thems (1800); Modern Collection of Sacred 
Music (1800); PlainPsalmody (1800) ; Charles¬ 
town Collection of Sacred Songs (1803); Vo¬ 
cal Companion (1807) ; and Occasional Pieces 
(n.d.). 

[Seth Chandler, Hist, of Shirley, Mass. (1883) ; Vi¬ 
tal Records of Shirley, Mass. (1918); T. T. Sawyer, 
Old Charlestown (1902) ; T. B. Wyman, Charlestown 
Geneals. and Estates (1879) J Mass. Soldiers and Sail¬ 
ors of the Revolutionary War, vol. VIII (1901); Eben 
Putnam, Holden Geneal. (1923); F. 0 . Rand, A Geneal. 
of the Rand Family in the U.S. (1898); J. T. Howard, 
Our Am. Music (1930) ; O. G. T. Sonneck, Early Con¬ 
cert Life in America (1906); Frank J. Metcalf, Am. 
Psalmody (1917), and Am. Writers and Compilers of 
Sacred Music (1925) ; A Diet, of Hymnology (1891), 
ed. by John Julian; The Diary of Wm. Bentley, D.D., 
vol. II (1907); Boston Transcript, Sept. 4, 1844.] 

F.J.M. 

HOLDEN, WILLIAM WOODS (Nov. 24, 
1818-Mar. 1, 1892), political journalist, gov¬ 
ernor of North Carolina, was born in Orange 
County, N. C. Ambitious from childhood, he 
made good use of his limited educational oppor¬ 
tunities, and when he was ten became printer’s 
devil to Dennis Heartt, editor of the Hillsboro 
Recorder, with whom he stayed for six years. 
After a year of newspaper work in Milton, N. C., 
and Danville, Va., he returned to Hillsboro as a 
clerk. In 1837 he went to Raleigh where he 
worked on the Star, the leading Whig paper, 
studying law during his scanty leisure. His po¬ 
litical writing attracted attention, and in 1843 
he was offered the North Carolina Standard, the 
leading Democratic paper, on condition that he 
become a Democrat. He accepted and began en¬ 
thusiastically the work of inspiring a minority 


138 



Holden 

party. The Whigs reviled him as a turncoat and 
traitor, but the Democrats soon regarded him as 
a gift from heaven. A fighter and an intuitive 
and masterly politician, he led them to victory 
and made the Standard more powerful than any 
other newspaper has ever been in North Caro¬ 
lina. During these years he preached editorially 
the most advanced secession doctrine. In 1858 
he was a candidate for the gubernatorial nomina¬ 
tion, but was defeated by John Willis Ellis \_q.v .], 
chiefly through the efforts of former Whigs. 
Embittered by this disappointment and by his 
defeat for the Senate in the following legisla¬ 
ture, he drifted away from his old party asso¬ 
ciates until in i860 he was out of accord with 
them on state issues and wavering with respect 
to state rights between advanced secessionist and 
pure nationalistic doctrine. 

He was a delegate to the Charleston and Balti¬ 
more conventions and refused to withdraw from 
the latter. In the campaign he supported Breck¬ 
inridge, though his heart was probably with 
Douglas, and after Lincoln’s election, favoring 
a “watch and wait” policy, he was elected a 
Union delegate to the convention which the peo¬ 
ple rejected. He was also elected to the seces¬ 
sion convention, where he voted for secession and 
pledged “the last man and the last dollar” to the 
Southern cause. Rapidly cooling towards the 
war, he aided in the establishment of a conserva¬ 
tive party. He supported Z. B. Vance [q.v.] for 
governor in 1862, believing undoubtedly that he 
would himself control the administration and 
bring about a breach with the Confederate gov¬ 
ernment. When he discovered his mistake, he 
broke with Vance, and in the summer of 1863 
was the leading figure in the peace movement. 
As a result, a Georgia regiment destroyed his 
press and his friends retaliated by similar injury 
to the administration organ. In February 1864, 
immediately after the suspension of the writ of 
habeas corpus, he suspended the Standard for 
several months. In May he announced his can¬ 
didacy for governor with no platform but a gen¬ 
eral understanding that his election would re¬ 
sult either in a convention to secede from the 
Confederacy, or in direct negotiation with the 
Federal government. He was defeated and re¬ 
mained quiet until May 1865, when President 
Johnson made him provisional governor. Since 
Holden had played fast and loose with parties, 
men, and principles, few had any confidence in 
him. He used his official power for personal 
ends, to punish old enemies, reward new friends, 
or stifle opposition, and in consequence he was 
defeated at the November election. Once more 
he shifted position, and, cooling from his fervid 


Holden 

support of the President, favored the adoption of 
the Fourteenth Amendment. In the spring of 
1866 the President appointed him minister to 
San Salvador, but the Senate refused confirma¬ 
tion. Increasingly bitter, he now advocated rig¬ 
orous punishment of the “rebels,” and urged that 
Congress control reconstruction. The Four¬ 
teenth Amendment soon seemed too lenient, and 
in the winter of 1866-67 he spent much time in 
Washington advising radical leaders and work¬ 
ing for the overthrow of the state government. 
In 1865 he had opposed the liberal policy adopted 
by the legislature towards the freedmen, but on 
Jan. 1, 1867, addressing the negroes in Raleigh, 
he advocated unrestricted negro suffrage. He 
early won the favor of the Carpet-bagger element 
which flattered and entirely controlled him. 
Elected governor in 1868, he began a highly 
partisan administration which was characterized 
by the most brazen corruption, extravagance, 
and incompetency. No one charged him with 
personal financial profit, but he screened and 
protected the guilty. The cause which he up¬ 
held was soon doomed. The legislature of 1870, 
at his urgent insistence, passed a number of acts 
directed against the Ku Klux, one of which au¬ 
thorized him to proclaim any county in a state 
of insurrection and to use the militia to suppress 
the uprising. In March he declared Alamance 
in insurrection; in June, with an election ap¬ 
proaching and every indication pointing to a 
Democratic victory, following the advice of Sen¬ 
ator John Pool and assured of aid from Presi¬ 
dent Grant, he planned to raise two regiments 
of state troops with which to suppress the oppo¬ 
sition and carry the election. In July he pro¬ 
claimed Caswell County in insurrection. George 
W. Kirk, a noted Tennessee bushwhacker in 
command of one illegally recruited regiment, oc¬ 
cupied both Caswell and Alamance, arresting a 
number of peaceful citizens and treating them 
with great brutality. By Holden’s personal or¬ 
der Josiah Turner, editor of the Sentinel, the 
leading Democratic paper, was arrested outside 
the insurrectionary area. When Kirk, under 
Holden’s order, refused to obey the writ of 
habeas corpus. Chief Justice Pearson declared 
the power of the judiciary exhausted. Civil war 
was impending when Judge George W. Brooks 
of the federal district court issued the writ and 
discharged the prisoners, the President declin¬ 
ing to interfere. Meantime the Democrats had 
swept the state in the election. The state troops 
dispersed and the House of Representatives im¬ 
peached Holden, presenting eight articles against 
him, on six of which he was convicted. He was 


139 



Holder 

removed and forever disqualified from holding 
office. 

Going to Washington, where he failed to se¬ 
cure federal aid, he became one of the editors of 
the Daily Morning Chronicle (Republican). In 
1872 Grant appointed him minister to Peru, but 
he declined, and becoming postmaster of Raleigh 
in 1873, held the place until 1881. Holden was 
twice married: first, in 1841, to Ann Augusta 
Young, and second, to Louisa Virginia Harri¬ 
son, both of Raleigh. In personal intercourse he 
was kindly, generous, and charitable. 

[Memoirs of W. W. Holden (1911), ed. by W. K. 
Boyd; “William W. Holden” in Trinity Coll. Hist. Soc. 
Ann . Pub . of Hist. Papers, vol. Ill (1899); S. A. Ashe, 
Biog. Hist . of N. C. t vol. Ill (1905) ; The Correspond¬ 
ence of Jonathan Worth (2 vols., 1909) and The Papers 
of Thos. Ruffin (2 vols., 1918), both ed. by J. G. deR. 
Hamilton; Hamilton, “Reconstruction in North Caro¬ 
lina,” in Columbia Univ. Studies in Hist., Econ., and 
Pub . Law, vol. LVIII (1914) ; Journal of the Conven¬ 
tion of the People of N. C. . 1861 (1862) ; Trial of 
Wm. W. Holden, Gov. of N. C. (3 vols., 1871) ; files 
of the N. C. Standard; News and Observer (Raleigh), 
Mar. 2,1892.] J. G. deR. H. 

HOLDER, CHARLES FREDERICK 

(Aug. 5,1851-Oct. 10, 1915), naturalist, sports¬ 
man, came of a line of Quakers, being a descend¬ 
ant of Christopher Holder, one of the early Quak¬ 
ers of Massachusetts. Born in Lynn, Mass., he 
was the son of Joseph Bassett Holder [ q.v .] and 
his wife Emily Augusta (Gove) Holder. Hav¬ 
ing received his preliminary education at the 
Friends* School, Providence, R. I., Allen’s 
School, West Newton, Mass., and from private 
tutors, he entered the United States Naval Acad¬ 
emy with the class of 1869 but did not graduate. 
After a period of service (1871-75) at the Amer¬ 
ican Museum of Natural History as assistant 
curator of zoology, he gave his entire time to 
writing on natural-history subjects. A good ob¬ 
server, he had a keen relish for making the lives 
of all kinds of animals understandable to the gen¬ 
eral public. Both his magazine articles and his 
books were designed to popularize the science of 
zoology and to develop interest in all branches 
of the animal world. The titles Marvels of Ani¬ 
mal Life (1885), Living Lights (1887), A 
Strange Company (1888), Stories of Animal 
Life (1899), “Crabs and Insects,” “Fishes and 
Reptiles,” and many others of a similar nature 
show his bent. Sometimes the appeal was made 
to juveniles through such publications as Saint 
Nicholas and the Youth 3 s Companion . His two 
books in the Leaders in Science Series, Charles 
Darwin: His Life and Work (1891) and Louis 
Agassis: His Life and Work (1893), were con¬ 
scientiously and happily done, and were influen¬ 
tial in giving the general public an appreciation 
of the life and labors of a scientist. On Nov. 8, 


Holder 

1879, he married Sarah Elizabeth Ufford of 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Leaving New York City, long his home, in 
1885, he migrated to California and resided dur¬ 
ing the remainder of his life at Pasadena. 
Through the Valley Hunt Club he was the 
founder of the New Year’s Tournament of Roses. 
Shortly after his arrival he discovered an an¬ 
gler’s paradise in the deep sea waters that lie 
about the irregular chain of scattered islands off 
the Southern California coast—the Santa Bar¬ 
bara group. Angling with rod and reel had never 
been practised there; no one had attempted to 
match a fisherman’s reel against the speed, en¬ 
ergy, cunning, and tenacity of a tuna. With a 
rod and six hundred feet of number twenty-one 
line (a line with a breaking strength of only 
forty-two pounds), Holder landed from a twen¬ 
ty-foot launch a leaping tuna six feet four inches 
long and weighing 183 pounds, after a spectacu¬ 
lar battle of four hours spread over four miles 
of the Catalina channel. It was the first time 
that a tuna had been taken in this way and the 
feat opened up a new sporting field. In 1898 
Holder founded the Tuna Club which developed 
a membership in all lands and by its strength ini¬ 
tiated legislation for the proper protection of 
game fish and especially of food fish during the 
spawning season. 

One of Holder’s latest efforts was a religious 
and political history of the Society of Friends 
from the seventeenth to the twentieth century 
entitled The Quakers in Great Britain and Amer¬ 
ica (1913). He also published in 1902 The Hold¬ 
ers of Holderness , which had been begun by his 
father. A man of considerable versatility and 
of some ingenuity he was at various times teach¬ 
er, naturalist, editor, lecturer, historian, archeol¬ 
ogist, and sportsman, but his name, doubtless, 
will longest be identified with the leaping tuna 
that inhabits the salt waters lying off the harbor 
of Avalon. 

[His book The Channel Islands of California (1910), 
affords biographical material and Big Game Fishes of 
the U. S. (1903) and Big Game at Sea (1908), are 
often, in large part, relations of personal experience. 
See also Who*s Who in America, 1914-15 ; Los Angeles 
Times, Oct. 11, 1915.] W.L.J—n. 

HOLDER, JOSEPH BASSETT (Oct. 26, 
1824-Feb. 27, 1888), naturalist, physician, au¬ 
thor, traced his ancestry to the ancient Saxon 
Holders of Holderness, in the East Riding of 
Yorkshire. He was a descendant of that much 
persecuted but intrepid Christopher, progenitor 
of the Quaker Holders of America, who arrived 
in Boston, July 27, 1656. Joseph was bom at 
Lynn, Mass., in the quaint Richard Holder home¬ 
stead, dating back to 1690. His mother, Rachael 


140 



Holder 

Bassett, was a woman of unusual mental endow¬ 
ment, a minister of the Society of Friends, poet 
and author of parts, though she destroyed most 
of her writings for conscience’s sake. His father, 
Aaron Lummus Holder, a birthright Friend, by 
profession a wholesale and retail druggist, des¬ 
tined his son for a career in medicine. As a boy 
Joseph spent much time with his Bassett grand¬ 
parents in Uxbridge, where, in Linset Woodland, 
which, he says, became to him “a little Paradise,” 
he studied the great variety of natural objects 
in botany and zoology present there and laid the 
foundation of the knowledge which enabled him 
later to prepare the first list of the birds and 
plants of Essex County. His early friendship 
with Agassiz, whose summer laboratory at Na- 
hant lay within sight of the Lynn shore, and 
with whom he made dredging expeditions in the 
bay, strongly influenced his later career. 

After completing the course at the Friends’ 
School in Providence, R. I., he entered the Har¬ 
vard Medical School, where he served Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes as demonstrator in anatomy. 
He practised in Swampscott and afterward in 
Lynn, where he was early made city physician 
and achieved reputation as a surgeon. Here he 
married Emily Augusta Gove, of distinguished 
Quaker ancestry. In 1859, at the instance of 
Agassiz and Prof. Spencer F. Baird [q.v.] of the 
Smithsonian Institution, he accepted a post as 
surgeon-in-chief to the government engineers on 
the Florida reef, in order to prosecute an ex¬ 
haustive study of its formation and of the plant 
and animal life of the reef. When the Civil War 
broke out, Holder, in other respects a consistent 
“Free Quaker,” entered the army, becoming 
health officer and surgeon of the military prison 
at Fort Jefferson on the Dry Tortugas. Here he 
remained for seven years, fighting yellow fever 
and scurvy among the prisoners and pursuing 
his scientific researches upon the reef. As a re¬ 
sult of these studies he was able to send to Agassiz 
and to the Smithsonian valuable collections and 
data. His investigations upset current beliefs 
about the development of coral formations, es¬ 
tablishing for the first time the fact of their rela¬ 
tively rapid growth. In 1869 he was transferred 
to Fortress Monroe. Two years later he resigned 
to accept the position of assistant to Agassiz’s 
pupil, Alfred S. Bickmore [q.v.], who was then 
inaugurating the new American Museum of Nat* 
ural History in New York. He devoted himself 
to the zoology collection, of which in 1881 he be¬ 
came curator. From 1885 until his death he spe¬ 
cialized in marine zoology. Holder was a high- 
minded man of wide culture, a bit of an artist, 
and a writer of considerable charm. Besides 


Holladay 

many scientific and popular papers, he wrote 
History of the American Fauna (1877) > “The 
Atlantic Right Whales” ( Bulletin of the Ameri¬ 
can Museum of Natural History, May 1, 1883); 
and in 1885 published a revised edition of J. G. 
Wood’s Our Living World. He interested him¬ 
self in local history and genealogy, and his re¬ 
searches into the story of the Holder family in 
America furnished the nucleus of The Holders 
of Holderness, published by his son, Charles 
Frederick [q.v.]. 

JC. F. Holder, The Holders of Holderness (n.d.) ; 
Vital Records of Lynn , Mass. (2 vols., 1905-06); N. Y. 
Tribune, Mar. 1, 1888.] M.B.H. 

HOLLADAY, BEN (October 1819-July 8, 
1887), organizer, financier, the son of William 
Holladay, of Virginian ancestry, was bom in 
Carlisle County, Ky. In early boyhood he re¬ 
moved with his parents to western Missouri, 
where the years of his young manhood were 
passed. He had little schooling. At Weston, Mo., 
he met and became engaged to Notley Ann Cal¬ 
vert. The girl’s parents objected to the match, 
so the young couple eloped and were married at 
the log-cabin home of the bride’s uncle, Capt. 
Andrew Johnson. Holladay operated a store and 
a hotel in Weston, and engaged in trade with the 
Indians in Kansas. At the outbreak of the Mexi¬ 
can War he furnished supplies for Kearny’s 
Army of the West. When the war ended he pur¬ 
chased at bargain prices oxen and wagons from 
the government. With T. F. Warner as partner 
he launched a trade venture to Salt Lake City 
with fifty wagon-loads of merchandise. A letter 
of recommendation from Col. A. W. Doniphan, 
who had befriended the Mormons during their 
troubles in Missouri, gave Holladay a favorable 
introduction to Brigham Young which insured 
success for his business undertaking in Utah. 
The following year he bought cattle, drove them 
to California, and sold them at a handsome profit. 
Successful business ventures throughout the fif¬ 
ties increased his resources. He advanced mon¬ 
ey to Russell, Majors, and Waddell; and when 
this great overland freighting firm went to the 
wall, he bought their Central Overland Cali¬ 
fornia and Pike’s Peak Express Company for 
$100,000. He set to work reorganizing, extend¬ 
ing, and improving the overland stagecoach serv¬ 
ice until under him it reached its greatest ex¬ 
tent. For a time the mail contract paid more 
than one million dollars annually and the pas¬ 
senger traffic from the Missouri River to the 
Golden Gate was correspondingly large, but dur¬ 
ing the Indian uprising on the Plains in 1864-65, 
when stage stations, equipment, and supplies 
were destroyed, Holladay suffered heavy losses. 



Holland 

He subsequently placed claims against the gov¬ 
ernment for these losses, but they were never 
paid. With the coming of the railroad he read 
the doom of the stagecoach and sold out his stag¬ 
ing business to Wells, Fargo and Company 
(1866). He had already organized in 1863 the 
California, Oregon, and Mexican Steamship 
Company, and four years later he formed 
the Northern Pacific Transportation Company, 
which operated vessels in an area extending from 
Sitka to Mexico. In 1868 he plunged into a 
railroad fight in Oregon and became the chief 
owner of the Oregon Central Railroad Company. 
He sold some of his railroad bonds in Germany. 
Railroad construction was pushed with vigor and 
money was spent extravagantly until some 240 
miles of railroad had been built in Oregon. When 
financial difficulties arose he sold steamship in¬ 
terests to bolster his railroad projects. The panic 
of 1873 staggered him. Finally the German 
bondholders took over the railroad and elimi¬ 
nated Holladay. With his retirement from the 
Oregon railroad system in 1876 his financial 
power was broken and was never regained. In 
the days of his success Holladay maintained a 
beautiful residence in Washington, D. C., and 
built a mansion, “Ophir Place,” on the Hudson 
River near White Plains. His two daughters by 
his first wife married titled Europeans. Left a 
widower in 1873, the following year he married 
Esther Campbell, by whom he had two children. 
None of the seven children of the first marriage 
survived him when he died in Portland in his 
sixty-eighth year. 

[H. W. Scott, Hist, of the Ore. Country (6 vols., 
1924); H. H. Bancroft, Hist, of Ore. (2 vols., 1890); 
C. H. Carey, Hist, of Ore. (1922) ; Henry Villard, 
Memoirs of Henry Villard (2 vols., 1904) ; F. A. Root 
and W. E. Connelley, The Overland Stage to Cal. 
(1901), containing articles by John Doniphan, Holla- 
day's attorney, and R. M. Johnson, Holladay’s brother- 
in-law; L. R. Hafen, The Overland Mail , 1849-69 
(1926); the Oregonian (Portland), July 9, 1887.] 

L.R.H. 

HOLLAND, CLIFFORD MILBURN 

(Mar. 13,1883-Oct. 27,1924), civil engineer, the 
only son of Edward John and Lydia Francis 
(Hood) Holland, was born at Somerset, Mass., 
a descendant of Francis LeBaron of Plymouth 
and Roger Williams of Providence. He attended 
the public schools of Somerset and of St Joseph, 
Mich,, the high school of Fall River, Mass., and 
the Cambridge (Mass.) Latin School, from which 
he was graduated in 1902. He entered Harvard 
University the same year. He was obliged to 
earn part of his college expenses, which he did 
by teaching evening school, waiting on tables in 
the college dining hall, reading gas meters, and 
working during the summer months, but he was 


Holland 

able to graduate A.B. in 1905 and B.S. in civil 
engineering in 1906. During his senior year at 
Harvard he passed the New York state civil- 
service examination and upon graduation was 
appointed assistant engineer with the Rapid 
Transit Commission of New York. In June 1906 
he made his first connection with the field of 
engineering when he was assigned by the com¬ 
mission to the division constructing the old Bat¬ 
tery Tunnel. In this work he spent two and a 
half years checking contract extras and inci¬ 
dentally he acquired a complete knowledge of 
the details of tunnel construction. In 1914 he 
became tunnel engineer for the Public Service 
Commission (the successor of the Rapid Transit 
Commission) in full charge of the design for and 
the construction of the four double-subway tun¬ 
nels under the East River. The contract value of 
the work involved in the construction of these 
and other tunnels under his direction at the time 
amounted to $26,000,000. In 1916 he was given 
the title of division engineer, in which position 
he continued to the end of his connection with 
the Public Service Commission in June 1919. At 
this time he was the outstanding leader in the 
field of subaqueous construction. 

Holland left the Public Service Commission to 
accept the position of chief engineer for the New 
York State and New Jersey Interstate Bridge 
and Tunnel commissions, to direct the design and 
construction of a vehicular tunnel under the 
Hudson River to connect New Jersey with New 
York. He assumed this office July 1, 1919, at a 
salary of $12,000 a year. As a vehicular tunnel 
of this type had never before been attempted, the 
engineering problems involved were many of 
them without precedent. The plan finally recom¬ 
mended by Holland provided for a pair of cast- 
iron shield-driven tubes, with outside diameters 
of twenty-nine feet, six inches. The roadway of 
each tube was to be twenty feet wide, accommo¬ 
dating two lines of traffic in the same direction. 
Ventilation of the tunnel was to be secured by 
pumping some 3,600,000 cubic feet of air per 
minute through the passages above , and below 
the roadway. The plan as recommended was 
strongly opposed and Holland was severely criti¬ 
cized by many competent engineers, but his plan 
was finally adopted over the protest of the op¬ 
position. Holland then gave all of his time and 
energy to the construction of the tunnels, until 
two days before the “holing through” was ac¬ 
complished, when his work was ended by his 
death. Less than a month later, on Nov. 12, 
1924, the interstate tunnel commissions adopted 
a joint resolution officially designating the new 
tunnel as the Holland Tunnel, in honor of the 


142 



Holland 

man who had given five years of his life as chief 
engineer of its construction. Holland was active 
in many engineering societies. He was a mem¬ 
ber of the board of direction of the American 
Society of Civil Engineers, a member of the 
American Association of Engineers, and treas¬ 
urer, secretary, vice-president, and president, 
successively, of the Harvard Engineering So¬ 
ciety. In his honor the engineering scholarship 
of die Harvard Society was renamed the Clif¬ 
ford M. Holland Memorial Aid in Engineering. 
Holland married Anna Coolidge Davenport of 
Watertown, Mass., on Nov. 5,1908. He died at 
Battle Creek, Mich., where he had gone in an at¬ 
tempt to regain his health. 

[Proc. Am. Soc. Civil Engineers, vols. L and LI 
(1924-25) ; memoir in Trans. Am. Soc. Civil Engi¬ 
neers, vol. LXXXIX (1926 ); Engineering News-Rec¬ 
ord, Oct. 30, 1924; Harvard Coll. Class of 1906. Twen¬ 
tieth Anniversary Report (1926); Harvard Grads.* 
Mag., June 1925; Who's Who in America, 1924-25; 
N . Y. Times, Oct. 28, 1924-] F.A.T. 

HOLLAND, EDMUND MILTON (Sept. 7, 
1848-Nov. 24, 1913), actor, was the second and 
ablest of the sons of George [q.z>.] and Catherine 
(De Luce) Holland. He made his first appear¬ 
ance on the stage on Dec, 20, 1855, in Wallaces 
Lyceum, as Master Thompson in To Parents and 
Guardians . At fifteen he was a responsible call- 
boy at Mrs. John Wood’s Olympic, occasionally 
appearing on the boards. In his fourth season 
he was a regular member of the company at Bar- 
num’s Museum and later he appeared with Jef¬ 
ferson in the first New York production of Rip 
Van Winkle . When in 1867 he joined Wallaces 
company, his father had him billed for a time as 
E. Milton, until he was certain that the boy would 
not discredit the family name. He served a thir¬ 
teen-years’ apprenticeship at Wallack’s, gaining 
steadily in range, power, subtlety, and restraint, 
and in time he was entrusted with leading comedy 
roles. His first personal success was scored as 
Silky in The Road to Ruin , the first of his many 
notable old-men’s parts. Leaving Wallack’s in 
1879 he played a London engagement with Mc¬ 
Kee Rankin, then for more than a decade, be¬ 
ginning in 1882, he was cast for leading roles in 
the famous Madison Square stock company— 
later Palmer’s. Among other memorable parts he 
played Lot Burden in Saints and Sinners , Gib¬ 
son in The Private Secretary , Captain Redmond 
in Jim the Penman , Colonel Moberly in Ala¬ 
bama, and the title role in Colonel Carter of Car- 
tersville . Later he allied himself with Charles 
Frohman’s Comedians, appearing as Eben Hol¬ 
den in the play of that name, and in 1902-03 as 
Pope Pius X in The Eternal City . From 1903 
to 1906 he appeared with Kyrle Bellew in Raffles 


Holland 

and in The American Cracksman, then in 1910 
he joined the company at the New Theatre, where 
he remained for two seasons. In 1912 he at¬ 
tained the avowed height of his ambition—an en¬ 
gagement with Belasco. He was cast as Metz in 
Years of Discretion, but just as the company 
went on the road he died suddenly in Chicago of 
heart-disease on Nov. 24,1913. 

Holland married in 1875 an actress, Mary E. 
Seward. He was survived by a son, Joseph, and 
a daughter, Edna Milton Holland, who was ap¬ 
pearing on the stage contemporaneously with 
him. As an actor he was regarded as a character 
comedian of the school of Joseph Jefferson and 
was credited by critics of his day with unfailing 
delicacy and good taste, precision, infinite hu¬ 
mor, and sagacity. His power of suggestion was 
unlimited. He had an actor’s face—clean-shaven, 
tight-lipped, with deepset eyes and a broad dome¬ 
shaped head. He was adroit in make-up, but he 
could get his effects without it, or without any 
eccentricity of costume, relying on gait, facial 
expression, inflections of the voice, or gesture 
to depict a character. He played between five 
hundred and a thousand roles and gave hundreds 
of “well-pondered performances rendered with 
unvarying penetration and finish.” 

[G. L. Lathrop, “Edmund Milton Holland/* in F. E. 
McKay and C. E. L. Wingate, Famous Am. Actors of 
Today (1896); M. J. Moses, Famous Actor-Families in 
America (1906); Who's Who in America, 1912-13; 
John Parker, Who's Who in the Theatre (1912); L. C. 
Strang, Famous Actors of the Day in America (1900) ; 
J. B. Clapp and E. F. Edgett, Players of the Present, 
Dunlap Soc. Pubs., 3 pts. (1899-1901) ; Wm. Winter, 
The Wallet of Time (2 vols., 1913) ; N. Y. Dramatic 
News, Nov. 29, 1913; N. Y. Dramatic Mirror , Dec. 3, 
1913; New York Times, Nov. 25, 1913; Robinson 
Locke collection, N. Y. Pub. Lib.] jj 

HOLLAND, EDWIN CLIFFORD (c. 1794- 
Sept. 11,1824), author, the son of John Holland, 
previously of Wilmington, N. G, by his wife 
Jane, the widow of Abraham Marshall of East 
Florida, was born and lived his short life in 
Charleston, S. C. At that time the nascent liter¬ 
ary culture of the town seemed promising. A 
flourishing theatre incited the dramatic efforts of 
Isaac Harby [q.v.] and John Blake White, while 
the anonymous author of Carolina (1790), a 
topographical poem written in 1776, and Joseph 
Brown Ladd [q.v.] were the forerunners of 
George Heartwell Spierin, John H. Woodward, 
John Davis of Coosawhatchie, and William 
Crafts Iq.v.]. Holland, who is said to have stud¬ 
ied law and then to have turned to journalism 
and become editor of the Charleston Times, be¬ 
longed to this group of fledgling bards. He 
mailed several effusions north to Joseph Den- 
nie’s Port Folio and printed articles over the sig¬ 
nature “Orlando” in local papers. In his twen- 


143 



Holland 

tieth year he published Odes, Naval Songs, and 
Other Occasional Poems (Charleston, 18x3) 
dedicated to “James Marshall, Esq., of Savannah, 
... by his affectionate brother.” Amid the dis¬ 
sonances of these seventeen pieces one may catch, 
faintly as if in the wind, the notes of William 
Collins and Thomas Moore, for with this volume 
romantic poetry began in South Carolina. Its 
most sonorous lines are the opening quatrain of 
the ode to the memory of Capt. James Lawrence: 

Hark! how the Mourning Barge with heavy Sweep 

Moves to the solemn Minute-stroke of Death! 

The lifeless Billow of the silent Deep 

Scarce curls beneath the Morning’s orient Breath! 

In 1818 Holland's dramatization of Byron's Cor¬ 
sair, with many of the rhyming lines of the orig¬ 
inal ingeniously retained in the blank verse, was 
published and was performed at the Charleston 
Theatre. With William Crafts and Henry J. 
Farmer he is said to have had a hand in Omnium 
Botherum, a burlesque, apparently deserved, of 
Thomas Bee's Omnium Gatherum (1821). In 
1822 appeared a vigorously rhetorical Refutation 
of the Calumnies Circulated against the Southern 
and Western States Respecting the Institution 
and Existence of Slavery among Them, which 
hinted at impending war. Published anonymous¬ 
ly, it was attributed afterward to Benjamin Elli¬ 
ott [g.v.], who had given Holland some assis¬ 
tance ( Refutation , pp. 78-79). Two years later 
he died during an epidemic of yellow fever. His 
younger brother, William Robert Holland, died 
at Savannah eight days before him. 

[Ludwig Lewisohn, “The Books We Have Made: A 
Hist, of Lit. in S. C.,” News md Courier (Charleston, 
S. C.), July 12, 1903; A. H. Quinn, Hist, of the Am. 
Drama from the Beginning to the Civil War (1923) ; 
A. S. Salley, Jr., Marriage Notices in the S . C. Gazette 
and its Successors, 1732-1801 (Albany, N. Y., 1902); 
death notice in Charleston Courier, Sept. 14, 1824.] 

G H G 

HOLLAND, GEORGE (Dec. 6, 1791-Dec. 
20, 1870), comedian, the English founder of an 
American family of actors, was for fifty-three 
years an irresistible fun-maker before the foot¬ 
lights. Born in Lambeth parish, London, the 
son of Henry Holland, a dancing-master, he was 
for seven years successful on the British stage 
before coming to New York, where he made his 
debut at the Bowery Theatre, Sept. 12, 1827, as 
Jerry in A Day After the Fair, scoring an im¬ 
mediate hit. For some sixteen years he traveled 
about, achieving immense popularity in most of 
the prominent cities of the Union, especially in 
the South. Occasionally he played in his skit, 
Whims of a Comedian. In 1829 he first appeared 
at New Orleans as Dominie Sampson in Guy 
Mannering. In 1832 he joined Ludlow at Louis¬ 
ville in a managerial venture, and two years later 


Holland 

he associated himself similarly with Sol Smith, 
in Montgomery, Ala. Between 1834 and 1842 
he was treasurer of the St. Charles Theatre in 
New Orleans, where he appeared at times on its 
boards and served also as secretary to J. H. Cald¬ 
well. He was in the cast of The School for Scan¬ 
dal during Ellen Tree's engagement, and of 
Much Ado About Nothing, during Caldwell's 
farewell. When the theatre burned, he returned 
to New York and for six years delighted the 
audiences at Mitchell's Olympic in such light 
farces as Lend Me Five Shillings . In 1855 came 
his first permanent engagement to play character 
parts with Wallack's company. He remained 
with Wallack twelve years, and at seventy-five 
he was impersonating with youthful spirit Tony 
Lumpkin in She Stoops To Conquer . His 
strength was waning, though not his popularity, 
when Daly made a place for him in his company 
in 1869. His last part was that of the reporter 
in the farcical comedy, Surf. In May 1870, when 
Daly tendered him a parting benefit, the aged 
comedian, seated in the midst of the company, 
made his last speech, “God bless you!” 

Upon Holland's death his old friend Joseph 
Jefferson attempted to arrange for his funeral at 
Dr. Sabine's church but met the historic refusal 
to bury an actor. Such was the general indigna¬ 
tion over the incident that a fund was raised for 
the comedian's family of more than fifteen thou¬ 
sand dollars. His widow, Catherine (De Luce) 
Holland, the daughter of an orchestra leader at 
the old Park Theatre, was his second wife, and 
the mother of his three sons, Edmund Milton, 
Joseph Jefferson [qq.v.], and George, and of the 
daughter, Kate, who died at the opening of her 
career with Daly. In his own eccentric line, Hol¬ 
land was without a rival; he embodied the very 
spirit of innocent farce. “His effects were broad¬ 
ly given,” says Jefferson, “and his personality 
was essentially comic. ... He was the merriest 
man I ever knew” ( Autobiography , p. 337). His 
droll faces, his songs and antics, and most of all, 
his lovable personality, endeared him to genera¬ 
tions of Americans. 

[T. H. Morrell, Holland Memorial: Sketch of the 
Life of Geo. Holland (1871) ; M. J. Moses, Famous 
Actor-Families in America (1906); The Autobiog. of 
Jos . Jefferson (1890); W. L. Keese, A Group of Come¬ 
dians (1901); Wm. Winter, The Wallet of Time (2 
vols., 1913), and Brief Chronicles, Dunlap Soc. Pubs., 
3 pts. (1889-90); N. M. Ludlow, Dramatic Life as I 
Found It (1880); Arthur Hornblow, A Hist, of the 
Theatre in America (2 vols., 1919) ; Laurence Hutton, 
Curiosities of the Am. Stage (1891); N. Y. Tribune, 
July 20, 1870; N. Y. Times, Dec. 21, 1870.] 

M. B. H. 

HOLLAND, JOHN PHILIP (Feb. 29,1840- 
Aug. 12,1914), inventor, was bom in Liscanor, 
County Clare, Ireland, the son of John and Mary 


144 



Holland Holland 

(Scanlon) Holland. After receiving a common his ideas at Washington for a quarter century, 
school education in his native town, he attended At the invitation of the Navy Department, at 
the Christian Brothers school at Ennistymon, various times from 1888 onward, Holland sub- 
then that at Limerick. During the years 1858- mitted, in competition with other designers, plans 
72 he taught school in various parts of Ireland, for a submarine, and in each instance his plans 
He conceived the submarine boat in his youth, were selected, but for one reason or another fed- 
and as a patriot saw how it might be used against eral appropriations were not forthcoming with 
the British navy to secure Irish independence, which to proceed with construction. In 1895, 
He studied the scanty literature of undersea ef- however, the J. P. Holland Torpedo Boat Com¬ 
fort, including the work of Bourne, Bushnell, pany obtained a navy contract to build a sub- 
and Fulton. The discouraging failures of these marine according to navy specifications, for the 
experimenters spurred rather than deterred Hoi- sum of $150,000, and the Plunger , as the vessel 
land, and by 1870 he had prepared plans for a sub- was called, was started at the Columbian Iron 
marine boat, but since he lacked financial means Works, Baltimore, Md. The inventor’s ideas 
to proceed with construction, he temporarily laid were largely ignored and the boat was in effect 
aside his plans. Late in 1873 he came to the the creation of Admiral George W. Melville 
United States and settled the following year in chief of the naval Bureau of Steam En- 

Paterson, N. J., where he found employment as gineering. It was clumsy, overpowered, replete 
a teacher in St. John’s Parochial School. In 1875 with traditional notions, and was abandoned as a 
he offered his submarine design to the United failure. Holland had $5,000 of private capital 
States Navy; it was rejected as a fantastic left He began to construct a boat incorporating 
scheme of a civilian landsman. The Fenian so- all the ideas which he was prevented from using 
ciety (Irish Republican Brotherhood) then came in the Plunger. This vessel, called the Holland , 
to his support and financed his first experimental was built in the Crescent Shipyards, Elizabeth, 
craft, one-man size, fourteen feet long, with a N. J., and launched in 1898. It was fifty-three 
tiny dubious steam engine. This boat, tested in feet ten inches long, ten feet in diameter, and had 
the Passaic River, 1878, was recovered from the a submerged displacement of seventy-five tons, 
river mud in 1927 and placed in the Paterson Its armament consisted of one bow torpedo tube, 
museum. The Fenians supplied Holland with one bow pneumatic dynamite gun, and several 
some $23,000 to build a full-size submarine, Whitehead torpedoes. It was fitted with a gaso- 
which, it was hoped, would cross the Atlantic line engine for surface propulsion and with elec- 
and destroy the English fleet; and the Fenian trie storage batteries and motor for submerged 
Ram was launched in the Hudson River from the cruising. The Holland was the first boat to be 
Delamater yard in May 1881. It was thirty-one equipped in this manner and, in fact, was the 
feet long, six feet beam, nineteen tons displace- first submarine having any power by which it 
ment, with a one-cylinder internal-combustion could be run when submerged to any considerable 
oil engine. It had a crew of three men. It made distance. One of the novel features of the vessel 
frequent runs beneath New York harbor and in (shared by the earlier Fenian Ram) was its abil- 
1883 dived to a depth of sixty feet and remained ity to dive by inclining its axis and plunging to 
on the bottom one hour. The Fenian Ram (ex- the desired depth. After a number of severe tests 
cepting obvious defects in its power system) em- the Holland was purchased by the federal gov- 
bodied the chief principles of the modern sub- ernment in 1900, and a few months later six more 
marine in balance, control, and compensation of vessels like it were ordered. In addition to fill- 
weight lost with torpedo discharge. It exists ing these orders from the United States govem- 
virtually intact as a memorial in a city park in ment, Holland’s company built submarines for 
Paterson, N. J. The impatient Fenians took it Great Britain, Russia, and Japan. To him must 
from the inventor’s hands but were unable to put be accorded the credit for bringing the submarine 
it to practical use. In 1886 Holland joined forces to a state of practical value. In December 1900 
with Lieut. Edmund L. G. Zalinski, of dynamite- he contributed an article on “The Submarine 
gun fame, and a third experimental boat was con- Boat and Its Future” to the North American 
structed—without the inventor’s supervision. Review . Amid outward success, the inventor was 
The hull was badly damaged by a launching acci- not happy in his relations with the financiers of 
dent and the enterprise terminated for lack of his company, who wished to retire him as a fig- 
funds. Holland continued, however, to make de- urehead at a salary of $10,000 a year. In 1904 
signs on paper, saved from total discouragement he made an attempt to form a new company but 
by the faith and friendship of Lieut, (later Rear partly because of litigation brought against him 
Admiral) W. W. TTit nhalT [q.v.], who advocated by the reorganized Electric Boat Company, 

145 



Holland 

which he had left, was unsuccessful in raising 
capital. He designed two submarines for Japan 
during the Russo-Japanese War, for which ser¬ 
vice he received in 1910 the mikado's Order of 
the Rising Sun. He devised in 1904 a respirator 
for escape from disabled submarines, similar to 
a device adopted by the United States Navy a 
quarter century later. Holland foresaw the mod¬ 
ern uses of the submarine in science, commerce, 
and exploration. His final years were devoted 
to experiment in aeronautics. He was married 
in Brooklyn, N. Y., Jan. 17, 1887, to Margaret 
Foley of Paterson, N. J., who with four children 
survived him. He died in Newark, N. J. 

[Simon Lake, The Submarine in War and Peace 
(1918); F. T. Cable, The Birth and Development of 
the Am, Submarine (1924) ; A. Hoar, The Submarine 
Torpedo Boat, Its Characteristics and Modern Develop¬ 
ment (1916); Chas. W. Domville-Fife, Submarines and 
Sea Power (London, 1919); Max Laubeuf and Henri 
Stroll, Sous-Marins, Torpilles et Mines (Paris, 1923) ; 
E. W. Byrn, The Progress of Invention in the Nine¬ 
teenth Century (1900) ; Report of the Secy, of the 
Navy, 1895-1900; Army and Navy Jour., Apr. 2 , Oct. 
29, Dec. 3, 1898; Am. Inventor, Oct. i, 1900, Mar. 1, 
1902; Shipp Data, U. S. Naval Vessels (1929) ; B. J. 
Hendrick, in World's Work, July 1915; Newark Eve¬ 
ning News and Newark Star, both Aug. 13, 1914; in¬ 
formation from J. R. McMahon, Little Falls, N. J., 
who is preparing a full-length biography of Holland.] 

C.W.M. 

HOLLAND, JOSEPH JEFFERSON (Dec. 
20,1860-Sept. 25,1926), actor, was the youngest 
son of the veteran comedian, George Holland 
[q.v .] 9 and Catherine (De Luce) Holland, and 
godson of Joseph Jefferson. Bom in New York 
when the elder Holland was sixty-nine, as a boy 
he played in his father's dressing-room at Wal¬ 
laces or perched himself beside the bass drum 
when the curtain rose. At six he went on the 
stage in a child's part. Four years later his fa¬ 
ther died. His mother, not an actress, destined 
him for trade, especially since at thirteen he be¬ 
came partially deaf, but despite these obstacles he 
contrived to follow family tradition to the stage. 
At his debut in 1878 he doubled as Lord Scroop 
and Captain Gower in Henry V which ran a 
whole season at Booth's theatre. In 1878-79 he 
joined his brother George at the Chestnut Street 
Theatre, Philadelphia, playing among other parts 
Antonio in The Merchant of Venice. Two years 
later he signed with McKee Rankin for leading 
roles, remaining in his company two seasons. 
He was next engaged as leading juvenile in the 
Baldwin stock company, San Francisco, where 
he played “everything, light comedy to tragedy, 
even old men’s parts and heavies,” learning more 
stagecraft than at any other period of his career. 
From 1886 to 1889 he was with Daly in a com¬ 
pany including John Drew and Otis Skinner, and 
with this company he made his first appearance 
in England. He then signed with Charles Froh- 


Holland 

man, acting under his direction in The Great 
Metropolis, Shenandoah, Men and Women, and 
Mr. Wilkinson's Widows, making a distinct hit 
in the last. On Sept. 2, 1895, he and his brother 
Edmund Milton Holland [q.v.] appeared at the 
Garrick Theatre, New York, as joint stars in 
The Man With a Past. With a repertoire which 
included this play they toured for two seasons, 
scoring an artistic rather than a financial suc¬ 
cess. Joseph's performances in A Social High¬ 
wayman, Dr. Claudius, and in A Superfluous 
Husband were regarded as especially finished. 
On May 7, 1896, he played Falkland in an all- 
star revival of The Rivals , with Mrs. John Drew 
playing Mrs. Malaprop. Later during successive 
seasons he toured with Annie Russell, Amelia 
Bingham, Ethel Barrymore, and William Faver- 
sham, but in 1904 his stage career ended abrupt¬ 
ly when he was stricken with paralysis and was 
forced to retire. The following year he was ten¬ 
dered a testimonial at the Metropolitan Opera 
House, Mar. 24, 1905, which was participated in 
by authors, composers, artists, and actors of rank. 
During the twenty years of Holland's enforced 
retirement he displayed a valiant spirit. He 
kept up his study of the drama, learned French, 
directed amateur performances from his invalid's 
chair, and cultivated notable friendships for 
which he had a genius. The last years of his life 
he passed at Falmouth, Mass. 

Holland's adroitness in nullifying the handi¬ 
cap of almost total deafness is one of the marvels 
of the stage. He memorized every part in his 
scenes, and by reading lips and faces and by 
“ticking off” speeches in his brain, he contrived 
to take his cues unerringly. When his back was 
turned to a speaker, his dresser, if necessary, 
gave him his cues from the wings. He was at 
all times a versatile light comedian, in whom “a 
quiet dignity, [and] a careful attention to detail, 
lent polish and distinction” to all his work. In 
his memory a tablet was placed in the Falmouth 
Library by his clubmates of the Lamb's and 
Players’ in New York and by his Falmouth 
friends. 

[Otis Skinner, Jos. Jefferson Holland: A Tribute 
(p. p. 1926); M. J. Moses, Famous Actor-Families in 
America (1906); T. A. Brown, A Hist, of the N. Y. 
Stage (3 vols., 1903) ; N. Y. Dramatic Mirror, May 2, 
1896; N. Y. Times, Mar. 25, 1905, Sept. 26, 1926; 
Robinson Locke collection, N. Y. Pub. Lib.] 

M.B.H. 

HOLLAND, JOSIAH GILBERT (July 24, 
1819-Oct. 12, 1881), editor, writer, was born in 
Belchertown, Mass., a descendant of John and 
Judith Holland who established themselves in 
New England in 1630, and a son of Harrison 
and Anna (Gilbert) Holland. His father seems 
to have been a hardworking but unthrifty man 


146 



Holland Holland 


who always remained in poor circumstances. As 
a boy Josiah worked for a time in a factory, spent 
a brief period at the Northampton High School, 
which he was forced to leave on account of poor 
health, and tried his hand at such gentleman-like 
occupations as the times offered to a young fel¬ 
low in his teens—school-teaching, taking daguer¬ 
reotypes, conducting writing-schools. At the age 
of twenty-one he began the study of medicine, 
not apparently because of any scientific bent. In 
1844 he was graduated from the Berkshire Medi¬ 
cal College, and tried, unsuccessfully, to estab¬ 
lish a practice in Springfield, Mass. On Oct. 7, 
1845, he married Elizabeth Luna Chapin of 
Springfield. He is said to have employed some 
of his leisure in writing for the Knickerbocker 
and other magazines, and he founded a weekly 
paper which failed after six months. Definitely 
abandoning medicine in 1848 he went South and 
taught school, first at Richmond, Va., then at 
Vicksburg, Miss. In 1850 he returned to Spring- 
field and became associated with Samuel Bowles 
in the editorship of the Springfield Repub¬ 
lican. It was his part to furnish the material of 
human interest while Bowles wrote on public 
affairs, and under this happy combination of 
editors the Republican attained the high position 
it long held. It was writings designed for this 
newspaper that first brought Holland to notice. 
He began with a series of imaginary letters “from 
Max Mannering to his sister in the country,” in 
which he mildly satirized differences between 
town and rural life. He next published serially 
a History of Western Massachusetts, issued in 
book form in 1855 > then a novel, The Bay-Path; 
A Tale of New England Colonial Life, pub¬ 
lished in book form in 1857; and later, over the 
signature “Timothy Titcomb,” a series of “Let¬ 
ters to Young People” collected in 1858 under 
the title Tit comb's Letters to Young People, Sin¬ 
gle and Married (1858). Several of his later 
prose works also appeared serially in the Repub¬ 
lican. For a time he was in complete editorial 
charge, but in 1857 he sold out his financial in¬ 
terest and ceased to hold a regular desk position, 
though he continued as a contributor and had an 
undefined editorial connection with the paper. In 
1862 when Bowles went to Europe in search of 
health, Holland became for a time editor-in-chief. 
It was in the decade following his withdrawal 
from routine editorial duties that he wrote many 
of his most popular works: Bitter Sweet, a Poem 
in Dramatic Form (1858) ; Gold Foil Hammered 
from Popular Proverbs (1859); Miss Gilbert's 
Career (i860); Lessons in Life (1861); Letters 
to the Joneses (1863); Plain Talks on Familiar 
Subjects (1865); Life of Abraham Lincoln 


(1866); Katrina, Her Life and Mine in a Poem 
(1867). Soon after the appearance of Titcomb's 
Letters he became in demand as a lyceum speak¬ 
er, and lectured in many parts of the country. In 
1868-69 he was in Europe, and here in conjunc¬ 
tion with Roswell Smith Iq.vJ], who was also 
traveling abroad, he projected a literary maga¬ 
zine. Charles Scribner [q.v.~\ had long admired 
Dr. Holland and had already suggested to him 
the editorship of another periodical, Hours at 
Home . On the return of Holland and Smith from 
Europe they with Scribner became proprietors, 
and Holland editor, of Scribner's Monthly, which 
first appeared in 1870. The well-known publish¬ 
ing house of the Scribners while financially in¬ 
terested did not control the new venture, and 
after the death of Charles Scribner some compli¬ 
cations arising out of the use of the name led to 
the rechristening of the periodical as the Cen¬ 
tury Magazine . Holland was to continue as edi¬ 
tor. He had, however, long known that he was 
suffering from an incurable heart disease, and he 
died, suddenly but not unexpectedly, just before 
the first number of the Century was given to the 
public. After 1870 he lived in New York City, 
with a summer home in the Thousand Islands. 
In his new residence as in his old he took an 
active interest in public affairs, and was for some 
time president of the New York City board of 
education. The chief writings of his later period 
were three novels, Arthur Bonnicastle (1873), 
Sevenoaks (1875), andNicholas Minium (1877); 
several volumes of poems, including The Marble 
Prophecy and Other Poems (1872), The Mis¬ 
tress of the Manse (1874), The Puritan's Guest 
and Other Poems (1881) ; and two series of es¬ 
says, Every-Day Topics (1876,1882). Collected 
editions of his poems appeared in 1873 and 1879. 

Dr. Holland was not, as has been persistently 
stated, a clergyman, and though he was in a sense 
a preacher his temper of mind was hardly cleri¬ 
cal. He was rather the intelligent, respected lay¬ 
man who without feeling the responsibility for 
mastering and expounding a system of belief 
leads the adult Bible class and tries to do what 
he can for the good of the community. His 
hopeful, somewhat sentimental philosophy grew 
out of his knowledge of the ordinary problems of 
ordinary people, and a helpful interest in his fel¬ 
low men. He achieved his first marked success 
with his Titcomb's Letters to Young People, 
Single and Married, and the nature of his mes¬ 
sage may be inferred from this title and from 
those of later works like Gold Foil Hammered 
from Popular Proverbs, Lessons in Life, and 
Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects. In his novels 
his purpose is the same as in his moralizing es- 


147 



Holley 

says. His poems, both shorter pieces and longer 
narratives like Bitter Sweet and Katrina , are 
usually in facile if undistinguished verse, and 
continued the didactic tradition common in New 
England. The timely and popular Life of Abra¬ 
ham Lincoln (1866) enforced the lessons to be 
drawn from the President's career, as well as 
recorded biographical facts. Holland not only 
conformed to the taste of his generation but he 
met its moral and spiritual needs, and it is a 
tribute to his usefulness that half a million vol¬ 
umes of such unsensational works as his were 
sold. Like many prophets of an age he was not 
for all time, and he ceased to be read soon after 
his death. In the history of American j ournalism 
he will be remembered for his share in building 
up one of the greatest provincial newspapers and 
one of the most important nineteenth-century 
literary magazines. 

[Probably the best single source of information re¬ 
garding Holland’s life is the article by his friend Ed¬ 
ward Eggleston in the Century Magazine, Dec. 18S1. 
His own account fii his connection with Scribner's 
Monthly appeared in the issue of that periodical for 
June 1881. See also G. S. Merriam, The Life and 
Times of Samuel Bowles (1885); R. U. Johnson, Re¬ 
membered Yesterdays (1923) ; H. M, Plunkett, Josiah 
Gilbert Holland (1894), an uncritical volume; A* Me¬ 
morial of Josiah Gilbert Holland (privately printed, 
n.d.), containing sermons by Washington Gladden and 
L. D. Bevan, and eulogies by many friends; N. Y. Trib¬ 
une and Springfield Republican, Oct. 13, 1881. For a 
bibliography of Holland’s poetical writings see Cam¬ 
bridge Hist, of Am. Lit., IV (1921), 648; for his fic¬ 
tion, Ibid., IV, 662. A contemporary criticism of sev¬ 
eral of his works is found in the North Am. Rev., July 

1862.] w.b.c. 

HOLLEY, ALEXANDER LYMAN (July 
20, i832-Jan. 29, 1882), writer, mechanical en¬ 
gineer, metallurgist, was born at Lakeville, Conn., 
the son of Alexander H. and Jane M. (Lyman) 
Holley. His father was a manufacturer of cutlery 
with a large establishment in Lakeville, and was 
governor of Connecticut in 1857. Holley was 
educated in academies in Salisbury and Farm¬ 
ington, Conn., and Stockbridge, Mass., then pre¬ 
pared for college under a private tutor and en¬ 
tered Brown University in the autumn of 1850. 
At a very early age he gave evidence of a keenly 
observant mind and an inborn talent for draw¬ 
ing. As early as his tenth year he was familiar 
with the machinery in his father's knife manu¬ 
factory and sketched it in great detail. Besides 
his skill in drawing, he developed a literary talent 
while still in preparatory school and published a 
number of school papers. He wrote and sold, 
before he entered college, “An Essay on Pen and 
Pocket Cutlery," which was published in Henry 
V. Poor's American Railroad Journal (May 24 
to Aug. 24, 1850). During his college career, 
which was brilliant, he continued his work of 
drawing, particularly locomotives. He invented, 


Holley 

too, a steam-engine cut-off which was described 
by him in Appletons* Mechanics' Magazine and 
Engineers' Journal , July 1852. 

Upon graduating in 1853, Holley entered the 
shops of Corliss & Nightingale, Providence, R. 
I., as a draftsman and machinist, and worked es¬ 
pecially on an experimental locomotive equipped 
with the Corliss valve gearing. In 1853 he 
joined the New Jersey Locomotive Works at 
Jersey City, N. J. Here he met Zerah Colburn, 
the superintendent, who was also the publisher 
of the Railroad Advocate , for which magazine 
Holley had written articles while with the Cor¬ 
liss company. Shortly after this meeting, Col¬ 
burn sold the Advocate to Holley, who there¬ 
upon gave up his locomotive work and published 
Holley's Railroad Advocate until the financial 
crash of 1857. Holley and Colburn then induced 
a number of railroad presidents to send them 
abroad to study European railroad practice. 
Their report appeared in 1858 under the title, 
The Permanent Way and Coal-burning Loco¬ 
motive Boilers of European Railways, with a 
Comparison of the Working Economy of Euro¬ 
pean and American Lines and the Principles 
upon Which Improvement Must Proceed. It re¬ 
flected much credit upon the authors and was 
profusely illustrated with Holley's own drawings, 
but to sell it Holley had to resort literally to 
house to house canvassing. About this time he 
met Henry J. Raymond Iq.vJ], founder and editor 
of the New York Times , who immediately at¬ 
tached Holley to his staff, and between 1858 and 
1875 the latter wrote nearly three hundred ar¬ 
ticles for this newspaper. He was also, during 
this period, technical editor of the American 
Railway Review, and, in addition, he wrote and 
published in i860 American and European Rail¬ 
way Practice. 

Although he had thoroughly established him¬ 
self as a technical writer, Holley was ambitious 
to engage in more original engineering work. 
Accordingly, about 1861 he undertook the rede¬ 
sign of a locomotive for the Camden & Amboy 
Railroad and then joined Edwin A. Stevens 
founder of Stevens Institute, Hoboken, 
N. J., in the latter's work on a floating gun bat¬ 
tery. Holley made several trips to Europe seek¬ 
ing information in ordnance and armor for Ste¬ 
vens and while in England in 1862 he first learned 
of and investigated Henry Bessemer's newly in¬ 
vented process for making steel. On his return 
to the United States he interested Corning, Wins¬ 
low & Company in the Bessemer process, and 
in May 1863 returned to England and bought for 
them the American rights to the patent. He was 
then engaged to design and build a Bessemer 


148 



Holley 

steel plant, and after bringing about a combina¬ 
tion between the holders of the Bessemer patents 
and the holders of the conflicting American pat¬ 
ents of William Kelly [ q.v .], he built a plant at 
Troy, N. Y., which he put into successful opera¬ 
tion in 1865 (see his article, “The Bessemer 
Process: The Works at Troy,” in Troy Daily 
Times, July 27, 1868). From this time on, the 
career of Holley was substantially the history of 
Bessemer steel manufacture in the United States. 
In 1867 he designed and built a Bessemer plant 
at Harrisburg, Pa. A year later he rebuilt the 
plant at Troy. Still later he planned the works 
at North Chicago and Joliet, the Edgar Thomson 
Works at Pittsburgh, and the Vulcan Works at 
St. Louis, besides acting as consulting engineer 
in the design of the Cambria Steel, Bethlehem 
Steel, and Scranton Steel works. He became the 
foremost steel-plant engineer and designer in the 
United States and, because of his original im¬ 
provements in design whereby the manufacture 
of steel on a large scale could be accomplished, 
he is today recognized as the father of modern 
American steel manufacture. 

Besides the patent for his steam-engine cut¬ 
off, which he received while in college, Holley 
obtained fourteen others, of which ten were for 
improvements in the Bessemer process and plant. 
He was a member of the American Institute of 
Mining Engineers and its president in 1876; a 
founder of the American Society of Mechanical 
Engineers; a member of the British Iron and 
Steel Institute, and of the Institution of Civil 
Engineers in England. He was a trustee of 
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a member 
of the United States Board for Testing Struc¬ 
tural Materials. During the whole of his ex¬ 
tremely busy engineering life he continued his 
literary work and in addition to writing many 
articles for popular magazines and technical 
journals prepared and read many technical pa¬ 
pers before the various engineering societies. 
He was married to Mary Slade of New York 
City, who with two daughters survived him at 
the time of his death in Brooklyn. 

[Memorial of Alexander Lyman Holley, pub. in 1884 
by the Am. Inst, of Mining Engineers; Trans. Am. Soc . 
.Mechanical Engineers, vols. III,. IV r and VI (188a— 
85); Am. Machinist (N. Y.), Feb. 18, Mar. 18, 1882; 
Van Nostrand's Engineering Mag. (N. Y.), Mar. 1882; 
“Brown Univ. Necrology for 1881-82,” in Providence 
Jour., June 21, 1882; N. Y. Times, Jan. 30, 1882; W. 
B. Kaempffert, A Popular Hist . of Am. Invention (2 
vols., 1924).] C.W.M. 

HOLLEY, HORACE (Feb. 13,1781-July 3L 
1827), Unitarian minister, educator, younger 
brother of Myron Holley [q.v.], was born at 
Salisbury, Conn., the second of the six sons of 


Holley 

Luther Holley, a farmer, merchant, and trader, 
and Sarah Dakin, the daughter of a Baptist min¬ 
ister. He spent his early years at school and in 
the usual sports of childhood. In 1797 he went 
to the Academy of Williams College. On com¬ 
pleting the course he entered the freshman class 
at Yale in 1799, and after a brilliant undergrad¬ 
uate course, he graduated in 1803. The next win¬ 
ter he was a student of law in New York City, 
but largely through the influence of Timothy 
Dwight, he returned to New Haven to study the¬ 
ology. In January 1805 he married Mary Aus¬ 
tin, daughter of Elijah and Esther (Phelps) 
Austin of New Haven. His first charge was at 
Greenfield Hill, Fairfield, Conn., where he re¬ 
mained three years. Then, after receiving vari¬ 
ous calls, he accepted the invitation of the South 
End Church, Hollis Street, Boston, Mar. 8,1809, 
and for nine years he served as pastor of the 
church. He was also active in other affairs of 
the city, being a member of the Boston school 
committee and of the board of overseers of Har¬ 
vard College. 

On June 25, 1818, Holley accepted the call to 
the presidency of Transylvania University which 
had been chartered as a “public school” by the 
Virginia Assembly in May 1780. It had had a 
precarious existence and had grown very slowly. 
The Presbyterians were the pioneers of educa¬ 
tion in Kentucky and had furnished most of the 
school's teachers and principals, so that they had 
come to feel a spiritual, if not a legal, ownership 
of the institution. When Holley, a Unitarian, 
was chosen as president, it awakened the hos¬ 
tility of the Presbyterians especially, although 
as soon as he assumed his office the university 
began a period of unparalleled growth in num¬ 
bers and reputation. The college was reorganized, 
the law and medical schools were revived under 
excellent faculties, and the institution drew stu¬ 
dents from the far Southern and Western states. 
Particularly, the medical department attained 
prestige. 

But in spite of this great progress, Holley's lib¬ 
eral religious views provoked opposition through¬ 
out the state and finally resulted in his resigna¬ 
tion. He left Lexington on Mar. 27,1827, escorted 
by a large number of students, citizens, and friends, 
and took boat for New Orleans. Here many 
prominent citizens urged him to found a college 
as a successor to the defunct College of New Or¬ 
leans. He entered upon the work with his usual 
zest and impetuosity, but his exertions through 
the hot summer brought on an illness, and he de¬ 
termined to take a sea voyage to New York be¬ 
fore the opening of the college. The fifth day out 
he contracted yellow fever, and five days later he 


149 



Holley 

died and was buried at sea. He was survived by 
his wife and their two children. 

[Chas. Caldwell, A Discourse on the Genius and 
Character of the Rev. Horace Holley (1828); John 
Pierpont, A Discourse Delivered in Hollis St. Church, 
Boston , Sept. 2, 1827, Occasioned by the Death of 
Horace Holley (1 827); Jas. S. Loring, The Hundred 
Boston Orators (1852) ; Robert Davidson, Hist, of the 
Presbyt. Church in Ky. (1847); Robert Peter, Tran¬ 
sylvania Univ. (1896); F. B. Dexter, Biog. Sketches of 
the Grads. of Yale Coll vol. V (1911).] T.B.M. 

HOLLEY, MARIETTA (July 16,1836-Mar. 
1, 1926), humorist, poet, essayist, novelist, was 
the daughter of John B. Holley, a farmer living 
on the road between Adams and Pierrepont Man¬ 
or in Jefferson County, N. Y., and Mary (Taber) 
Holley. In the farmhouse—on the site of which 
five generations of the Holley family had lived— 
Marietta Holley was born, and in the immediate 
vicinity she spent the greater part of her life. 
Her only public education, gained at a nearby 
school, was supplemented by a further period of 
study at home, and by private tutoring in French 
and music. She showed considerable talent in 
drawing, and for many years she gave piano les¬ 
sons to the children of the neighborhood. Grad¬ 
ually, however, her interest in writing, which 
since childhood had manifested itself in sketches 
and verses, came to predominate. Her literary 
output during the forty-one years from the pub¬ 
lication of My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet’s 
(1873), to Josiah Allen on the Woman Question 
(1914), was very large, and in combination with 
her numerous sketches and poems for the lead¬ 
ing magazines of the country, established her 
pen name of “Josiah Allen’s Wife” as a house¬ 
hold word in the United States, while the fame 
of her Samantha books spread even to foreign 
countries. “Miss Marietta Holley has done 
much to add to the gaiety of nations,” writes a 
reviewer in the Critic of January 1905. “As 
'Josiah Allen’s Wife,’ she has entertained as 
large an audience, I should say, as has been en¬ 
tertained by the humor of Mark Twain. Miss 
Holley’s humor is homely but none the less at¬ 
tractive to thousands of readers. Its very home¬ 
liness is its charm.” The droll, imperturbable 
sanity of Samantha, busy over her cooking and 
the manifold practical duties of her beloved 
household, was offset, in a manner delightful to 
countless women readers, by a recurring rest¬ 
lessness which resulted either in outbursts against 
the limitations imposed by masculine tradition 
on her sex, or in excursions with her husband, 
Josiah Allen, to the outside world—whether to 
the Philadelphia Centennial, the Chicago World’s 
Fair, the St Louis Exposition, the races at Sara¬ 
toga, or beyond the seas to Europe and Hawaii. 
Whatever the context, her comments are filled 


Holley 

with homespun metaphor, abounding in awk¬ 
ward aphorisms. “You have to hold up the ham¬ 
mer of a personal incident to drive home the nail 
of Truth and have it clench and hold fast,” says 
Samantha; and the close reader of Marietta Hol¬ 
ley is aware that the authoress is here expressing 
in Samantha’s clumsy vernacular one of her own 
basic theories of writing. But it is in Samantha’s 
philippics against the liquor traffic, white slav¬ 
ery, and male corruption and stupidity in govern¬ 
ment that it is possible to identify most complete¬ 
ly the character of Josiah Allen’s Wife with that 
of the author. Miss Holley was a friend of Su¬ 
san B. Anthony and Frances E. Willard [qq.v.], 
both of whom were deeply indebted to her for the 
valuable propaganda of the Samantha books and 
of her other writings on the subjects of woman’s 
suffrage and temperance. Samantha, standing 
before her various books in the library at the 
Chicago World’s Fair, exclaims in a moment of 
unguarded enthusiasm, “It is dretful fond of me 
the nation is, and well it may be. I have stood 
up for it time and agin, and then I’ve done a 
sight for it in the way of advisin’ and backin’ it 
up,” perhaps giving in these words a not unfair 
appraisal of the literary achievement of her cre¬ 
ator. 

[See Who’s Who in America, 1924-25; J. A. Had¬ 
dock, The Growth of a Century: As Illustrated in the 
Hist, of Jefferson County (1895) ; R. A. Oakes, Geneal. 
and Family Hist, of the County of Jefferson, N. Y. 
(1905) ; Gazetteer of Jefferson County, N. Y. (1890), 
ed. by Hamilton Child; F. E. Willard and M. A. Liver¬ 
more, A Woman of the Century (1893) ; N. Y. Times, 
Mar. 2, 1926. The date of birth was supplied by the 
town clerk of Ellisburg, Jefferson County, N. Y.] 

E.M.,Jr. 

HOLLEY, MYRON (Apr. 29, 1779-Mar. 4, 
1841), Abolitionist, born at Salisbury, Conn., 
was the son of Luther and Sarah (Dakin) Hol¬ 
ley and by family tradition a direct descendant 
of Edmund Halley, the English astronomer. 
Horace Holley [1 q.v .] was his younger brother. 
In 1799 h e graduated from Williams College and 
began the study of law in the office of Judge Kent 
at Cooperstown, N. Y. In 1802 he practised law 
at Salisbury, and in the following year he moved 
to Canandaigua in New York. There he aban¬ 
doned the law, and having purchased the stock 
of Bemis, a local merchant, he became the book¬ 
seller for the village and the surrounding coun¬ 
try. In 1804 he married Sallie House who bore 
him six daughters. Elected in 1816 to represent 
Canandaigua in the General Assembly, he be¬ 
came deeply interested in the projected Erie 
Canal and was appointed one of the canal com¬ 
missioners. He acted as treasurer of the com¬ 
mission and expended more than $2,500,000 for 
the state. Because of the method of the disburse- 



Holley 

merits and his carelessness in safeguarding his 
own interests he was unable to produce vouchers 
for $30,000 of the total, and in order to make up 
the deficiency, he surrendered his small estate. 
An investigating committee exonerated him of 
all charges of misappropriation, but, although 
the state later returned his property, he was 
never adequately compensated for his great serv¬ 
ices. He had retired and was devoting himself 
to horticulture when he was again brought into 
public affairs by the abduction and murder of 
William Morgan followed by the anti-Masonic 
movement which swept New York state and 
culminated in a convention at Albany. He draft¬ 
ed the address of that convention to the people 
of the state and was one of the New York dele¬ 
gates to the National Anti-Masonic Convention 
which assembled in Philadelphia in 1830. The 
Address ... to the People of the United States 
(1830), eloquently demonstrating that Masonic 
societies were inimical to the principles of a free, 
republican government, was the work of Holley 
as the committee chairman. In 1831 he became 
editor of the Lyons Countryman and for the next 
three years waged a vigorous campaign against 
Freemasonry. In 1834 he went to Hartford to 
edit the Free Elector for the Anti-Masons of 
Connecticut, but after a year he returned to New 
York and settled near Rochester. 

Holley first began to take a practical interest 
in the slavery question in the winter of 1837 and 
was soon convinced of the necessity of organized 
political action. At the anti-slavery convention 
held in Cleveland in 1839 he moved that a nomi¬ 
nation of candidates for president and vice-presi¬ 
dent be made, but the motion was badly defeated. 
He returned to New York and secured the pas¬ 
sage of a resolution by the Monroe County anti¬ 
slavery convention in favor of a distinct nomina¬ 
tion, and a few days later he was again success¬ 
ful at a larger convention held at Warsaw, which 
convention nominated James G. Birney as its 
candidate. The formation of the Liberty party in 
April 1840 at Albany was thus in a large meas¬ 
ure his achievement, for he had succeeded^ in 
transforming the moral and religious indignation 
of the Abolitionists into effective political action. 
On June 12, 1839, Holley issued the first num¬ 
ber of the Rochester Freeman which he edited 
until it failed shortly before his death. 

[Elizur Wright, Myron Holley; and What He Did 
for Liberty and True Religion (1882) ; A Life for Lib¬ 
erty: Anti-Slavery and Other Letters of Sallie Holley 
(1899), ed. by J. W. Chadwick; Wm. L. Garrison, 
1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Chil¬ 
dren, vol. II (1885); The Rochester Hist. Soc . Pub. 
Fund Ser., vols. I—III (1922—24); W. F. Peck, Semi- 
Centennial Hist, of the City of Rochester (1884) ; Hist. 
Colls. Relating to the Town of Salisbury, Conn., vol. II 
(1916); the Nation, Mar. 9, 1882; files of the Roches - 


Holliday 

ter Freeman in the library of the Buffalo Hist. Soc.; 
and manuscript letters in the Holley collection, N. Y. 
Hist. Soc.] F. M—n. 

HOLLIDAY, CYRUS KURTZ (Apr. 3, 
1826-Mar. 29, 1900), promoter, railroad builder, 
the son of David and Mary Kennedy Holliday, 
was born near Carlisle, Pa. His progenitors, of 
Scotch-Irish descent, were prominent in the 
founding of Hollidaysburg, Pa. After gradu¬ 
ating from Allegheny College at Meadville, in 
1852, he planned to enter the legal profession, 
but he soon forsook the law to engage in business 
enterprises. He was successful in his early ven¬ 
tures in Pennsylvania, but farther West, he 
thought, his capital and talents could be used to 
greater advantage, and in 1854 he moved to Kan¬ 
sas. He settled first at Lawrence, allying him¬ 
self with the Free-state men. Convinced that 
Kansas would become a free state, and that the 
time was ripe for founding the future capital, he 
organized a party at Lawrence and led it up the 
Kansas River to select a suitable site for such 
a city. In November 1854, the party selected the 
location, staked out the townsite, and organized 
the Topeka Town Company, with Holliday as 
president. Five years later, in 1859, Holliday 
appeared before the Wyandotte constitutional 
convention and succeeded in having his city de¬ 
clared the territorial capital. He established a 
home in Topeka and built up various business 
undertakings, and during the slavery troubles in 
Kansas he worked consistently for the Free- 
state cause. 

He had long dreamed of the possibility of 
building a railroad along the old Santa Fe Trail, 
but railroad schemes were legion during the 
fifties and he found it difficult to interest people 
in his project. His energy and enthusiasm, how¬ 
ever, finally won him a following and his per¬ 
sistence achieved results. While a member of 
the Kansas territorial council in 1859 drafted 
the bill chartering the Atchison & Topeka Rail¬ 
road Company (later the Atchison, Topeka & 
Santa Fe Railroad) and secured its enactment. 
When the company was formed pursuant to the 
charter, Holliday was made president. Later he 
drafted the bill which passed Congress in 1863, 
providing a land grant for his road, and the fol¬ 
lowing year the Kansas legislature authorized 
the counties through which the road would pass 
to issue bonds and subscribe stock in the rail¬ 
road company. Finally the bonds were voted 
and sold, and in November 1868 the ground was 
broken for the first construction. Holliday re¬ 
mained a director of the railroad until the time 
of his death. In addition to his other activities 
he was one of the organizers of the Republican 


151 



Hollins Hollis 


party in Kansas; he served in the territorial and 
state legislature; and he was an adjutant-general 
during the Civil War. He became president of 
the Merchants* National Bank and of the Excel¬ 
sior Coke and Gas Company of Topeka and was 
for many years the largest tax-payer in the city. 
He was married, on June n, 1854, to Mary 
Dillon Jones of Meadville, Pa.; they had two 
children. 

[See G. D. Bradley, The Story of the Santa Fe 
(1920); W. E. (Donnelley, A Standard Hist. of Kan . 
and Kansans (1918), vols. I-III; and D. W. Wilder, 
The Annals of Kan. (1875). Information as to certain 
facts was supplied by Holliday’s children, Chas. K. 
Holliday, Sacramento, Cal., and Lillie H. Kellam, 
Bronxville, N. Y.] L.R.H. 

HOLLINS, GEORGE NICHOLS (Sept. 20, 
1799-Jan. 18, 1878), naval officer, was born at 
Baltimore, Md., the son of John Hollins, a prom¬ 
inent merchant of that city, and his wife, Janet 
Smith, sister of Gen. Samuel Smith. He was a 
brother of Robert S. Hollins, secretary of the 
Northern Central Railway, and of Smith Hol¬ 
lins, mayor of Baltimore in 1852. After his pre¬ 
liminary education in Baltimore, he applied for 
a midshipman’s warrant, which he received in 
February 1814. At this time he is described as 
being "manly, active, intelligent, and ambitious.” 
He went immediately to sea, was on the President 
with Capt. Decatur when it was captured off 
Long Island in January 1815, and was held pris¬ 
oner until peace was declared. He served also 
with Decatur against the Algerians, 1815, and 
was aide to Commodore Chauncey in 1818. On 
Jan. 13, 1825, he was commissioned lieutenant; 
he commanded the Peacock in 1836, and the 
Cyane and Savannah in 1844; he was commis¬ 
sioned commander Sept. 8, 1845, an d served in 
the Mexican War. On July 13, 1854, in com- 
mand of the Cyane, he bombarded and destroyed 
the town of San Juan de Nicaragua (Grey Town) 
in retaliation for outrages to American citizens 
and property. After commanding the Navy Yard 
at Sackett’s Harbor for a short time, he was or¬ 
dered to the Mediterranean Squadron and was 
promoted captain. Sept. 14, 1855. 

In May 1861, in command of the Susquehanna 
at Naples, he received orders to return to New 
York and to report to the secretary of the navy. 
Upon his arrival in America, his sympathy for 
the Confederate cause led him to resign his com¬ 
mission. Dismissed from the United States 
Navy June 6, 1861, he was commissioned cap¬ 
tain in the Confederate States Navy, June 20, 
1861. By permission of Governor Letcher of 
Virginia, who furnished him $1,000 with which 
to buy arms, and with a hastily assembled force 
which included his two sons, Hollis captured 
shortly afterwards the steamer St. Nicholas, 


plying between Baltimore and Washington, near 
Point Lookout, Chesapeake Bay. With this ves¬ 
sel he immediately took as prizes the MonticeUo 
with United States mail and dispatches from 
Brazil and 3,500 bags of coffee, the Mary Pierce 
with 260 tons of ice, and the Margaret with 270 
tons of coal. These supplies were diverted to the 
use of the Confederate forces at Fredericksburg, 
and the St Nicholas was converted into a gun¬ 
boat. On July 31, 1861, Hollins took command 
of the Naval Station at New Orleans, with the 
rank of commodore. By the first of October he 
had his small "Mosquito Fleet” of seven varied 
vessels in readiness, and with that force he drove 
from the river, Oct. 12, 1861, a superior Union 
force of five ships, sank the Preble, and captured 
a supply ship. By February 1862, he had col¬ 
lected, fitted out, or built a considerable fleet of 
steam war-vessels, floating batteries, and fire 
ships, and had under construction several iron¬ 
clads, including the Louisiana. 

In February 1862 Hollins was made flag-cap¬ 
tain and placed in command of the naval forces 
operating in the upper Mississippi, where he 
engaged in almost continuous fighting around 
Columbus, New Madrid, Island No. 10, Fort 
Pillow, and Memphis. He strongly urged the 
Navy Department to allow him to defend New 
Orleans; and it is quite possible and not improb¬ 
able that if his advice had been accepted he could 
have prevented Farragut’s victory on Apr. 24, 
1862, by combining his own ships with those at 
New Orleans and cooperating with the forts be¬ 
low. After the Union success, Hollins was called 
to Richmond to serve on the court martial of 
Commodore Tattnall, and saw other routine ser¬ 
vice until the close of the war. He then returned 
to Baltimore, and was appointed to duties in the 
city court. He died in Baltimore of paralysis, 
recognized as a brave and able officer, a thorough 
seaman, and a worthy gentleman. He was twice 
married, both wives being daughters of Colonel 
Steritt of Baltimore. 

War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Navy); 
J. T. Scharf, Hist, of the Confederate States Navy 
(1887) ; W. M. Robinson, The Confederate Privateers 
(1928); T. H. S. Hamersley, Gen. Reg. of the U . S. 
Navy for One Hundred Years (1882); Naval War 
Records: Officers in the Confederate States Navy 
(1898) ; W. H. Parker, Recollections of a Naval Officer, 
1841-65 (1885) ; R. W. Neeser, Statistical and Chrono¬ 
logical Hist, of the U. S. Navy, 1775-1907 (2 vols., 
1909) ,* E. S. Maclay, A Hist, of the U. S. Navy (1894), 
vol. II; The Sun (Baltimore;, Jan. 19, 1878; Army 
and Navy Jour., Jan. 26, 1878.] W.K.D. 

HOLLIS, IRA NELSON (Mar. 7, i 8 s< 5 -Aug. 
14, 1930), naval engineer, educator, was born 
at Mooresville, Floyd County, Ind., the son of 
Ephraim Joseph Hollis (1825-1910) and Mary 
(Kerns) Hollis. During the Civjl W&r Jii$ fe- 


152 



Hollis 

ther became captain in the 59th Indiana Regi¬ 
ment, serving at Vicksburg, Corinth, Shiloh, 
Chickamauga, Atlanta, and on the march to the 
sea. He returned in command of his regiment, 
and later became owner and operator of a quarry 
at Louisville, Ky. His wife was the daughter of 
a farmer in Steubenville, Ohio. Ira’s youth was 
spent at Louisville in straitened circumstances. 
He attended the local high school and then be¬ 
came an apprentice in a machine shop. He later 
secured a clerical position with a railroad, and 
then with a cotton commission house in Mem¬ 
phis. At the age of eighteen he took the exami¬ 
nation for admission to the United States Naval 
Academy at Annapolis and came out at the head 
of the list, a position which he retained through¬ 
out the course. After graduating as cadet-engi¬ 
neer in 1878 he spent three years on the cruiser 
Quinnebaug in the Mediterranean and North 
seas and on the coast of Africa. He was pro¬ 
moted to assistant engineer in 1880, and at the 
conclusion of the cruise was detailed as professor 
of marine engineering at Union College, Sche¬ 
nectady, N. Y. In 1884 he served with the ad¬ 
visory board for the construction of the ships of 
the White Squadron. Ordered to the Pacific 
coast in January 1887, he spent three years at 
the Union Iron Works, supervising the construc¬ 
tion of the Charleston, and three years on board 
that vessel in charge of her machinery, with the 
rank of passed assistant engineer, going to the 
Pacific Station and later, taking part in the chase 
of the Itata. In 1892 he was designated to lec¬ 
ture on naval engineering at the Naval War Col¬ 
lege at Newport, his lectures being subsequently 
published as a textbook for the navy. He then 
became assistant to the chief of the Bureau of 
Steam Engineering, but resigned from the navy 
in 1893 to take charge of the development of in¬ 
struction in engineering at Harvard University. 

During his twenty years as professor of me¬ 
chanical engineering at Harvard, Hollis built up 
a reputation as an educator and an administrator. 
His breadth of experience, energy, and sanity 
of judgment were also brought into play in nu¬ 
merous non-academic activities. As chairman of 
the athletic committee he converted the marsh 
land (now known as Soldiers Field) into a well- 
equipped playing field, and constructed on it the 
colossal Stadium, the first structure of its char¬ 
acter in America. His courage in building that 
structure of reinforced concrete, in the face of 
the grave doubts then existing as to its dura¬ 
bility in the New England climate, was charac¬ 
teristic of the man. He was active also in im¬ 
proving intercollegiate athletic relations, in es¬ 
tablishing the Harvard Union (a students’ club), 


Hollister 

in founding the Engineers Club of Boston, of 
which he was the first president, and in numer¬ 
ous other enterprises demanding organizing 
power and leadership. His election later to the 
Board of Overseers of Harvard University—a 
unique honor for a non-graduate—gave evidence 
of the confidence and respect with which he was 
regarded by the great body of Harvard alumni. 
In 1913 Hollis was called to the presidency of 
the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a position 
which gave wide scope to his administrative 
powers. He soon became a leading citizen of the 
community and during the World War was a 
member of the Committee of Public Safety and 
of the New England Fuel Administration. In 
this period also he was elected president of the 
American Society of Mechanical Engineers and 
in that position did valuable work for national 
preparedness. He resigned the presidency of the 
Institute in 1925 on account of ill health, re¬ 
turned to Cambridge, Mass., and devoted himself 
to writing until his death some five years later. 

His publications include The Frigate Consti¬ 
tution: The Central Figure of the Navy under 
Sail (1900) and various scientific papers. His 
proposals for naval reorganization, presented in 
the North American Review, May 1896, and in 
the Atlantic Monthly, September 1897, were the 
basis for the Personnel Act of 1898 which re¬ 
organized the line and staff of the navy and es¬ 
tablished the present system. The influence of 
Hollis in all his associations was the result not 
only of his energy, character, and good judg¬ 
ment but also of his genialty and capacity for 
comradeship and sympathetic helpfulness. On 
Aug. 22,1894, he was married to Caroline (Lor- 
man) Hollis, the daughter of Charles Lorman 
of Detroit. He was survived by four children. 

[C. J. Adams, “Ira Nelson Hollis,” in Mech. Engi¬ 
neering, Oct. 1930, and in Trans . Am. Soc. Mech. En¬ 
gineers, vol. LII, pt. II (1931) ; Who's Who in Amer¬ 
ica, 1928-29; Harv. Grads . Mag., Dec. 1930; Boston 
Transcript, Aug. 15, 1930; Navy Registers, 1878- 
93 ; Army and Navy Jour., Oct. 29, 1892; Aug. 21, 28, 
Nov. 6, 1897; certain information from members of 
the family; personal acquaintance.] l. S. M—s. 

HOLLISTER, GIDEON HIRAM (Dec. 14, 
1817-Mar. 24, 1881), lawyer, author, was bom 
in Washington, Litchfield County, Conn. He 
was the son of Gideon and Harriet (Jackson) 
Hollister and a descendant in the seventh gen¬ 
eration of Lieut John Hollister, said to have 
been an Englishman, who came to America about 
1642 and settled in Wethersfield, Conn. At Yale 
College, where he graduated in 1840, young Hol¬ 
lister was the class poet and editor of the Yale 
Literary Magazine. He studied law in Litchfield, 
Conn., with Judge Origen S. Seymour, Adroit- 


15 3 



Holloway 

ted to the bar in April 1842, he began to practise 
in Woodbury, but after a short time he returned 
to Litchfield. In 1843 he was appointed clerk 
of the county court, holding this position, with 
the exception of a single year, until 1852. In 
June 1847 he married Mary S. Brisbane of 
Charleston, S. C., became an influential figure 
in western Connecticut, was elected to the state 
Senate in 1856, and was largely responsible for 
the election of James Dixon [ q.v .] to the United 
States Senate. In February 1868 he was ap¬ 
pointed minister to Haiti by President Johnson 
but was recalled by President Grant in Septem¬ 
ber 1869. He returned to Connecticut and prac¬ 
tised law with his brother, David Frederick, in 
Bridgeport until 1876, when he again removed 
to Litchfield. He was elected to the legislature 
in 1880 as a Democrat, but died on Mar. 24 of 
the following year. 

He was a successful lawyer despite his meager 
knowledge of the law. Excelling in cross-exam¬ 
ination and in addressing a jury, he was un¬ 
equaled by any of the Connecticut bar as a trial 
lawyer. His interests, however, were literary 
rather than legal. In 1851 he published Mount 
Hope; or, Philip, King of the Wampanoags, a 
historical romance of Connecticut in the seven¬ 
teenth century. His History of Connecticut, 
from the First Settlement of the Colony to the 
Adoption of the Present Constitution, appeared 
in two volumes in 1855. Although it is based 
chiefly upon secondary materials and is extreme¬ 
ly dull, it is a valuable general history of the 
state. Hollister was also the author of Thomas d 
Becket, a tragedy in blank verse the acting copy¬ 
right of which was owned by Edwin Booth. It 
was produced only three times and now seems 
labored and lifeless. This play, together with 
“Andersonvillea poem which acquired popu¬ 
larity during the Civil War, and other verse, was 
published in 1866. Kinley Hollow, a novel pub¬ 
lished posthumously in 1882, is his most suc¬ 
cessful work. Partly historical and partly auto¬ 
biographical, it is a vigorous indictment of the 
sordid Puritanism of a New England village of 
the early nineteenth century. 

[L. W. Case, Hollister Family in America (1886) : 
D. C. Kilbourn, Bench and Bar of Litchfield County, 
Conn,, 1709-1909 (1909) ; Hist. Record of the Class of 
1840 Yale College (1897) ; G. A. Hickox, in 48 Conn. 
Reports, 590-92; New Haven Evening Register, Mar. 
25,1881.] F. M—n. 

HOLLOWAY, JOHN (c. 1666-Dec. 14, 1734 ), 
Virginia colonial official, was born in England, 
As a youth he “served a Clerkship,” and then 
went with King William's army to Ireland. He 
was later an attorney of the Marshalsea court. 
According to a contemporary (Randolph, post, 


Holloway 

p. 120), Holloway turned “projector” and failed 
in business. This misfortune caused his emigra¬ 
tion to Maryland and eventually to Williamsburg, 
Va., where he practised law “upwards of thirty 
Years, with great Reputation for Diligence and 
Learning” (Ibid.). He is described in official 
records as “an eminent lawyer well acquainted 
with Parliamentary affairs, zealous and careful 
of the Privileges of the House of Burgesses” 
(Calendar of Virginia State Papers, I, 242), 
but according to Randolph, he was “of a haughty, 
insolent nature; passionate and peevish to the 
last Degree. . . . But what he wanted in Vir¬ 
tue and Learning to recommend him was abund¬ 
antly supplied by fortunate Accidents” (post). 
He was “universally courted,” charged large 
fees, and acquired wealth which hid a multitude 
of faults. Sometime after 1720 he married Eliz¬ 
abeth (Catesby) Cocke, widow of Dr. William 
Cocke and sister of Mark Catesby [q.v.], the 
naturalist 

Holloway was appointed a judge of vice-ad¬ 
miralty by Governor Spotswood. In 1718 the 
other judges objected to his sitting in the trial 
of a pirate for whom he had once served as at¬ 
torney; Spotswood, accordingly, asked him not 
to sit, and Holloway relinquished his office. The 
Governor welcomed the opportunity to replace 
him with “an honester man” who was not, like 
Holloway, “a constant Patron and Advocate for 
Pirates.” (Spotswood, Letters, II, 354.) Yet 
Holloway occupied with apparent success and 
over long periods several offices of honor and 
trust. On a number of occasions he was one of 
those appointed to supervise the construction of 
public buildings in Williamsburg and to survey 
and lay out the streets of the capital. When the 
city was granted a charter in 1722, he was ap¬ 
pointed its first mayor. He was also a vestry¬ 
man of Bruton Parish Church. For many years 
he was a member of the House of Burgesses— 
from King and Queen County, 1710-14; York 
County, 1720-22, and Williamsburg, 1723-34 
(except that in 1727 he was elected from both 
York County and Williamsburg, although he 
could represent only one, and chose to serve for 
York. He was elected speaker of the House of 
Burgesses, Nov. 2, 1720, and reelected in suc¬ 
cessive sessions with little or no opposition, be¬ 
ing forced by ill health to resign Aug. 20, 1734. 
He was in addition treasurer of the colony from 
1723 to 1734. 

According to Sir John Randolph, who suc¬ 
ceeded him as speaker and treasurer, “his man¬ 
agement of the Treasury contributed to his Ruin, 
and brought him to the Grave with much Dis¬ 
grace” (post, p. 122). His collections were in 


J 54 



Holloway 

arrears, and his books were in such bad condi¬ 
tion that the Assembly appropriated a special 
grant to his successor for putting the accounts 
in order. The act appointing Randolph upon 
Holloway’s resignation stated that "through the 
infirmity and weakness of his body and memory 
[he] is become incapable of executing the said 
office” (Hening, post, IV, 434). His accounts 
were short £1,850 but in September 1734 he as¬ 
signed his whole estate to trustees to make good 
the debt. The following month the Council sug¬ 
gested that his disorder was due in part to the 
fatigue of settling the tobacco inspectors’ ac¬ 
counts, and suggested that he be allowed a sum 
of money, whereupon the House awarded him 
£100, He died two months later, in his sixty- 
ninth year. 

[The fullest account of John Holloway is that left by 
Sir John Randolph, printed in the Va. Hist. Reg., July 
1848. See also W. P. Palmer, Calendar of Va. State 
Papers, vol. I (1875) ; W. W. Hening, The Statutes at 
Large: Being a Coll, of All the Laws of Va., IV (1820), 
434; H. R. Mcllwaine, Jours, of the House of Bur¬ 
gesses 1702-12, 1712-26 (1912), 1727-40 (1910); 
Wm. and Mary Coll. Quart. Hist. Mag., Jan. 1895, pp. 
175, 180, Oct. 1901, pp. 8$, 175; R. A. Brock, The 
Official Letters of Alexander Spotswood (2 vols., 1882- 
85), being vols. I and II of the Va. Hist. Soc. Colls.] 

R. L. M—n. 

HOLLOWAY, JOSEPH FLAVIUS (Jan. 
18, 1825-Sept. 1, 1896), mechanical engineer, 
was born at Uniontown, Stark County, Ohio. 
His father, Joseph T. Holloway, who had moved 
to Uniontown from Sunbury, Pa., again moved 
his family, when young Joseph was six years old, 
to a homestead in the wilderness on the banks of 
the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland. After clear¬ 
ing land for a home and farm he was able to re¬ 
sume his trade of cabinetmaker in the growing 
settlement. Later he was elected justice of the 
peace and in time became popular as a preacher 
of the Gospel. Young Joseph attended the settle¬ 
ment school for only a few short terms but re¬ 
ceived many hours of elementary instruction 
from his father. When he was fourteen years old 
he obtained work as a helper in the drugstore at 
Cuyahoga Falls, and there became interested 
in mechanics through assisting a repairer of 
watches and clocks who carried on his business 
in the store. Later he served an apprenticeship 
with a firm of engine builders at the Falls and 
at the age of twenty went to Cabotsville, Mass., 
where he worked for a year as a machinist. Re¬ 
turning to Ohio, he became associated with the 
Cuyahoga Steam Furnace Company, and within 
a year designed (with E. H. Reese) the ma¬ 
chinery for the Niagara, a screw-propeller boat, 
built at Cleveland for service on the Great Lakes 
(1848). The design of this machinery, after re¬ 
ceiving the approval of Horatio Alien [g.z>.], 


Holls 

dean of the country’s mechanical engineers, se¬ 
cured for Holloway a position with a boat-build¬ 
ing firm at Pittsburgh, for which he designed 
and constructed the machinery of two boats 
which he took down the Ohio and Mississippi 
Rivers and up the coast to New York (1850). 
At Wilmington, Del., he next designed and built 
a side-wheel iron steamer for the Cuban service. 
The success of the steam equipment in these 
crafts made Holloway’s name known among en¬ 
gine builders and created a demand for his ser¬ 
vices. He next went to Cumberland, Md., as 
manager for the Cumberland Coal and Iron 
Company, and shortly after from there to Shaw- 
neetown. Ill., where he took a similar position 
with the iron and coal works organized there by 
the William Sellers Company of Philadelphia. 
About 1857 he returned to Cleveland and became 
successively superintendent, manager, and presi¬ 
dent of the Cuyahoga Steam Furnace Works. 
From 1887, when the company merged with the 
Cleveland Steamboat Company, to 1894 he was 
connected with the firm of H. R. Worthington, 
hydraulic engineers of New York, serving as 
vice-president and treasurer and as adviser to 
the commercial and engineering branches of 
the business. At the expiration of a seven-year 
contract he became connected in a similar capac¬ 
ity with the Snow Steam Pump Works of Buf¬ 
falo, with which he remained until his death. 

ITrans. Am. Inst. Mining Engineers, vol. XXVI 
(1897) ; Trans. Am. Soc. Mech. Engineers, vol. XVIII 
(1897); Am. Machinist, Sept. 17, 1896; Locomotive 
Engineering, Oct. 1896.] F.A.T. 

HOLLS, FREDERICK WILLIAM [See 

Holls, George Frederick William, 1857- 

1903]- 

HOLLS, GEORGE FREDERICK WIL¬ 
LIAM (July 1, 1857-July 23, 1903), lawyer 
and publicist, was born at Zelienople, Butler 
County, Pa. His father, George Charles Holls, 
a native of Darmstadt, Germany, and a Lutheran 
clergyman, emigrated in 1851 to Ohio, where he 
devoted his life to scientific poor relief and par¬ 
ticularly to the care of orphan children (Henry 
Barnard, George Charles Holls, a Memoir, 
1901). His wife was Johanna Louise Burx. 
Their son was educated at Columbia College, 
receiving the degrees of A.B. (1878) and LL.B. 
(1880). After admission to the bar he opened 
a law office in New York City, where by dint 
of hard work he succeeded in building up an im¬ 
portant practice, chiefly among clients of Ger¬ 
man descent. At the time of his death he was 
senior member of the firm of Holls, Wagner & 
Burghard. Although unsuccessful in 1883 in 
his candidacy on the Republican ticket for state 


1 55 



Holls 

senator, he attracted the attention of political 
leaders who later frequently made use of his abil¬ 
ity as a campaign speaker. He was a delegate 
to the New York constitutional convention in 
1894, where as chairman of the committee on 
education he procured the adoption of an amend¬ 
ment prohibiting the use of public funds for re¬ 
ligious schools, but he held no other elective 
office. , 

Holls’s most important accomplishments were 
in the field of international politics. The legal 
firm of which he was a member on several occa¬ 
sions represented the German government; it had 
a branch in Germany, and Holls made frequent 
trips to Europe, where he made the acquaintance 
of leaders of public opinion. When Czar Nich¬ 
olas II proposed, in 1899, an international peace 
conference, Holls determined that the United 
States should participate and brought to bear 
upon the Administration all the resources of his 
political influence and of his vigorous personal¬ 
ity. “To him and, indeed, to him almost alone 
must be attributed the gradual arousing of Pres¬ 
ident McKinley’s interest in the conference, and 
the final determination of our government to be 
represented” {Review of Reviews, New York, 
September 1903, p. 304). A strong delegation 
was chosen of which Holls was made secretary. 
In this capacity he displayed unexpected re¬ 
sources as an expert in international law and 
as a negotiator. His familiarity with several 
languages and his wide acquaintance with Euro¬ 
pean personages were important assets to the 
American group. At a critical stage in the pro¬ 
ceedings, when German opposition threatened to 
prevent the adoption of a scheme of international 
arbitration, Holls was sent secretly to Berlin, 
where he succeeded in converting opposition 
into support. “Mr. Holls,” the Paris correspon¬ 
dent of the London Times later wrote, “contrib¬ 
uted so largely and with such fervent zeal to the 
creation of the International Court that it may 
be fairly said that in no small measure it owed 
its existence to him” ( The Times, July 27,1903). 
He was a member of the committee which draft¬ 
ed the arbitration treaty. His book, The Peace 
Conference at the Hague and Its Bearings on 
International Law and Policy (1900), although 
hurriedly prepared, was pronounced by an au¬ 
thority “fair and unbiased and... in the highest 
degree interesting” (T. W. Woolsey, in Yale 
Review, February 1901, p. 457). He also con¬ 
tributed an account of the conference to the New 
York Independent, Dec. 28, 1899. 

In his remaining years Holls was principally 
devoted to promoting better relations between 
Germany and the United States, and in bringing 


Holly 

about a better understanding between Americans 
of German descent and their fellow citizens. His 
unquestioned patriotism did not preclude an in¬ 
terest in European affairs which, far from being 
merely sentimental, carried with it the duty of 
promoting international goodwill. In the midst 
of a busy professional life he found time for the 
cultivation of literary, artistic and philosophical 
interests. His publications included Franz Lie - 
her: Seine Leben und Seine Werke (1884); 
Sancta Sophia and Troitsza (1888), a collection 
of travel sketches; a pamphlet advocating com¬ 
pulsory voting (1891); and Correspondence be¬ 
tween Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman 
Grimm (1903). In politics Holls was not blind¬ 
ed by reforming zeal to what was practicable. 
His philosophy was realistic. In editorial notes 
to a translation of Gustav Rumelin’s Politics and 
the Moral Law (New York, 1901), while de¬ 
nouncing the ideas of “barrack-trained pseudo¬ 
philosophers especially in Germany who have 
attempted to regard war as a positive good,” he 
sympathized with Rumelin’s claim that the Law 
of Love has no application in the conduct of a 
state, and that “an unqualified obligation on the 
part of a state to observe treaties made or rec¬ 
ognized by it cannot be maintained.” Holls's 
philanthropic activities included participation in 
the work of the Legal Aid Society and the Char¬ 
ity Organization Society, and in tenement house 
reform. Holding strong opinions which he did 
not hesitate to assert, he seemed on chance ac¬ 
quaintance somewhat aggressive, but his friends 
knew him as a charming companion and a gra¬ 
cious host. He was a lover of music and an 
accomplished organist. On Feb. 20, 1889, he 
was married to Caroline M. Sayles, daughter of 
Frederic C. Sayles of Rhode Island. Death came 
to him suddenly in 1903 as the result of an acci¬ 
dent. 

[Published material includes Jour . of the Const. 
Conv. of the State of N. Y., 1894 (rev. ed., 1895); J. 
B. Scott, The Proc. of the Hague Peace Conferences. 
. . . The Conference of 1899 (1920) ; In Memoriam 
Frederick William Holls (priv. pr,, 1904) ; Who's Who 
in America, 1901-0 2; Rev. of Revs. (N. Y.), Sept. 
1903; editorial in the Independent (N. Y.), July 30, 
1903 ,* editorial in the Outlook, Aug. 1, 1903, repr. in 
Am. Law Rev., Sept.-Oct. 1903; Columbia Univ. Quart., 
Sept., Bee. 1903 ; Albany Law Jour., Aug. 1903; N . Y. 
Times, N. Y. Tribune, July 54, 1903. The Holls Papers 
are in the custody of the Librarian of Columbia Univer¬ 
se] P.W.B. 

HOLLY, JAMES THEODORE (Oct. 3, 
1829-Mar. 13, 1911), bishop of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, was born in Washington, 
D. C., of free negro parents. His father, James, 
was one of the laborers employed in the building 
of the Capitol. He was also a shoemaker and 
was wont to boast that he made the shoes which 



Holly 

President Madison wore at his first inaugura¬ 
tion. James Theodore learned his father’s trade. 
In 1844 the family moved North in order to es¬ 
cape disabilities under which negroes labored in 
the South, and young Holly secured some school¬ 
ing in New York, and later in Buffalo and De¬ 
troit. From 1851 to 1853 he was associate editor 
of the Voice of the Fugitive , published in Wind¬ 
sor, Canada; in 1854 he was a public school prin¬ 
cipal in Buffalo. At Detroit, die following year, 
although his parents had been Roman Catholics, 
he was ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church. 

Prior to this time he had become interested in 
the question of emigration for members of his 
race. He was among those who called the Na¬ 
tional Emigration Convention of Colored Men 
which met in Cleveland, Ohio, Aug. 24 to 26, 
1854. There were three parties in the conven¬ 
tion. Martin R. Delaney [q.^.] was at the head 
of those who favored removal to the Niger Val¬ 
ley in Africa; James M. Whitfield, of Buffalo, a 
writer, at the head of those who preferred Cen¬ 
tral America; and Holly led those who chose 
Haiti. Soon after his ordination, in the interest 
of the emigration project and also to collect for 
the Church information as to the feasibility of 
establishing a mission there, Holly went to Haiti. 
He entered into negotiations with the minister 
of the interior, by whom he was presented to 
Emperor Faustin I. Upon his return he gave a 
report at the Emigration Convention which met 
in 1856, and the next year published A Vindica¬ 
tion of the Capacity of the Negro Race for Self- 
government, and Civilized Progress , a lecture 
based on the history of Haiti. It is worthy of 
note that this lecture was the first publication of 
the Afric-American Printing Company, formed 
under the auspices of the National Emigration 
Convention for the publishing of negro litera¬ 
ture. There were delays in the actual carrying 
out of the emigration scheme because of internal 
feuds in Haiti; in the meantime Holly was or¬ 
dained priest, Jan. 2,1856, in New Haven, Conn., 
where he served as rector of St. Luke’s Church 
until 1861. In 1859 James Redpath [ q.v .] visited 
Haiti and President Geffrard appointed him com¬ 
missioner of emigration in the United States, on 
the understanding that he would cooperate with 
Holly. Authorized by him, in 1861 Holly and a 
shipload of emigrants left Philadelphia for Port- 
au-Prince. Altogether about two thousand per¬ 
sons went forth, but not more than a third of the 
number remained and many of these died, in¬ 
cluding members of Holly’s own family. In 1874 
an arrangement was made between the House of 
Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 
the United States and the Convocation of that 


Hollyer 

Church in the Republic of Haiti, whereby the lat¬ 
ter was recognized as a foreign church under the 
“nursing care” of the American Church. That 
same year, Nov. 8, Holly was consecrated bishop 
of Haiti in Grace Church, New York. During 
the remainder of his life he worked with singular 
zeal to advance the cause of Christianity in his 
adopted home. In 1878 he went to England as a 
member of the second Lambeth Conference, and, 
having been invited to preach in Westminster Ab¬ 
bey on St. James Day, delivered a sermon of great 
fervor and eloquence. Only rarely did he visit 
the United States in his later years. He died in 
Port-au-Prince. 

[J. W. Cromwell, The Negro in Am. Hist. (1914) ; 
G. F. Bragg, Men of Md. (rev. ed., 1925) and Hist, of 
the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church 
(1922) ; Jour, of Negro Hist., Apr. 1925, Oct. 1925; 
Who*s Who in America, 1910-ri; Evening Post (New 
York), Mar. 20, 1911; Churchman, Mar. 18, 1911; Liv¬ 
ing Church, Mar. 18, 1911; The Am. Ch. Almanac < 5 * 
Year Book, 1912.] 5 

HOLLYER, SAMUEL (Feb. 24, 1826-Dec. 
29, 1919), engraver, the last of the old school of 
American line-engravers, was born in London, 
England, the son of Samuel Hollyer, of an old 
Warwickshire family. His grandfather, John 
Hollyer, who married a relative of Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, went to London about the middle of the 
eighteenth century and there lost a considerable 
fortune in dock-building. The elder Samuel Holl¬ 
yer was a line-engraver and publisher and later 
became an expert collector of water colors of the 
early English school. The younger Samuel was 
apprenticed at fourteen to the Findens, engrav¬ 
ers, for a fee of five hundred pounds, but after 
serving five of his seven years he was trans¬ 
ferred to Ryall’s studio. He afterward worked 
for Ryall and other engravers. The first plates 
which bear his signature are dated 1842. In 1850 
he married Amy Smith and the following year 
they emigrated to New York. Hollyer did well, 
executing plates for book publishers, but in 1853 
his wife died and he returned to England for a 
few months. On returning to England again 
in i860 he found his stipple in great demand and 
remained for six years, marrying meanwhile, in 
1863, Madeline C. Chevalier. After his perma¬ 
nent settlement in America in 1866, he lived for 
many years at Hudson Heights, near Gutten- 
berg, N. J., commuting to New York. During 
his more than seventy years of active work he 
engraved in line and stipple excellent portraits 
of most of the literary celebrities of his time, as 
well as landscapes, bookplates, and vignettes for 
book-illustration. He also made excursions into 
mezzotint and etching. His self-portrait, etched 
at the age of forty, is a fine piece of work. Ac- 


157 



Holman 

cording to Stauffer he engaged at times in lithog¬ 
raphy, photography, and the publishing business. 
In 1904 he published a series of etchings of his¬ 
toric buildings under title Prints of Old New 
York, of antiquarian interest. During his later 
years he was a picturesque and familiar figure on 
the streets of New York, known and liked every¬ 
where in the print world. In appearance he is 
described (New York Times, post) as resem¬ 
bling Ruskin: “a handsome, patriarchal figure 
with flowing white beard, sealskin cap and coat, 
and his portfolio under his arm.” 

[D. McN. Stauffer, Am. Engravers upon Copper and 
Steel (1907); Frank Weitenkampf, Am. Graphic Art 
(1912) ; Am. Art News, Jan. 3, 1920 ; Jour, of the Ex- 
Libris Soc., June 1897; N. Y . Times, Dec. 30, 1919; 
information as to certain facts from Hollyer’s brother, 
Frederick Hollyer, London, England.] M. B.H. 

HOLMAN, JESSE LYNCH (Oct. 24,1784- 
Mar. 28, 1842), Indiana legislator, Baptist cler¬ 
gyman, judge, was born near Danville, Ky., be¬ 
ing one of fourteen children. His father, Henry 
Holeman (the son preferred the simpler form 
of the name), migrated in 1776 from Virginia 
to Kentucky, where in 1789 he met death at the 
hands of hostile Indians who attacked a block¬ 
house in which his wife, Jane, and children had 
taken refuge. After completing a preparatory 
course, the son read law in the office of Henry 
Clay. In 1805 or 1806 he set up as a lawyer in 
Carrollton, Ky., then known as Port William. 
While living at this place, he was married to 
Elizabeth Masterson, the accomplished daugh¬ 
ter of Judge Richard Masterson, a man of some 
wealth and consequence. William Steele Hol¬ 
man [q.z'.] was their son. In 1810, the young 
lawyer crossed the Ohio and settled in Indiana 
Territory a short distance south of Aurora, of 
which town he was one of the founders. The 
following year Gov. William Henry Harrison 
appointed him prosecuting attorney for Dear¬ 
born County. In 1814, he was elected to the 
popular branch of the territorial legislature, by 
which body he was chosen speaker. Before the 
end of 1814, he was appointed judge of one of 
the two circuits comprised in the territory and 
two years later to the supreme bench of the new 
state. He held this office until 1830, when Gov. 
James Brown Ray refused to reappoint him. In 
1831, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the 
United States Senate. In 1834, President Jack- 
son appointed him to a federal judgeship. From 
this time until his death in 1842, he served as 
judge of the United States district court of 
Indiana. 

In the interval between 1830 and 1834, when 
he held no judicial appointment, Holman was 
made superintendent of schools of Dearborn 


Holman 

County. Throughout his life he was interested 
in education. He was one of the founders of 
Indiana College (Indiana University), and was 
a devoted friend of Franklin College. He was 
ordained to the Baptist ministry in 1834, was an 
active member of the Baptist Board of Foreign 
Missions and a moving spirit in the work of the 
Baptist Association throughout Indiana for a 
number of years. He is said to have written a 
number of poems and, in his youth, to have at¬ 
tempted a novel which some time after publica¬ 
tion he tried to suppress, believing that “its mor¬ 
als were not sound.” 

[C. W. Taylor, Biog. Sketches and Review of the 
Bench and Bar of 2 nd. (1895); W. T. Stott, Ind. Bap¬ 
tist Hist. (1908); Jour, of the Senate of the State of 
Ind., 1831; Damans Knobe, The Ancestry of Grafton 
Johnson (1924); A Biog . Hist, of Eminent and Self- 
Made Men of the State of Ind. (1880) ; Hist, of Dear¬ 
born and Ohio Counties (1885) ; Indiana Jour ., Apr. 6, 
1842.] W.O.L. 

HOLMAN, WILLIAM STEELE (Sept. 6, 
1822-Apr. 22, 1897), congressman, was bom 
near Aurora, Dearborn County, Ind., the son of 
Jesse Lynch Holman [q.v.] and Elizabeth (Mas¬ 
terson) Holman, whose families were among 
the pioneers of Kentucky. William was educated 
in local schools and attended Franklin College 
for two years, giving up his course on the death 
of his father. When he was about twenty he 
married Abigail Knapp. He studied law, was 
admitted to the bar, served as probate judge, 
1843-46, and as prosecuting attorney 1847-49, 
was a member of the constitutional convention 
of 1850, of the legislature in 1851-52, and com¬ 
pleted his service under the state government 
by a four-year term as judge of the court of com¬ 
mon pleas, 1852-56. For the next forty years he 
was the candidate of the Democratic party in the 
4th congressional district of Indiana, being 
elected sixteen times. His terms of service in 
the House covered the periods 1859-65,1867-77, 
1881-95, 1897. He first gained prominence as a 
War Democrat and throughout his later career 
was known as a friend of the old soldier. 

An effective debater, a master of parliamen¬ 
tary tactics, and, thanks to long experience on 
committees, an expert on Indian affairs, public 
lands, and government expenditures, Holman be¬ 
came one of the outstanding members of the 
lower house. It was in the matter of appropri¬ 
ation bills that he made his reputation and earned 
the titles “The Watch Dog of the Treasury” 
and “The Great Objector,” the latter by the fre¬ 
quency with which he blocked consideration of 
measures—usually carrying an appropriation— 
which required unanimous consent. While con¬ 
stantly denounced as a demagogue and an expo¬ 
nent of “hay-seed statesmanship,” he had a 



Holman Holme 


well-defined philosophy of government, and his 
legislative conduct was quite in accordance there¬ 
with. He was in many respects a Jeffersonian, 
carrying the ideas of a simple agricultural era 
over into the age of railroads, industrialism, and 
high finance. According to his view, most of 
the people were poor and over-taxed; govern¬ 
mental outlays usually benefited those who least 
needed help; one outlay bred others; in the long 
run democratic institutions could hardly survive 
the strain. A typical expression of his views may 
be found in one of his speeches against naval 
expansion, a program due, he charged, to the 
uneasiness of capitalistic interests, “the unexam¬ 
pled accumulation of great fortunes ... the out¬ 
growth in a large degree of partial and vicious 
legislation,” which desired a government based 
on physical power, and whose designs were fa¬ 
cilitated by the existence of “the vast and dis¬ 
honoring surplus in the Treasury”—collected by 
unnecessary taxation ( Congressional Record, 49 
Cong., 2 Sess., App., p. 98). 

His attitude was sometimes shortsighted, and 
the “Holman amendment,” carried for years in 
the rules of the House, by which an appropriation 
bill was permitted to embody a change in exist¬ 
ing law, “provided it be germane to the subject 
matter and retrenches expenses,” aggravated the 
pernicious practice of “riders” and in part de¬ 
feated the intention of its author. As an offset, 
however, his opposition in 1885 to the “scatter 
policy” by which various committees were au¬ 
thorized to bring in appropriation bills disclosed 
a thorough understanding of budgetary pro¬ 
cedure, and his predictions as to the evils involved 
in the change were fully justified by subsequent 
developments. He was meticulously honest and 
applied his own principles of economy to expense 
accounts when on public service. Numerous 
anecdotes were the natural and perhaps the chief 
result, of this habit, among them a story of his 
forcing a congressional committee of inspection 
to take a laborious trip in an army ambulance in 
order to reduce transportation costs. His nick¬ 
name and the hostility of many contemporaries 
whose measures he defeated, combined with his 
lanky frame, simplicity of manner, careless dress, 
somewhat uncouth appearance, and fondness for 
chewing tobacco, caused his real ability to be 
frequently underrated. Aside from such matters 
as his attempts to starve the Library of Congress 
and his hostility to expenditures for the improve¬ 
ment of the national capital, his speeches in gen¬ 
eral disclose a high order of ability and in many 
instances a profound insight into the injustice 
and hardship involved in many of the economic 
policies of the day. James G. Blaine, whose ideals 


were very different, paid tribute to his character 
and ability ( Twenty Years of Congress, vol. I, 
1884, p. 329). Testimony is unanimous that, per¬ 
sonally, Holman was a delightful character, with 
many qualities reminiscent of Lincoln, the same 
ability as a raconteur, and somewhat the same 
whimsical appreciation of the virtues and weak¬ 
nesses of the common man. He was a remark¬ 
ably effective stump speaker. 

ICong. Record, 59 Cong., 1 Sess., pp. 2512 ff., App., 
pp. 259 ff.; Washington Post, Apr. 2$, 24, 1897; In¬ 
dianapolis Jour., Apr. 23, 1897; Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. 
(1928); A Biog. Hist, of Eminent and Self-made Men 
of the State of Ind. (1880), vol. I; C. C. Carlton, in 
O. O. Stealy, Twenty Years in the Press Gallery 
(1906), pp. 318-22.] W.A.R. 

HOLME, THOMAS (1624-1695), surveyor, 
map-maker, member of the Provincial Council 
of Pennsylvania, was probably a native of York¬ 
shire, England, although there is a tradition that 
he was bom in Ireland. His early life is obscure. 
It is said that he was a captain in the Parliamen¬ 
tary forces during the Civil Wars, that he ac¬ 
companied Admiral Penn on the Hispaniola 
expedition of 1654-55, and that he was one of 
Cromweirs soldiers who received a land grant in 
Ireland about 1655. He joined the Society of 
Friends and in 1672 was associated with Abra¬ 
ham Fuller in the publication of a pamphlet de¬ 
scribing the suffering and persecution of the 
Irish Quakers. His wife, whose name is un¬ 
known, died before 1682. They had five children, 
of whom four probably came to America with 
their father. 

Holme's connection with the history of Penn¬ 
sylvania began on Apr. 18, 1682, when he was 
appointed surveyor-general of the province by 
William Penn. He sailed on the Amity, Apr. 23, 
and reached his destination some time in June, 
Acting with the Commissioners for Settling the 
Colony, he was instructed by the proprietor to 
choose the site for a great city which was high, 
dry, and healthy, and provided with a good deep 
harbor. A preliminary survey was made, but the 
final selection of the site was delayed until after 
Penn's own arrival in the province in October 
1682. Holme then laid out that part of the city 
of Philadelphia which lies between South Street 
and Vine Street and extends from the Delaware 
to a distance of three blocks beyond the Schuyl¬ 
kill. He also prepared a map, entitled A Por¬ 
traiture of the City of Philadelphia, which was 
first printed in A Letter from William Penn .., 
to the Committee of the Free Society of Traders 
(London, 1683). With the exception of some 
changes made in 1684 under Holme's supervi¬ 
sion, the Portraiture is still substantially ac¬ 
curate, On the completion of this task, he began 


159 



Holmes Holmes 


a survey of the southeastern section of the three 
original counties (Philadelphia, Bucks, and 
Chester), and drafted a Map of the Province of 
Pennsilvania, which was first published in Lon¬ 
don about 1687. He was also a member of the 
first Assembly of Pennsylvania, which met at 
Upland (Chester), Dec. 4, 1682, a member of 
the Provincial Council, 1683-86, and for a short 
time in 1685 an< i 1686, acting-president of the 
Council and acting-governor. He served on 
many important committees, including the com¬ 
mittee that drafted the Frame of Government of 

1683 and the committee that was appointed in 

1684 to consider the boundary dispute with Lord 
Baltimore, the proprietor of Maryland. He was 
interested in Indian affairs and took part in the 
negotiation of several Indian treaties. Accord¬ 
ing to John F. Watson, one of these treaties, 
concluded in 1685, while Holme was presiding 
over the Council, was the basis of Penn’s claim 
to the city of Philadelphia and the adjacent coun¬ 
try as far west as the Susquehanna ( Memoirs of 
the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. Ill, 
pt. 2,1836, pp. 131-40). Holme visited England 
in 1688-89 and again from 1690 to 1694. In the 
year of his second return to the province he was 
appointed one of the commissioners of property. 
He died on his plantation in Dublin township, 
Philadelphia County, Pa., in March or April 

1695* 

[Oliver Hough, “Capt. Thos. Holme, Surveyor-Gen. 
of Pa. and Provincial Councillor,” Pa. Mag. of Hist, 
and Biog.j Jan., Apr., July 1896; A. C. Myers, Immi¬ 
gration of the Irish Quakers into Pa., 1682-1750 
(1902); Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pa ., vol. 
I (1852); W. R. Shepherd, Hist, of Proprietary Gov¬ 
ernment in Pa. (1896); Penn MSS. in the Pa. Hist. 
Soc.] W.R.S. 

HOLMES, ABIEL (Dec. 24, 1763-June 4, 
1837), Congregational clergyman, historian, was 
born at Woodstock, Conn., and died in Cam¬ 
bridge, Mass. His father, David Holmes, served 
as a surgeon in the Revolutionary War. David 
was descended from John Holmes, an early set¬ 
tler of Woodstock, and married Temperance 
Bishop, of Norwich, Conn. When Abiel Holmes 
was fifteen his father died, and he himself entered 
Yale College, from which he graduated in 1783, 
having joined the College Church in his sopho¬ 
more year. After a visit to the South, following 
his graduation, he was ordained at New Haven, 
Sept. 15, 1785, with a view to ministering to a 
Congregational Church in Midway, Ga. The 
Rev. Levi Hart’s sermon at his ordination, which 
was presided over by the learned President Ezra 
Stiles [q.v.] of Yale, bore the title “A Christian 
Minister described, and distinguished from a 
Pleaser of Men.” His ministry in Georgia, 


where his health was imperfect, lasted until June 
1791, and was broken by a period of teaching at 
Yale (1786-87). In 1790 he married Mary, a 
daughter of Ezra Stiles. Soon after his final 
return to New England in 1791 he was called to 
the pastorate of the First Church in Cambridge, 
Mass., where he* was installed Jan. 25, 1792, and 
served as minister for thirty-seven years. In 1795 
both his wife and her father died. Left childless, 
Holmes was not left without occupation, for 
Stiles had bequeathed to him “no less than forty 
volumes of the valuable manuscripts” collected 
“by an extensive and remarkably inquisitive cor¬ 
respondence.” These provided not only abundant 
material for The Life of Esra Stiles, D.D. } LL.D., 
which Holmes published in 1798, but also an 
impetus towards the important work of his own 
by which he is best remembered. In 1805 the 
first edition of this work appeared in two octavo 
volumes, under the title, American Annals; or a 
Chronological History of America from its Dis¬ 
covery in MCCCCXCII to MDCCCVI. A sec¬ 
ond edition, published in 1829, was entitled The 
Annals of America, from the Discovery by Co¬ 
lumbus in the Year 1492 to the Year 1826 . These 
volumes, as the first attempt at an extensive 
orderly history of the country as a whole, marked 
an important step in American historiography. 
They consist largely of a chronological recital 
of facts, amassed with a scholar’s care from a 
great variety of sources, manuscript and printed. 
It was in keeping with the interests of Holmes 
that from 1798 to the end of his life he was a 
highly productive member of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, and from 1813 to 1833 its 
corresponding secretary. His published writ¬ 
ings include a large number of sermons and ad¬ 
dresses. There is good reason to ascribe to his 
authorship a number of poems, signed “Myron,” 
in a small volume entitled A Family Tablet pub¬ 
lished in 1796 ( Proceedings of the Massachusetts 
Historical Society, vol. LXII, 1930, p. 155). 

Six years after the death of his first wife, 
Holmes married, Mar. 26, 1801, Sarah Wendell, 
only daughter of Oliver Wendell, a Boston mer¬ 
chant. Their home was “The old Gambrel-roofed 
House” in Cambridge, so often celebrated by 
Oliver Wendell Holmes [q.v.], the fourth of 
their five children. Here the faithful minister 
and scholar compassed a long span of fruitful 
years, truly respected and beloved. His theology, 
that of a mild but determined Calvinist, did not 
save him from the distresses attending the “Uni¬ 
tarian schism” in New England. The termina¬ 
tion of his practice of “exchanging” with neigh¬ 
boring ministers of liberal views gave rise to a 
bitter controversy, recorded in two pamphlets, 


160 



Holmes 

and in 1829 his long pastorate came to an end. 
The church members who quitted the First Par¬ 
ish with him then organized the “Shepard Con¬ 
gregational Society,” of which he became the 
first minister. In 1831 he retired from active 
parochial duties. “A person of the middle size,” 
he appears in a portrait reproduced in the Life 
and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes as pos¬ 
sessing a countenance of marked beauty and 
charm. 

[W. Jenks, “Memoir of the Rev. Abiel Holmes," 
Colls. Mass. Hist. Soc ., 3 ser., VII (1838); W. B. 
Sprague, Annals Am. Pulpit, voj. II (1857); Alexander 
McKenzie, Lectures on the Hist . of the First Ch. in 
Cambridge < 1873); John T. Morse, Jr., Life and Let¬ 
ters of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1896); F. B. Dexter, 
Biog. Sketches Grads. Yale Coll., vol. IV (1901); G. 
A. Gray, The Descendants of George Holmes of Rox - 
bury (1908) ; Boston Daily Advertiser, June 6, 1837.] 

M. A. DeW. H. 

HOLMES, BAYARD TAYLOR (July 29, 
1852-Apr. 3, 1924), surgeon, was born at North 
Hero, Vt., the son of Hector Adams and Olive 
(Williamson) Holmes. His father is credited 
with having invented the first successful twine- 
binder harvesting machine. The family moved to 
Minnesota in 1865 and at Carleton College, 
Northfield, young Bayard began his college ca¬ 
reer, later attending Paw Paw Institute at Paw 
Paw, Ill., where he was given the degree of B.S. 
in 1874. He commenced the study of medicine 
at the Chicago Homeopathic College, from which 
he received the degree of M.D. in 1884. Then 
followed an interneship at the Cook County Hos¬ 
pital and three years of study at the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons and the Chicago Medi¬ 
cal College, from which latter school he was 
graduated in 1888. Interested from the first in 
medical education he was professor of surgery at 
the Post-Graduate Medical School of Chicago 
from 1889 to 1892, then in the latter year he 
joined the faculty of the University of Illinois 
College of Medicine as secretary and professor 
of surgical pathology and bacteriology. He was 
later made professor of surgery, a position he 
filled until 1908. He was largely instrumental 
in bringing about the increased entrance require¬ 
ments and improved methods of instruction in 
that school. For three years (1889-92) he was 
attending surgeon at the Cook County Hospital. 

In his early career, Holmes took a strong in¬ 
terest in sociologic problems, such as the educa¬ 
tion of the laboring classes, factory inspection, 
and child-welfare. He organized a society called 
the National Christian Citizenship League and 
in 1895 was Socialist candidate for mayor of 
Chicago. In his later years a family bereave¬ 
ment turned his chief interest from surgery to 
the study of mental disease. In this period he 
wrote The Friends of the Insane , The Soul of 


Holmes 

Medical Education , and Other Essays (1911), 
and The Insanity of Youth and Other Essays 
(1915). In his earlier career he had been a pro¬ 
lific contributor to periodic literature on subjects 
relating to surgery and medical education, and 
in 1904 he published a textbook entitled Surgery 
of the Abdomen . For several years he edited the 
North American Practitioner and contributed 
editorials to other medical periodicals including 
the Journal of the American Medical Associ¬ 
ation. He was instrumental in establishing the 
Medical Library Association, which furnished 
the nucleus for the Newberry Medical Library. 
Physically Holmes was of medium height and of 
heavy build. He was a popular lecturer and 
though he often wandered far afield from his 
surgical subjects he was always interesting. His 
final address to the graduating class was an an¬ 
nual charge covering the fields of ethics, moral¬ 
ity, and medical economy. His saddened last 
days were spent at his winter home in Fairhope, 
Ala., where he died of a heart affection. He had 
married on Aug. 14, 1878, Agnes Anna George, 
daughter of Capt. James W. George of Lansing, 
Minn. Two sons were born to them. 

[Irving A. Watson, Physicians and Surgeons of 
America (1896); Who’s Who in America, 1922-23; 
Jour, of the Am. Medic. Asso., Apr. 12, 1924; Chicago 
News, Apr. 3, 1924; information as to certain facts 
from Holmes’s son, Dr. Bayard Holmes, Chicago, Ill.] 

J.M.P. 

HOLMES, DANIEL HENRY (July 16, 
1851-Dec. 15,1908), poet, lawyer, musician, was 
born in New York City, the son of Daniel Henry 
Holmes and his wife, Eliza Maria Kerrison. His 
father early in his career settled in New Orleans 
and became a merchant; his mother, an English 
girl, the daughter of Robert Kerrison, was bom 
in London and came to America with her parents 
when she was ten years old. In 1852 the elder 
Holmes purchased an old manor-house near 
Covington, Ky., which he christened “Holmes- 
dale,” and there for many years he went with 
his family from New Orleans to spend the sum¬ 
mers. Before the outbreak of the Civil War he 
took his family abroad and put his children to 
school in France. Daniel Henry spent a number 
of years in school at Tours and In the Lycee 
Bonaparte at Paris. His father then sent him to 
Manchester, England, to be prepared for a mer¬ 
cantile career; but after a brief trial of it, he 
returned in 1869 with his family to America and 
entered his father's business in New Orleans. 
Liking this even less, he was allowed to return 
to “Holmesdale.” He studied law in Cincinnati 
and, after being graduated in 1872, practised 
desultorily for several years. 

In 1883 Holmes married Rachel Gaff, of Cin- 


l6l 



Holmes Holmes 


cinnati, and went to Europe in 1884, traveling 
through England, France, Italy, and Germany. 
In the year of his arrival in England he pub¬ 
lished in London under the name of “Daniel 
Henry, Jun.,” a book of poems that he had writ¬ 
ten previously in Kentucky. Entitled Under a 
Fool's Cap (1884), ^ contained twenty-four 
lyrics based upon old nursery rhymes. In 1890 
his father gave him “Holmesdale,” but he con¬ 
tinued to spend almost as much time abroad as at 
home. In 1904, however, he returned to Ken¬ 
tucky where he wrote another volume of poems, 
A Pedlar’s Pack, published in New York in 1906. 
In the same year he published in Cincinnati 
Hempen Homespun Songs, a collection of four¬ 
teen songs for four of which he had written the 
words as well as the music. Although his second 
book contained some graceful lyrics, and his 
third some pleasing songs, his first book, Under 
a Fool's Cap, remains his best. From the sug¬ 
gestions found in twenty-four familiar nursery 
rhymes he wrote a group of lyrics unlike any¬ 
thing else in English poetry. Some of them are 
elaborated stories, some are allegories, and still 
others are illustrations of the modern instance of 
a particular Mother-Goose rhyme. The fact that 
their author was a musician is everywhere evi¬ 
dent from the musical qualities of these poems. 
Holmes's works would probably have remained 
unknown for a longer time but for their discov¬ 
ery by Thomas Bird Mosher [q.v.] who was the 
first to identify the authorship of his early poems. 
Holmes went to Hot Springs, Va., in the fall of 
1908 to spend the winter. There he died sudden¬ 
ly in the early morning of Dec. 15. He was 
buried in Cincinnati. 

[There is a Foreword by Thos. Bird Mosher and a 
critical essay by Norman Roe in Under a FooVs Cap 
(editions 1910, 1911, 1914, 1925). See also J. W. 
Townsend, Ky. in Am. Letters (2 vols., 1913); Cin¬ 
cinnati Enquirer, Dec. 16, 1908; and, for reviews of 
Holmes’s works, W. T. Larned, “A Poet in a Fool’s 
Cap,” Century Mag., Feb. 1914, and comment in the 
Bibelot, May 1910. Information as to certain facts was 
supplied for this sketch by Mrs. Daniel Henry Holmes.] 

W.K.D. 

HOLMES, DAVID (Mar. 10, 1770-Aug. 20, 
1:83^), governor of Mississippi, was the second 
of nine children born to Joseph and Rebecca 
(Hunter) Holmes. His mother was of Presby¬ 
terian stock, sister of Rev. Andrew Hunter 
; his father, according to tradition of Eng¬ 
lish descent, was a native of the north of Ireland 
who emigrated to Pennsylvania in his teens. 
Both David and his older brother, Hugh, later a 
Virginia judge, were born at Mary Ann Furnace 
in York County, Pa., but while they were still 
small, their parents migrated to Frederick 
County, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley. Joseph 


Holmes established himself as a merchant in 
Winchester, and during the Revolution was 
given charge of prisoners of war held there. 
David received his schooling at the academy in 
Winchester and at fifteen became his father's 
partner and accountant. In 1790 he went to Wil¬ 
liamsburg to study law, and after being admitted 
to the bar, opened an office in Harrisonburg, 
where from 1793 t0 J 797 he was commonwealth’s 
attorney for Rockingham County (J. W. Way- 
land, A History of Rockingham County, Va., 
1912, p. 442). In 1797 he was sent to Congress 
as a Jeffersonian Republican and was reelected 
five times. In 1809, upon the expiration of his 
sixth term, President Madison appointed him 
governor of Mississippi Territory ( Journal of 
the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the 
United States of America, vol. II, 1828, p. 119), 
in which capacity he served by successive reap¬ 
pointments until the admission of Mississippi to 
the Union {Ibid., pp. 241, 589). 

As governor he was called upon to exercise 
courage, discretion, and tact. The territory was 
menaced on its borders by hostile Creeks and not- 
too-friendly Choctaws who threatened at times 
to cut the Mississippi settlements off from com¬ 
munication with die states to the north (I. J. 
Cox, The West Florida Controversy, 1918, p. 
438). To the south, in West Florida, settlers 
from the United States were growing restive 
under Spanish taxation and Spanish authority; 
within the Territory, resentment against restric¬ 
tions imposed on commerce by Spanish customs 
duties was increasing; one of the duties of the 
Governor of Mississippi was to restrain his peo¬ 
ple and their emigrant brethren from acts of hos¬ 
tility toward a power with which the United 
States was at peace (Cox, passim). When the 
time was ripe, however, Holmes's tactful co¬ 
operation with Gov. W. C. C. Claiborne [ q.vl\ 
was instrumental in effecting the successful oc¬ 
cupation of the District of Baton Rouge (Cox, 
p. 505), and the later annexation (1812) of the 
District of Mobile to Mississippi Territory. (See 
I. J. Cox, in American Historical Review, Janu¬ 
ary 1912.) During the next three years came 
both the Creek War and the War of 1812. In 
1816 two great tracts of land to the north of the 
settled area were ceded to the Territory by the 
Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians {American 
State Papers: Indian Affairs, vol. II, 1834, pp. 
92, 95). The following year the Territory was 
divided, and the western portion admitted to the 
Union as the State of Mississippi. Holmes was 
a delegate from Adams County to the constitu¬ 
tional convention of 1817 and was chosen to be 
its president (J. F. H. Claiborne, Mississippi, 


162 



Holmes 

1880, p. 352). After the adoption of the consti¬ 
tution he was elected first governor of the state 
and served until January 1820, when, having de¬ 
clined to be a candidate for reelection ( Inde¬ 
pendent Press, Natchez, Apr. 14, 1819), he was 
succeeded by George Poindexter [q.v.]. For a 
time during his governorship he was president of 
the board of trustees of Jefferson College ( 1 Mis¬ 
sissippi State Gazette, Natchez, Jan. 23, 1819). 
Appointed to the United States Senate in August 
1820 (Mississippi Republican, Natchez, Aug. 22, 
1820) in the place of Walter Leake, resigned, he 
was subsequently elected and served until his 
resignation, Sept. 25, 1825 (Biographical Di¬ 
rectory of the American Congress, 1928). He 
had meanwhile defeated Cowles Mead for the gov¬ 
ernorship by an overwhelming majority ( South¬ 
ern Luminary, Jackson, Miss., Sept. 13, 1825), 
and in January 1826 he was inaugurated, but in 
July, by the failure of his health, was forced to 
relinquish the office to Lieut.-Gov. Gerard C. 
Brandon [q.z>.]* He returned to his home in 
Winchester, Va., but was shortly stricken by 
paralysis, and after five years of helplessness 
cheerfully endured, he died near Winchester, at 
the age of sixty-two. He was never married. 

[In addition to references above, see character sketch 
by Holmes's nephew, D. H. Conrad, in Miss. Hist. Soc. 
Pubs., Centenary Ser., vol. IV (1921) ; Dunbar Row¬ 
land, Mississippi (1907), vol. I ,* Daily National Intelli¬ 
gencer (Washington, D. C.), Aug. 27, 1832. Holmes’s 
Executive Journals and other documents are deposited 
with the Miss. Dept, of Archives and Hist., at Jackson 
(Ann. Report Am. Hist. Asso., 1903, 1 , 477)* His cor¬ 
respondence with the U. S. Dept, of State is in the Miss. 
Terr. MSS., Bureau of Rolls and Library, Dept, of 
State, Washington (Am. Hist. Rev., Jan. 1912, p. 294).] 

E.R.D. 

HOLMES, EZEKIEL (Aug. 24, 1801-Feb. 
9,1865), editor, legislator, educator, agricultur¬ 
ist, was bom to Nathaniel and Asenath (Chan¬ 
dler) Holmes at Kingston, Mass. He was de¬ 
scended in the sixth generation from William 
Holmes who was born in England about 1592 
and migrated to America prior to 1641, with his 
son, John Holmes, the latter ultimately becoming 
the second minister of Duxbury, Mass. Ezekiel 
prepared for college under Rev. Samuel Parris 
of Kingston, graduating from Brown Univer¬ 
sity in the class of 1821. In college he manifested 
a particular interest in botany and mineralogy, 
both at the time quite undeveloped sciences. He 
studied medicine with his uncle, Dr. Benjamin 
Chandler, in Paris, Me., teaching at the same 
time in the local high school. At Paris he con¬ 
tinued to develop as a naturalist and on one of 
his expeditions discovered the great tourmaline 
deposit on Mount Mica. Entering the medical 
school at Bowdoin, he received the degree of 
M.D. in 1824. Though he continued to practise 


Holmes 

his profession in a small way throughout most 
of his life, his main interests were those of a 
naturalist and an agriculturist. In 1825 he was 
appointed instructor in agriculture at the Gardi¬ 
ner Lyceum, founded four years before by Rob¬ 
ert Hallowell Gardiner \_q.v.~\. Here he con¬ 
tinued his scientific studies and made an excellent 
collection of minerals. In 1829 he was elected 
principal after the resignation of Dr. Benjamin 
Hale tq.v.], and served until the failure of the 
Lyceum from lack of adequate support in 1832. 
During 1828 he edited the New England Farm¬ 
er's and Mechanics' Journal, a publication which 
lasted about a year. For two years, beginning in 
1831, he edited an anti-slavery paper known as 
the American Standard. In 1832 he established 
his permanent home in Winthrop, Me. From 
1833 to 1837 he held the post of lecturer on chem¬ 
istry, mineralogy, geology, and botany in Water- 
ville (now Colby) College. On Jan. 21, 1833, as 
editor, he issued the first number of the Kennebec 
Farmer and Journal of the Useful Arts, soon re¬ 
named the Maine Fanner and Journal of the 
Useful Arts. When he began this enterprise 
there was no other agricultural paper in Maine 
and there were only a few in the nation. He 
succeeded in overcoming to a large extent the 
conservatism of the Maine farmers, whose preju¬ 
dices against ‘hook farming” were exceedingly 
strong, and accomplished “the banishment of 
superstitious notions in agriculture ... [setting] 
forth in their stead rational and even scientific 
truths which could be comprehended by the 
readers of his paper” (True, post, p. 212). He 
was a frequent lecturer before agricultural so¬ 
cieties, many of his addresses being published in 
the Farmer and others in the Agricultural Re¬ 
ports of the state. He also contributed articles 
to the United States Patent Office Reports. He 
was influential in bringing about the establish¬ 
ment of a state Board of Agriculture in 1852 and 
was its secretary, 1852-55. He helped to found 
the Maine State Agricultural Society (1855), 
of which he was secretary until his death. From 
1835 to 1839 inclusive and again in 1850 he 
served as a member of the state legislature, and 
in 1840-41 he was a state senator. In 1839 he 
published at Augusta the Report of an Explora¬ 
tion and Survey of the Territory on the Aroos¬ 
took River during the Spring and Autumn of 
1838 . This survey which he conducted for the 
state attracted considerable attention and was an 
important factor in stimulating American immi¬ 
gration into a region the possession of which was 
at the time in dispute between Great Britain and 
the United States. In 1861 and 1862, in asso¬ 
ciation with Charles Henry Hitchcock [q.tf.], a 


163 



Holmes 

geologist, Holmes conducted under state au¬ 
thority a more extended survey of the natural 
characteristics of Maine. As a result of this work 
he made an important report on the ichthyology 
and zoology of the state, published in the Seventh 
Annual Report of the Secretary of the Maine 
Board of Agriculture (1862). The last two years 
of his life were devoted to leading the struggle 
to persuade the state legislature to use the funds 
which would accrue from the Morrill Act of 
1862 for the creation of a separate college de¬ 
voted to “agriculture and the mechanic arts” 
rather than turn the money over to any of the 
existing institutions. He died just as his efforts 
were being crowned with success. He was, 
therefore, one of the founders of the University 
of Maine. “To him must be rightfully accorded 
the honor of being the founder of systematic and 
intelligent fanning in Maine” (True, post , p. 
220). Wise counselor and generous friend, 
Holmes always remained poor, being often fi¬ 
nancially embarrassed. He served his fellow 
men more successfully than himself. On Aug. 
14,1825, he married Sarah E. Benson. They had 
two children. 

[Files of tlie Maine Farmer ; N. P. True, “Biographi¬ 
cal Sketch of Ezekiel Holmes, M.D.,** in Tenth Ann. 
Report of the Secretary of the Me. Board of Agric 
1865 (1865) ; Joseph Griffin, Hist, of the Press of Me . 
(1872) ; J. A. Vinton, The Giles Memorial (1864); M. 
C. Femald, Hist, of the Me. State Coll, and the Univ. of 
Me. (1916) ; Providence Daily Journal , Sept. 6, 1863.] 

R.H.G. 

HOLMES, GEORGE FREDERICK (Aug. 
2,1820-Nov. 4,1897), scholar, educator, author, 
was born at Straebrock, Demerara, British Gui¬ 
ana. His father was Joseph Henry Herndon 
Holmes, judge-advocate in that colony; his 
mother was Mary Anne Pemberton, daughter of 
Stephen and Isabella (Anderson) Pemberton. 
Both parents were of sturdy Northumbrian stock. 
When George was two years old, they took him 
to England to the home of his maternal grand¬ 
father, who lived with a maiden daughter, Eliza¬ 
beth. The boy was placed at school at Sunder¬ 
land in the county of Durham; and in 1836 he 
entered the University of Durham, where he won 
a prize scholarship. His studies here were ab¬ 
ruptly broken off by reason of some indiscretion 
that was misunderstood by his guardians. As a 
result, he was sent off at seventeen to Canada, 
landing at Quebec, July 28, 1837. He drifted to 
Philadelphia, Virginia, Georgia, and South 
Carolina. In the last state he was admitted to 
the bar in 1842, though he never became natu¬ 
ralized. He was not suited to the law; his tastes 
were literary. “A foreigner—friendless—fund- 
less,” as he described himself, he began to write 
for the Southern Literary Messenger and other 


Holmes 

periodicals, and his articles brought him in touch 
with many of the leading men of the South. He 
married, about 1844, Eliza Lavalette Floyd, 
daughter of John Floyd and sister of John Bu¬ 
chanan Floyd iqq.v.'}. 

Holmes was called to the University of Rich¬ 
mond (Va.) in 1845, as professor of ancient 
languages. In 1847 he became professor of his¬ 
tory and political economy in the College of Wil¬ 
liam and Mary, and the following year was 
chosen first president of the University of Mis¬ 
sissippi. Thence he was recalled to Virginia by 
illness in his family. On the journey thither he 
met with an accident which cost him an eye and 
came near costing his life. His consequent pro¬ 
longed absence from his post led to his resigning 
from the University of Mississippi. There fol¬ 
lowed nine years of life in southwest Virginia, 
where he farmed, wrote numerous articles, and 
carried on an extensive correspondence. To 
Auguste Comte he wrote: “I have first to work 
for bread for my family, then to work for books, 
and finally to work for leizure and independence” 
(Thornton, post , p. 36). Mentally this was a 
fruitful period, though obscure. Called to the 
University of Virginia in 1857, he remained 
there until his death forty years later. At first 
he was professor of history and literature; in 
1882 his chair was reduced to historical science, 
including political economy; and in 1889 it em¬ 
braced political economy and the science of so¬ 
ciety. He was a prodigy of miscellaneous knowl¬ 
edge, an encyclopedic scholar. 

In personal appearance he was tall and lank, 
negligent in dress, and unconventional. He was 
genial, but paradoxical and individualistic. He 
published numerous textbooks—readers, spell¬ 
ers, grammars, and a school history of the United 
States. “He was a free trader, a believer in 
slavery, and an advocate of states rights” (Ibid 
p. 39). Though he mingled with Calhoun’s group 
in South Carolina, and though his wife’s family 
was one which furnished two governors of Vir¬ 
ginia, Holmes remained detached from politics. 
In 1891 he was given the degree of D.C.L. by the 
University of Durham, England, from whose 
doors he had been driven by the folly of his 
natural guardians. This honor he prized highly. 
Upon his death, at the age of seventy-seven, his 
last word was “England.” He was buried at 
Sweet Springs, W. Va., beside his wife. 

[P. B. Barringer, Univ. of Va. (1904), I, 361; H. 
E. Shepherd, in Lib. of Southern Lit., vol. VI (1909) ; 
Holmes papers, Lib. of Cong.; Richmond Dispatch and 
Richmond Times , Nov. 5,1897; W. M. Thornton, “The 
Letter-Book of George Frederick Holmes/* Alumni 
Bull, of the Univ. of Va., Aug. 1898; B. B. Minor, 
“Some Further Notes Relating to Dr. G. F. Holmes/* 
Ibid., Nov. 1898; P. A. Bruce, Hist, of the Univ . of 


164 



Holmes 

Va. (1920 ); Biog. Geneals. of the Va.-Ky. Floyd Fam¬ 
ilies (1912)-] S.C.M. 

HOLMES, ISAAC EDWARD (Apr. 6,1796- 
Feb. 24, 1867), congressman, son of John Bee 
Holmes and Elizabeth (Edwards) Holmes, was 
born in Charleston, S. C. Under the tutelage of 
his cousin, the Rev. Christopher Gadsden, after¬ 
ward Bishop, and at the Hopkins Grammar 
School, New Haven, young Holmes was pre¬ 
pared for college. He entered Yale at the age of 
fifteen, graduated with the class of 1815, re¬ 
turned to Charleston for the study of law, and 
was admitted to the bar in 1818. He married in 
this year his cousin, Mary Fisher Holmes. His 
first local distinction was the result of amateur 
literary undertakings, particularly his Recre¬ 
ations of George Taletell (1822), an imitation 
of Irving's Sketch Book. Attracted to politics, 
he identified himself with the extreme Southern 
party, joining in 1823 with others in founding 
the South Carolina Association, an organization 
created for the express purpose of countering 
abolitionist influences from the North. As coun¬ 
sel in a legal attempt forcibly to hold a colored 
cook taken from a British merchantman, Holmes 
delivered speeches characterized by the presid¬ 
ing judge as inflammatory. In the legislature, to 
which he was elected in 1826 and again in 1828, 
he vehemently opposed the tariff. Defeated by 
the power of Union sentiment in 1830, he was 
returned in 1832 with renewed energy to expend 
in behalf of the Nullification program. The year 
before he had initiated a test case by refusing to 
pay duty upon certain imports from England. 

Aided by the powerful friendship of Calhoun, 
Holmes in 1838 defeated the conservative H. S. 
Legare [q.v.] for Congress and sat during the 
next twelve years as representative of the 1st 
South Carolina District. He served as chairman 
of the Committee on Commerce, 1843-44, and as 
chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs, 
1846-47. He strongly championed adequate na¬ 
tional defense, urged improvements in the great 
interstate waterways of the West—though he 
opposed federal aid within the states—and advo¬ 
cated the annexation of Texas. He delivered a 
memorial address upon John Quincy Adams, 
Feb. 24,1848 (quoted in part in W. H. Seward's 
Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams, 
3:849, PP- 340-41), and upon Calhoun, Apr. 1, 
1850. His point of view in national affairs was 
consistently that of the slave-holding South. In 
August 1847 he wrote to Howell Cobb, pleading 
for the establishment of an effective Southern 
bloc (U. B. Phillips, The Life of Robert Toombs, 
I 9 I 3 > P* 59 ); and in a fervent speech before Con¬ 
gress; Dec. 27, 1845, he proclaimed that the rep- 


Holmes 

resentatives of the South “must now assume the 
attitude of bold defiance to the circumscription 
of their rights in the Territories” ( Congressional 
Globe } 31 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 82). 

Yielding political ambitions in an effort to bet¬ 
ter his private fortune, Holmes went to Cali¬ 
fornia in 1851, practising law for a while in San 
Francisco and farming for a while at Bushy Glen 
in Alameda County. The illness of his wife, 
who died in 1856, was the occasion of his only 
return to Charleston in a decade. When the or¬ 
dinance of secession was passed he hurried to 
Washington for a conference with Seward and 
others concerning a possible way of maintaining 
peace. When the conference failed, he went on 
to Charleston, threw his support to the Confed¬ 
eracy, and as a member of the council and in 
other ways served his city. After Lee's surren¬ 
der, he was sent as one of the commissioners 
from Charleston to Washington to propose a 
plan of provisional government; the appointment 
of Governor Perry was in some measure a result 
of this mission. Holmes was genuinely con¬ 
cerned for the welfare of his country, though the 
necessity of slavery was with him cardinal doc¬ 
trine. In social relations he was genial, almost 
gay; and it is worthy of comment that he was 
capable of true affection, as witnessed by his 
friendships with Adams and Webster, both of 
which rose above clamorous partisan politics. 
He died in Charleston in his seventy-first year. 

[Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, vols. X-XII 
(1876-77) ; Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928) ; F. B. Dex¬ 
ter, Biog. Sketches Grads • Yale Coll., vol. VI (1912) ; 
H. G. Wheeler, Hist, of Cong., vol. I (1848) ; Charles¬ 
ton Daily Courier, Feb. 26, 1867 ; clippings in posses¬ 
sion of Mrs. George S. Holmes, Charleston, S. C.] 

F P G 

HOLMES, ISRAEL (Dec. 19, 1800-July 15, 
1874), brass manufacturer, was bom at Water- 
bury, Conn., the third son of Israel and Sarah 
(Judd) Holmes. The father died when Israel 
was two years old, and from that time he lived 
and worked on the farm of his grandfather, Cap¬ 
tain Samuel Judd. At the age of sixteen, hav¬ 
ing completed the district school education, he 
taught in the West Centre district school of Wa- 
terbury. About 1818 he entered into partnership 
with Horace Hotchkiss for the manufacture of 
hats and went to Augusta, Ga., to take charge of 
a store for their sale. Two years later he re¬ 
turned to Waterbury and entered the employ of 
Leavenworth, Hayden, & Scovill (later J. M. L. 
& W. H. Scovill), manufacturers of brass but¬ 
tons, and took charge of their store. In 1829 he 
went to England for the Scovills to obtain skilled 
workmen and a knowledge of the methods and 
materials used by the more successful English 
manufacturers. After much difficulty, since the 


* 6 5 



Holmes 

export of craftsmen, machines, and trade secrets 
was prohibited, Holmes brought a company of 
workers to Waterbury. In 1830, with seven 
partners and a capital of $8,000, he established 
the firm of Holmes & Hotchkiss, for the manu¬ 
facture of sheet brass and wire for the market, 
the first venture of the kind in the United States. 
He again went to England (1831) for men and 
equipment, and brought back the first wire¬ 
drawing and tube-making machinery seen in this 
country. In 1833 when the success of this in¬ 
fant industry was threatened by tariff legislation 
admitting unmanufactured goods free, Holmes 
and Israel Coe [ q.v .] went to Washington and 
succeeded in having special legislation enacted 
classifying sheet brass and wire as manufac¬ 
tured goods. At this time the loss of two of his 
children in the burning of Captain Judd's home 
led Holmes to sell his interest in the business 
and move to Wolcottville (Torrington), Conn., 
where he became one of the founders of the Wol¬ 
cottville Brass Company. This firm was the first 
to employ the battery process in the manufacture 
of brass kettles. In 1834 Holmes again went 
to England for experienced workers. After 
eleven years at Torrington he returned to Wa¬ 
terbury as president of the newly formed Water¬ 
bury Brass Company. In 1853 he resigned and 
with J. C. Booth and H. W. Hayden [q.v.’] 
formed the firm of Holmes, Booth & Haydens. 
This company was the first organized both to roll 
brass and then to manufacture it on a large scale. 
After sixteen years as president of this firm he 
resigned and with Booth and L. J. Atwood 
[q.v .], purchased the Thomas Brass Company of 
Thomaston, Conn., which they renamed Holmes, 
Booth & Atwood (later Plume & Atwood) and 
enlarged with a branch at Waterbury. With 
this firm he remained until his death. Holmes 
stands out as one of the most prominent figures 
in the history of the American brass industry, 
and it is said that after his death no new venture 
of importance was organized until 1900. He 
was a leader in the construction of the Nauga¬ 
tuck Railroad, which had much to do with the 
success of the industry. He represented Tor¬ 
rington in the Connecticut legislature in 1839, 
and Waterbury in 1870. His wife was Ardelia 
Hayden of Waterbury, by whom he had six chil¬ 
dren. 

[Joseph Anderson, The Town and City of Waterbury, 
Conn. (1896); Henry Bronson, The Hist . of Water¬ 
bury, Conn . (1858) ; Samuel Orcutt, Hist . of Torring¬ 
ton, Conn. (1878) ; W. G. Lathrop, The Brass Industry 
in Conn. (1909) ; J. L. Bishop, Hist, of Am. Manufac¬ 
tures from 1608 to i860 (1864), vol. II; J. D. Van 
Slyck, Representatives of New England: Manufacturers 
(1879); Hartford Daily Courant, July 17, 1874.] 

F.A.T. 


Holmes 

HOLMES, JOHN (Mar. 28, 1773-July 7, 

1843), lawyer, senator from Maine, was born 
at Kingston, Mass., the son of Melatiah and 
Elizabeth (Bradford) Holmes, and a descendant 
of William Holmes who was in Scituate, in 
Massachusetts, as early as 1641. Withdrawing 
from his father's iron works at nineteen, John 
studied at the town school and with Rev. Zeph- 
aniah Willis so successfully that he was able to 
enter Rhode Island College (now Brown Uni¬ 
versity), in 1793. After graduating in 1796, he 
studied law under Benjamin Whitman of Han¬ 
over and was admitted to the bar in 1799. This 
same year he removed to Maine and settled in 
that part of Sanford later incorporated (1808) as 
Alfred. In this new country, he built up a lucra¬ 
tive practice in land titles. Keen of wit, cool in 
the face of his opponents' wrath, using satire, 
ridicule, epithet, and anecdote, often in prefer¬ 
ence to logic, he gained a wide reputation as a 
lawyer more because of his success than because 
of his knowledge of the law. When the Dart¬ 
mouth College case came before the Supreme 
Court, he with Attorney-General Wirt was op¬ 
posing counsel to Webster and Hopkinson (Tim¬ 
othy Farrar, Report of the Case of Dartmouth 
College against William H. Woodward, Ports¬ 
mouth, 1819). Of Holmes's speech, Webster 
wrote, “Upon the whole, he gave us three hours 
of the merest stuff that was ever uttered in a 
county court" (Fletcher Webster, The Private 
Correspondence of Daniel Webster, 1857, I, 
275 )- 

Holmes's natural taste for politics had been 
whetted by his election by the Federalists of San¬ 
ford as representative to the Massachusetts Gen¬ 
eral Court in 1802 and 1803. Suddenly in 1811 
the vigorous Federalist became an ardent Demo¬ 
crat, possibly through conviction but possibly 
also because of the increasing popularity of the 
Democratic party in Maine. In 1812 he was 
returned as a representative to the General Court 
where he was the defeated Democratic candi¬ 
date for the speakership. Active in the lower 
house as well as in the Senate, to which he was 
elected in 1813, he upheld the national govern¬ 
ment and opposed the anti-war measures of Fed¬ 
eralist Massachusetts. His political conversion 
won for him much ridicule, including the title 
“Duke of Summersetts." In January 1816 Pres¬ 
ident Madison appointed him a commissioner 
under the fourth article of the Treaty of Ghent 
to make division between the United States and 
Great Britain of the islands in Passamaquoddy 
Bay. In the same year Holmes was elected to 
Congress and was reelected in 1818. 

A foremost advocate of the separation of 



Holmes 

Maine from Massachusetts, Holmes took a 
prominent part in the Brunswick Convention of 
1816. Though not the author of the curious 
method of counting votes called “Holmes' arith¬ 
metic," he signed the report setting it forth and 
received blame and ridicule for the argument 
that five-ninths of the aggregate majorities of 
the town corporations constituted the five-ninths 
of the legal votes of Maine required by the Mas¬ 
sachusetts law authorizing separation {To the 
People of Maine, 1816). Besides acting as chair¬ 
man of the committee which drafted the Maine 
constitution, he did much to put through Con¬ 
gress the bill creating the new state. His pam¬ 
phlet {Mr. Holmes■ Letter to the People of 
Maine, Washington, Apr. io, 1820), wherein he 
argued that any restriction upon the admission 
of Missouri would be unconstitutional, was his 
defense against the opposition of many citizens 
of Maine to entangling the admission of Maine 
with the question of slavery extension. Elected 
senator from Maine in 1820, he retired in 1827, 
only to be elected the next year to fill the unex¬ 
pired term of Albion Keith Parris. In 1833 he 
again retired to the practice of law. 

In 1824 Holmes supported Crawford as a can¬ 
didate for the presidency. Never a Jacksonian, 
he transferred his allegiance to Clay and later to 
the Whig party. In the upper house he defended 
Foot's resolution, which led to the Webster- 
Hayne debate, and was active in opposing Van 
Buren's nomination as minister to Great Britain 
in 1831. Blair called him the “Thersites of the 
Senate.'' In 1836 and 1837 he represented the 
town of Alfred in the state legislature. Appoint¬ 
ed in 1841 United States attorney for the Maine 
district by President Harrison, he held the office 
until his death in Portland in 1843. He had pub¬ 
lished in 1840 a volume entitled The Statesman, 
designed to illustrate the “Principles of Legis¬ 
lation and Law." He was twice married: on 
Sept. 22,1800, to Sally Brooks of Scituate, Mass., 
who died Dec. 6, 1835, and on July 3L 1837, to 
Caroline F. (Knox) Swan, youngest daughter 
of Gen. Henry Knox, with whom he spent his last 
years in the mansion at Thomaston, Me. Though 
he had been notoriously intemperate during the 
earlier years of his career, late in life he took an 
active part in the temperance movement. 

[Wm. Willis, A Hist. of the Law, the Courts, and the 
Lawyers of Me. (1863), is the source of the accounts 
in J. A. Vinton, The Giles Memorial (1864), and in 
the Biog. Encyc. of Me. of the Nineteenth Century 
(1885), ed. by H. C. Williams. See also H. S. Burrage, 
Me. in the Northeastern Boundary Controversy (1919) ; 
and the Law Reporter, Aug. 1843. There are two vol¬ 
umes of letters to Holmes in the Maine Hist. Soc.] 

R.E.M. 


Holmes 

HOLMES, JOSEPH AUSTIN (Nov. 23, 
1859-July 12, 1915), mining engineer, father of 
the United States Bureau of Mines, was born in 
Laurens, S. C., the son of Rev. Z. L. Holmes, a 
Presbyterian minister with scientific tastes, and 
of Catherine (Nickles) Holmes. His education 
was received in the local schools and at Cornell 
University, where he was graduated in 1881, 
having specialized in agriculture and science. 
In the following year he was appointed professor 
of geology and natural history at the University 
of North Carolina, where he remained for ten 
years and where he continued to lecture after he 
was appointed state geologist in 1891. In addi¬ 
tion to his geological studies he showed political 
ability by inaugurating a campaign for the build¬ 
ing of good roads by the use of convict labor and 
by increased taxes. While still state geologist, 
in 1903-04 Holmes was put in charge of the de¬ 
partment of mines and metallurgy at the Louisi¬ 
ana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. In con¬ 
nection with this appointment he took up the test¬ 
ing of fuels and structural materials, conducting 
his demonstrations with such skill that he was 
put in charge of testing laboratories for the 
United States Geological Survey. The waste of 
mineral resources was given much attention in 
the Roosevelt administration, and Holmes be¬ 
came prominent in the conservation movement. 
By 1907 the work with which he was associated 
had become so important that it was organized 
as the technological branch of the Survey, with 
Holmes as its chief. About this time his atten¬ 
tion was directed, by a series of disasters, to the 
investigation of accidents in mines. Explosions 
and fires in coal mines were taking terrible toll 
of life, and there was serious need for scientific 
study and educational propaganda. The techno¬ 
logical branch was expanded into the United 
States Bureau of Mines in 1910, and Holmes, 
who had worked for the reorganization, was se¬ 
lected from several candidates as director. With 
high ambitions for the success of the new bu¬ 
reau, he took up earnestly the problem of the dis¬ 
graceful mortality in American mining. A model 
mine for testing explosions was developed at 
Bruceton, Pa. Holmes contended that dust from 
bituminous coal is dangerous by itself, a tenet 
contrary to the old belief that coal dust could not 
explode without gas. At the first national mine- 
safety meeting, organized in Pittsburgh in Octo¬ 
ber 1911, mine operators were impressed by the 
demonstrations. Federal and state rescue sta¬ 
tions were established in the coal and metal min¬ 
ing regions, and a number of railroad cars were 
equipped as movable safety and rescue stations. 
Holmes made popular the slogan “safety first" 

167 



Holmes 

and maintained an effective educational cam¬ 
paign for the reduction of industrial accidents. 
The arduous traveling necessary for building 
up these services told on his health, particularly 
as he did not spare himself in the long and wear¬ 
ing work. Notable force of character, as well as 
dexterity of action, was required for impressing 
Congress and the mining industry as to the im¬ 
portance of what he was doing. By 1915 he was 
forced to retire to a sanitarium in New Mexico, 
and in July death came to him in Denver from 
tuberculosis. Coal mines throughout Pennsyl¬ 
vania and West Virginia closed while operators 
and miners paid homage to him. Shortly after 
his death the Colorado School of Mines estab¬ 
lished the Joseph A. Holmes professorship of 
safety and efficiency engineering, and the Joseph 
A. Holmes Safety Association was formed under 
the auspices of the Bureau of Mines. Holmes 
was married on Oct. 20,1887, to Jeanie I. Sprunt 
of Wilmington, N. C. She, with two sons and 
two daughters, survived him. 

[.Joseph Austin Holmes (Am. Mining Cong., 1915) ; 
Who's Who in America 1914-15; N. Y, Times, July 
14, 1915; Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), July 13, 
1915; Pittsburgh Post, July 14, 1915; Rocky Mountain 
News (Denver), July 13, 1915 ; Mining and Engineer¬ 
ing World, July 17, 1915; Engineering and Mining 
Jour,, July 17, 191s; Hon Age, July 15, 1915; Coal 
Age, July 27, 1912, July 17, 1915; information from 
George S. Rice, Esq., of the U. S. Bureau of Mines.] 

P.B.M. 

HOLMES, MARY JANE HAWES (Apr. 5, 
1825-Oct. 6, 1907), novelist, the daughter of 
Preston and Fanny (Olds) Hawes, was born at 
Brookfield, Mass. Her grandfather, Joel Hawes, 
was a Revolutionary soldier; her father and his 
elder brother, Rev. Joel Hawes, a New England 
preacher of note, were both men of intellect; and 
her mother was a lover of poetry and romance. 
Mary Jane was a precocious child. She went to 
school at the age of three, was studying gram¬ 
mar at six, taught a district school at thirteen, 
and began writing at fifteen. On Aug. 9, 1849, 
she married Daniel Holmes, a lawyer of Brock- 
port, N. Y., and lived with him for a short period 
at Versailles, Ky., where she obtained atmosphere 
for many future novels. For the remainder of 
her life her home was in Brockport. She had no 
children and spent most of her time in writing 
and in travel; her house was filled with paint¬ 
ings, statuary, and curios collected on her jour¬ 
neys. She was fond of young girls and was in 
the habit of entertaining groups of them in her 
home with talks on art and travel. She wrote 
novels at the rate of almost one a year and their 
net circulation has been estimated at over two 
million. The first of these was Tempest and 
Sunshine 1 or, Life in Kentucky (1854). It was 


Holmes 

followed by: English Orphans (1855), Tfee 
Homestead on the Hillside, and Other Tales 
(1856), Lena Rivers (1856), Meadow Brook 
(1857), Dora Deane (1858), Cousin Maude 
(i860), Marian Gray (1863), Darkness and 
Daylight (1864), Hugh Worthington (1865), 
The Cameron Pride; or, Purified by Suffering 
(1867), Rose Mather (1868), Ethelyris Mis¬ 
take (1869), Millbank (1871), Edna Browning 
(1872), West Lawn (1874), Edith Lyle (1876), 
Daisy Thornton (1878), Forrest House (1879), 
Madeline (1881), Queenie Hetherton (1883), 
Bessie's Fortune (1885), Marguerite (1890), 
Dr. Hat hern's Daughters (1895), a story of 
Virginia, in four parts, Paul Ralston (1897), 
The Tracy Diamonds (1899), The Cromptons 
(1902), The Merivale Banks (1903), Rena's 
Experiment (1904), The Abandoned Farm and 
Connie's Mistake (1905). Many of these were 
issued in paper covers. Long before the term 
“Main Street” was applied to small town life, 
Mrs. Holmes wrote “Main Street” stories. Hav¬ 
ing a simple ethical code, in which everything 
was either black or white, with no grays, and 
writing in an equally simple style, she held the 
devotion of a large public over a long period of 
years. Next to E. P. Roe [q.-z;.] she was prob¬ 
ably the most popular of American novelists 
during the period following the Civil War, but 
she is now little read and her sentimental style, 
hackneyed phrases, and noble heroes and super¬ 
sensitive heroines provoke a smile. She also 
wrote various magazine articles and essays, 
among them Men, Don't be Selfish; a Talk to 
Husbands by the Ladies' Favorite Novelist 
(1888). A photograph of her, taken in later life, 
shows a plain, large-featured woman, with hair 
in a heavy bang. While returning from her sum¬ 
mer home at Oak Bluffs, Mass., in 1907, she be¬ 
came ill at Albany, but was able to reach her 
home at Brockport, where she died a few days 
later. 

[Vital Records of Medway, Mass . (1905); date of 
birth from Vital Records of Brookfield, Mass. (1909) > 
Who's Who in America, 1906-07; F. E. Willard and 
M. A. Livermore, A Woman of the Century (1893); 
Bookman, Dec. 1907; Nation, Oct. 10, 1907; N. Y. 
Tribune, Oct. 8, 1907; Buffalo Express, Oct. 7, 1907.] 

S.G.B. 

HOLMES, NATHANIEL (Jan. 2,1815-Feb. 
26, 1901), judge and law teacher, was born at 
Peterborough, N. H,, the son of Samuel and 
Mary (Annan) Holmes. He was descended 
from Nathaniel Holmes, born in Coleraine, Ire¬ 
land, who emigrated to Londonderry, N. H., in 
1740. His father was a pioneer manufacturer of 
machinery, who soon after his son's birth moved 
to Springfield, Vt., where he built a cotton mill 


168 



Holmes 


Holmes 


and a machine shop. After attending the acade¬ 
mies in Chester, Vt., and New Ipswich, N. H., 
Holmes went to Phillips Exeter Academy and 
graduated from Harvard College in 1837. He 
studied law in Maryland while doing private tu¬ 
toring, and at the Harvard Law School, 1838- 
39. After his admission to the Boston bar, he 
moved to St. Louis, where he practised law until 
1865. In 1846 he was city and county attorney, 
and in 1853-54 counselor of the school board. In 
1856 he became a charter member of the Acad¬ 
emy of Science of St. Louis and was long its en¬ 
ergetic corresponding secretary. 

At the close of the Civil War, Missouri held a 
constitutional convention, which not only estab¬ 
lished a notorious test oath for all office-holders, 
subsequently held void by the United States Su¬ 
preme Court, but also with even more question¬ 
able authority passed an ordinance ousting the 
duly elected judges of the state supreme court 
and directing the governor to appoint their suc¬ 
cessors. Gov. T. C. Fletcher appointed Holmes 
and two others. Two of the existing judges re¬ 
fused to quit and obtained an injunction from the 
St. Louis circuit court prohibiting Holmes’s two 
associates from disturbing the sessions of the 
old supreme court The governor called in po¬ 
lice who installed Holmes and his two associates 
by forcibly removing their reluctant predeces¬ 
sors. Shortly afterward, Holmes delivered a ju¬ 
dicial opinion declaring the injunction invalid 
(Thomas vs. Mead, 36 Mo., 232, discussed in the 
American Law Register, October 1865, PP* 7 ° 5 ~ 
22). These high-handed proceedings must have 
been the only exciting event in Holmes’s life. 
He served on the court from 1865 until 1868 and 
with his two associates turned out a large vol¬ 
ume of work. His many opinions are competent 
but not distinguished, and none of his decisions 
except that just mentioned has proved important 
in the development of the law. 

In 1868 Holmes resigned his judgeship to be¬ 
come Royall Professor of Law at Harvard. The 
invitation came from Prof. Theophilus Parsons, 
who was undoubtedly drawn to Holmes by their 
common zealous adherence to Swedenborgian- 
ism. Harvard Law School then possessed two 
eminent legal writers as professors, Parsons and 
Emory Washburn, but the students remained 
unstimulated by class-room discussion and un¬ 
tested by examinations, and the library had be¬ 
come very unsatisfactory. Holmes appears to 
have accepted this situation without question, 
and took no active part in the administration of 
the school. His lectures on equity, bailments, and 
domestic relations were not sufficiently note¬ 
worthy to receive comment in the recollections 


of students of his time. In 1870 the new presi¬ 
dent of Harvard, Charles W. Eliot, secured the 
appointment of C. C. Langdell as dean, who com¬ 
pletely reorganized the school by the introduc¬ 
tion of written examinations and the case-meth¬ 
od of instruction. Because of his inability to ac¬ 
cept the new methods, Holmes resigned on May 
6, 1872, at the request of the President and Fel¬ 
lows. He returned to practice in St. Louis but 
retired in 1883 an d settled once more in Cam¬ 
bridge, where he died. 

Holmes did no legal writing, but was widely 
interested in other subjects. His Realistic Ideal¬ 
ism in Philosophy Itself (1888) exhibits exten¬ 
sive philosophic and scientific reading but has 
had no perceptible influence and now seems un¬ 
readable. His only permanent contribution to 
knowledge was The Authorship of Shakespeare, 
which went into four editions (1866,1867, 1875, 
1886). Holmes was the first writer after Delia 
Bacon to support the Baconian hypothesis. He 
uses no arguments about ciphers but furnishes 
an exhaustive collection of parallel passages in 
the plays and Bacon’s writings. His scholarship 
and fairness have been praised by his opponents. 
In his old age he compiled “A Genealogy of the 
Holmes Family of Londonderry, N. H.,” con¬ 
taining garrulous sketches of his relatives and a 
long autobiography. His career may be summed 
up as that of a lawyer of the old school, whose 
cultivation extended far beyond the limits of his 
profession, but who had the misfortune to meet 
opportunities too great for his abilities. 

b [Holmes’s manuscript “Genealogy” is in the posses¬ 
sion of the Peterborough Hist. Soc. Printed sources 
include: Albert Smith, Hist, of Peterborough (1876); 
Charles Warren, Hist, of the Harvard Law School 
(1908), vol. II; Henry Williams, Memorials of the 
Class of 1837 of Harvard Univ . (1887) ; personal rec¬ 
ollections in Proc. Am. Acad. Arts and Sci. } vol. XXXVI 
(1901), and in Trans. Acad. Set. of St. Louis, vol. XI 
(1901); and obituary in Boston Transcript, Feb. 28, 
1901. There is a detailed account of the proceedings by 
which the old supreme court in Missouri was ousted and 
Holmes became judge in 35 Mo. Reports, iii; for his 
opinions see 35-42 Mo. Reports . Until late in life 
Holmes believed the date of his birth to have been 
July 2, 1814. When he discovered a record of his par¬ 
ents’ marriage, which took place on Mar. 31, 1814, he 
became convinced that he must have been bom on 
Jan. 2, 1815.] Z.C.,Jr. 

HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL (Aug. 29, 
1809-Oct 7, 1894), essayist, poet, teacher of 
anatomy, was born at Cambridge, Mass., where 
his father, the Rev. Abiel Holmes [q.v.], was the 
minister of the First Church, before its depar¬ 
ture from Orthodoxy into Unitarianism. His 
mother, Sarah (Wendell) Holmes, daughter of 
Oliver Wendell, a Boston merchant, and de¬ 
scended both from early Dutch settlers of Al¬ 
bany and from the Boston families of Jackson 


169 



Holmes 

and Quincy—from which he inherited the por¬ 
trait that prompted his familiar poem, “Dor¬ 
othy Q.”—was his father’s second wife. He was 
the fourth of his parents’ five children, of whom 
three were his older sisters, one of whom died 
when he himself was three years old, and one 
(John, a witty lawyer of Cambridge) was his 
younger brother. In the opening pages of his 
novel, Elsie Venner, he defined the “Brahmin 
caste of New England,” and isolated, as a chem¬ 
ist might say, a definite class in New England. 
Of this class he was a truly typical member, ac¬ 
quainted with Europe only through one early 
sojourn there as a student of medicine, and an¬ 
other in his old age as a “lion,” and, largely by 
reason of the physical limitations imposed by 
asthma, almost entirely untraveled in his own 
country. 

Few American authors have been so autobio¬ 
graphical as Holmes in their general writings. 
It is in the “Life and Letters” of a writer that the 
concentrated items of his personality are usually 
to be found. Not so with Dr. Holmes—and it is 
significant that although the “Mr.” usually drops 
readily away from the names of eminent authors 
at death, it is only after more than thirty years 
that the familiar “Dr. Holmes” is giving.place in 
common speech to “Holmes.” Even today he 
seems, quite as clearly through his own pages 
as through those of the excellent biography by 
his kinsman, John T. Morse, Jr., to establish a 
definitely personal relation with his readers. In 
this regard one stanza from his poem, “At a 
Bookstore,” may be taken to state the case: “A 
Boswell, writing out himself!” is the single line 
of it that must be quoted. 

The “old Gambrel-roofed House” in which he 
was born, near what were still called “the col¬ 
leges” at Cambridge, the blending of clerical 
and mercantile ancestry, the early influences of 
good books and the companionship of thoughtful 
elders—all described or suggested in his writings 
as desirable backgrounds for the young Brahmin 
—made the setting for his own favored boyhood. 
The Calvinism of his father was by no means of 
a repellent nature in its personal manifestations, 
but as a system of theology, especially as Holmes 
the boy became acquainted with it through the 
Pilgrim*s Progress of Bunyan, it afforded an 
early occasion for a healthy revolt on his part. 
A youthful independence of spirit is suggested 
also by the record ( Letters of John Holmes to 
James Russell LoweU and Others, 1917, p. 5) 
that before he was eight, he took his younger 
brother, aged five, to witness the last public 
hanging in Cambridge, on Gallows Lot—an en¬ 
terprise for which he was duly brought to book. 


Holmes 

Holmes received his earlier education in Cam¬ 
bridge and at the age of fifteen proceeded to Phil¬ 
lips Academy, Andover, then, as through many 
years to follow, a stronghold of Orthodoxy. If 
his father hoped thus to make a minister of him, 
he did not reckon sufficiently with the force of 
revulsion from the embodied Calvinism which 
surrounded a son who could write in later years, 
“I might have been a minister myself, for aught 
I know, if [a certain] clergyman had not looked 
and talked so like an undertaker” ( Life and Let¬ 
ters, I, 26 ). After Andover came four years of 
Harvard College, with the class of 1829, made 
famous in part by Holmes’s long series of poems 
for its reunions, and in part by the early produc¬ 
tion of “America” by another of its members, 
Samuel F. Smith [q.z/.]. The frankly Unitarian 
influences of the college at this time served but 
to strengthen Holmes’s revulsion from Calvin¬ 
ism. “A youth of low stature and an exceeding 
smooth face” (Ibid., 1 ,55)—five feet three, wear¬ 
ing “substantial boots” in his junior year, after¬ 
wards “five feet five (not four as some have pre¬ 
tended)” (Ibid., II, 101)—clear-sighted enough 
to write in his old age, “I have always consid¬ 
ered my face a convenience rather than an orna¬ 
ment” (Ibid., II, 103)—the young collegian en¬ 
tered heartily into the life of the Harvard of his 
day, neglecting neither its serious nor its con¬ 
vivial opportunities. The easy Latinity of all 
his writings, the flattering assumption that his 
readers were really educated persons and could 
be approached as such, must be counted high 
among the fruits of his non-professional educa¬ 
tion. 

In the year following his graduation he made 
his first public appearances as a writer of verse, 
and began a course of study for the legal profes¬ 
sion which he abandoned at the end of that year. 
The verses, only a few of which met his own 
rigid requirements for inclusion in his collected 
writings, were printed chiefly in a short-lived 
Harvard periodical, the Collegian, and in a Bos¬ 
ton periodical, also short-lived, the Amateur. 
The poem which brought him first into general 
notice—and he was but twenty-one when this 
happened—was “Old Ironsides,” impetuously 
written in pencil on a scrap of paper after he had 
read the news that the frigate Constitution was 
about to be destroyed, and printed over the sim¬ 
ple initial “H.” in the Boston Daily Advertiser 
for Sept. 16, 1830. In the column next to these 
verses was an elaborate announcement of, the ar¬ 
rangements for celebrating on the following day 
the two-hundredth anniversary of the founding 
of Boston. The intensely patriotic sentiment that 
charged the local air was evidently not restricted 


170 



Holmes 

to a single region, for the verses struck a widely 
popular note, spread through the press of the 
country, and were even distributed on hand-bills, 
like an Elizabethan ballad, in the streets of 
Washington ( Life and Letters , 1 , 80). The Con¬ 
stitution was saved—not for the last time. The 
son of the eminent author of Annals of America 
had begun early to serve his country well. It is 
perhaps worth noting that in “Old Ironsides,” 
as it first appeared in the Advertiser , the famil¬ 
iar first line read, “Ay, pull her tattered ensign 
down,” and that several other minor changes 
were made in it before Holmes included it in his 
first volume of Poems . 

A year and two months later he made a sec¬ 
ond memorable early appearance, as a writer of 
prose. The November 1831 issue of the New 
England Magazine, the fifth monthly number of 
a new periodical, contained an article, nearly 
four pages in length, signed “O.W.H.”; and en¬ 
titled “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.” 
A slightly longer paper under the same title ap¬ 
peared in the same magazine for February 1832. 
It is customary for writers about Holmes to refer 
casually to these articles as distant precursors of 
The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table, begun in 
the Atlantic Monthly of November 1857, with 
the whimsical remark, “I was just going to say, 
when I was interrupted”—twenty-five years be¬ 
fore. Holmes’s wish that these articles should 
not be reprinted appears to have been respected. 
They will nevertheless reward the reading of a 
student of Holmes by their clear foreshadow¬ 
ings of his later work—even to a certain declen¬ 
sion of merit from the first to the second article, 
just as the second and third books of the Break¬ 
fast Table series fell short of the first. In the 
November 1831 article the mingling of charac¬ 
teristic prose and verse is to be noticed, and the 
very method of presenting a catalogue of “the 
artificial distinctions of society,” beginning with 
“1. People of cultivation, who live in large 
houses,” and ending with “5. Scrubs.” The en¬ 
suing sentence reads, “An individual at the up¬ 
per end of the table, turned pale and left the 
room, as I finished with the monosyllable.” 
Other passages would illustrate as clearly the 
close kinship between Holmes’s youthful and 
maturer writing. 

The New England Magazine articles were 
printed after Holmes had diverted his studies 
from law to medicine. His sensitive spirit re¬ 
coiled at first from some of the grimmer aspects 
of a medical education, but after two years of 
study in a private medical school in Boston, with 
the addition of courses in the Harvard Medical 
School, he sailed, in the spring of 1833, for Eu- 


Holmes 

rope. For more than two years he pursued his 
studies in the hospitals of Paris, seizing every 
opportunity to profit from the instructions of 
Louis, his chiefly admired master, of Larrey, 
whose distinction as a favorite surgeon of Napo¬ 
leon helps to place his American pupil in point 
of time, and of other great teachers in what was 
then regarded as the medical center of the world. 
In his intervals of study he traveled in France, 
Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and England, com¬ 
mitting many characteristic observations to writ¬ 
ing, among them this note prompted by a glimpse 
of William IV: “The King blew his nose twice, 
and wiped the royal perspiration repeatedly from 
a face which is probably the largest uncivilized 
spot in England” ( Life and Letters, I, 135). 
There are many such tokens that he was learn¬ 
ing to express himself in terms other than those 
merely of his chosen profession. 

In December 1835 Holmes returned from 
Paris to Boston, and in 1836, receiving the de¬ 
gree of M.D. from Harvard, began the practice 
of medicine in Boston. It was against him as a 
serious beginner in his profession that he could 
take it rather lightly—even to the extent of say¬ 
ing, when added years might have fortified his 
dignity, that “the slightest favors (or fevers) 
were welcome.” He seems to have exerted him¬ 
self but little towards building up a practice, 
which indeed never came to him on an exten¬ 
sive scale. It was as a writer on medical sub¬ 
jects, and still more as a teacher of anatomy, 
that he made his mark in his profession. Turning 
his back upon opportunities to contribute to mag¬ 
azines of supposedly general appeal he found 
the more time, in these earlier years, for writings 
relating especially to medicine. Something was 
needed to offset the publication in 1836, of his 
first volume, Poems, with its evidences of those 
qualities both of wit and of poetic fancy which 
are more likely to be counted handicaps than 
helps to the young practitioner of a sober pro¬ 
fession. This makeweight was found in his win¬ 
ning a Boylston Prize for a medical essay at 
Harvard in 1836, and two more in 1837. In 

1838 he received a gratifying “recognition” by 
his appointment as professor of anatomy at Dart¬ 
mouth College, to which his duties called him 
only in the months of August, September, and 
October. He held this post through the years 

1839 and 1840, when his marriage, June 15,1840, 
to Amelia Lee Jackson, a daughter of Charles 
Jackson, justice of the Massachusetts supreme 
court, rooted him even more firmly than before 
in Boston soil. Of this marriage three children 
were born: Oliver Wendell Holmes, justice of 
the United States Supreme Court; a daughter, 


171 



Holmes Holmes 


Amelia (Mrs. Turner Sargent); and Edward 
Jackson Holmes, a Boston lawyer, who died in 
1884, leaving a son of the same name. 

Leslie Stephen has written of Holmes ( Stud¬ 
ies of a Biographer, vol. II, 1898, p. 167), “few 
popular authors have had a narrower escape 
from obscurity.” From the time of his marriage 
in 1840, when he was thirty-one, until the estab¬ 
lishment of the Atlantic Monthly in 1857, when 
he was forty-eight, he was indeed proceeding on 
a path which could not conceivably have brought 
him into the place he came at length to occupy. 
What he did was abundantly worth doing, and 
he did it well. It was chiefly the work of a medi¬ 
cal writer and teacher. In the first of these two 
functions he made some name for himself earlier 
than in the second. The Boylston Prize Disser¬ 
tations were followed, in 1842, by two lectures, 
published as a pamphlet, Homeopathy and its 
Kindred Delusions. In the next year he read be¬ 
fore the Boston Society for Medical Improve¬ 
ment, and published as a pamphlet, after printing 
in the New England Quarterly Journal of Medi¬ 
cine and Surgery, the paper on “The Contagious¬ 
ness of Puerperal Fever," which is commonly 
counted his best contribution to the progress of 
medicine. Written long before the days of mod¬ 
em bacteriology, this paper gave evidence of a 
close study of well-attested facts, assembled by 
one possessing a wide knowledge of the medical 
literature of Great Britain and France as well as 
that of the United States. The presentation of 
the subject was altogether scholarly, but there 
were many in the medical profession who were 
not ready to accept the conclusions drawn by 
Holmes from his facts. Two leading professors 
and practitioners of obstetrics in Philadelphia, 
H. L. Hodge and C. D. Meigs \.qq.vJ\ t attempted, 
respectively nine and eleven years after Holmes's 
pamphlet appeared, to oppose its teachings in 
pamphlets of their own. This resulted in a re¬ 
printing of the pamphlet in 1855, with an intro¬ 
duction, quietly standing by his position and de¬ 
claring, “I take no offence, and attempt no re¬ 
tort. No man makes a quarrel with me over the 
counterpane that covers a mother, with a new¬ 
born infant at her breast/' Convinced in later 
years that his essay had served a really valuable 
purpose, he wrote ( Medical Essays, ed. 1891, p. 
105), “I do not know that I shall ever again have 
so good an opportunity of being useful as was 
granted me by the raising of the question which 
produced this Essay/' 

In the field of teaching he did not come fully 
into his own until 1847, when he was appointed 
Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physiology 
in the Harvard Medical School. This chair, so 


extended in its functions that he enjoyed calling 
it a “settee," he occupied under its full title until 
1871, remaining from that time forth Parkman 
Professor of Anatomy until 1882, then becoming 
professor emeritus for the remaining twelve 
years of his life. From 1847 t0 I ^S3 he served 
also as dean of the Harvard Medical School. 
His devotion of thirty-five years to active teach¬ 
ing explains the prominence assigned to the 
term, “Teacher of Anatomy," as the words pre¬ 
ceding “Essayist" and “Poet" on the mural tab¬ 
let to his memory in King's Chapel, Boston. 

In addition to the sound, fundamental knowl¬ 
edge of the subject of anatomy which Holmes 
acquired in the Paris hospitals, he possessed un¬ 
common gifts as a lecturer. “The Professor's 
chair," he once wrote ( Medical Essays, p. 426) 
“is an insulating stool, so to speak; his age, his 
knowledge, real or supposed, his official station, 
are like the glass legs which support the electri¬ 
cian's piece of furniture, and cut it off from the 
common currents of the floor upon which it 
stands.” Realizing the perils of such a situation, 
Holmes was at once vigilant and competent to 
surmount them. Classes of medical students are 
notoriously among the most difficult of audi¬ 
ences. Because he could be counted upon pecul¬ 
iarly to hold them, it was to him that the last of 
the five morning lectures at the School—from 
one to two o'clock—was assigned. The exhaust¬ 
ed students would have expressed then, if ever, 
their disapproval of an inadequate lecturer. 
What really happened is suggested by the remi¬ 
niscence of a pupil: “He enters, and is greeted 
by a mighty shout and stamp of applause. Then 
silence, and there begins a charming hour of de¬ 
scription, analysis, simile, anecdote, harmless 
pun, which clothes the dry bones with poetic 
imagery, enlivens a hard and fatiguing day with 
humor, and brightens to the tired listener the de¬ 
tails for difficult though interesting study” ( Life 
and Letters, I, 176). 

In these years before Holmes took his place as 
a popular writer, he was exercising his gifts as 
a lecturer far beyond the walls of the Med¬ 
ical School. It was the time of the Lyceum, an 
institution of extraordinary popularity, through 
which the best minds, in a period of intellectual 
and spiritual flowering in American letters that 
can be defined with some excuse as “Augustan," 
displayed themselves on the lecture platform to 
the delight and profit of insatiable audiences. 
Emerson and Lowell endured much in meeting 
and influencing large numbers of the American 
public, in many places, through this medium. 
Holmes, handicapped by his asthma from more 
extensive travel, was also in great demand. In 


172 



Holmes 

1853 he delivered in Boston a Lowell Institute 
course of twelve lectures on the English poets. 
In these sympathetic talks to crowded assemblies 
of friends and neighbors he instituted a prac¬ 
tice which he was soon to apply with great suc¬ 
cess to his “Breakfast-Table” papers—the prac¬ 
tice of bringing his discourse to a close with an 
original poem. The verses “After a Lecture on 
Keats” and “After a Lecture on Shelley” (Com¬ 
plete Poetical Works, Cambridge Edition, 1895, 
p. 92) illustrate with special happiness to what 
good purpose he could already supplement his 
prose with verse. 

As early as 1832, in the second of the “Auto¬ 
crat” papers in the New England Magazine, 
Holmes had written: “It is strange, very strange 
to me, that many men should devote themselves 
so exclusively to the study of their own particu¬ 
lar callings. . . . The knowledge of a man, who 
confines himself to one object, bears the same 
relation to that of the liberal scholar, that the 
red or violet ray of a prism does to the blended 
light of a sunbeam.” This wisdom of a youth of 
twenty-three Holmes exemplified through life. 
Besides joining literature to medicine, and verse 
to prose, he was constantly making excursions 
into fields that allured him. As a young physi¬ 
cian he enjoyed especially the possession of a 
chaise and a fast horse, of whose powers of speed 
he took full advantage ( Life and Letters, 1 ,158). 
Living in the earlier years of his married life on 
Montgomery Place (now Bosworth Street) and 
through many later years at 296 Beacon St., he 
dwelt, during the intermediate years, in close 
proximity to his friend and publisher, James T. 
Fields, on Charles Street, with the river at the 
foot of his garden. In the several row-boats 
which he kept moored within easy reach he took 
an oarsman's delight At a time when athletic 
exercise had little of its later vogue, he, although 
“a slender man,” was a vigorous advocate of 
it. “I am satisfied,” he wrote with scorn in the 
seventh of his Autocrat papers, “that such a set 
of black-coated, stiff jointed, soft-muscled, paste- 
complexioned youth as we can boast in our At¬ 
lantic cities never before sprang from loins of 
Anglo-Saxon lineage.” He himself took a hearty 
Anglo-Saxon interest in the race-track and box¬ 
ing-matches. Among his own intimate hobbies 
were microscopy and photography, and the hand 
stereoscope, with the invention of which he is 
credited. Had the man of business in him been 
more nearly on an equal footing with the man of 
science, a comfortable fortune might well have 
come to him from this once popular instrument 
for introducing a sense of actual distance into 
photographic scenes. For the scenes of nature 


Holmes 

itself he had a love seldom found in so confirmed 
a city-dweller. Without such a love the faithful 
pictures of nature in many of his poems could 
hardly have been drawn. The accurate knowl¬ 
edge revealed also in these poems owed much to 
his spending seven summers (1849-56) on a 
country place near Pittsfield, Mass., inherited 
from his great-grandfather Wendell. Here, to 
his heart's content, he could cultivate his devo¬ 
tion to trees, beloved, as his readers will remem¬ 
ber, for the characteristic reason that 

“there’s nothing that keeps its youth, 

So far as I know, but a tree and truth.” 

All these diversions of a teacher of anatomy 
—and the list of them would be quite incomplete 
were the habit of discursive reading to go un¬ 
mentioned—were clearly the pursuits of a hu¬ 
manist. They were proper also in the main to a 
rationalist, and it was as such that Barrett Wen¬ 
dell in his Literary History of America (pp. 418 
ff.) ascribed to Holmes his distinctive place in 
New England letters. Indeed the rationalist, in 
constant rebellion against the eighteenth-century 
theological view of life which shadowed his boy¬ 
hood, spoke with a quiet insistence in much of 
what he wrote as well as in much of his brilliant 
talk. In the realm of talk, when conversation 
was rated with the arts, Holmes appears to have 
reigned almost, perhaps quite, supreme in Bos¬ 
ton. Lowell and Agassiz and a few others may 
have crowded him a little at the top. Possibly 
none of them took the art of talking quite so seri¬ 
ously or consciously as he. “Now, James, let 
me talk and don't interrupt me,” he is found ex¬ 
claiming to Lowell one day at the Saturday Club 
(M. A. DeW. Howe, Memories of a Hostess, 
1922, p. 33). What he himself called his “lin- 
guacity” sometimes led him to monopolize the 
conversation—but to such good purpose that few 
found fault. “I do not think any one enjoyed 
praise more than he,” said Howells ( Literary 
Friends and Acquaintance, 1900, p. 160). Yet 
when, in the character of the “Autocrat,” Holmes 
says, “I never saw an author in my life—saving, 
perhaps, one—that did not purr as audibly as a 
full-grown domestic cat (Fells Catus, Linn) on 
having his fur smoothed in the right way by a 
skilful hand,” the vanity lurking behind the re¬ 
mark is quite neutralized by the accompanying 
frankness. So it may well have been with 
Holmes the talker. 

His social gift, displayed chiefly in his talk, 
bore a close relation to his sudden, extraordinary 
success as a popular writer. The Saturday Club, 
of which both Holmes and James Russell Lowell 
were early lights, and the Atlantic Monthly, 


173 



Holmes Holmes 


named by Holmes and appearing for the first 
time in November 1857, were nearly simultane¬ 
ous in origin, each owing much to each. Lowell, 
the first editor of the magazine, made it a sine 
qua non of accepting the editorship that Holmes 
should be secured as a contributor before any¬ 
body else. In the thirties and forties of their 
century Holmes had disappointed Lowell by not 
joining the more advanced advocates of many 
causes of which, with Lowell, anti-slavery stood 
first. Holmes, as much a patriot as any of the 
more vocal reformers, would not, or could not, 
swell their outcries for reform, as Lowell himself 
would fain have had him do ( Life and Letters, 
I, pp. 295 ff.). It is the more to Lowell's credit 
as an editor, therefore, that, basing his estimate 
of Holmes's powers so largely on the social qual¬ 
ities called forth by such gatherings as those of 
the Saturday Club, he could discern the unreal¬ 
ized capacities of his friend as a magazine writer. 
The result of this discernment was the remark¬ 
able series of “Breakfast-Table" books, begun by 
the “Autocrat" in the first issue of the Atlantic . 

A recent critic has defined The Autocrat of 
the Breakfast-Table as “that best book of one of 
the first and ripest of the columnists” (Saturday 
Review of Literature, Jan. 26, 1929). It is 
Holmes's best book, but the definition of him as 
a “columnist"—serving quite as well to suggest 
what columnists are not as what Holmes was— 
is an obvious attempt to characterize the witty, 
tender, sophisticated, wise, learned, highly vari¬ 
ous prose and verse of Holmes in terms adapted 
to modern comprehension. There has been noth¬ 
ing precisely comparable with The Autocrat 
since its first appearance as an Atlantic serial 
and its publication as a book in 1858. This was 
a time when the delightful motto of Dean Briggs, 
“Dulce et decorum est desipere in loco," would 
have caused many good people to stand aghast, 
and the unaccustomed levity of Holmes produced 
frowns as well as smiles. The success of the 
papers, and of the book, was, however, so pro¬ 
nounced that they were followed by two closely 
related series, The Professor at the Breakfast- 
Table and The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, 
which first appeared as books, respectively, in 
i860 and 1872. All three of these pursued the 
method of the early “Autocrat" papers of the 
New England Magazine, blending the discursive, 
whimsically comprehending talk of a boarding¬ 
house sage with verses, both light and serious, 
the enthusiastic reception of which has been jus¬ 
tified by the place they have retained in Ameri¬ 
can letters. Both “The Chambered Nautilus," 
counted by Holmes himself and by general con¬ 
sent his best serious poem, and “The Deacon's 


Masterpiece, or the Wonderful f One-Hoss- 
Shay,'" his masterpiece in lighter verse with a 
deep significance, were included, for example, in 
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table . The sig¬ 
nificance of the “One-Hoss-Shay," whether or 
not it was detected by its first readers, has been 
recognized as lying in its character as a parable 
of the breakdown of Calvinism, and the frowns 
which The Autocrat and its sequels, especially 
The Professor, evoked were to be seen chiefly on 
the brows of the orthodox in matters of religion. 
To his friend Motley, the historian, Holmes 
wrote in 1861: “But oh! such a belaboring as I 
have had from the so-called 'Evangelical' press 
for the last two or three years, almost without 
intermission! There must be a great deal of 
weakness and rottenness when such extreme bit¬ 
terness is called out by such a good-natured per¬ 
son as I can claim to be in print" ( Correspond¬ 
ence of John Lothrop Motley, I, 361). To the 
eyes of a later generation the sum of Holmes's 
offending as a destructive critic of religion ap¬ 
pears absurdly small. As a “modern" of the fif¬ 
ties and sixties of the nineteenth century, he has 
even shared the common lot of his kind in ap¬ 
pearing somewhat old-fashioned today. When 
his contemporaries complained that his books 
that followed The Autocrat fell below it in merit, 
they were more nearly right. The Breakfast- 
Table Poet and Professor, already mentioned, 
and the much later volume of the same general 
structure, Over the Teacups (1891)—in spite of 
containing so spirited a production of old age as 
“The Broomstick Train," celebrating in verse 
the earliest trolley-cars—afforded no exception 
to the rule that sequels are rarely the equals of 
their prototypes. 

When Holmes quitted the field of the drama¬ 
tized causerie which he had made his own in The 
Autocrat and entered the field of outright fiction 
he fell even farther below his highest level. His 
three novels were Elsie Venner (1861), The 
Guardian Angel (1867), and A Mortal Antipa¬ 
thy (1885). When a friend called the first of 
them a “medicated novel” Holmes did not resent 
the term; indeed he confessed in later years to 
producing more than one such book. All three 
were studies of abnormal states, physiological 
and psychological, for which the subjects were 
not primarily responsible. In this respect they 
foreshadowed much fiction of later decades. But 
the hand of the essayist frequently prevailed over 
that of the novelist—the presentation of an idea 
over the creation of a human character. In Elsie 
Venner the idea is that a snake-bite suffered by 
the mother of an unborn child can affect pro¬ 
foundly the life of that child in the world of 


174 



Holmes 

men and women. In The Guardian Angel more 
normally inherited tendencies are the subject of 
study. In A Mortal Antipathy the hero is a vic¬ 
tim of the strange malady of “gynophobia.” 
When The Guardian Angel appeared, a critic in 
the Nation was ready to charge Holmes with 
“too often bearing on hard when only the light¬ 
est touch would have been pleasing, not to say 
sufferable; sternly breaking on his wheel the 
deadest of bugs and butterflies.” This critic went 
on to declare: “When he had written the Auto¬ 
crat of the Breakfast-Table Dr. Holmes would 
have done well, as it has since appeared, had he 
ceased from satire. ... He has never stopped 
hammering at the same nail which he hit on the 
head when he first struck. The Professor took 
away something from the estimation in which 
we had been holding the Autocrat; Elsie Venner 
took away a little more; and The Guardian Angel 
takes away a larger portion than was removed 
by either of the others” {Nation, Nov. 14, 1867). 
Contemporary critics might have complained 
also of an excessive respect for the proprieties 
which even forced “demonish” for “devilish” 
into the vocabulary of a free-spoken character in 
The Guardian Angel ; and, equally, of the labori¬ 
ous attempts to reproduce New England speech 
in Elsie Venner by writing “haaf” for “half” and 
“graaat” for “great.” For all their shortcom¬ 
ings, however, the novels had in them enough of 
the essence of Holmes to give them the distinc¬ 
tive place in American letters which they took at 
once and have retained. Of the three, Elsie Ven¬ 
ner makes the strongest claim to survival. 

To the list of Holmes's more substantial writ¬ 
ings in prose six titles must be added: Sound¬ 
ings from the Atlantic (1864), a book of essays; 
John Lothrop Motley: a Memoir (1879), a biog¬ 
raphy of a beloved friend based upon a sketch 
prepared for the Massachusetts Historical Soci¬ 
ety; Medical Essays (1883) ; Pages from an Old 
Volume of Life (1883), a collection of essays 
chiefly from the Atlantic Monthly ; Ralph Waldo 
Emerson (1885), a volume in the American 
Men of Letters series; and Our Hundred Days 
in Europe (1887), a record of a happy summer 
passed with the author's daughter, Mrs. Turner 
Sargent, in revisiting scenes first known more 
than fifty years before, and in receiving many 
tokens of admiration and respect, including the 
bestowal of honorary doctorates by both Oxford 
and Cambridge. Many addresses, lectures, and 
essays on medical, civic, literary, and academic 
subjects filled out the list of his publications in 
prose. 

In verse, apart from successive enlarged edi¬ 
tions of the Poems of 1836, various pamphlets, 


Holmes 

and reprints from the works containing both 
prose and verse, the chief volumes include Songs 
in Many Keys (1862) ; Songs of Many Seasons 
(^S); The Iron Gate, and Other Poems 
(1880); and Before the Curfew and Other 
Poems (1887). The Complete Poetical Works 
of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Cambridge edition, 
a single convenient volume of more than three 
hundred double-columned pages, appeared in 
1895. The bulk of Holmes's poetical writing 
was indeed considerable, and of wide range in 
character and quality. The truly poetic, the 
merely fanciful, the deftly humorous and whim¬ 
sical, all were there. In his verses of the Civil 
War period an intense patriotic feeling found 
frequent and spirited expression. His prose ac¬ 
count of the search he made for his son and 
namesake, wounded at the battle of Antietam, 
appearing in the Atlantic Monthly as early as 
December 1862, under the title, “My Hunt after 
the Captain,” suggests something of the personal 
meaning of the war to him. In the field of vers 
d’occasion, where for a long period he was pre¬ 
eminently the “poet laureate” of Boston and 
Harvard, he occupied a place quite his own. The 
remarkable series of Poems of the Class of '29 
revealed his gifts as a weaver of felicitous after- 
dinner verse at their best. A “Letter from the 
Author,” printed as a preface to the 1849 edition 
of his “Poems,” urges his publishers to “say that 
many of the lesser poems were written for meet¬ 
ings more or less convivial, and must of course 
show something like the fire-work frames on the 
morning of July 5th.” Even so showing, the 
best of them, like “Bill and Joe” and “The Boys,” 
remain permanent models of what such verses 
should achieve through a perfected blending of 
sentiment and fun. Transcending the interests 
of a single college class, the civic, literary, aca¬ 
demic, and social occasions of Boston and Har¬ 
vard celebrated by Holmes in verse were large 
in number and various in character. In the body 
of his verse one finds, therefore, the same un¬ 
mistakable local flavor that marked his prose. 
The character of “Little Boston” i n The Pro¬ 
fessor at the Breakfast-Table typified clearly the 
capacity of Holmes to confer upon a figure, or 
a topic, that seems irretrievably local a quality 
with an appeal that has proved universal. It was 
to Holmes that a critic has pointed as “another 
witness, if one were needed, to the truth, that 
identification with a locality is a surer passport 
to immortality than cosmopolitanism is” ( Life 
and Letters, 1 ,211). In a hymn of such wide ac¬ 
ceptance as his “Lord of all being! throned afar” 
the appeal, as of course in many other pieces of 


17s 



Holmes 

his verse and prose, is frankly universal in in¬ 
terest 

This hymn, with a number of others in his 
Collected Works, speaks for the place which, for 
all his rebellion against the Calvinism of his 
youth, he gave to religion in his life and his 
thought. “There is a little plant called Rever¬ 
ence in the corner of my Soul's garden,” he once 
wrote to Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, “which I love 
to have watered about once a week” {Ibid., II, 
257). This watering habitually took place in 
King's Chapel, Boston, where the congenial doc¬ 
trines of Unitarianism were presented to him in 
an equally congenial setting of Bostonian and 
Anglican tradition. The tablet to his memory 
on a wall of that church has already been men¬ 
tioned. The greater part of its text provides the 
summary of a truthful epitaph. “In his conver¬ 
sation and writings shone keen insight, wit, de¬ 
votion to truth, love of home, friends, and coun¬ 
try, and a cheerful philosophy. A true son of 
New England, his works declare their birthplace 
and their times, but their influence far transcends 
these limits.” Surmounting the tablet are per¬ 
haps the most inclusively descriptive words of 
all: “ Miscuit Utile Dulci” Of all the great New 
England group of writers to which Holmes be¬ 
longed he was the last survivor. Hawthorne, 
Emerson, Lowell, Motley, Longfellow, Whittier, 
all had gone before. At his house in Boston, 
Holmes died on Oct. 7, 1894, less than two 
months after his eighty-fifth birthday. 

EJ. T. Morse, Jr., Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell 
Holmes (2 vols., 1896), is the authoritative biography, 
containing many letters and autobiographical records 
not to be found elsewhere. In the Correspondence of 
John Lothrop Motley (1889), ed. by G. W. Curtis, let¬ 
ters of Holmes are included. He figures largely in the 
biographies of his contemporaries among men and wo¬ 
men of letters, also in the many historical and critical 
writings about his period; see e.g., W. D. Howells, Lit¬ 
erary Friends and Acquaintance (1900) ; Annie Fields, 
Authors and Friends (1896); Barrett Wendell, Lit. 
Hist, of America (1900) ; E. W. Emerson, Early Years 
of the Saturday Club (1918). A Bibliog. of Oliver 
Wendell Holmes (1907), compiled by G. B, Ives, is an 
invaluable guide to a< study of his works.] 

M. A. DeW. H. 

HOLMES, THEOPHILUS HUNTER 
(Nov. 13,1804-June 21,1880), Confederate sol¬ 
dier, was born in Sampson County, N. C., the 
son of Gov. Gabriel H. and Mary (Hunter) 
Holmes. Having graduated at the United States 
Military Academy in 1829, he served on the 
Southwest frontier, in the Seminole campaign, 
and in the occupation of Texas. For gallantry 
at Monterey in the Mexican War he was brevet- 
ted major. In 1841 he had married Laura Wet- 
more, niece of George E. Badger [q.v.]. From 
1850 to 1859 he was on garrison duty and from 
1859 to 1861, in command of the recruiting sta- 


Holsejf 

tion on Governors Island, N. Y. Resignu 
Apr. 22, 1861, he returned to North Carolir. 
where he assisted the governor in the organiz 
tion of the state's forces for the coming war ai 
received command of the southern department 
coast defense. On June 5, 1861, President Davj 
his classmate at the Military Academy and h 
intimate friend, appointed him brigadier-gener 
in the Confederate army and transferred him 1 
Virginia, where he commanded a reserve br 
gade under Beauregard at Bull Run. Davis soc 
made him major-general and in the fall of iSt 
sent him back to eastern North Carolina, whei 
the state built up a division for him. His servic 
here is described as “capable” (Hill, post , 1 
303); but called back to active service, at Ma] 
vern Hill he “ ‘allowed the day to pass and th 
battle to be decided in his hearing' without doin; 
more than forming his men in line of battle 
(Ibid., II, 159). Since eastern North Carolin; 
now required a more vigorous and effective de 
fender, President Davis put him in command 0 
the trans-Mississippi department and on Oct. 10 
1862, made him lieutenant-general. Holmes a 
first declined the promotion, but under the urg 
ing of Davis at length accepted (Wheeler, post 
p. 411). Oppressed with his responsibility, how¬ 
ever, he begged Davis to relieve him, and in con¬ 
sequence he was made subordinate to Edmund 
Kirby-Smith. In this capacity he led a gallant 
though ineffective attack on Helena, July 3,1863. 
Complaints of his inefficiency and of his jealousy 
of Gen. Sterling Price continued to come in, and 
in 1864 he was relieved and returned to North 
Carolina where he was in charge of the reserves 
until the close of the war. Here, in Cumberland 
County, he lived out his days. In 1879 L. B. 
Northrop [g.z>.] wrote Davis of a “charming and 
fresh” letter which he had just received from 
“the old paladin” in which he said: “ ‘As for Jef¬ 
ferson Davis I look upon him as the great sacri¬ 
fice of the age, his and not Lee's name should fill 
the hearts of the Southern people . . J ” (Row¬ 
land, post, VIII, 402). The Raleigh Observer, 
June 22,1880, editorially described him as “sim¬ 
ple in his tastes, brave, true, and just in his de¬ 
portment ... a splendid example of an unpre¬ 
tentious North Carolina patriot and gentleman.” 

[J. H. Wheeler, Reminiscences and Memoirs of Emi¬ 
nent North Carolinians (1884) ,* D. H. Hill, Bethel to 
Sharpsburg (2 vols., 1926); Dunbar Rowland, Jeffer¬ 
son Davis, Constitutionalist, His Letters, Papers, and 
Speeches (10 vols., 1923).] C.C.P. 

HOLSEY, LUCIUS HENRY (c. 1842-ALUg. 
3, 1920), bishop of the Colored Methodist Epis¬ 
copal Church, was born near Columbus, Ga. His 
mother, Louisa, a woman of African descent and 
strong personality, was the slave of James Hoi- 


176 



Holsey 

sey, who was his father. Upon the death of his 
father and first master when the boy was about 
seven years old, he was taken from his mother, 
with whom he did not live again for some years. 
They were reunited on the place of Lucius' sec¬ 
ond owner, James Holsey’s cousin, in Hancock 
County, Ga. In 1857, this man, T. L. Wynn, 
died, and young Holsey fell into the service of 
Col. R. M. Johnstone. As a slave he received no 
regular education, but with the initiative which 
characterized him he learned in any way he 
could; and, having been converted under the 
ministration of W. H. Parks, of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, South, he became intensely 
interested in matters of religion. On Nov. 8, 
1863, he married Harriet A. Pearce (Who 3 s 
Who in America , 1910-11; Harriet A. Turner 
in Who's Who in America, 1918-19) of Sparta, 
Hancock County, who became the mother of 
nine children. For three years after he became 
free, he managed a farm near Sparta, and he 
received instruction from Bishop George Fos¬ 
ter Pierce [g.-z/.], of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South. Licensed to preach in 1868, he 
served for a while on the Hancock circuit, and on 
Jan. 9,1869, was sent by Bishop Pierce to Savan¬ 
nah. In 1870 he was a delegate to the first General 
Conference of the Colored Methodist Episcopal 
Church, assembled in Jackson, Tenn., at which 
gathering this denomination was organized as a 
body distinct from the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, of which up to that time it had 
formed a part; and he offered the resolution that 
led to the establishing of a publishing-house for 
the new connection. In 1871 he went to Augusta, 
Ga., as pastor of Trinity Church, and, after being 
there a little more than two years, he was, in 
March 1873, at the second General Conference 
of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, 
elected bishop, his youth and his rapid rise indi¬ 
cating uncommon ability in leadership. He was 
a member of the Ecumenical Conference which 
assembled in London in 1881, and he was also a 
delegate to that in Washington in 1891. He rep¬ 
resented his denomination at the Conference of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, held in 
Nashville in 1882, and won the assistance of that 
body for education. He was instrumental in 
founding and in raising the first money for Paine 
College, Augusta, Ga., in founding Lane Col¬ 
lege, Jackson, Tenn., and in founding the Holsey 
Industrial Institute, Cordele, Ga., and the Helen 
B. Cobb Institute for Girls, Barnesville, Ga. 
For a quarter of a century he was secretary of 
the College of Bishops of his church, and for 
many years corresponding secretary for the de¬ 
nomination. He compiled a Hymn Book of the 


Holst 

Colored M. E. Church in America (1891), A 
Manual of the Discipline of the Colored Metho¬ 
dist Episcopal Church in America (1894); and 
for some years edited the church paper, The 
Gospel Trumpet . He also served as commis¬ 
sioner of education for his connection. 

[Materials on Holsey are scattered and contradic¬ 
tory, but note C. H. Phillips, The Hist, of the Colored 
Meth . Episc . Ch. in America (1898); J. W. Gibson and 
W. H. Crogman, The Colored American (1902); The 
Nat. Cyc. of the Colored Race, vol. I (1919), ed. by 
Clement Richardson; Hist, of the Am. Negro and His 
Institutions, vol. I (1917), ed. by A. B. Caldwell; Who's 
Who in America, 1910-19; Atlanta Jour., Aug. 4, 
1920.I B.B. 

HOLST, HERMANN EDUARD von (June 
19, 1841-Jan. 20, 1904), historian, was born at 
Fellin, a small town of one of the former Baltic 
provinces of Russia and since 1919 in the repub¬ 
lic of Esthonia. He was the seventh in a suc¬ 
cession of ten children bom to Valentin von 
Holst, a Lutheran minister, and to his wife, 
Marie Lenz. The Von Holsts belonged to the 
considerable group of German colonists who had 
settled along the Baltic shores during the four¬ 
teenth century, and German influences surround¬ 
ed young Eduard in family, church, and school 
throughout his formative years. While he was 
still at the Gymnasium, the death of his father 
left the family in desperate circumstances, and 
only by giving private lessons and following the 
most Spartan code of life was he able to continue 
at school and, later, to take up his university 
studies at Dorpat and Heidelberg. Drawn early 
to history, he specialized in the modem field, 
taking his doctor's degree at the latter institution 
in 1865. Had not fate interfered, his magnum 
opus would have been devoted to France, for he 
worked for a considerable period in the archives 
of Paris and put out as die first fruits of his 
labors a study of the reign of Louis XIV (Feder- 
zeichmngen aus der Geschichte des Despotism 
mus, 1868 ). Even before this work saw the light, 
however, the crisis had been precipitated which 
was destined to divert his interest from Europe 
to the United States. Detesting the autocracy 
of his native Russia, he ventured (1867) to at¬ 
tack it in a fiery pamphlet which promptly elic¬ 
ited an order of arrest. Since he was abroad at 
the time, he could not be apprehended but he 
now no longer had any place he could call home. 
Resolutely turning his back on Europe, he board¬ 
ed an emigrant ship and in 1867 landed in New 
York, a friendless, penniless human atom vio¬ 
lently hurled from its familiar orbit 
Although acquainted from youth with every 
variety of hardships, his sufferings in New York, 
where he was obliged to eke out a miserable ex- 


1 77 



Holst Holst 

istence by manual labor and chance teaching, By 1892, when the last volume appeared, Von 
were terrible. They laid the foundation of that Holst had become an outstanding figure among 
ill health which even thus early began to attend writers on American history, and on the found- 
him as a dark specter and converted his later ing of the University of Chicago was with emi- 
years into a long martyrdom heroically sup- nent propriety called to the head of its depart- 
ported. A better prospect dawned when, at the ment of history. At Chicago he taught for the 
request of a number of Bremen merchants, he next seven years, until his shattered health forced 
undertook a study of suffrage in the United him into retirement. Thenceforth he resided in 
States. In a characteristic burst of emotion, he Italy and Germany. He died in Freiburg, Ba- 
had already resolved to throw in his lot with the den. 

western Republic, and now by the Bremen com- Passionately interested in life, Von Holst 
mission his professional interests were directed plunged into all the controversies of the day, 
toward the same goal. Imperceptibly expanding never hesitating, when his conscience issued the 
under his hands, the suffrage study grew until it command (as for instance in the imperialist 
assumed the proportions of a life work devoted controversy precipitated by the annexation of 
to the unfolding of the American political ex- Hawaii) to take the unpopular side. Unlike 
periment. For such an enterprise the ideal back- most professors, he was an orator of extraordi- 
ground would have been an American univer- nary eloquence, and with his long haggard form, 
sity; but as no institution on this side of the his dramatic voice and blazing eyes, fairly hyp- 
Atlantic had room for him, he accepted (1872) notized his audience. In 1894 he delivered a 
a call to the newly founded University of Strass- series of lectures at the Lowell Institute, pub- 
burg, transferring thence two years later to Frei- lished under the title The French Revolution 
burg in Baden, where he fully came into his own Tested by Mirabeau’s Career (2 vols., 1894). It 
and dominated the academic scene for the next is a work of solid information, recounting with 
twenty years. Just before sailing from New epic energy the story of how revolutionary 
York, he married, as if in token of his continued France, provided with a savior in Mirabeau, was 
commitment to the New World, Annie Isabelle tragically unable to make use of him. His other 
Hatt, of old New England stock. It was during major publications were Das Staatsrecht der 
his Strassburg period that the first volume of Vereinigten Staaten (1885; translated in 1887) 
his monumental work appeared (1873) under and a biography, John C. Calhoun (1882). The 
the name, Verfassung und Demokratie der latter work represents its hero as an American 
Vereinigten Staaten. When this was translated Don Quixote, perversely moved to place a pure 
three years later into English, the American pub- heart and a sturdy mind at the service of a de- 
lisher adopted the title. The Constitutional and testable cause. An essay on John Brown (1888) 
Political History of the United States , a dis- bears the same moral stamp as all his other 
tinctly unfortunate choice since the volume was works. 

far less a reasoned history than an introductory Like every German of his generation respon- 
essay on the constitutional developments after sive to the influences of his time, young Von 
1750 leading up to the slavery ^controversy. Slav- Holst grew up a liberal in thought and a uni- 
ery, in the author s eyes preeminently a moral tarian in politics, inspired by an unwavering 
issue, was set in the center of the stage and clear- faith in the upward progress of mankind. On 
ly indicated as the all-absorbing theme of the turning to history he felt the breath upon him of 
drama about to be exhibited. In Volume II, Haeusser, Von Sybel, and Treitschke, leaders of 
which appeared in 1878 simultaneously in Ger- what is often called the Prussian but might more 
man and in English dress—a practice thence- expressively be designated the Unitarian school, 
forth maintained to the end—the great theme of Conceiving, like these admired prototypes, his- 
slavery is considered in elaborate detail, begin- tory to be purposive and its individual actors 
ning with the presidency of Andrew Jackson; responsible for the good and evil of their day, he 
and the subsequent volumes, which in the Eng- was immutably convinced that the Union cause 
lish version reach a total of seven, carty the ac- was written in the stars and that its Southern 
count down, to its inevitable catharsis in the opponents were evil men, manifestly and wilfully 
Civil War. In spite of its vastness, sure to act tarred with the evil of slavery. It is the domi- 
as a deterrent on the general reader, the work nation of this philosophical background which 
has an amazing intensity which it owes in part defines the author’s great work as essentially a 
to the compact theme but, overwhelmingly, to the product of German historiography, 
moral fervor pulsing through it like a ceaseless rT 

tide. [Important correspondence and papers are in pos¬ 

session of Von Holst's son, Hermann von Holst, Chi- 

178 



Holt Holt 


cago. Material of uneven value will be found in the 
following publications: Univ. Record (Univ. of Chi¬ 
cago Press), Oct. 1903, Jan., Feb., Mar. 1904; the 
Nation (N. Y.), Jan. 28, 1904; C. D. Warner, Library 
of the World's Best Literature, vol. XIII (1897) ; 
Bookman, Mar. 1904; Rev, of Revs . (N. Y.), Mar. 
1904J F.S. 

HOLT, EDWIN MICHAEL (Jan. 14, 1807- 
May 15, 1884), cotton manufacturer, was born 
in a part of Orange County which is now in¬ 
cluded in Alamance County, N. C. His great¬ 
grandfather was Michael Holt, who went to 
North Carolina from Virginia about 1740, and 
was a machinist and farmer. Michael Holt, Jr., 
grandfather of Edwin Michael, was a blacksmith, 
storekeeper, and landowner on Little Alamance 
Creek. He was a Loyalist, a magistrate, and a 
captain of militia, and was imprisoned in Phila¬ 
delphia, 1776, for leading a Loyalist force at the 
command of the royal governor; but, on profess¬ 
ing allegiance to the Patriot cause, he was re¬ 
leased at the request of his State. His son, also 
named Michael, married Rachel, daughter of 
Benjamin and Nancy Rainey. As a member of 
the state legislature, 1804,1820, 1821, he favored 
internal improvements. Edwin Michael Holt, 
being a younger son, did not go to the university, 
but worked on the farm in the summer, went to 
the country school in winter, and picked up a 
good knowledge of mechanics in his spare time. 
On Sept. 30, 1828, he married Emily Farish, 
'daughter of a farmer of Chatham County, by 
whom he had ten children. He conducted a store 
and small farm near his father's home until 1836, 
when he resolved to manufacture cotton. He had 
become familiar with the little factory of Henry 
Humphries at Greensboro, and was convinced 
that there was profit in manufacturing the staple 
in the South. His father and brother-in-law, 
William A. Carrigan, were not willing to give 
him assistance, but he boldly went to Paterson, 
N. J., and ordered machinery. Chief Justice 
Thomas Ruffin [q.v.] of North Carolina, whom 
Holt met in Philadelphia, offered to help him 
*with a site and money. When he reported this 
fact to his family, they relented, and the mill was 
erected on the water power which ran Michael 
Holt's grist mill, Carrigan investing money and 
'entering the firm, which was known as Holt & 
Carrigan. The little factory started during the 
depression of 1837, but made steady progress. In 
1853 (Carrigan had left the enterprise by this 
time) a French dyer offered to teach Holt to dye 
for $100 and his board. A large copper boiler 
which had been used to cook turnips for the pigs, 
and a wash kettle from the store were used for 
the vats in which the first yarns to be dyed for 
power looms south of the Potomac were dipped. 
Soon a dye house was equipped, some four-box 


looms were installed, and the manufacture of 
“Alamance Plaids," long a celebrated name in 
the industry, was commenced. The mill had be¬ 
gun with 528 spindles and soon sixteen looms 
were added. By 1861 it had 1,200 spindles and 
ninety-six looms. It was smaller than several 
other Southern cotton mills of the time, but Holt 
reared his sons in the business, and they all built 
plaid mills nearby, which twenty years after his 
death aggregated over 160,000 spindles. He was 
at first opposed to secession; but three of his 
sons fought for the Confederacy. In 1866 he re¬ 
tired from active management of his Alamance 
mill. He held no office but that of associate 
judge of the county court. A consistent advo¬ 
cate of internal improvements, when the state 
treasury was in distress after the war he loaned 
$70,000 to the North Carolina Railroad, of which 
he was a director, without security. With his 
sons he established the Commercial National 
Bank of Charlotte. He was a lifelong friend of 
John M. Morehead [g.z/.], Thomas Ruffin, and 
Francis Fries [ q.v .]. At the time of his death, 
which occurred at his home, “Locust Grove,'' 
Alamance County, he was accounted the richest 
man in North Carolina. 

[See Samuel A. Ashe and S. B. Weeks, Biog . Hist, 
of N . C., vol. VII (1908) ; Holland Thompson, From 
the Cotton Field to the Cotton Mill (1906); D. A. 
Tompkins, Cotton Mill, Commercial Features (1899); 
News and Observer (Raleigh, N. C.), May 16, 1884.] 

B. M—l. 

HOLT, HENRY (Jan. 3,1840-Feb. 13,1926), 
publisher, author, son of Dan and Ann Eve (Sie- 
bold) Holt, was born in Baltimore, Md. After 
attending several private schools, he entered 
Yale College with the class of 1861. His free 
spirit and eager intellect revolted against what 
impressed him as a puritanical attitude and lack 
of constructive scholarship in the institution, and 
after two rather turbulent years he was forced to 
drop back a class, so that he eventually took his 
bachelor's degree in 1862. His personal experi¬ 
ence with the “sham secrecy" of the societies at 
Yale awakened in him a deep hatred of all shams. 
During these same years the seeds of his future 
career were planted by a remark made by Daniel 
Coit Gilman [g.z/.], then librarian of Yale: “If 
you find on a book the imprint of Ticknor and 
Fields it is probably a good book." To deserve 
such a reputation appealed to him as a standard 
worthy of a life's endeavor; how fully he lived 
up to it was abundantly attested by the tributes 
that poured forth when the “dean of American 
publishers" finally left the field. After his grad¬ 
uation he went to New York to study law, and on 
June 11, 1863, he married Mary Florence West, 
who died in 1879. To her stimulating influence 
he attributed, in later life, the really creative por- 


179 



Holt 

tion of his publishing career. Quickly discover¬ 
ing, as he put it, that his “patrimony was not 
quite equal to matrimony,” he cast about for some 
congenial way of making a living, and in the 
same year solved the problem by buying from 
Charles T. Evans a part ownership in The Re¬ 
bellion Record , the other share of which was held 
by George P. Putnam [#.z>.]. Holt acted as pub¬ 
lisher of this collection of Civil War documents 
until 1864 when its increasing volume induced 
the owners to sell. In the same year the studies 
which he had been pursuing in the Columbia 
University Law School were rewarded with the 
degree of LL.B. Two years later he associated 
himself in a publishing concern with F. Ley- 
poldt, the firm being known for a time as Ley- 
poldt & Holt, then as Leypoldt, Holt & Williams, 
later as Holt & Williams, and finally (1873) as 
Henry Holt & Company. The publishing busi¬ 
ness in those days was a very different affair 
from what it was later, and Holt never became 
reconciled to the developments that he was forced 
to witness in his closing years, particularly those 
resulting from the activities of the literary agent. 
He felt strongly that publishing, at least in the 
case of belles-lettres, should be a profession, not 
a business. He had a lifelong hunger for learn¬ 
ing, and also a desire for literary self-expression. 
In 1867 he produced an English translation of 
Edmond About's The Man with the Broken Ear , 
and later, anonymously, two novels, Calmire , 
Man and Nature (1892) and Stunnsee , Man and 
Man (1905), both of which achieved consider¬ 
able success. To several other books including 
Talks on Civics (1901), republished as On The 
Civic Relations (1907), On the Cosmic Relations 
(1914), and The Cosmic Relations and Immor¬ 
tality (1918), he added the remarkable feat of 
founding in his seventy-third year a literary 
magazine, called The Unpopular Review , a title 
which he reluctantly changed later to The Un - 
partisan Review . This he published and per¬ 
sonally edited until its suspension was forced in 
1921 by conditions following the war. In 1923 
he published Garrulities of an Octogenarian Edi¬ 
tor. On Dec. 2,1886, he married Florence Taber. 

Holt was fully as notable for his secondary in¬ 
terests, or avocations, as for his profession. He 
was passionately devoted to music, and became 
the leading spirit in an amateur string quartet 
organized by Richard Grant White [q.v.] 9 in 
1875, which met for years at Holt's house. He 
himself played the 'cello, an instrument on which 
he became proficient after he was forty. He was 
the first chairman of the New York University 
Settlement Society, and was affiliated with many 
other social, literary, and artistic organizations. 

I 


Holt 

He was one of the founders of the University 
Club, and a member of several other leading 
clubs in New York City, and was always a cen¬ 
ter of attraction whenever he appeared in any 
one of them. In his closing years he became 
deeply interested in psychic phenomena, and did 
much to promote research in that field. Tall, 
handsome, combining to a remarkable degree 
dignity and geniality, he made a deep and last¬ 
ing impression on all who met him. 

[Holt’s Garrulities of an Octogenarian Editor gives 
an intimate picture of him. On the occasion of his 
seventieth birthday he prepared for the Publishers* 
Weekly, Feb. 12, 1910, "The Publishing Reminiscences 
of Mr. Henry Holt.” Chloe Arnold, in “The Fellowship 
of the Fiddle,” American Mercury , June 1927, portrays 
Holt the music lover. See also Who's Who in America , 
1925-26; N. 7 . Times , Feb. 14, 1926.] H. P.F. 

HOLT, JOHN (1721-Jan. 30, 1784), printer, 
journalist, postmaster, was bom in Williams¬ 
burg, Va. He received a good education and was 
trained for a merchant’s career, which he fol¬ 
lowed for some years in his native place, becom¬ 
ing in the course of time the mayor of the town. 
In 1749 he married Elizabeth Hunter (1727- 
Mar . 6,1788), daughter of John Hunter, another 
merchant of Williamsburg, and sister of William 
Hunter, public printer at Williamsburg and with 
Benjamin Franklin joint postmaster-general for 
America. From this brother-in-law Holt prob¬ 
ably learned the printing art. When in 1754 busi¬ 
ness reverses led him to New York City, he car¬ 
ried an introduction to James Parker [q.v.], a 
well-known printer and journalist of that place 
and resident postmaster there. Meanwhile, on 
the invitation of President Clap of Yale College, 
Franklin had set up at New Haven, Conn., a 
printing-establishment which he intended to put 
in charge of his nephew, Benjamin Mecom 
[q.v.], but Mecom declined, whereupon Parker 
acquired the outfit and on Apr. 12, 1755, began 
the Connecticut Gazette , the first paper printed 
in Connecticut Holt was made a deputy post¬ 
master at New Haven and manager of Parker's 
New Haven printery. On Dec. 13 the Gazette 
appeared with the copartnership imprint of James 
Parker & Company, Holt being the resident part¬ 
ner as well as editor. In the early summer of 
1760 he removed from New Haven to New York 
to manage the Parker business on Burling Slip, 
and on July 31,1760, the New-York Gazette and 
Weekly Post-Boy appeared with the imprint of 
James Parker & Company, Holt being again a 
junior partner. Together the partners also con¬ 
trolled the postriders from New York to Hartford, 
who met the postriders from Boston ( Post-Boy, 
Apr.8,1762). When the partnership was dissolved 
on May 6,1762, Holt became sole publisher, hav- 

80 



Holt Holt 


; n g rented the plant and its accessories from 
Parker. In May 1763 he removed to “the lower 
End of Broad Street, opposite the Exchange” 
(present Broad and Water Streets). He con¬ 
tinued as lessee of Parker’s business until May 
1766. On May 29, he issued a newspaper which 
he called The NewYork Journal, or General 
Advertiser (no. r) in which he stated his re¬ 
lations with Parker and the prospect of his own 
new venture, but when he learned that Parker 
would not then resume the Gazette, or Post-Boy, 
Holt abandoned the Journal and resumed the old 
Gazette title, on June 5 (no. 1222), continuing it 
in that form until Oct. 9,1766 (no. 1240). Then, 
on Oct. 16 (no. 1241), he again changed the title 
to The New-York Journal, or General Adver¬ 
tiser, and on the same date Parker (also with no. 
1241) resumed the Gazette . Holt’s Journal was 
continued in New York City till Aug. 29, 1776 
(no. 1756), and then discontinued on the eve of 
the occupation of the city by the British troops. 
He made a hurried exit to New Haven leaving 
behind property that was a total loss to him; and 
when he left New Haven with his family in 1777 
to become public printer at Kingston, Ulster 
County, N. Y., the enemy pillaged or burned his 
effects at Danbury, Conn. At Kingston he re¬ 
vived the Journal on July 7, 1777 ( no * I 757 )> 
and continued it till Oct. 13 (no. 1771), three 
days before the British burned the town. He was 
able to remove only “about a Sixth part” of his 
effects, including his account books, most of his 
paper stock, “and the two best Fonts of printing 
Letter belonging to the State,” which, said he, 
“I preserved in preferance to my own” (Paltsits, 
post, p. 16). On May 11, 1778, Holt’s Journal 
was again revived at Poughkeepsie. Here it con¬ 
tinued until suspended on Nov. 6, 1780; was 
resumed on July 30, 1781; suspended again on 
Jan. 6,1782 (no. 1926), interrupted by the print¬ 
ing of the New York Laws, and resumed finally 
in New York City at the dose of the war, on 
Nov. 22, 1783, with the title The Independent 
New-York Gazette . Under this or varying titles 
it continued, while he lived. For a while his 
widow, who had been a good helpmeet to him 
in his business, continued the newspaper alone 
or with assistance; then it passed into other 
hands, and expired on Mar. 8, 1800. The widow 
Holt lodged an extensive daim against the State 
of New York for unpaid public printing done by 
her husband during the Revolution (Manuscript 
Assembly Papers, Executive Messages and Cor¬ 
respondence, pp. 471-78, Albany). She removed 
to Philadelphia where she died (Hildebum, post, 
p. 98). 

About 1775, Holt founded a printing business 


at Norfolk, Va., which was superintended by his 
son, John Hunter Holt. There he published The 
Virginia Gazette, or the Norfolk Intelligencer, 
under the firm name of John H. Holt & Com¬ 
pany. By printing some reflections on the an¬ 
cestors of Lord Dunmore, the firm involved itself 
in a quarrel with the royal governor of Virginia, 
and on Sept. 20, 1775, fifteen royal soldiers 
“marched up to the printing-office, out of which 
they took all the types and part of the press,” and 
carried them on board ship ( Pennsylvania Ga¬ 
zette, Oct. 18, 1775). Public protest was made 
to Dunmore, who replied with bitterness against 
the printers (Ibid., Nov. 1,1775). 

Holt was deeply interested in postal reforms. 
He made extensive recommendations to Samuel 
Adams, on Jan. 29, 1776 (Paltsits, pp. 13-15)* 
and seems to have been the first person in New 
York to suggest a newsdealers’ system of de¬ 
livery of newspapers in place of the hazards of 
postriders (NewYork Journal, Nov. 23, 1778). 
He was also a bookseller, as well as a printer. 
Isaiah Thomas described him as “a man of ardent 
feelings, and a high churchman, but a firm whig, 
a good writer, and a warm advocate of the cause 
of his country” (post, I, 303). When “he ex¬ 
pired, after experiencing with Christian fortitude 
the pains of a lingering illness,” a contemporary 
obituary deplored his death as an irreparable pub¬ 
lic loss (Independent Gazette, Jan. 31, 1784)* 
He was interred in St. Paul’s churchyard, New 
York City, where his remarkable tombstone is 
still extant. Cut in letters of printing type, it fol¬ 
lows the form of a memorial card which his 
widow, says Thomas (I, 304), “dispersed among 
her friends and acquaintances.” 

[V. H. Paltsits, John Holt, Printer and Postmaster: 
Some Facts cmd Documents Relating to his Career 
(1920); Isaiah Thomas, Hist, of Printing in America 
(2nd ed., 2 vols., 1874), not always accurate in minute 
data; C. S. R. Hildeburn, Sketches of Printers and 
Printing in Colonial N. 7 . (1895); C. S. Brigham, 
“Bibliography of American Newspapers,” in Proc. Am. 
Antiq. Soc., n.s., XXVII (1917) \ Charles Evans, Am. 
Bibliog., vols. III-VI (1905-10) ; N. 7 . Gazetteer and 
Country Journal, Feb. 2, 1784.] V.H.P. 

HOLT, JOSEPH (Jan. 6, 1807-Aug. 1, 
1894), postmaster-general, secretary of war, 
judge-advocate general, was born in Brecken- 
ridge County, Ky., the oldest of six children of 
John Holt, a lawyer, and of Eleanor (Stephens) 
Holt. He was educated at St Joseph’s and Cen¬ 
tre colleges and at the age of twenty-one opened 
a law office in Elizabethtown, where for a year 
he acted as a local partner of the celebrated Ben 
Hardin. He early gained recognition as an elo¬ 
quent speaker, appearing frequently on Demo¬ 
cratic platforms to expound the political issues 
of the day. In 1832 he moved to Louisville, 


l8l 



Holt 

where he was assistant editor of the Louisville 
Advertiser for a year and commonwealth’s at¬ 
torney for two. Soon afterward, he moved to 
Mississippi, where he practised with notable suc¬ 
cess. In his thirty-fifth year, with a considerable 
fortune, he retired from active practice and re¬ 
turned to Louisville to recuperate from tuber¬ 
culosis, from which his wife, Mary Harrison, 
had died. 

For a number of years, Holt took little part in 
political life except for an occasional campaign 
speech. He was married again, to Margaret, 
daughter of Charles A. Wickliffe. For his share 
in winning the Democratic victory of 1856, he 
was appointed commissioner of patents in 1857 
by President Buchanan. In 1859 he was made 
postmaster-general, from which office he sanc¬ 
tioned a local ruling barring abolitionist doc¬ 
trines from the mails within the borders of Vir¬ 
ginia. At this time he was opposed to “coercion” 
of a state by the federal government; he con¬ 
tributed a letter, dated Nov. 30, i860, to the 
Pittsburgh Chronicle , denouncing the personal 
liberty bills passed by Northern states but pro¬ 
claiming his loyalty to the Union on the basis of 
“a faint , hesitating hope that the North will do 
justice to the South and save the Republic before 
the wreck is complete” (quoted by Montgomery 
Blair in The Rebellion . . . Where the Guilt 
Lies, n.d., a speech at Clarksville, Md., on Aug. 
26, 1865). When the ordinance of secession had 
passed and South Carolina's commissioners ap¬ 
peared in Washington, however, Holt joined 
Jeremiah Black and Edwin M. Stanton in urg¬ 
ing upon Buchanan a policy of firmness. On Jan. 
1,1861, he succeeded John B. Floyd [ q.v .] in the 
office of secretary of war, being commissioned 
Jan. 18. In the light of his new responsibilities 
what he had heretofore termed “coercion” began 
to appear as “self-defense,” and his latent but 
tenacious Unionism developed into an inflexible 
belief in the righteousness of the Federal cause. 

After the inauguration of Lincoln, Holt ad¬ 
dressed himself to the task of winning his native 
Kentucky from its equivocal policy of neutrality. 
He kept in close communication with Union 
leaders there, writing letters for publication and 
making speeches in the border states, and his 
efforts were rewarded by Kentucky’s voting in 
September to support the Federal armies. He 
also toured Massachusetts and appealed to an 
audience in New York City to give a sturdy sup¬ 
port to the war and to the administration. In 
view of his services, President Lincoln deter¬ 
mined to appoint him to office as soon as a suit¬ 
able vacancy occurred, while Holt in the interim 
accepted minor commissions to investigate war 

I 


Holt 

contracts. Meanwhile Lincoln was becoming in¬ 
volved in a struggle with Congressional leaders 
in his own party over the possession of the war 
powers. Among other matters, his treatment of 
political prisoners was challenged by legislation 
skilfully steered through Congress by Senator 
Lyman Trumbull. The President wished to ar¬ 
rest citizens suspected of disloyal activities and 
hold them in prison for indefinite terms by means 
of the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, 
but successive acts of Congress made specific 
provision that the civil courts should punish 
such activities. The President, believing that 
these courts could not be trusted, turned to Holt, 
a War Democrat, to forward his policy of execu¬ 
tive (or military) control of political prisoners, 
and appointed him judge-advocate general of the 
army on Sept 3,1862. 

Holt was thus the first incumbent of an office 
recently created by Congress, the duties of which 
consisted in receiving, revising, and causing to 
be recorded the proceedings of all courts martial, 
courts of inquiry, and military commissions. In 
the phase of his work that touched the military 
commission the President saw the opportunity to 
extend his control of political prisoners. Holt 
therefore set to work to develop the jurisdiction 
of the military commission so that persons and 
offenses not subject to the jurisdiction of courts 
martial could be tried by a military body. The 
military authorities were thus enabled to arrest 
and keep in prison many persons who would 
otherwise have been released to the civil courts. 
The most conspicuous of the cases tried by mili¬ 
tary commission during Lincoln's lifetime were 
those of Clement L. Vallandigham [q.v,’] of Ohio 
and Lambdin P. Milligan and his associates in 
Indiana. 

The assassination of Lincoln aroused in the 
War Department an added zest for military trial 
of civilians. The individuals accused of having 
conspired with John Wilkes Booth [q.v.] against 
the lives of Lincoln and high officials of state 
were prosecuted by Judge-Advocate General 
Holt, assisted by John A. Bingham and Henry 
L. Burnett [qq.v.] f before a military commission 
convened in Washington in the midst of much 
excitement and general public approval. Holt's 
credit with the Radical group soared in propor¬ 
tion to the certainty of his obtaining a conviction, 
and when he returned from his conference with 
President Johnson bearing the death sentence of 
Mrs. Surratt, his popularity stretched its bounds. 
The trial of Henry Wirz, ill-starred keeper of the 
Confederate prison, followed hard in the wake 
of the government's triumph in the case of the 
“assassins,” and Holt's plans for a further use of 

82 



Holt 

this convenient tribunal to convict Jefferson 
Davis and his cabinet of treason were checked 
only by a series of unexpected developments 
which undermined the confidence of many erst¬ 
while supporters of the tribunal. In December 
1866 the United States Supreme Court pro¬ 
nounced against the jurisdiction of the military 
commission in the Milligan case. In 1864, “tak¬ 
ing its opinion bodily from the argument of 
Judge-Advocate General Holt” (Randall, post, 
p. 179) the Court had refused to review the pro¬ 
ceedings of the military commission in the Val- 
landigham case (Ex parte Vallandigham, 1 Wal¬ 
lace, 243), but the decision in the case of Ex 
parte Milligan (4 Wallace, 2) was reached when 
the war was at an end and the necessity for the 
policy of military trial of civilians had termi¬ 
nated. Resentment toward the policy which had 
been steadily growing in Conservative circles as 
recent passions declined was unexpectedly fanned 
by the disclosure of gross perjury on the part of 
the government’s witnesses in the trial of the 
Lincoln conspirators and of a regrettable credu¬ 
lousness on the part of the prosecution, which 
was the inevitable result of the method of trial. 
Holt was accused of suppressing important evi¬ 
dence, notably Booth’s diary, and of withholding 
from President Johnson the military commis¬ 
sion’s recommendation of clemency toward Mrs. 
Surratt. Confronted by these charges, which 
failed to discriminate between the intent and the 
error of judgment, he rose to the defense of his 
personal integrity. He published in the columns 
of the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle 
(Sept. 3, 1866) a justification, later issued as a 
pamphlet: Vindication of Judge Advocate Gen¬ 
eral Holt from the Foul Slanders of Traitors, 
Confessed Perjurers and Suborners , Acting in 
the Interest of Jefferson Davis (1866). This 
method of meeting opposition threw him more 
irrevocably into the Radical camp. When Presi¬ 
dent Johnson joined the Conservative party. 
Holt’s personal quarrel with him over the re¬ 
sponsibility for the execution of Mrs. Surratt be¬ 
came a part of a larger political antagonism. 
Holt maintained thereafter his attempts to dis¬ 
prove a charge which had ceased to carry public 
significance with the change of political issues; 
thirteen years after his resignation (in 1875) as 
judge-advocate general, he published an article 
in the North American Review (July 1888), in 
a vain effort to revive interest in a subject still 
of vital moment to himself. His health became 
feebler and he lost his eyesight. Shortly after 
the advent of this last affliction he died in his 
solitary home at New Jersey Avenue and C 
Street, South East, Washington. 


Holt 

[Sources for Holt’s life and career include: Holt 
Papers, J. 0. Harrison Papers, Stanton Papers, in the 
Lib. of Cong.; letter sent the writer by a relative of 
Joseph Holt; official correspondence in the Judge-Ad¬ 
vocate General’s Office, War Dept., many excerpts 
from which appear in War of the Rebellion: Official Rec¬ 
ords (Army) and in Digest of the Opinions of the 
Judge Advocate General (1868) ; House Report No. 
I0 4 , 39 Cong., 1 Sess., and Holt’s many controversial 
pamphlets; Mary B. Allen, “Joseph Holt, Judge Advo¬ 
cate General, 1862-65” (MS.), doctor’s thesis, Univ. 
of Chicago (1927); W. M. Dunn, A Sketch of the 
Hist, and Duties of the Judge Advocate Generals Dept. 
(1876); H. S. Foote, Bench and Bar of the South and 
Southwest (1876) ; J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abra¬ 
ham Lincoln (1890), vols. II, III, VIII, IX, X; J. G. 
Randall, Constitutional Problems under Lincoln (1926); 
Courier-Journal (Louisville), Aug. 8, 1894; Evening 
Star (Washington), Aug. 1, 1894. For references on 
the trial of the Lincoln “assassins” see sketch of John 
Wilkes Booth.] M.B.A. 

HOLT, LUTHER EMMETT (Mar. 4,1855- 
Jan. 14,1924),pediatrician,was bom of New Eng¬ 
land Puritan stock in Webster, N. Y.,the youngest 
of three children. His father, Horace Holt, de¬ 
scended from Nicholas and Elizabeth Holt who 
came to Boston in 1635, was a farmer of limited 
means; his mother, Sabrah Amelia Curtice, was 
a remarkable woman who exhibited the traits of 
mind and character later exemplified in her son. 
Holt’s boyhood was uneventful. At the age of 
sixteen he entered the University of Rochester, 
graduating in 1875, seventh in his class. After* 
teaching for a year he began medical study at 
the University of Buffalo. At the end of the first 
year, however, he went to New York City to be¬ 
come interne in the service of Dr. Y. P. Gibney 
at the Hospital of the Society for the Relief of 
the Ruptured and Crippled and to continue his 
medical studies at the College of Physicians and 
Surgeons. This step marked the beginning of 
his career, for it established him in New York 
City, brought him in contact with Dr. Gibney, 
the mentor of his early years and his lifelong 
friend, and started him in orthopedics, which 
proved a natural gateway to pediatrics. Holt 
received his doctor’s degree from the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons in 1880. After com¬ 
pleting an intemeship in surgery at Bellevue 
Hospital in 1881, he opened an office in New 
York City for the practice of medicine. Though 
he accepted at this time an assistantship in ortho¬ 
pedics tinder Dr. Gibney at the newly created 
New York Polyclinic, his interest and activities 
turned more and more toward the medical ail¬ 
ments of children. He received posts in the next* 
few years at the Northwestern Dispensary, the 
New York Infant Asylum—now the Nursery 
and Child’s Hospital—and the New York Found¬ 
ling Hospital. Holt considered that the experi¬ 
ence in pathology which he gained at the New 
York Infant Asylum was the foundation for his 


•83 



Holt Holten 


knowledge of disease in children. In 1884, dur¬ 
ing three months’ travel abroad, he obtained his 
first glimpse of European medicine. In 1886 he 
married Linda F. Mairs of New York City. Five 
children were born from this marriage. 

The Babies Hospital of New York City, the 
first in this country to be devoted to children, was 
founded in 1887, and the following year Holt 
was selected to take charge of it Under his 
leadership the hospital grew and became inter¬ 
nationally known. It was, medically speaking, 
his creation. In 1890, when he was appointed 
professor in the newly established chair of dis¬ 
eases of children at the New York Polyclinic, he 
entered into the most productive period of his 
life. For the instruction of the nurses (nursery 
maids) of the Babies Hospital, he devised a cate¬ 
chism of twenty-three questions which was pub¬ 
lished in 1893 and was amplified the following 
year, for the use of the mother in the home, into 
a book of sixty-six pages entitled The Care and 
Feeding of Children (1894). The success of this 
book was unparalleled in medical publication; it 
ran through more than seventy-five printings, 
was translated into three languages, and made 
Holt’s name a household word. Two years later, 
1896, appeared The Diseases of Infancy and 
Childhood, a textbook on pediatrics which be¬ 
came the standard in the English language and 
has so remained through twelve editions. In this 
volume he defined and coordinated pediatrics, 
separated it as a specialty from internal medi¬ 
cine, and placed the subject on a high plane of 
excellence. He furnished for the first time in 
any language a clear, well balanced, complete 
exposition of the infant in health and disease and 
of the principles of feeding and care. In 1901 
Holt resigned from the New York Polyclinic to 
take the chair of pediatrics established for him 
at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, a post 
which he held until 1921. In his later years he 
became more and more interested and active in 
the social aspects of pediatrics. In 1919 he was 
asked as a delegate to attend the International 
Medical Conference at Cannes called by the Red 
Cross Societies of the Allied Powers. In Au¬ 
gust 1923, he left for China to become for a year 
visiting professor of pediatrics at the Peking 
Union Medical College. There he died suddenly 
on Jan. 14,1924. 

A man of dynamic personality, he was one of 
the founders of the American Pediatric Society 
and twice its president (1898 and 1923), a fel¬ 
low, treasurer, and vice-president of the New 
York Academy of Medicine, a director of the 
Henry Street Settlement, a founder and editor of 
the American Journal of Diseases of Children, a 


member of the National Child Labor Committee, 
of the Advisory Board of the New York City 
Health Department, and of the Advisory Coun¬ 
cil of the Milbank Memorial Fund, one of the 
founders and later president of the Child Health 
Association, and vice-president of the American 
Child Health Association. He was one of the 
advisers called by John D. Rockefeller in con¬ 
nection with the founding of the Rockefeller In¬ 
stitute for Medical Research, and was a member 
of the original Board of Directors. The influ¬ 
ence which he exerted toward the improvement 
in the milk supply, the reduction of summer 
diarrhea and of infant mortality, cannot be over¬ 
estimated. A master in the art of private prac¬ 
tice, he found great satisfaction in it and 
believed it essential for the best clinical develop¬ 
ment A teacher by nature, he felt keenly his 
obligation to prepare the student for the daily 
demands of office and bedside. He habitually 
chose, therefore, as subjects for his lectures and 
clinics—which were models of thoroughness, 
clear analysis and concise expression—the com¬ 
mon, often seemingly trivial, diseases and con¬ 
ditions. Through his unconscious example he 
succeeded to an unusual degree in inculcating his 
own highly developed, intelligent methods of 
work, characterized by system, precision, and 
thoroughness. He made several notable address¬ 
es and wrote many articles of importance on a 
variety of medical subjects, but his most valu¬ 
able contributions were the two books already 
mentioned. His great achievement was as an 
educator. Osier alone in the United States ex¬ 
erted a comparable influence* 

lJour. Am. Medic . Asso., Jan. 26, 1924; V. P. Gib- 
ney, in Archives of Pediatrics, Jan. 1924; Am. Jour . of 
the Diseases of Children, Mar. 1924; manuscript bi¬ 
ography of Holt communicated by his family; John 
Howland, in H. A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Diet, of 
Am. Medic. Biog. (1928); Who*s Who in America, 
1922-23 ; unpublished address by H. L. K. Shaw at the 
Memorial Meeting for Dr. Holt, N. Y. Acad, of Medi¬ 
cine, Mar. 12, 1924; D. S. Durrie, A Geneal Hist, of 
the Holt Family in the U. S. (1864); John Shrady, 
The Coll . of Physicians and Surgeons, N. Y. (n.d.), 
vol. II ; N. Y. Times, Jan. 15,16,1924.] 2. A. P. 

HOLTEN, SAMUEL (June 9, 1738-Jan. 2, 
I 8i6), physician, Massachusetts public official, 
was bom in Salem Village, shortly to become 
Danvers, Mass. His parents, Samuel and Han¬ 
nah (Gardner) Holten, were both descended 
from early settlers of the region, the father from 
Joseph Holten, freeman of Salem Village in 
1690. His parents at first planned to give the 
boy a collegiate education, but the work of prep¬ 
aration proved too great a strain upon his health 
and he was accordingly dedicated to the sup¬ 
posedly less arduous profession of medicine. Dr. 
Jonathan Prince, a local practitioner, became fai§ 


184 



Holten 

mentor and gave him, apparently, all his pro- 
fessional training 1 . In 1756, or thereabouts, he 
began the practice of medicine in Gloucester, 
Mass. After two years he returned to Danvers, 
bringing with him a wife, Mary (Warner) Hol¬ 
ten, whom he had met and married (Mar. 30, 
1758) in Gloucester. His position as the rising 
physician of Danvers enabled him to impress his 
amiable personality on his neighbors. They sent 
him in 1768 to the General Court and kept him 
in public office until the year just preceding his 
death. The practice of his profession grew ever 
more sporadic until in 1775 he abandoned it com¬ 
pletely. His medical knowledge enabled him, 
however, to serve usefully on committees of the 
Provincial and Continental Congresses which 
dealt with medical and surgical affairs of the 
Revolutionary armies. His continued interest in 
medicine is also shown by his inclusion among 
those who incorporated the Massachusetts Medi¬ 
cal Society in 1781. 

His major interests lay, however, in the excite¬ 
ment of the Revolutionary movement. He worked 
on committees of correspondence, represented his 
town in the General Court, in the Essex County 
Convention of 1774, and in the Provincial Con¬ 
gress of 1774-75. This latter body by appointing 
him to a place on the Committee of Safety in 
1775 gave him his first position of prominence. 
In 1778 he was chosen to represent Massachu¬ 
setts in the Continental Congress. During the 
ensuing two years, in which he was assiduous in 
attendance, he labored over the perplexing west¬ 
ern land claims and the ratification of the Ar¬ 
ticles of Confederation. He remained in Con¬ 
gress during most of the life of the Articles. In 
1785 he joined with Rufus King and Elbridge 
Gerry [qq.vf] in refusing to present to Congress 
the Massachusetts resolves asking Congress to 
call a convention for the purpose of changing the 
Articles, which they felt had not yet been given 
an adequate trial (C. R. King, The Life and Cor¬ 
respondence of Rufus King, vol. I, 1894, pp. 59- 
66). It is also probable that they felt some pique 
that the changes were to be effected through a 
convention independent of Congress. When two 
years later such a convention produced a radically 
different organ of government, Holten opposed 
its ratification. A delegate to the Massachusetts 
convention of 1788, he was the only Anti-Fed¬ 
eralist of established reputation in that body, yet 
illness robbed him of the opportunity to lead the 
fight against the Constitution and forced him, 
after only a few days, to retire from the conven¬ 
tion. 

The remainder of his life saw him as a patriarch 
of Danvers, He held almost at will all the sig- 


Holyoke 

nificant town offices. He reappeared in the Gen¬ 
eral Court as the town’s senator, sat on the Gov¬ 
ernor’s Council, and rounded out his career by 
acting as judge of probate for Essex County 
from 1796 to 1815. He even went to Philadelphia 
to sit in the Third Congress (1793-95), but his 
role in that body was not significant Late in 
life, in 1812-13, he interested himself in the early 
temperance movement in Massachusetts. He 
died in Danvers, his wife having died three years 
before. 

{The Jours, of Bach Provincial Cong . of Mass, in 1774. 
and 1775 > etc. (1838); Journals^ of the Continental Cong,, 
1774-88; Debates and Proc. in the Convention of the 
Commonwealth of Mass. Held in the Year 1788 (1856) *; 
Annals of Cong., 3 Cong.; Holten MSS., Danvers Hist. 
Soc. ; Hist. Colls. Danvers Hist. See., containing Hol- 
ten’s diary, vols. Ill (1915), VH-VIH (1919-20), X 
(1922); Essex Inst. Hist. Colls., vols. IV (1862), LV- 
LVI (1919-20); E. C. Burnett, Letters of Members of 
the Continental Cong., vols. III-IV (1926-28); Ben¬ 
jamin Wadsworth, A Discourse Delivered ... at the 
Interment of the Honorable Samuel Holten (1816) ; 
A. B. Hart, Commonwealth Hist, of Mass. (1929), 
vol. Ill; Columbian Centinel (Boston), Jan. 6, 1816.] 

P. H. B—k. 

HOLYOKE, EDWARD AUGUSTUS 

(Aug. 1, 1728-Mar. 31, 1829), physician, was 
born in Marblehead, Mass., and died in Salem at 
the age of one hundred years and eight months. 
He was a descendant of Edward Holyoke who 
emigrated from England and settled in Lynn, 
Mass., in 1638, and the son of Rev. Edward Hol¬ 
yoke, president of Harvard College from 1737 
to 1769. His mother was Margaret Appleton of 
Ipswich. Edward Augustus graduated from 
Harvard College in 1746, and the following year 
taught school in Roxbury. He studied medicine 
under Dr. Thomas Berry of Ipswich and began 
practice in Salem in 1749, becoming one of the 
foremost New England physicians of his day and 
a factor in medical education. From 1762 to 1817 
he trained thirty-five students, among them Na¬ 
thaniel W. Appleton and James Jackson [qq.v.]. 
In March 1777 he took charge of the smallpox 
hospital in Salem where he practised inoculation; 
he was also an early vaccinator and by 1802 was 
employing that preventive commonly. He was 
one of the founders of the Massachusetts Medical 
Society and its president from 1782 to 1784 and 
from 1786 to 1787. He was also a founder of the 
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, serv¬ 
ing as president for six years (1814-20), and of 
the Essex Historical Society, over which he pre¬ 
sided for eight years (1821-29). He was essen¬ 
tially a family physician, and his practice is 
reputed to have been based on four drugs, mer¬ 
cury, antimony, opium, and Peruvian bark. His 
pupil, James Jackson, “beloved physician” of 
Boston, in his thesis, Remarks on the Brunonian 
System (1809), which was inscribed to his 


i8 5 



Holyoke 

“glorious master,” declared: “By you I was 
taught to pay a sacred regard to experience as 
the source of all medical knowledge and by you 
I was forbidden to resort to speculative prin¬ 
ciples as guides to practice except where experi¬ 
ence failed.” In that tribute may be found the 
keynote of Holyoke’s teaching. His published 
writings include: “A Letter . . . Respecting 
the Introduction of the Mercurial Practice in the 
Vicinity of Boston,” Medical Repository, New 
York, April 1798; “An Easy and Cheap Method 
of Preparing Sal Aeratus,” Ibid July 1798; “An 
Account of the Weather and of the Epidemics at 
Salem ... for the Year 1786” and “The His¬ 
tory of a Retroverted Uterus,” Medical Com¬ 
munications of the Massachusetts Medical So¬ 
ciety, vol. I, pt. 3 (1808); An Ethical Essay , or 
an Attempt to Enumerate the Several Duties 
Which We Owe to God } Our Saviour, Our 
Neighbour and Ourselves (1830), edited by John 
Brazer; “A Meteorological Journal from the 
Year 1786 to the Year 1829 Inclusive,” Memoirs 
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 
n.s. I (1833), 107-216. He was the father of 
twelve children, born to his second wife, Mary, 
daughter of Nathaniel Viall of Boston, whom he 
married Nov. 22, 1758. She died in April 1802. 
His first wife, Judith Pickman, whom he married 
in June 1755, died Nov. 19, 1756. 

[A. L. Peirson, Memoir of Edward A. Holyoke, M.D., 
LL.D. (1829), also printed in Medic . Dissertations . .. 
of the Mass. Medic. Soc., IV (1829), 185-260; John 
Brazer, A Discourse Delivered in the North Church, in 
Salem . . . at the Interment of Edward Augustus 
Holyoke (1829) ; W. L. Burrage, A Hist. of the Mass. 
Medic. Soc. (1923) ; T. F. Harrington, The Harvard 
Medic. School, A Hist., Narrative and Documentary 
(1905), I, 241-51; J. G. Mumford, A Narrative of 
Medicine in America (1903) ; H. A. Kelly and W. L. 
Burrage, Am. Medic. Biogs . (1920); J. B. Felt, Annals 
of Salem (1827); Andrew Nichols, “Geneal. of the 
Holyoke Family,” Essex Inst. Hist. Colls., vol. Ill, 
No. 2 (Apr. 1861); "The Holyoke Family,” in G. F. 
Dow, The Holyoke Diaries, 1709-1856 (1911); Salem 
Gazette, Apr. 3, 1829.] G.A.B—r. 

HOLYOKE, SAMUEL (Oct. 15, 1762-Feb. 
21,1820), teacher, composer of music, was bom 
in Boxford, Mass., the son of Rev. Elizur Hol¬ 
yoke, cousin of Edward Augustus Holyoke 
[ q.v .], and minister for forty-seven years of the 
Congregational Church in Boxford. His moth¬ 
er, Hannah Peabody, was a daughter of Rev. 
Oliver Peabody, a minister to the Indians in 
Natick. The first child of this couple had been 
named Samuel, but as he died in infancy the 
second son was given the same name. He grad¬ 
uated from Harvard College in 1789, then in 
i793> upon the establishment of an institution of 
higher education in Groton, Mass., he was called 
to open the new school. He began to teach in 
one of the district schoolhouses, his term ex- 


Homer 

tending from May 17 to Oct 5, 1793. Thus he 
became the organizer of Groton, later Lawrence, 
Academy. Holyoke had a fine voice and was 
composing music before he had graduated from 
college. His most popular tune, and his favorite 
piece of music, was “Arnheim,” which was writ¬ 
ten when he was but sixteen years old, and dur¬ 
ing the year of his graduation he contributed 
several compositions to the Massachusetts Maga¬ 
zine. From the year 1800 he lived much of the 
time in Salem, whence he went to conduct sing¬ 
ing schools and concerts in the neighboring 
towns. For a while he had charge of the singing 
in the North Society in Salem. He was a mem¬ 
ber of the Essex Musical Association in that 
town, and several of the annual festivals of the 
association were held in his father’s church in 
Boxford. His first compilation, Harmonia Amer¬ 
icana, was printed in 1791. His Columbian Re¬ 
pository of Sacred Harmony, though not dated, 
was entered for copyright on Apr. 7,1802. It was 
dedicated to the Essex Musical Association, con¬ 
tained over seven hundred tunes to fit the vari¬ 
ous meters in several hymn books then in com¬ 
mon use and named on the title-page, and was the 
largest collection of tunes that had been pub¬ 
lished up to that time. Many of them were of his 
own composition. The period of his musical ac¬ 
tivity began just at the time when William Bill¬ 
ings was advocating the use of fugue tunes and 
was proclaiming their brilliancy over the slower 
tunes. Holyoke, however, did not approve of that 
style, for he considered that the effect of such 
music was trifling, and he therefore omitted it 
from his collections. While teaching in Concord, 
N. H., he was taken sick with lung fever and died 
after a short illness in February 1820. He was 
never married. In addition to the collections of 
hymns already mentioned, Holyoke’s works in¬ 
cluded: The Massachusetts Compiler (1795) 
with Hans Gram and Oliver Holden; The Chris¬ 
tian Harmonist (1804); and The Instrumental 
Assistant (2 vols., 1800-07); as well as compo¬ 
sitions for special services. He also published, 
beginning in 1806, several numbers of a peri¬ 
odical, the Occasional Companion . 

[Sidney Perley, The Hist, of Boxford (1880); H. 
M. Brooks, Olden-Time Music (1888) ; Vital Records 
of Boxford, Mass. (1905); Andrew Nichols, “Geneal. 
of the Holyoke Family,” Hist. Colls, of the Essex Inst., 
Ill (1861), 57-61; The Diary of Wm. Bentley (4 vols., 
1905-14) ; F. J. Metcalf, Am. Psalmody (1917), and 
Am. Writers and Compilers of Sacred Music (1925) ; 
Quinquen. Cat. of the Officers and Grads, of Harvard 
XJniv. (1915).] F.J.M. 

HOMER, WINSLOW (Feb. 24, 1836-Sept. 
29, 1910), painter, was born in Boston, Mass. 
He came of old New England stock, being de¬ 
scended from Capt. John Homer, an English- 



Homer 

man who crossed the Atlantic in his own ship 
and landed at Boston in the middle of the seven¬ 
teenth century. Winslow Homer's father was 
Charles Savage Homer, a hardware merchant, 
and his mother was Henrietta Maria (Benson) 
Homer, who came from Bucksport, Me., a town 
named after her maternal grandfather. Both the 
Homers and Bensons were hardy and long-lived 
people. Winslow's grandfathers both lived to be 
over eighty-five, and his father died at the age 
of eighty-nine. His birthplace in Friend Street 
was abandoned when the family, during his in¬ 
fancy, moved to Bulfinch Street; in 1842, when 
he was six years old, they went to Cambridge. 
There his boyhood was passed. He was the sec¬ 
ond of three sons. His elder brother, Charles S. 
Homer, Jr., became a successful chemist, made 
a fortune in the paint and varnish business in 
New York, and was able to give him generous 
assistance during the early part of his career 
when he was struggling for recognition. 

In Cambridge, Winslow Homer attended the 
Washington Grammar School, Brattle Street 
He was a quiet, sedate lad, whose favorite sports 
were boating and fishing. As early as 1847, 
when he was eleven years of age, he was fond of 
drawing sketches. In school hours he stealthily 
illustrated his textbooks. His father bought for 
him Julian's lithographs of heads, eyes, ears, and 
noses, and Victor Adam's lithographs of ani¬ 
mals ,* a few years later, when the boy was nine¬ 
teen, he apprenticed him to Bufford, the lithog¬ 
rapher, in Boston. Winslow Homer remained 
in Bufford's establishment for two years, design¬ 
ing title-pages for sheet-music, the portraits of 
all the members of the state Senate, and a variety 
of pictorial decorations for commercial uses. At 
nineteen he was delicately built, rather under the 
average height but very erect; he seldom mani¬ 
fested any emotion, and was considered some¬ 
what stolid. During his apprenticeship he met 
a French wood engraver named Damereau who 
gave him some useful practical instruction in 
methods of drawing on the block in such wise 
as to adapt his lines to the process. When the 
two years of his apprenticeship were up, on his 
twenty-first birthday (1857), he took a studio in 
Winter Street 

His first work was done for Ballou's Pictorial . 
In 1858 he began to send drawings to Harper's 
Weekly . The next year he went to New York, 
where for a short time he occupied a studio in 
Nassau Street, moving in 1861 to the old Uni¬ 
versity Building in Washington Square. He at¬ 
tended the night school of the National Academy 
of Design, and for a brief period took lessons in 
painting of a French artist named Frederic 


Homer 

Rondel. In 1861 he was commissioned by Har¬ 
per & Brothers to go to Washington for the pur¬ 
pose of making drawings of Lincoln's inaugura¬ 
tion, and later to the seat of war in Virginia, 
where, during the Peninsular campaign, he was 
unofficially attached to the staff of Col. Francis 
C. Barlow. He sent a number of drawings of 
the early engagements at Yorktown and on the 
Chickahominy, together with camp scenes and 
incidents of army life, to Harper's Weekly . 
After his return to New York he began to paint 
pictures of war subjects, including the “Sharp¬ 
shooter on Picket Duty," “The Last Goose at 
Yorktown," “Home, Sweet Home," and “Ra¬ 
tions," two of which were exhibited at the Na¬ 
tional Academy in 1863, being the first paint¬ 
ings by Homer shown there. Two of the pictures 
were bought by an unknown purchaser, whose 
identity was not revealed until seven years after¬ 
ward, when he turned out to be Charles S. 
Homer, Jr. Several other war paintings were 
exhibited at the National Academy in 1864,1865, 
and 1866, among them “Prisoners from the 
Front," which is much the best of his works in 
this class. It was subsequently exhibited at the 
Paris International Exposition of 1867, also at 
Brussels and Antwerp, and finally became the 
property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 
New York. 

Homer was made an associate of the National 
Academy of Design in 1864, and became an Aca¬ 
demician in 1865. He made his first voyage to 
Europe in 1867, and spent about ten months in 
France, doing little work there. After this time 
he continued to exhibit pictures regularly in the 
National Academy, but his subjects were differ¬ 
ent from anything he had previously shown. 
They were for the most part scenes from farm 
life, rustic episodes, and landscapes. Up to 1875 
he also continued to contribute many drawings 
to Harper's Weekly , and in 1871 he made a 
series of illustrations for Every Saturday , pub¬ 
lished in Boston. His frequent trips to Massa¬ 
chusetts, to New Jersey, and to the Catskills, in 
search of rural subjects, yielded many interesting 
and original results. He spent the summer of 
1873 on an island in Gloucester harbor and made 
a series of delightful watercolors. 

At the National Academy exhibition of 1875 
he exhibited four paintings. The Centennial Ex¬ 
position of 1876 at Philadelphia brought to view 
his “Snap the Whip" and “The American Type," 
with a group of four watercolors. The first of 
his important Adirondack pictures, “The Two 
Guides," was painted in 1876 and was shown 
two years later at the Academy. It was bought 
by Thomas B. Clarke, who became his most loyal 



Homer Homer 


patron, friend, and admirer. Several pictures of 
negro life in Virginia were painted in the late 
seventies, notably the “Visit from the Old Mis¬ 
tress,” which is now in the National Gallery of 
Art, Washington. This work, with four others, 
was exhibited at the Paris exposition of 1878. 
The summer of 1878 was spent at the Houghton 
Farm, Mountainville, N. Y., where the artist 
painted a number of excellent watercolors, in¬ 
cluding the “Hillside” and the “Shepherdess,” 
which figured in the exhibition of the American 
Watercolor Society in 1879. 1880 went to 

Gloucester and Annisquam and brought back 
with him another large portfolio of watercolors, 
twenty-three of which were in the fourteenth ex¬ 
hibition of the American Watercolor Society. 
To the same year belongs the “Camp Fire,” an 
oil painting of a nocturnal scene in the Adiron- 
dacks. This canvas, a sterling example of the 
painter's originality, was shown in New York 
three times, and at the World's Columbian Ex¬ 
position, Chicago, in 1893. 

A new page of his art was revealed in 1881-82, 
a page far more serious than any that had gone 
before. Homer had found his way to the east 
coast of England, where, at Tynemouth, he es¬ 
tablished himself for two seasons and produced 
a series of watercolors depicting storms at sea 
and shipwrecks, the life of the fisherman, and 
the daring deeds of the coastguards, in a man¬ 
ner which combined rare dramatic power, inti¬ 
mate actuality, and beauty of design. To this se¬ 
ries belong those stirring compositions, “Watch¬ 
ing the Tempest,” “Perils of the Sea,” “The Life 
Brigade” and “The Ship's Boat.” These and 
other equally fine works marked a turning point 
in the painter's career. When they were exhibit¬ 
ed in New York and Boston in 1883 and 1884, 
they were received with enthusiasm. They 
formed a fit prelude to the long line of great 
marine pieces that was to follow through more 
than twenty years of activity. 

After his return from England in 1882, Homer 
determined to leave New York and make his 
home at Prout's Neck, in the town of Scarboro, 
Me. He turned his back on the city for good 
in 1884, and from that time to the end of his 
life in 1910 he lived on the rocky promon¬ 
tory which his achievements have made famous. 
There he built a little cottage studio with a south¬ 
erly view over the Atlantic, and behind it a gar¬ 
den. Near by were the summer cottages of his 
two brothers. The place was ideal for the pur¬ 
poses of a marine painter. Here Homer stayed 
habitually until the first severe winter weather 
arrived, when he departed for Florida, Nassau, 
or Bermuda, returning in March or April. There 


were some years when he remained at the shore 
all winter long, for the most part in solitude, 
though he employed a man to come to him for a 
part of the day to attend to the household chores. 
Homer did a good deal of his own cooking and 
all of the garden work. Besides vegetables, he 
raised many old-fashioned perennials. Though 
he never seemed to feel the need of company—he 
remained single all his life—he was by no means 
a hermit. Tales are told of his barring his door 
to visitors. No doubt he found it irksome at 
times to interrupt his work, but he was under all 
circumstances a gentleman. From New York he 
had brought in 1884 a number of studies and un¬ 
finished paintings, begun at Tynemouth and at 
Atlantic City, N. J. The first of these that he 
completed and exhibited was “The Life Line.” 
This work, shown at the National Academy in 
1884, was the most important story-telling pic¬ 
ture that he had made up to that time and had 
an immediate popular success. 

Homer spent the winter of 1885-86 at Nassau, 
Bahamas, and on the southern coast of Cuba. 
This was the first of many winter voyages he 
made to the tropics, sometimes alone, sometimes 
in company with his father and his brother 
Charles. In Nassau and Santiago de Cuba he 
produced a notable set of watercolors and two or 
three oil paintings of importance, among which 
were “The Gulf Stream” and “Searchlight, Har¬ 
bor Entrance, Santiago de Cuba,” both of them 
now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New 
York. The first of these depicts a stalwart negro 
sailor afloat on a dismasted derelict, at the mercy 
of the elements, on the deep blue waters of the 
Caribbean. His drifting sloop is followed by 
hungry sharks. “The Gulf Stream” has been de¬ 
scribed and discussed, praised and censured, as 
much as any picture ever painted in America. 
The most emphatic praise came from artists, 
critics, and connoisseurs, who were able to ap¬ 
preciate the originality of the design, the beauty 
of the color, and the sense of serious import con¬ 
veyed by the work. On the other hand, one writ¬ 
er called the picture a burlesque, condemned its 
repulsive subject, suggested that its proper place 
was the 200, and stated that when the work was 
first exhibited in Philadelphia it was laughed at. 
Another critic remarked that sharks were neither 
pretty nor artistic-looking creatures, and that 
they gave a touch of grotesque hideousness to the 
work. Finally, the unusual interest shown by 
the general public was doubtless due in the main 
to the story, told in such a dramatic yet objective 
manner,—its atmosphere of danger, suspense, 
fatefulness, with the antithesis of a background 
of wondrous beauty in sea and sky. 


188 



Homer 

The first few years at Prout’s Neck were pro¬ 
lific. “The Life Line” was the beginning of a 
notable series of paintings of marine subjects 
with figures. “The Fog Warning,” originally 
called “Halibut Fishing,” now in the Museum of 
Fine Arts, Boston, represents a fisherman re¬ 
turning to his schooner in his dory. The sea is 
rough and dark under the late afternoon light; 
near the horizon is a rising fog bank. The sails 
of the schooner are visible far away at the right; 
the man rests on his oars momentarily as he turns 
his head in order to make out whereaway his ves¬ 
sel lies. “Banks Fishermen” shows two men in 
a dory hauling in a net full of squirming herring. 
It was exhibited at the autumn Academy of 1885 
and at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chi¬ 
cago in 1893, under the prosaic title of “Her¬ 
ring Fishing.” The picture called “Lost on the 
Grand Banks,” dated 1886, has some similarity 
to “The Fog Warning,” but its suggestions of 
danger and possible death are even more obvi¬ 
ous. Two fishermen are seen in a dory; a fog has 
enveloped them; they are anxiously peering into 
the swirling vapors, trying to ascertain the di¬ 
rection of their schooner. The canvas was first 
shown at the St. Botolph Club, Boston, in 1886. 
“Undertow” pictures an incident which had been 
witnessed by the painter at Atlantic City, the 
rescue of two half-drowned women bathers by a 
couple of men. As a background for the group 
of four figures, which forms a chain, a huge 
bluish-green wave impends. “Eight Bells” is 
one of Homer’s most stirring deep-sea classics. 
The action depicted is an ordinary part of the 
daily routine on ship-board, the taking of the 
noon observation to determine the position of the 
vessel. The chief figure, probably that of the 
master, occupies the center of the composition, 
standing near the bulwarks with his back turned 
to the observer, while he holds up the sextant and 
gazes into the telescope. His assistant, seen in 
profile, bends intently over the chronometer. 
Nothing of the ship is visible except the upper 
part of the bulwarks and a stanchion just behind 
the mate’s back. The ocean is seething in a 
welter of creamy foam, the aftermath of a gale, 
but the heavy clouds are breaking away here and 
there. The picture was bought by Thomas B. 
Clarke. In the sale of his collection in 1899 it 
brought $4,700. It has been engraved on wood 
by Henry Wolf. 

In 1887 the artist finished a large figure piece 
which he considered the most important picture 
he had painted up to that time. It was called 
“Hark! the Lark,” and was a replica on an en¬ 
larged scale of a watercolor of 1883 painted from 
studies made in Tynemouth. The oil painting 


Homer 

was acquired by the Layton Art Gallery, Mil¬ 
waukee, Wis. It was among the pictures exhib¬ 
ited at the loan exhibition of Homer’s works at 
the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1908. 
The watercolor, entitled “A Voice from the 
Cliff,” represents a group of three pretty English 
fishergirls on the beach, with their sturdy forms 
outlined against the gray cliffs behind them. A 
striking feature of the arrangement is the repe¬ 
tition of lines in the arms of the girls as they 
hold their baskets. This gives a swinging move¬ 
ment which is pleasing in its rhythm. 

. * n the fete eighties Homer made a series of 
six etchings after his own paintings, choosing 
for the purpose “Eight Bells,” “The Life Line,” 
“Undertow,” “Perils of the Sea,” “Mending the 
Nets,” and “Fly Fishing, Saranac Lake.” The 
important marine pieces of 1890 were “Coast in 
Winter” and “Sunlight on the Coast.” “The 
West Wind,” which followed in 1891, is a simple 
design of few and telling lines in which the 
strong and steady sweep of the off-shore wind 
is suggested with grandeur of style. To the same 
period belong “The Signal of Distress” and “A 
Summer Night” The former is among Homer’s 
most interesting illustrative pictures of life at 
sea. The crew of a liner is getting ready to lower 
away the boats in an attempt to go to the aid of a 
full-rigged ship in distress. Vivid realism is here 
combined with a dramatic sense of danger and 
suspense. “A Summer Night” has for its motive 
a scene that the painter saw at Prout’s Neck: the 
ocean at night, with the shining field of silvery 
moonlight on the tossing waves, and in the fore¬ 
ground, at the top of the diff, the dark forms of 
a group of people watching the surf and two girls 
waltzing. The blue, purple, slate, and silver- 
gray tones form a rich cool harmony in the minor 
key, and the rhythmical movement of the design 
is in Homer’s noblest vein. This masterwork 
belongs to the Luxembourg Museum, Paris. 

Fifteen of Homer’s pictures were exhibited at 
the Chicago exposition of 1893, when a gold 
medal was awarded to him. He was now, at the 
age of fifty-seven, in the maturity of his powers; 
from this time to the end of his life he received 
every token of appreciation, every evidence of 
popular favor, and all the honors that can be be¬ 
stowed upon a successful painter. The story of 
his closing years is but a recital of a remarkable 
succession of triumphs. The great picture of 
1893 was the “Fox Hunt,” a large canvas, chiefly 
remarkable for its original and novel composi¬ 
tion. Frank Fowler shrewdly observed that it 
exemplified the fine sense of quantities in space 
that characterized so much of Homer’s best 
work. The picture was bought by the Pennsyl- 


189 



Homer 

vania Academy of the Fine Arts. Four masterly 
marine pieces were painted in 1894, “Storm- 
Beaten,” “Below Zero,” “High Cliff, Coast of 
Maine,” and “Moonlight, Wood Island Light.” 
For the first-named work the painter received the 
gold medal of the Pennsylvania Academy. “High 
Cliff, Coast of Maine,” is in the National Gal¬ 
lery of Art, Washington. For the purpose of 
painting the sea in cold or stormy weather, 
Homer had a small portable studio constructed 
which could be moved to any point where he 
wished to work. Many of his famous marine 
pieces were painted from this convenient shel¬ 
ter. The “Northeaster,” one of the most impres¬ 
sive of his surf effects, gives the weight and 
momentum of a tremendous breaker with unsur¬ 
passed force. It belongs to the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art, New York “Cannon Rock” 
and “The Maine Coast” also belong to the same 
museum. “On a Lee Shore” is in the Rhode 
Island School of Design, Providence. It is of 
these pictures that Kenyon Cox speaks as the 
series which marks Homer as the greatest of 
marine painters. 

Among the works of 1896 were “The Look¬ 
out—All’s Well,” and “The Wreck ” In the 
former, a moonlight figure piece, one sees a 
hardy old seaman intoning his “Airs well!” as 
he strikes the hour on the ship's bell. This was 
one of the thirty-one Homers bought by Thomas 
B. Clarke. It is now in the Museum of Fine 
Arts, Boston. “The Wreck,” showing a life-sav¬ 
ing crew hurrying to the beach with their boat, 
was exhibited at Pittsburgh in 1896 and obtained 
for its author the first prize of $5,000 with a 
gold medal. “Sunset, Saco Bay, the Coming 
Storm” was bought by the Lotus Club, New 
York. Another gold medal came from the Penn¬ 
sylvania Academy. “A Light on the Sea” went 
to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington. 
The Homers in the Clarke collection were sold 
at auction in 1899 for a total of $33,295. A gold 
medal was awarded the artist at the Pan-Amer¬ 
ican Exposition at Buffalo. More medals came 
from Philadelphia, Charleston, St. Louis. Ready 
purchasers snapped up all the marine pictures 
available. “Kissing the Moon” was engraved for 
the Gazette des Beaux-Arts . “Early Evening” 
was added to the collection of Charles L. Freer 
of Detroit, and is now in the Freer Gallery in 
Washington. The outstanding feature of the 
twelfth exhibition of the Carnegie Institute, 
Pittsburgh, was a group of twenty-two paintings 
by Homer. Half of these works were lent by 
museums. 

One of the last of Homer’s pictures of the 
ocean was his “Early Morning after Storm at 


Homer 

Sea” (1902). It was painted in exactly eight 
hours of work, but there were long intervals be¬ 
tween the four sessions devoted to it. A transient 
effect of light, which did not last long enough to 
permit the painter to carry it to a finish at one 
time, was the effect sought. This work, some 
years later, brought about $40,000. 

It was in the midst of a swelling tide of popu¬ 
larity and success that Winslow Homer died in 
1910, at the age of seventy-four. His body was 
cremated and the ashes were laid in Mount 
Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Mass., near the 
home of his boyhood. The art museums of Bos¬ 
ton and New York opened memorial exhibitions 
of his works in the winter of 1911. The Metro¬ 
politan Museum bought from the estate a set of 
twelve superb watercolors, subjects from the Ba¬ 
hamas, Bermuda, and Florida, doubtless among 
the finest things that Homer ever produced. His 
pictures are in almost every art museum in 
America today, and so keen is the competition 
for them that the prices have mounted by leaps 
and bounds from year to year, reaching the high 
record for American paintings. 

Homer’s method and style were those of a man 
who had something to say and who employed no 
rhetoric, but drove straight to the mark. He 
cared little for what had gone before him, and 
he echoed no painter living or dead. As a con¬ 
tribution to the art of painting in America his 
ceuvre stands alone and unequaled. It is wholly 
personal and American. There is no trace of 
foreign influence. His work is racy of the soil; 
even its blemishes are national. It is virile, con¬ 
cise, pungent; it abounds in the “unexpectedness 
of the usual.” Although it deals in realities it is 
not prosaic. On the contrary, it contains those 
essential elements of poetry, deep feeling, and 
noble form, to which is added in many instances 
the charm of rhythm. The singular beauty and 
dignity of many of his compositions, seemingly 
due to instinct rather than deliberate plan, are 
salient qualities of his work which more than 
anything else give the aspect of unforgettable 
pictorial authority and weight to his master¬ 
pieces. 

As a painter of the sea he is preeminent. There 
have been many able painters of marine pictures, 
but no one approaches Homer. The sheer might 
of the ocean when a great storm stirs it to fury 
had never been adequately pictured before his 
time. Added to this impressive spectacle of the 
elements in violent commotion, the human inter¬ 
est supplied by the figures of sailors, fishermen, 
and coast-guards, pitting their courage, skill, and 
intelligence against the forces of nature, and 
confronting danger and death with the calm 


190 



Homes Homes 


mien of men performing a simple duty, lends a 
significance of the highest order to the work and 
stirs the imagination by its suggestion of manly 
heroism. All the romance of the seaman’s life 
is brought to mind by means of a few dramatic 
episodes illustrating events which are of almost 
daily occurrence in real life but which one rare¬ 
ly visualizes. Nothing is exaggerated; no melo¬ 
dramatic emphasis mars the sense of stark truth; 
the tale is told in the simple and brief terms of a 
ship’s log. But beneath this reserve and brevity 
of statement is a world of feeling and meaning, 
all the more poignant because of the absence of 
insistence. Homer’s heroes are the common, 
rough men who sail the seven seas before-the 
mast, who endure hardships and privations and 
tyranny, who face danger and think little of it 
because it is all in the day’s work. He has made 
of their deeds nothing less than a monumental 
national epic. 

The treatment is worthy of the theme. With¬ 
out much academic training, by dint of indomi¬ 
table will-power and remarkable singleminded¬ 
ness, he triumphed over all difficulties, winning 
laurels which with peculiar unanimity have been 
conferred upon him by his fellow artists, the 
critics, and the man in the street. 

[W. H. Downes, The Life and Works of Winslow 
Homer (1911), with an exhaustive bibliography; Ken- 
yon. Cox, Winslow Homer (1914); Leila Mechlin, 
“Winslow Homer,” in International Studio, June 1908 ; 
Homer Saint-Gaudens, “Winslow Homer/* in the 
Critic 4 Apr. 1905; Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of 
Paintings by Winslow Homer (Metropolitan Museum 
of Art, New York, 1911) ; F. W. Morton, “The Art of 
Winslow Homer,” in Brush and Pencil, Apr. 1902; 
N . Y. Times, Oct. 1, 1910.] W.H. D. 

HOMES, HENRY AUGUSTUS (Mar. 10, 
1812-Nov. 3, 1887), missionary, librarian, was 
bom in Boston, Mass., the son of Henry and 
Dorcas (Freeman) Homes, and a descendant of 
Rev. William Homes of Ireland who came to 
America about 1686. William’s son Robert, a 
sea captain, married Mary Franklin, sister of 
Benjamin Franklin, and through this line Henry 
Augustus traced descent. His father was a 
wealthy Boston merchant, his mother a woman 
of intelligence and kindliness. At the early age 
of ten, their son was sent to Phillips Andover 
Academy, from which he entered Amherst in 
1826, graduating in 1830. Not forced by circum¬ 
stances to enter a gainful occupation, he followed 
his scholarly bent, first in Andover Theological 
Seminary, 1831-32, then at Yale, 1832-34, where 
he studied medicine as well as theology. He re¬ 
ceived his divinity degree from Andover, then 
studied for a year in Paris, specializing in Ara¬ 
bic, and in June 1835 he was ordained by the 
figlise Reformee. The following year he went to 


Turkey as a missionary for the American Board 
of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. He 
carried on his work with characteristic energy 
and devotion. He preached and taught, pub¬ 
lished and distributed religious books and tracts 
incessantly, and traveled extensively, in 1839 ac¬ 
companying Dr. Asahel Grant [ q.v.J on an ex¬ 
pedition into Kurdistan ( Missionary Herald, 
November, December 1840). From 1851 to 1853 
he was connected with the American legation at 
Constantinople, serving successively as interpre¬ 
ter, acting-consul, and charge d’affaires. 

On returning to the United States in 1854, 
Homes altered the course of his career. He be¬ 
came assistant librarian of the New York State 
Library, and eight years later he became chief 
librarian, continuing in this position for the re¬ 
mainder of his active life. His annual reports, 
especially “The Future Development of the New 
York State Library” ( Documents of the Senate 
of the State of New York, 1879, No. 14, Ap¬ 
pendix C), show his wide knowledge of the his¬ 
tory and administration of libraries and indicate 
his conception of the means of realizing the pur¬ 
poses of the library. His other papers, covering 
a variety of subjects, include: “Observations on 
the Design and Import of Medals,” “California 
and the North-west Coast One Hundred Years 
Since,” “The Palatine Emigration to England in 
1709,” “The Alchemy of Happiness, by Mo¬ 
hammed Ghazzali,” a translation from the Turk¬ 
ish, and “The Water Supply of Constantinople,” 
published in the Transactions of the Albany In¬ 
stitute, and “The Pompey (New York) Stone, 
with an Inscription and Date of A. D. 1520,” in 
the Transactions of the Oneida Historical So¬ 
ciety (1881). He also published a pamphlet, 
Description and Analysis of the Remarkable Col¬ 
lection of Unpublished Manuscripts of Robert 
Morris (1876), and The Correct Arms of the 
State of New York (1880), giving much study 
to the preparation of the latter. When the com¬ 
mittee was appointed by the state Senate to de¬ 
cide upon a standard design for the arms of the 
state, the model which Homes submitted was ac¬ 
cepted as authentic and was so designated in the 
act of 1892, despite the adverse criticism of other 
authorities. Homes was married, on Apr. 15, 
1841, to Anna Whiting Heath, the daughter of 
John Heath, of Brookline, Mass. At the time of 
his death it was said of him (New York Genea¬ 
logical and Biographical Record, January 1888, 
p. 38) that he was “very fixed in his views on all 
subjects when once formed, although sometimes 
they were erroneous.” 

[Geo. W. Kirchwey and others, “In Meraoriam/' 
Trans . of the Albany Ipst., vol. XII (1893); Am. An - 


191 



Hone 

ff^'ooS 1 -1 New-Eng. Hist, and Geneat. Reg., 

July 1888; Lewis Tappan, Memoir of Mrs. Sarah Tat- 
pan (1834) ; Gen. Cat. of the Theol. Seminary, An¬ 
dover, Mass., 1808-1908 (.1909); Obit. Record of 
Grads, of Amherst Coll, for the Acad. Year Ending 
June 27, 1888 (1888); E, A. Bowen, Lineage of the 
Bowens of Woodstock, Conn. (1897); N. Y. Times, 
N.Y. Tribune, Nov. 5, 1887,] A E P 

HONE, PHILIP (Oct. 25,1780-May s’ 1851), 
diarist, was born in New York City of German- 
French ancestry, his father being a joiner of 
limited means. At sixteen he began assisting his 
elder brother John in an auction business, and at 
nineteen became a partner. The firm rapidly 
grew to be one of the most profitable in New 
York, its net profits in the single year 1815 reach- 
$ I 59 >°°o, and it gave Hone at forty a fortune 
of at least a half million. Retiring from business 
in May 1821, he made a tour of Europe, and then 
settled himself, his wife, Catharine Dunscomb, 
whom he married Oct. 1,1801, his six children, 
his large library, and his art collection in his 
Broadway house, overlooking City Hall Park. 
His wealth, his cultivation, his affable personal¬ 
ity, and his public spirit, made him a prominent 
figure in city affairs. Elected mayor for one 
year when in 1825 the Democratic city counsel 
split upon two rival candidates, he ably repre¬ 
sented the city at the reception of Lafayette and 
the opening of the Erie Canal. He became con¬ 
spicuous in the most exclusive social circles, was 
a local leader of the Whig party from its birth, 
served as a vestryman of Trinity, a trustee of 
Columbia College and the Mercantile Library, 
ana an officer of the Bank for Savings, and was 
active in civic and charitable undertakings. 

Hone s claims to repute as an able, honorable 
and conservative citizen were known to every¬ 
one; but. his immortality rests upon the secret 
diary which he kept from 1828 to 1851, and which 
furnishes the best extant picture of New York 
life m that period. Most of his activities are 
therein described. He was one of the projectors 
of the Delaware & Hudson Canal, and part own¬ 
er of the coal mines opened near its Honesdale, 
Fa., terminus, named in his honor. He was a 
shareholder in the first unsuccessful Italian opera 
house in New York, and in a hotel venture at 
Rockaway which also failed. He made frequent 
visits to Boston, Saratoga, and Washington, and 
m 1836 toured Europe again. His chief inter¬ 
ests, however, were in politics, letters, and the 
drama. He was intimate with Webster, Clay, J. 

Q. Adams, and Seward, and often entertained 
them at his home; once, presiding at a Whig din¬ 
ner in Washington between Clay and Webster 
he placed his hands on their shoulders and mad* 
flie assemblage swear “to make one of us Presi¬ 
dent of the United States.” He paid Webster ex- 


Hontan — Hood 

tended visits at Marshfield. Only once did he 
again run for office, being defeated for the state 
Senate in 1839; but he was indefatigable in or¬ 
ganizing the Whigs, addressing meetings, and 
raising party funds. Till late in life he assidu¬ 
ously attended the theatre, and knew all the stage 
folk of note. Washington Irving, Henry Bre- 
voort, and John P. Kennedy were close friends 
and he knew Cooper, Halleck, and other writers 
well. The.diary records a constant succession of 
dinners with or to the city’s leading business and 
professional men. He was one of the founders 
of the Union Club, and a dinner group called it¬ 
self the Hone Club in his honor. 

In the panic of 1837, Hone, who had signed 
much paper to launch two sons in business, lost a 
large part of his estate. Disappointed in an effort 
to obtain the New York postmastership from 
Tyler, he reentered business as head of the Amer¬ 
ican Mutual Insurance Company, and after its 
bankruptcy was appointed naval officer of the 
port by President Taylor. A tour of the Western 
prairies in 1847 left him with impaired health, 
but he maintained his diary till within five days 
of his death. 

miH!? 6 diary of Philip Hone, in twenty-eight 
™ lumes ’ a f! re S?ting not less than two million 
words, is preserved by the N. Y. Hist. Soc. A selection 
in two volumes was published in 1889 by Bayard Tuck- 
erman, with a short introduction; a fuller selection in 
two volumes was published in 1927 under the editorship) 
of Allan Nevins J. W. Franck/O/J HewYork er 
Reminiscences of the Past Sixty Years (x858/sketches 
Hone and the Hone Club. See also J. G. Wilson Me¬ 
morial HlSt. Of the City of N. Y VOls III anri TV 
(1893); N. Y. Daily Tribune, May <5 ™8 s ;.] 

hontan, louis-armand de lom 

D ARCE, Baron de la [See Lahontan, Louis 
armand de Lom d’Arce, i 666-c. 1713.] 


192 


HOOD, JAMES WALKER (May 30, 1831- 
Oct. 30, 1918), bishop in the African Methodist 
Episcopal Zion Church, was bom in Kennett 
Township, Chester County, Pa., the son of Levi 
and Harriett (Walker) Hood. He went to school 
a few months only in Newcastle County, Del., 
Chester County, Pa., between 1841 and 1845. 
When he was about twenty-one he was impressed 
with his call to the ministry. Removing to New 
zork, he was in 1856 granted license to preach 
and the next year he removed to New Haven, 
Conn., where he was received into the Quarterly 
Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal 
Zion Church. Having been appointed to Nova 
Scotia, he worked in a hotel in New York for 
thirteen months, at the end of which time he had 
saved enough money to provide for his family 
and to take him to his field of labor. He was or¬ 
dained a deacon in Boston, Mass., the first Sun¬ 
day in September i860, and sailed for Halifax 



Hood 

the following Wednesday. In 1862 he met the 
Conference in Hartford, Conn., and was or¬ 
dained elder. In an unfriendly community at 
Englewood, near Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, he 
organized a church of eleven members, then in 
1863 he returned to the United States and was 
stationed at Bridgeport, Conn. After six months 
of service there he was sent by Bishop J. J. Clin¬ 
ton of the New England Conference as a mis¬ 
sionary to the freedmen within the Union lines in 
North Carolina. He arrived in New Bern on 
Jan. 20, 1864. Here he served for three years, 
after which he left to organize the work in and 
near Fayetteville. After two years there, he 
served in Charlotte for three and a half years. 
In 1868 he was a member of the Reconstruction 
Constitutional Convention and in the same year 
became assistant superintendent of public in¬ 
struction in North Carolina, in which position 
he served for two years, especially helping in 
organizing the public schools of the state. On 
July 3, 1872, he was ordained bishop of the Afri¬ 
can Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and in 
his later life he was long known as senior bishop. 
He was a delegate to the Ecumenical Conference 
in London in 1881, also to that in Washington 
in 1891, and was the first negro to preside over 
that body. He was chairman of the board of 
trustees of Livingstone College at Salisbury, N. 
C., from its founding until his death; and it was 
on the voyage to England in 1881 that he took up 
with J. C. Price the matter of the latter’s travel¬ 
ing in interest of the new institution and of ac¬ 
cepting the presidency on his return. In 1882 
Hood traveled in behalf of his church in thirty- 
four states and thereafter was a leading factor in 
the organization of the denomination. For twen¬ 
ty-six years he presided over the Conference in 
the state of New York; then and later his 
strengthening influence was felt throughout the 
connection. His published works include: The 
Negro in the Christian Pulpit (1884) ; One Hun¬ 
dred Years of the Methodist Episcopal Zion 
Church (1895) ; and The Plan of the Apocalypse 
(1900). He was three times married: in Sep¬ 
tember 1852 to Hannah L. Ralph; in May 1858 
to Sophia J. Nugent, and in June 1877 to Mrs. 
Keziah P. McCoy. 

[Who's Who in America, 1918-19 ; Who's Who of 
the Colored Race, 1915; Wm. J. Simmons, Men of 
Mark (1887).] B.B. 

HOOD, JOHN BELL (June 1,1831-Aug. 30, 
31879), Confederate soldier, third son and fifth 
child of Dr. John W. and Theodocia (French) 
Hood, was born at Owingsville, Bath County, 
Ky. Against the wishes of his father, who de¬ 
sired him to study medicine, he entered West 


Hood 

Point in 1849 and was graduated, after an undis¬ 
tinguished career as a cadet, forty-fourth in a 
class of fifty-two that included Sheridan, Mc¬ 
Pherson, and Schofield. After brief garrison 
duty at Fort Columbus, N. Y., he served two 
years in California as second lieutenant in the 
4th Infantry and was then transferred to Texas, 
to join the 2nd Cavalry, which was then under 
the care of its lieutenant-colonel, Robert E. Lee. 
Wounded in a scouting expedition against ma¬ 
rauding Indians in July 1857, Hood was partially 
incapacitated for two years. 

In April 1861 he resigned his commission, 
joined the Confederate army, and was sent, as 
first lieutenant, to Yorktown, Va., where Gen. 
John B. Magruder put him in charge of the 
cavalry attached to his forces. By rapid promo¬ 
tion Hood became brigadier-general on Mar. 2, 
1862, and took command of the “Texas Brigade.” 
These troops, whom he personally led into action 
at Gaines’s Mill, broke the Federal line on June 
27, 1862, and won high reputation, which they 
confirmed by hard, successful fighting at Second 
Manassas and Sharpsburg (Antietam). Follow¬ 
ing the Maryland campaign, Hood was promoted 
major-general, Oct. 11, 1862, partly at the in¬ 
stance of “Stonewall” Jackson, and his troops 
became the first division of Longstreefs corps. 
At Gettysburg, Hood pleaded to be allowed to 
attempt to turn Round Top, but was ordered to 
attack up the Emmitsburg road, where he was 
badly wounded in the arm on the afternoon of 
July 2. Before he had fully recovered, he re¬ 
joined his men, en route to Georgia, and at 
Chickamauga he distinguished himself while di¬ 
recting Longstreet’s corps and three divisions of 
the Army of Tennessee. Another wound, which 
necessitated the amputation of his right leg, de¬ 
prived him of further part in the campaign. 

Hood was made lieutenant-general on Feb. 1, 
1864, to date from the battle of Chickamauga. 
Crippled as he was, he went to Dalton, Ga., a few 
days later to take command of one of the corps 
of the army under Joseph E. Johnston. This was 
the turning-point of his career. Trained to the 
offensive, he had now to fight under a general 
who held to the defensive. Successful previously 
in all his operations, in every battle thereafter 
he met defeat Johnston’s continued withdrawals 
from in front of Sherman, coupled with Presi¬ 
dent Davis’ distrust of that officer’s ability, in¬ 
duced the President to remove Johnston on July 
17,1864, and to put Hood in his place, in the con¬ 
viction that Hood’s experience and inclination 
would lead him to take the offensive. Hood, with 
the temporary rank of general, tried to prevail 
upon Davis to defer the order for Johnston’s re- 


193 



Hood 

moval until the impending battle for Atlanta was 
over, but when Davis refused and Johnston left 
army headquarters, Hood struck promptly against 
Sherman on July 20 and 22. Failing to drive 
back his adversary, he had to submit to a siege in 
Atlanta, whence he was forced to retire on Sept. 

1, after a battle at Jonesboro made it clear that 
Sherman would soon envelop him. Knowing 
that he could not successfully resist Sherman 
with inferior forces on the plains of Georgia, 
Hood waited only long enough to insure the safe 
removal of the 34,000 Federal prisoners at An- 
dersonville. Then he turned toward Sherman’s 
extended line of communications in the hope that 
he might cause his opponent to divide his army 
and to dispatch a force into the mountains where 
Hood hoped he could attack to advantage. Sher¬ 
man, however, was strong enough to detach 
Thomas and Schofield, with a larger force than 
Hood possessed, while the remainder of the Fed¬ 
eral army was being rested preparatory to the 
march to the sea, which Hood did not anticipate. 
Rains, the slow arrival of supplies, and the im¬ 
paired morale of his army kept Hood from strik¬ 
ing as early as he had planned. After Oct. 16, 
when his corps commanders told him the army 
was in no condition to fight, Hood moved into 
Tennessee, abandoned the campaign against 
Sherman, and, amid the misgivings of Davis and 
of Beauregard, who had been given general su¬ 
pervision of his operations, launched operations 
against Thomas and Schofield, in the belief that 
he could defeat them, recruit his army, and move 
to reenforce Lee in Virginia. The successive 
heavy defeats at Franklin, on Nov. 30, and at 
Nashville, Dec. 15-16, ended this dream. As¬ 
suming full responsibility for the failure of his 
plan, Hood asked to be relieved and on Jan. 23, 
1865, said farewell to his troops. He was on his 
way to the Trans-Mississippi department, with 
orders to collect troops for the reenforcement of 
Lee, when the capitulation of the last Confederate 
army led him to ride into Natchez, Miss., and 
surrender on May 31, 1865. Going into Texas, 
which he had regarded as his adopted state 
even before he had command of Texas troops, he 
was able to make good business connections and 
soon set himself up as a factor and commission 
merchant in New Orleans. In 1868 he married 
Anna Marie Hennen and seemed in a fair way 
to a fortune, but unwise ventures soon reduced 
him to poverty. On Aug. 24, 1879, his wife died, 
presumably of yellow fever. Hood and several 
of his family were stricken shortly afterwards, 
and he and his eldest daughter died on Aug. 30, 
1879. He left ten children, among them twins, 
three weeks old. He was buried in New Orleans. 


Hood 

In physique, Hood was commanding and digni¬ 
fied, with ample ability to inspire soldiers. As a 
commander, he undoubtedly deserved the repu¬ 
tation he won in Virginia as a “fighting general, 1 * 
an admirable leader of a brigade or a division in 
action; but if he possessed the higher military 
qualities, they were marred by an irrepressible 
rashness. “Hood is a bold fighter/’ Lee wrote 
Davis when the president asked his opinion on 
the substitution of Hood for Johnston, “I am 
doubtful as to other qualities necessary.” 

[Hood's memoirs, written in 1878-79, were posthu¬ 
mously published for the benefit of his orphans, under 
the title, Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences 
in the United States and Confederate States Armies 
(1880). The sternest criticism of him appears in Joseph 
E. Johnston’s Narrative of Military Operations (1874). 
T. R. Hay's Hood’s Tennessee Campaign (1929) is 
a modern study. Lee's opinion of Hood, quoted in the 
text, appears on p. 282 of Lee’s Dispatches (1915), ed. 
by D. S. Freeman. Hood's reports on his principal 
operations will be found in War of the Rebellion: Of¬ 
ficial Records (Army), 1 ser. XI (pt. 2), s68ff.; XII 
(pt. 2), 6o 4 ff.; XIX (pt. 1), 922ff.; XXXVIII (pt. 3), 
628ff., 76off.; XXXIX (pt. 1), 8oiff.; XLV (pt. 1), 
6$2f£, Apparently Hood, because of wounds, filed no 
reports on Gettysburg or on Chickamauga. See also G. 
W. Cullum, Biog. Reg., Officers and Grads. U. S. Mil. 
Acad. (3rd ed., 1891) ; Memoirs of Gen. Wm. T . Sher¬ 
man (2 vols., 1875) >' M. J. Wright, Gen. Officers of the 
Confed. Army (1911); manuscript records of U. S. 
Mil. Acad.; Mary B. Chesnut, A Diary From Dixie 
(1905); Confed. Mil. Hist. (1899), vol. I; D. W. San¬ 
ders, “Hood’s Tennessee Campaign,” Southern Bivouac , 
Nov. 1884-Sept. 1885 ; Southern Hist. Soc . Papers, vol. 
IX (1881) ; Mrs. C. M. Winkler, Life and Character 
of Gen. John B . Hood (1885) ; Ida R. Hood, “In Mem¬ 
ory of Gen. J. B. Hood,” Daily Picayune (New Or¬ 
leans), Sept. 4, 1904; Eleventh Ann. Report Asso. 
Grads. U. S. Mil. Acaa. t (1880) ; New Orleans Times, 
Aug. 31, 1879. Genealogical data have been supplied by 
Miss Marcella Chiles, deputy clerk of Montgomery 
County, Ky., and by Mrs. Leah Hood Reese of Mt. 
Sterling, Ky.] D.S.F. 

HOOD, WASHINGTON (Feb. 2, 1808-July 
17, 1840), topographical engineer, was born in 
Philadelphia, the first of a family of twelve chil¬ 
dren. His father was John McClellan Hood, 
who came to America from County Tyrone, Ire¬ 
land, about 1799, married Eliza Forebaugh, a 
descendant of early German pioneers, and settled 
in Philadelphia as a wholesale grocer. Washing¬ 
ton Hood was appointed to the United States 
Military Academy and graduated in 1827. Com¬ 
missioned second lieutenant in the 4th Infantry, 
he was assigned to Jefferson Barracks, Mo. Two 
years later he entered on engineer duty and from 
1831 to 1836 served on topographical duty, being 
promoted first lieutenant in 1835. He resigned 
his commission in 1836 but after a year as a 
civil engineer in Cuba reentered the army as 
captain of Topographical Engineers. 

In the line of duty Hood surveyed and made 
maps for the United States government. With 
Robert E. Lee, in 1835, he determined the bound¬ 
ary line between the state of Ohio and Michigan 


194 



Hooker 

Territory, thus settling a violent controversy 
during which both state and territory had called 
out militia. In 1837 he prepared “A Map Illus¬ 
trating the Plan of the Defenses of the West and 
Northwestern Front, as Proposed by Charles 
Gratiot” ( Senate Document 65 and House Ex¬ 
ecutive Document 59 , 25 Cong., 2 Sess.). His 
map of the “United States Territory of Oregon 
West of the Rocky Mountains, Exhibiting the 
Various Trading Depots or Forts Occupied by 
the British Hudson Bay Company Connected 
with the Western and Northwestern Fur Trade,” 
compiled in 1838, accompanied a report from a 
select committee to which was referred a bill to 
authorize the President to occupy the Oregon 
territory, and was republished several times with 
other similar reports (see Senate Document 470 , 
25 Cong., 2 Sess., House Report 101 , 25 Cong., 3 
Sess., and House Report 830 , 27 Cong., 2 Sess.). 
The same map was also published in Wyndham 
Robertson's influential work entitled Oregon, 
Our Right and Title (1846). In 1839 Hood com¬ 
piled a map showing the country adjacent to the 
headwaters of the Missouri, Salmon, Lewis, and 
Colorado rivers, with various observations on 
the subject of practical passes or routes through 
the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. It 
remains in manuscript, but has been found to be 
correct. When in 1839 President Van Buren 
desired to make grants of land by law and to 
issue patents to Indian tribes west of the Mis¬ 
sissippi River, Hood was commissioned to make 
the necessary survey. In his report he exposed 
errors of previous surveys, but since correction 
of these errors would have deprived the Shaw- 
nees of valuable timberland and have caused a 
clash of all the tribes bordering Arkansas and 
Missouri, he advised against it. While on this 
expedition he contracted a fatal disease and died 
a few months later at Bedford Springs, Pa. 

[G. W. Cullum, Biog. Reg . Officers and Grads. U . S. 
Mil. Acad . (3rd ed., 1891); T. W. Bean, Hist. of Mont¬ 
gomery County, Pa. (1884); records of the Second 
Presbyterian Church of Phila.; P. L. Phillips, A List 
of the Geographical Atlases in the Lib. of Cong. (4 
vols., 1909-20) ; G. M. Wheeler, Report upon U. S. 
Geog. Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, 

I (1889), 545-46; Sen. Doc. 51, 24 Cong., 1 Sess.; 
Sen. Doc. 58,26 Cong., 1 Sess.; Pennsylvanian (Phila.), 
July 23, 1840.] F.W.S. 

HOOKER, ISABELLA BEECHER (Feb. 
22, 1822-Jan. 25, 1907), reformer, prominent in 
the movement to secure equal rights for women, 
was born in Litchfield, Conn., the daughter of 
Rev. Lyman Beecher [g.z/.] by his second wife, 
Harriet (Porter) Beecher. When Isabella was 
four years old the family moved to Boston, where 
her father became pastor of the Hanover Church; 
and six years later, to Cincinnati, where he as- 


Hooker 

sumed charge of Lane Theological Seminary. 
Here she attended the school established by her 
sister, Catharine Beecher Iq.v.], and in the stimu¬ 
lating atmosphere of the Beecher home was early 
awakened to an interest in theological questions 
and public affairs. “Our family circle,” she says, 
“was ever in discussion on the vital problems of 
human existence, and the United States Consti¬ 
tution, fugitive slave laws, Henry Clay and Mis¬ 
souri Compromise, alternated with free-will, re¬ 
generation, heaven, hell, and The Destiny of 
Man.' ” After the death of her mother in 1835, 
Isabella went to Hartford, Conn., to live with her 
sister Mary, who had married a prominent law¬ 
yer of that city, Thomas C. Perkins. In their 
household she became acquainted with a young 
law student, John Hooker, sixth in descent from 
Thomas Hooker lq.v.] t whom she married, Aug. 
5, 1841. Until 1851 they lived in Farmington, 
Conn., and then removed to Hartford. With his 
brother-in-law, Hon. Francis Gillette [q.v.], 
Hooker bought a hundred acres of land just out¬ 
side the city and established Nook Farm, where 
a community grew up which came to include 
Charles Dudley Warner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
Joseph R. Hawley, and Samuel M. Clemens 
lqq-v.]. Hooker became prominent in Hartford 
legal circles, was recorder of the supreme court 
of Connecticut for many years, and, being sym¬ 
pathetic with his wife's views, cooperated with 
her in her public activities. 

Her interest in the status of women began in 
her husband's office, where, as she knitted, he 
read Blackstone to her. The theory of domestic 
relations set forth by that writer, based on the 
assumption that by marriage husband and wife 
become one person in law, and that during mar¬ 
riage the legal existence of the woman is sus¬ 
pended, aroused her resentment. Because of un¬ 
certainty of mind as to what course should be 
pursued, and especially because of a long-stand¬ 
ing prejudice against Susan B. Anthony and 
Elizabeth C. Stanton [qq: z/.], it was some time 
before she gave the woman's rights movement 
whole-hearted support. An acquaintance formed 
with Anna Dickinson [q.v.] in 1861, however, 
and a later association with Paulina Wright 
Davis IqjuJ], finally removed all misgivings, and 
she became one of the most active and prominent 
advocates of woman's suffrage in the United 
States. She wrote two letters, purporting to be 
from a mother to her daughter, on the subject, 
which appeared in Putnam's Magazine, Novem¬ 
ber and December 1868. The following year she 
called the first convention held in Connecticut for 
the discussion of women in government, and 
formed the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Asso- 


195 



Hooker Hooker 


ciation. In 1870 she presented a bill to the Con¬ 
necticut legislature, making husband and wife 
equal in property rights, and continued to agi¬ 
tate this reform until a similar bill, drawn up by 
her husband, was passed in 1877. She was one 
of the speakers at the Second National Woman 
Suffrage Convention, held at Washington in 
1870, and organized and directed the Convention 
of the succeeding year. She wrote the Declara¬ 
tion and Pledge of Women of the United States, 
asserting their rights, which, signed by 80,000 
women, was presented to Congress. Partly to 
repudiate the charge that suffragists favored 
loose sex relations, she published in 1874, Wo¬ 
manhood: Its Sanctities and Fidelities, in which 
she treats of domestic relations and the educa¬ 
tion of children. With Susan B. Anthony she 
made a lecture tour through Connecticut in 1874. 
She assisted in calling the first International 
Convention of Women, 1888, and delivered an 
address on “Constitutional Rights of Women of 
the United States.” Gov. Thomas Waller of 
Connecticut appointed her to the Board of Lady 
Managers of the World’s Columbian Exposition, 
held at Chicago in 1893, and she prepared the 
“Universal Litany,” used for Cities Day. She 
appeared frequently before legislative commit¬ 
tees and gave series of afternoon talks in Boston, 
New York, and Washington. With her husband 
she became a convert to Spiritualism, and in 1885 
drew up a general confession of her faith (see 
The Connecticut Magazine, vol. IX, no. 2). Her 
death, occasioned by a cerebral hemorrhage, oc¬ 
curred at Hartford in her eighty-fifth year. She 
was the mother of four children. 

[An autobiographical sketch appears in The Conn . 
Mag., vol. IX (1905), no. 2. See also John Hooker, 
Some Reminiscences of a Long Life (1899); Ida H. 
Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B . Anthony (2 
vols., 1899); E. C. Stanton, S. B. Anthony, and M. J. 
Gage, Fist, of Woman Suffrage, vols. II (1882), III 
(1887) ; Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, 
Portraits and Biogs . of Prominent Am. Women (1901); 
Hartford Courant, Jan. 2 5, 1907.] jj £ 

HOOKER, JOSEPH (Nov. 13, 1814-Oct. 31, 
1879), soldier, was born at Hadley, Mass., the 
son of Joseph Hooker and the latter’s second 
wife, Mary Seymour. His grandfather, another 
Joseph Hooker, had been a captain in the Revo¬ 
lution. In Hooker’s endowments, character¬ 
istics, and opportunities lay all the elements of a 
successful military career. After attending the 
Hopkins Academy at Hadley, he entered the 
United States Military Academy at West Point 
in 1833, and four years later was graduated num¬ 
ber twenty-nine in a class of fifty. Among his 
classmates were Bragg, Sedgwick, Early, and 
Pemberton. Tall, robust, bronze-haired, sharp- 
eyed, he commanded attention at a time when 


physical attractiveness lent much prestige, and 
his frank, affable manners brought him early 
recognition. After service as a subaltern in the 
Florida War and the Canadian border disturb¬ 
ances, he was brought back to West Point as 
adjutant of the Academy. Successful in this 
executive capacity, he held the post of adjutant 
of the 1st Artillery until the outbreak of the 
Mexican War, when he served successively on 
the staffs of Generals P. F. Smith, Hamer, But¬ 
ler, and Pillow. He went through part of Tay¬ 
lor’s campaign and most of Scott’s. In that 
period service as a staff officer did not prevent a 
man from distinguishing himself in action, and 
Hooker was brevetted a captain for gallantry at 
Monterey, a major at the National Bridge, and 
a lieutenant-colonel at Chapultepec. His “cool¬ 
ness and self-possession” in battle forecast the 
traits that were to signalize him in the Civil War. 
In the lamentable disloyalty of Pillow to Scott at 
the end of the war, however, Hooker by giving 
testimony in favor of Pillow incurred the enmity 
of Scott 

With the coming of peace, the army was re¬ 
duced, and hope of advancement and progress 
was curtailed for the officer. Hooker, energetic 
and ambitious, resigned from the service on Feb. 
21, 1853. Until 1858 he was a farmer at So¬ 
noma, Cal., in 1858-59 he was superintendent of 
military roads in Oregon, and in 1859-61 a colo¬ 
nel of California militia. In that region was 
developed his portentous antipathy to Halleck. 
When the Civil War broke out, Hooker, like 
Grant and others who had served their country 
courageously and with high professional ability 
in the Mexican War, proffered his services to the 
Union, and, like them, was genuinely snubbed. A 
trip to Washington seemed for a time entirely 
futile, because of some impediment or, as he felt, 
probably General Scott’s attitude. On May 17, 
1861, however, he was appointed brigadier-gen¬ 
eral of volunteers aiding in the defense of Wash¬ 
ington. In the Peninsular campaign, at Williams¬ 
burg on May 5, 1862, his division bore the brunt 
of the battle. At the head of his troops in the face 
of torrents of rain and bullets, he inspired his 
men and directed the fire of his artillery even 
after he had fallen in the mud with his dying 
horse. His determination, energy, and bravery 
in this battle won for him a major-generalcy of 
volunteers and the sobriquet of “Fighting Joe”— 
a name he secretly deplored because of its smack 
of the buccaneer. His further engagements at 
Fair Oaks, Williamsburg Road, Glendale, Mal¬ 
vern Hill, Bristoe Station, and Manassas were 
strongly flavored with his daring and profes¬ 
sional skill. In cgmmand pf the I Corps in the 


196 



Hooker 

Maryland campaign, he was successful at South 
Mountain, but while leading- the pivot of the 
maneuver at Antietam, he was so painfully- 
wounded in the foot that he had to be carried 
from the field. During his ensuing sick leave, he 
was awarded on Sept. 20,1862, the rank of briga¬ 
dier-general in the regular army. 

In December came defeat at Fredericksburg. 
Although Hooker, like others of Burnside’s sub¬ 
ordinates, expressed himself too freely about the 
latter’s conduct of the campaign, he led his troops 
forward and safely disengaged them from the 
enemy. Shortly afterward Burnside [ q.v.~\ re¬ 
quested the relief of some of his chief officers, 
Hooker leading the list, or of himself. Accepting 
the latter alternative, Lincoln appointed Hooker 
to the command of the Army of the Potomac. In 
his famous letter to the new appointee (A Letter 
from President Lincoln to General Joseph Hook¬ 
er, Jan . 26 , 1863 , 1879), the President frankly 
told him that although he was brave, skilful, 
ambitious, and self-reliant, he had thwarted 
Burnside by criticism and the withholding of 
confidence, and that his action might prove a 
boomerang. Lincoln said further: “I have heard 
in such a way as to believe it, of your recently 
saying that both the Army and the Government 
needed a dictator. Of course it is not for this, 
but in spite of it that I have given you the com¬ 
mand. Only those generals who gain successes 
set up dictators. What I now ask of you is mili¬ 
tary success, and I will risk the dictatorship.” 

Hooker immediately set in motion some needed 
reforms of organization, especially by doing 
away with the grand divisions and consolidating 
the cavalry into a corps. On Mar. 29, 1863, he 
announced to his officers: “My plans are perfect 
. . . may God have mercy on General Lee, for I 
will have none” (H. S. Hall, Personal Experi¬ 
ence under Generals Burnside and Hooker, 1894, 
pp. n-12). The ensuing action at Chancellors- 
ville, May 2-4,1863, was Hooker’s great chance. 
His plans and preparations for the battle were 
indeed masterly. Leaving Sedgwick completely 
covering Washington from a counter stroke, 
Hooker left Lee’s front without opposition, 
crossed the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, and 
established his army at Chancellorsville, a po¬ 
sition of “great natural strength” (Apr. 30, 
1863). The next day he ordered a general ad¬ 
vance but retreated upon Lee’s approach. On 
May 2 Lee sent Jackson with 32,000 men on a 
flank march. Hooker could easily have crushed 
Lee’s remaining 14,000 troops, but remained 
passive while Jackson made an attack on the 
Union right and forced Howard to fall back. 
Upper’s continued inactivity on May 3 enabled 


Hooker 

Lee to reenforce the 13,000 troops he had left 
facing Sedgwick, and Wilcox in the battle of 
Salem Heights prevented Sedgwick from join¬ 
ing Hooker. The latter was struck on the head 
by a falling pillar and was in a shattered nervous 
condition throughout the day. Since he was not 
completely incapacitated he remained in com¬ 
mand of the army. Leaving Stuart with 24,000 
troops at Chancellorsville, Lee went in person 
to attack Sedgwick (May 4). Hooker, with 78,- 
400 men, remained idle, making no attempt to 
crush Stuart. Lee forced Sedgwick’s with¬ 
drawal. At midnight May 4-5 Hooker held a 
council of war. Meade, Reynolds, and Howard 
wished to fight. Couch, who had lost all con¬ 
fidence in Hooker, joined Sickles in voting 
against an advance (F. A. Walker, History of 
the Second Army Corps in the Army of the Po¬ 
tomac, 1886, pp. 250-51). Hooker then ordered 
a retreat. With an army of 138,300 he had been 
unable to defeat Lee’s 62,550 troops. None the 
less, upon his return to camp at Falmouth, Va., 
he issued a general order on May 6, 1863, felici¬ 
tating the army upon its “achievements” ( War 
of the Rebellion: Official Records, Army, 1 ser., 
XXV, pt. 1, p. 171). 

Yet vigorously he followed Lee and skilfully 
maneuvered his troops, desiring his opponent to 
get well into Pennsylvania and predicting two 
weeks in advance that Gettysburg would be the 
battleground. His work here merited the thanks 
of Congress for the “skill, energy and endurance” 
with which he covered Baltimore and Washing¬ 
ton. But just before the decisive battle, his re¬ 
quest that the 10,000 troops at Harper’s Ferry 
be added to his army was refused by Halleck. 
Regarding this as a breach of faith by the ad¬ 
ministration, Hooker asked to be relieved of the 
command of the army. On June 28, 1863, Meade 
took command. 

Hooker was given the XI and XII Corps then 
en route to the Department of the Cumberland. 
His subsequent conduct under Generals Thomas 
and Sherman was characterized by the same sol¬ 
dierly qualities he had previously shown. At 
Lookout Mountain on Nov. 24, 1863, he demon¬ 
strated again his impetuous and determined lead¬ 
ership. For his aggressiveness there he was bre- 
vetted major-general in the regular army. At 
Mill Creek Gap, Resaca, Cassville, New Hope 
Church, Pine Mountain, and the siege of Atlanta, 
he commanded his troops with vigor and sagac¬ 
ity. When McPherson was killed, Hooker be¬ 
came the logical successor; but Sherman, pos¬ 
sibly through the influence of Halleck, felt a 
distrust of Hooker for so important a command 
and gave it to Howard? As a consequence, Hook- 


197 



Hooker 

er asked to be relieved from duty, saying: 
“Justice and self-respect alike require my re¬ 
moval from an army in which rank and service 
are ignored” ( War of the RebellionOfficial Rec¬ 
ords, Army, i ser., XXXVIII, pt. 5, p. 273). 
Thus ended Joseph Hooker’s military service in 
the field. In September 1864, he was transferred 
to command the Northern Department at Cin¬ 
cinnati, Ohio, where in 1865, after the eventful 
days of his life had passed, he married Olivia 
Groesbeck. On July 8, 1865, he was placed in 
command of the Department of the East at New 
York City; and on Aug. 23,1866, of the Depart¬ 
ment of the Lakes at Detroit. In 1868 his wife 
died, and on Oct. 15 of the same year he was re¬ 
tired as a major-general on account of paralysis. 
He died at Garden City, N. Y., and was buried 
beside his wife in Laurel Grove Cemetery, Cin¬ 
cinnati. 

Gossip has sometimes connected Hooker’s 
name with questionable personal conduct which 
his friends and close associates stoutly dis¬ 
claimed. All authorities agree that he was ex¬ 
cellent as a corps commander. 

[G. W. Cullum, Biog, Reg. of the Officers and Grads . 
of the U. S. Mil. Acad. (3rd ed., 1891); G. A. Taylor, 
in Jour, of the Mil. Service Inst, of the U . S., Sept.— 
Oct, 1910; War of the Rebellion: Official Records 
(Army), see index; “Report of the Joint Committee on 
the Conduct of the War,” Senate Report No. 142, 38 
Cong., 2 Sess.; J. W. De Peyster, Obits, of Maj.-Gen. 
Samuel P . Heintzelman and Maj.-Gen. Jos. Hooker 
(1881); John Bigelow, Jr., The Campaign of Chancel¬ 
lorsyille (1910) ; W. R. Livermore, The Story of the 
Civil War, pt. Ill (1913) ; Battles and Leaders of the 
Civil War (4 vols., 1887-88); Wm. Swinton, Cam¬ 
paigns of the Army of the Potomac (1866); J. H. 
Stine, Hist . of the Army of the Potomac (189a); T. 
A. Dodge, The Campaign of Chancellorsville (1881) ; 
Abner Doubleday, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg 
(1882) ; Geo. Meade, Life and Letters of George Gor¬ 
don Meade (2 vols., 1913); Autobiog. of Oliver Otis 
Howard (1907), vol. I; Memoirs of Gen. Wm. T. Sher¬ 
man (1875), vol. II; J. L. Butterfield, A Biog. Memorial 
of Gen. Daniel Butterfield (1904); H. E. Tremaine, 
Two Days of War (1905); Cot. Alexander K. Mc¬ 
Clure’s Recollections of Half a Century (1902) ; Em¬ 
ory Upton, The Military Policy of the U. S. (1904) ; 
W. A. Ganoe, Hist, of the U. S. Army (1924); Daniel 
E. Sickles, Address Delivered in Boston before the 
Hooker Monument Asso. of Mass. (1910); Army and 
Navy Jour., Nov. 8, 1879; N. Y. Tribune, Nov. 1, 
l8 ”-3 W.A.G. 

HOOKER, PHILIP (Oct. 28, 1766-Jan. 31, 
1836), builder, architect, surveyor, was the eld¬ 
est child of Samuel and Rachel (Hinds) Hooker 
and the great-grandson of Henry and Elizabeth 
(Hilliard) Hooker, or Hocker, of Medfield, 
Mass. He was bom in Rutland, near Worcester, 
Mass., but moved with his parents, probably 
soon after 1772, to Albany, N. Y. It is with the 
latter town that his name is generally associated. 
From May 2, 1796, almost until the day of his 
death forty years later he figured in the Albany 
records* He was seven times elected assessor 


Hooker 

for the fourth ward, received three appointments 
to the common council between 1818 and 1821, 
was city superintendent from 1821 to 1827, and 
city surveyor from 1819 to 1832. It was never¬ 
theless principally as an architect and builder 
that he made his local reputation. Between 1797 
and 1830 he designed, and in some cases built, 
for Albany, at least six churches, the state Capi¬ 
tol, the City Hall, two municipal markets, two 
academies, and a theatre. Of these buildings only 
the Albany Academy remains (1931) substan¬ 
tially unaltered. The demand for new buildings 
for Albany, which developed soon after 1790, and 
which afforded Hooker the opportunity of an 
architectural career, was a result of the town’s 
having suddenly become the capital of New York 
and the principal northern gateway to the West. 
When Hooker began to design buildings Albany 
was a Dutch frontier village; at his death it had 
been reconstructed, largely through his own ef¬ 
forts, into the semblance of a thriving, New Eng¬ 
land city. Outside of Albany Hooker’s principal 
works were the second Union College building, 
Schenectady, the second building for the First 
Presbyterian Church of Utica, Hyde Hall, on 
Otsego Lake, and the steeple and front of the 
Hamilton College Chapel in Clinton, N. Y. 

Hooker probably received his practical train¬ 
ing from his father, but his knowledge of archi¬ 
tectural design seems to have been derived 
primarily from his study of the work of other 
American architects, notably Macbean (St. Paul’s 
Chapel, New York), Mangin and McComb (City 
Hall, New York), and Bulfinch (Hollis Street 
Church, Boston). From these men his archi¬ 
tectural ancestry may be traced through the Eng¬ 
lish architects of the eighteenth and seventeenth 
centuries to Palladio and Brunelleschi. Much of 
his work was distinguished by its good propor¬ 
tion, by its combination of refinement and bold¬ 
ness in the detail, and by its successful definition 
of the principal masses. Its occasional incon¬ 
gruities of arrangement and apparent lack of 
resource were due no doubt to some extent to the 
architect’s deficient education and natural limi¬ 
tations, but probably to a much greater extent to 
the impecuniosity of his clients and the impossi¬ 
bility of obtaining either adequate materials or 
competent workmen. The family name of Hook¬ 
er’s first wife is not known. His second wife, to 
whom he was married in 1814, was Sarah Monk. 
He died at Albany without issue. 

[The principal sources of information regarding 
Hooker are the manuscript minutes and other manu¬ 
script records of the Albany common council, the 
manuscript records of the churches and institutions for 
which he designed buildings, and vouchers, receipts, and 
other papers in the New York state comptroller's office. 
Particular references to these and other sources of in- 


198 



Hooker 

formation are given in E. W. Root, Philip Hooker 
(1929). For measured drawings by J. L. Dykeman of 
some of Hooker’s buildings see Architecture, Dec. 1916, 
Dec. 1917, May, June, Sept. 1919; and the Architec¬ 
tural Record, Feb., Mar. 1916.] E.W.R. 

HOOKER, THOMAS (is86?-July 7, 1647), 
Congregational clergyman, was born probably in 
1586 according to Cotton Mather (post, I, 333), 
and G. L. Walker (post, p. 1) adds July 7 as the 
probable day, but there appears to be no con¬ 
vincing evidence even of the year; Marfield, Lei¬ 
cestershire, England, seems to have been his 
birthplace, though one authority (Venn, post, 
II, 403) gives Birstall. His father was Thomas 
Hooker, a yeoman. It is possible that the boy 
attended a school at Market Bosworth, about 
twenty-five miles from Marfield, established by 
Sir Wolstan Dixie together with two fellowships 
at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, one of which 
was later held by Hooker. He entered Queen’s 
College, Cambridge, and passed to Emmanuel 
College from which he received the degree of 
A.B. in 1608, and that of A.M. in 1611. From 
1609 to 1618 he was Dixie fellow at Emmanuel. 
About 1620 he became rector of Esher, Surrey, 
the living being one which did not require the 
approbation of a bishop. His Puritan leanings 
became more developed at this time and he fell 
much under the influence of the Rev, John 
Rogers of Dedham. Efforts were made to settle 
him at Colchester but for some reason were un¬ 
successful, and about 1626 he became “lecturer” 
at St. Mary’s, Chelmsford. There his preaching 
attracted great public attention and the malevo¬ 
lent eye of Laud. Hooker hoped he would not be 
brought before the High Commission and that 
he could leave the diocese peaceably. He was 
forced to retire from Chelmsford and went to 
Little Baddow, not far away, where he opened a 
school, with the celebrated John Eliot [q.z/.] as 
his assistant. In 1630 the spiritual court sitting 
at Chelmsford bound Hooker in the sum of £50 
to appear before the High Commission, and a 
Puritan farmer went surety for him. Several of 
Hooker’s friends raised the amount necessary to 
indemnify the good farmer, and Hooker aban¬ 
doned his bond and fled to Holland. He stayed 
for a while at Amsterdam and then for two years 
was the associate minister of the English Non- 
Conformist church at Delft. From there he went 
to Rotterdam where he was associated with the 
Rev. William Ames. For the latter’s A Fresh 
Suit Against Human Ceremonies in Gods Wor¬ 
ship (1633) Hooker wrote a long preface. 

At this time the Puritan exodus to the West 
Indies and Massachusetts was well under way. 
Hooker had for some time been in correspond¬ 
ence with the Rev. John Cotton [q>v.~\, who had 


Hooker 

been considering whether to go to Holland, Bar¬ 
bados, or Massachusetts. Meanwhile, a group of 
Puritans from the general neighborhood of 
Chelmsford had gone to the place last named, 
and were known as “Mr. Hooker’s company” 
because they had been his parishioners or listen¬ 
ers in England. Negotiations were started to 
have Hooker and Cotton go over as colleagues 
but proved futile, the members of the congrega¬ 
tion wisely consoling themselves with the cryptic 
remark that “a couple of such great men might 
be more serviceable asunder than together” 
(Mather, post, I, 434). Both decided to emi¬ 
grate, however, and Hooker went to London to 
arrange his affairs. Here the authorities got on 
his trail and the officers of the law even knocked 
at the door of the room in which he lodged, but 
his friend Samuel Stone [q.v.], who was to ac¬ 
company him to New England, made sufficiently 
misleading remarks to save the minister from 
annoyance and any confusion of conscience 
(Ibid., I, 340). He soon set sail for America in 
company with Cotton and Stone, the noted trio 
arriving at Boston Sept. 4, 1633. Massachu¬ 
setts was delighted to receive such recruits. They 
said that they now had “Cotton for their clothing, 
Hooker for their fishing, and Stone for their 
building” (G. L. Walker, post, p. 74). On Oct 
21, Hooker and Stone were chosen pastor and 
teacher of the congregation at Newtown. Hooker 
was soon called upon to take his part in one of 
the chief of the innumerable controversies in the 
colony and to answer Roger Williams [q.v.] in 
debate. Williams lost at the moment to win out 
a century or two later, the laurels of the day 
going to Hooker. When Endecott cut the cross 
out of the national ensign. Hooker wrote a pa¬ 
per on the subject in which he quietly con¬ 
demned Endecott’s action. Hooker’s church 
prospered and in 1635 his leading member, John 
Haynes Iq.vJ] was elected governor of Massa¬ 
chusetts Bay. 

The Newtown people, however, had always 
been somewhat restless in the Bay Colony. Al¬ 
though surmises are easy, it is not possible to 
declare just what the trouble was. For some 
time they had considered removal and had spied 
out certain possible sites for a new colony. It 
was claimed that they were “straitened” for want 
of land, but the difficulty appears to have been 
more intellectual or emotional or political than 
agricultural. The leading members of Hooker’s 
congregation, Haynes and Goodwin, became 
very restive. It was finally decided to move 
to Connecticut. Cotton preached and argued 
against the exodus, and the General Court op¬ 
posed the project in consequence. Hooker re- 



Hooker 

fused to discuss it, and in 1636, with a majority 
of his congregation, he emigrated and settled at 
what is now Hartford. In the more rarefied at¬ 
mosphere of the small Connecticut population he 
at once became, and deservedly remained, a lead¬ 
er. He was emphatically one of the founders of 
that state. There was bitter feeling about the 
split in the Bay Colony and Hooker did not hesi¬ 
tate in his letters to claim that the Massachu¬ 
setts authorities discouraged emigrants from 
joining the younger offshoot. Massachusetts 
through a series of voluntary and involuntary re¬ 
movals from the Bay was expanding into New 
England, and Hooker was preeminently a New 
Englander. Although at first opposing a synod 
in connection with the Hutchinsonian contro¬ 
versy, he changed his mind and at the synod held 
in 1637 he was one of the two Moderators, jour¬ 
neying back to Boston for the purpose. The main 
result of the synod was the condemnation of 
eighty-two erroneous or blasphemous opinions 
which were abroad in the colonies. Hooker, 
however, took advantage of the occasion to con¬ 
tinue his discussions with Winthrop over the 
possibility of a confederation of the several colo¬ 
nies. His main dispute with Winthrop was on 
the subject of democracy. Winthrop and the 
other Massachusetts leaders opposed democracy 
tooth and nail; Hooker was a bom democrat In 
the few Hooker-Winthrop letters which have 
been preserved the conflict of opinion comes out 
sharply. At the General Court of Connecticut 
which apparently had the making of the Con¬ 
necticut “constitution” in its charge (there being 
no royal charter), Hooker preached his famous 
sermon which has come down only in the form 
of brief notes by a hearer (Walker, post , p. 125). 
In it he took positions diametrically opposed to 
the doctrines of Massachusetts, maintaining that 
“the foundation of all authority is laid ... in 
the free consent of the people”; that “the privi¬ 
lege of election . . . belongs to the people”; and 
that “they who have the power to appoint officers 
and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set 
the bounds and limitations of the power and place 
unto which they call them.” The “Fundamental 
Orders” which served as the constitution of 
Connecticut were adopted in January 1639 and 
embodied the democratic ideas of Hooker, who 
undoubtedly had much to do with framing them. 
He soon after went to Boston for another con¬ 
ference on the formation of a New England con¬ 
federation, but it was not until 1643 that his long- 
cherished plan took tangible shape. In that year 
he attended the convention held at Cambridge, 
Mass., which was assembled for the purpose of 
combating the Presbyterian tendencies in the 


Hooker 

churches and reemphasizing the “Congrega¬ 
tional way.” He and Cotton were the two Mod¬ 
erators. Hooker and John Davenport [g.z/.] 
were chosen to reply to two books recently pub¬ 
lished in England and to defend the Congrega¬ 
tional system. Each wrote a volume and both 
were dispatched for printing to England in that 
fated ship which left New Haven with so much 
of the goods and hopes of the colony and was 
never heard from afterward. Both authors re¬ 
wrote their works, though Hooker did so very 
reluctantly, and his was not published until after 
his death ( A Survey of the Stimme of Church- 
discipline, 1648). In it he answered Samuel 
Rutherford’s The Due Right of Presbyteries 
(1644), point by point, a method which makes 
the book today rather dull and repetitious. As 
a kind of preface, however, he presented a state¬ 
ment of Congregational principles in one page, 
which was approved by all the ministers of Con¬ 
necticut and many of the other colonies, and 
which is as clear an exposition of Congregation¬ 
alism as has ever been given. Aside from this 
important work, he had been a fairly voluminous 
writer. J. Hammond Trumbull in his bib¬ 
liography, mostly sermons, lists thirty items 
(G. L. Walker, post, pp. 184 ff.). Hooker died 
in 1647, one of the victims of an epidemic sick¬ 
ness. There is no portrait of him, the statue in 
the Connecticut State House having been made 
by the dubious method of comparing the like¬ 
nesses of his numerous descendants. He was 
married at Amersham, Bucks, Apr. 3, 1621, to 
Susan Garbrand ( Buckingham Parish Registers 
—Marriages —vol. IV, 1908, p. 13). It is stated 
in Edward and M. H. Hooker’s Descendants of 
Rev. Thomas Hooker (1909) that he was twice 
married, but no authority is given. Three chil¬ 
dren survived him. 

[Cotton Mather, Magnolia Christi Americana (2 
vols., 1853), ed. by Thomas Robbins; G. L. Walker, 
Thomas Hooker , Preacher , Founder , Democrat (1 891) ; 
J. and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses (1922), vol. 
II; John Bruce, Calendar of State Papers: Domestic 
Series ... 1628-1629 (1859), 1629-1631 (i860), 1633 - 
1634 (1863); Records of the Governor and Company 
of the Mass. Bay , vol. I (1853); Winthrop's Jour . (2 
vols., 1908), ed. by T. K. Hosmer; W. B. Sprague, An¬ 
nals Am. Pulpit , vol. I (1857) ; Williston Walker, The 
Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (1893); 
Diet . of Nat . Biog.] j. t. a. 

HOOKER, WILLIAM (fl. 1804-1846), en¬ 
graver, first appears as one of the “artists” em¬ 
ployed in making the maps for the American edi¬ 
tion of Pinkerton 3 s Modern Geography, published 
in Philadelphia in 1804. Soon thereafter he was 
in Newburyport, Mass., his name appearing 
among those admitted to membership in the 
Agile Fire Society “at or soon after the date of 


200 



Hooker Hooker 


its organization” (1805). In 1807 he produced 
a copperplate engraving of the Wolfe Tavern 
for Prince Stetson & Company, the proprietors, 
which is still in existence. The following year, 
in conjunction with Gideon Fairman, he was en¬ 
graving and publishing children’s writing or 
copy books ( Newburyport Herald, May 17, 
1808), and in 1809 thirteen of the maps in the 
American Coast Pilot, published at Newbury¬ 
port by Edmund M. Blunt [q.vf] f carried Hook¬ 
er’s name. He was also employed by Little & 
Company, the Newburyport publishers, to make 
engravings for the first American edition of 
Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (1810). When the 
Embargo and the Non-Intercourse Acts of the 
Jefferson administration brought “the stillness 
of the grave” to Newburyport, Blunt moved his 
business to New York and Fairman departed for 
Philadelphia. Hooker moved first to Philadel¬ 
phia, affiliating himself there with the Colum¬ 
bian Society of Artists, but later he moved to 
New York to assist in the production of Blunt’s 
Stranger’s Guide to the City of New York 
(1817). He established himself as an “engraver 
and copperplate printer” at the same address as 
that of Blunt’s “chart store,” on the East River 
front. He made the city plan for the Stranger’s 
Guide and became more and more closely iden¬ 
tified with the store. In 1821 he was the proprie¬ 
tor, and in 1822 the tenth edition of the Ameri¬ 
can Coast Pilot, “published by Edmund M. Blunt 
for William Hooker,” carried an advertisement 
of the books, charts, and nautical instruments for 
sale at his “Navigation Store.” In 1824 he pub¬ 
lished a New Pocket Plan of the City of New 
York not only “Compiled & Surveyed” but 
“Drawn, Engraved, Printed, Published and Sold 
by W. Hooker, Instrument Maker and Chart 
Seller to the U. S. Navy.” This was followed 
about 1827 by a pocket map of New York state, 
with various statistical tables in corners and 
margins, and in 1831 by one of the earliest maps 
of its kind, a chart of the Atlantic Ocean, show¬ 
ing “the character and rout of a Storm which 
occurred on the American coast in August 1830.” 
The city map in Theodore Sedgwick Fay’s Views 
in New-York and its Environs (1831) was also 
his work. By. 1830 he had given up his “chart 
and quadrant store” and was calling himself 
simply a “copper plate printer and map pub¬ 
lisher.” The latest engravings to bear his name 
appear with date 1846 in the 1848 edition of Na¬ 
thaniel Bowditch’s New American Practical 
Navigator . 

[J. J. Currier, Hist, of Newburyport, Mass. ( z vols., 
1906-09) ; D. McN. Stauffer, Am. Engravers upon Cop¬ 
per and Steel (1907) ; advertisements in The Am. Coast 


Pilot (ed. 1922 ); New York City directories; pocket 
maps in the New York Pub. Lib. map collection.] 

A E P 

HOOKER, WORTHINGTON (Mar/3, 
1806-Nov. 6 , 1867), Connecticut physician and 
writer, was a lineal descendant of the Rev, 
Thomas Hooker [q.z/.], leader of the first colony 
of planters which settled in Hartford, Conn. His 
father was John Hooker, of Springfield, Mass., 
and his mother was Sarah Dwight. Following 
his graduation from Yale College in 1825 he pur¬ 
sued his medical studies in Philadelphia and af¬ 
terward attended lectures in Boston. He re¬ 
ceived the degree of M.D. from Harvard College 
in 1829, then established himself in practice in 
Norwich, Conn., where he remained for twenty- 
three years, gaining a wide reputation. In 1844 
he published an essay read before the Connecti¬ 
cut Medical Society, Dissertation on the Respect 
Due to the Medical Profession, which was after¬ 
ward enlarged into a book entitled Physician and 
Patient (1849). In 1850 he won the Fiske Fund 
prize of the Rhode Island Medical Society with 
his essay on Lessons from the History of Med¬ 
ical Delusions (1850), and the following year he 
won the same prize with an essay on homeopathy. 
Upon his appointment as professor of the theory 
and practice of medicine in the Medical Institu¬ 
tion of Yale College, he left Norwich and moved 
to New Haven, where he also carried on an ex¬ 
tensive practice. He continued to write, and in 
1854 he published Human Physiology, a volume 
of more than four hundred pages, designed for 
use in colleges and high schools. This was the 
first of a series of books intended to popularize 
the natural sciences and was followed by The 
Child’s Book of Nature (1857); The Child’s 
Book of Common Things (1858); Natural His¬ 
tory (i860); First Book in Chemistry (1862) ; 
Natural Philosophy (1863) ; Chemistry (1863) ; 
and Mineralogy and Geology (1863)—l ast 
three being parts of a series entitled Science for 
the School and Family. Some of these works 
became widely known and had an extensive sale. 
One of his best medical treatises was that on 
Rational Therapeutics (1857), which obtained 
the hundred-dollar prize offered by the Massa¬ 
chusetts Medical Association. Hooker also wrote 
for literary and religious newspapers and maga¬ 
zines, including the New Englander, the Boston 
Congregationalist, Harper’s Magazine, and Har¬ 
per’s Weekly. For the latter he prepared in all 
not less than forty-six papers. He lectured to his 
pupils five or six days in the week during term 
time, held private medical recitations throughout 
the year, attended his practice, was a director 
in the Connecticut Hospital Society and one of 
its attending physicians, and in 1864 was elected 


201 



Hooper 

vice-president of the American Medical Associ¬ 
ation. He was twice married. His first wife was 
Mary Ingersoll, of Springfield, Mass., whom 
he married on Sept. 30, 1830. She died in 1853 
and on Jan. 31, 1855, he was married to Henri¬ 
etta Edwards, a daughter of Henry W. Edwards 
[#.£.], who with a son survived him. The Worth¬ 
ington Hooker Public School of New Haven, 
Conn., memorializes his name. 

[Henry Bronson, “Memoir of Prof. Worthington 
Hooker, M.D., of New Haven ”Proc. and Medic. Com¬ 
munications of the Conn. Medic. Soc., 2 ser., vol. Ill 
(1871); Obit. Record of the Grads, of Yale Coll. . . . 
1868 (1868); B. W. Dwight, The Hist, of the Descend¬ 
ants of John Dwight of Dedham (2 vols., 1874).] 

H. T—s. 

HOOPER, JOHNSON JONES (June 9, 
1815-June 7, 1862), humorist, the son of Archi¬ 
bald McLaine and Charlotte (De Berniere) 
Hooper, was born in Wilmington, N. C, and 
died in Richmond, Va. His father, a journalist, 
was related to the most prominent families in 
North Carolina, and his mother, the daughter of 
a British army officer, was descended from Jer¬ 
emy Taylor. The boy did not go to college, but 
at fifteen he was in Charleston, the home of his 
mother's relatives, working on a newspaper. At 
twenty he set out on a journey of the Gulf states, 
living by his wits, a few months here and a few 
there, until 1840, when he settled in Lafayette, 
Ala., and read law under his brother, already a 
resident of seven years' standing. But the wan¬ 
derlust and the newspaper instinct had firm hold 
of him and he was obliged to be stirring. For a 
time he edited the Dadeville Banner , attracting 
attention to it by his humor, and then he moved 
on to edit the Wetumpka Whig for six months. 
This was in 1846. Later in die same year, at 
Montgomery, he helped edit the Journal, and 
then he returned to Lafayette. In the meantime, 
the chronicle of that arch backwoods sharper, 
Simon Suggs, whom he had invented for his 
journals, had become widely popular; some of it 
had been reprinted in the New York Spirit of the 
Times, and in 1846 a great portion of it, Some 
Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs, Late of the 
Tallapoosa Volunteers, was published in book 
form in Philadelphia. A. B. Longstreet and 
W. T. Thompson [qq.vJ] had preceded Hooper 
in portraying the type man of the early Southern 
frontier, and J. G. Baldwin [q.v.] a little later 
was to do the same with greater artistry. Yet, 
by unifying his stories more thoroughly than had 
been customary with his predecessors, and by 
writing earlier than Baldwin, Hooper retains a 
historical importance not attributable to the 
others. In 1851 he published The Widow Rug¬ 
by's Husband, A Night at the Ugly Man's and 
Other Tales of Alabama, which was similar to 


Hooper 

the Suggs stories in its subject matter, and in 
1858 he published Dog and Gun, A Few Loose 
Chapters on Shooting . In 1849 Hooper was elect¬ 
ed solicitor of the 9th Alabama circuit, but upon 
being defeated for reelection four years later he 
moved to Montgomery and established a news¬ 
paper, the Mail He edited this paper until 1861, 
when, with the assembling of the Confederate 
government in Montgomery, he was made sec¬ 
retary of the Provisional Congress. But so fully 
did his reputation as a humorist dominate men's 
judgment of him that they could never take him, 
as he was eager to be taken, quite seriously, and 
though he wished to have a part in the govern¬ 
ment at Richmond, he was disappointed in his 
hopes. He was married to an Alabama woman, 
the daughter of Greene D. Brantley of Lafayette. 

[Lib. of Southern Lit., vol. VI (1909) ; T. M. Owen, 
Hist, of Ala. and Diet, of Ala. Biog. (1921), vol. Ill; 
Jennette Tandy, Crackerbox Philosophers (1925); 
Henry Watterson, Oddities in Southern Life and Char¬ 
acter (1883) ; Wm, Garrett, Reminiscences of Pub. Men 
in Ala. (1872) ; F. J. Meine, Tall Tales of the South¬ 
west (1930); Daily Dispatch and Daily Enquirer 
(Richmond), June 9, 1862.] J.D.W. 

HOOPER, LUCY HAMILTON (Jan. 20, 
1835-Aug. 31, 1893), editor, journalist, was 
born in Philadelphia, Pa., the daughter of Bataile 
Muse Jones, a prominent wholesale grocer. At 
the age of nineteen she married Robert M. 
Hooper, a well-to-do merchant of Philadelphia, 
and for the next ten years devoted herself large¬ 
ly to the fashionable social life of the city. She 
found time to indulge her taste for music and art, 
and to write occasional poems that brought her a 
local reputation for literary ability. In 1864 she 
published a little volume of verse, Poems: with 
Translations from the German of Geibel and 
Others, and acted as associate editor of Our 
Daily Fare, a paper put out by the managers of 
the Great Central Sanitary Fair held in Phila¬ 
delphia during that year. This pleasant dabbling 
in literature came to an end with her husband's 
financial failure a few years later. Feeling the 
necessity of turning her writing to account, she 
obtained, in 1868, through her friendship with 
the Lippincott family, a place on the editorial 
staff of the newly founded Lip pine otfs Mag¬ 
azine. Here she promptly won recognition 
through her poems, stories, and a successful se¬ 
ries of gossipy travel letters. She published her 
second volume of verse, Poems, in 1871. 

In 1874 with her husband and two children she 
removed to Paris, Robert Hooper having been 
appointed consul-general in that city. There she 
devoted herself for the remainder of her life tp 
an active journalistic career. She continued her 
connection with Lippincotfs Magazine, supply¬ 
ing it with lively articles on French theatres, art 


202 



Hooper 

exhibitions, concerts, and fashions, as well as 
with occasional stories, and contributed to Ap- 
pletons’ Journal weekly letters dealing with the 
social and literary life of Paris. She undertook 
regular correspondence with Philadelphia, Balti¬ 
more, and St. Louis papers, establishing a re¬ 
markable record for almost twenty years of unin¬ 
terrupted service with the Philadelphia Evening 
Telegraph . While carrying on her literary labors 
she led an active social life in Paris. She dis¬ 
pensed hospitality to the American colony and 
delighted in bringing together literary and ar¬ 
tistic groups. Her interest in the life and the ac¬ 
complishment around her enabled her to write 
enthusiastically of the music, the painting, and 
the drama of the day and to find material for her 
journalistic work in the streets and shops of the 
city. She died in Paris two days after dictating 
her last letter to the Philadelphia Evening Tele¬ 
graph, and, in accordance with her request, her 
body was cremated at Pere-Lachaise Cemetery. 
Her published works include The Nabob (1878), 
from the French of Alphonse Daudet; Her 
Living Image (1886), a play written in collabo¬ 
ration with the French dramatist Laurencin; 
Under the Tricolor; or The American Colony in 
Paris (1880), a novel; The Tsar’s Window 
(1881), a novel; and Helen’s Inheritance, a play 
in which her daughter was cast for the leading 
part when it was first produced in America. 

[J. T. Scharf and Thompson Westcott, Hist, of Phila . 
(1884), vol. II; A Woman of the Century (1893), ed. 
by Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore; Ap- 
pletons’ Ann. Cyc ., 1893; Evening Telegraph (Phila.), 
Aug. 31, Sept. 12, 1893.] B.M.S. 

HOOPER, SAMUEL (Feb. 3, 1808-Feb. 14, 
1875), merchant, legislator, was born in Marble¬ 
head, Mass. His parents, John and Eunice 
(Hooper) Hooper, were both descended from 
Robert Hooper who settled in Marblehead some 
time before 1663. Several generations of the 
Hooper family had engaged in trade and ship¬ 
ping, and Samuel's father, a man of energy and 
shrewdness, achieved wealth and influence as a 
merchant He built the mansion in Marblehead 
known as the Hooper (not the King-Hooper) 
house, in which Samuel was bom, owned ships 
on which the boy voyaged to various European 
ports, and was president of the Marblehead Bank 
in the counting room of which he taught his son 
his first lessons in finance. After an ordinary 
education in the Marblehead schools, Samuel 
went to Boston. In 1832 he married Anne Stur¬ 
gis, the daughter of William Sturgis, and be¬ 
came a junior partner in the shipping firm of his 
father-in-law, that of Bryant, Sturgis & Com¬ 
pany. Gradually his business interests expand¬ 
ed. In 1843 he joined the importing firm of Wil¬ 


li ooper 

liam Appleton & Company, which remained his 
major concern, and in 1862 it became Samuel 
Hooper & Company. He was also one of the di¬ 
rectors of the Merchants' Bank of Boston and of 
the Eastern Railroad Company; he owned con¬ 
siderable property in various forms of the iron 
industry, and he held investments in western 
railroad properties. His wealth, originally large 
through inheritance and marriage, increased 
greatly until he was reputed to be one of Boston's 
wealthiest citizens. Having gained a knowledge 
of foreign trade and finance which impressed his 
contemporaries as authoritative, he set down his 
views on currency in two well-received pam¬ 
phlets: Currency or Money (Boston, 1855), and 
An Examination of the Theory and the Effect of 
Laws Regulating the Amount of Specie in Banks 
(Boston, i860). In both he discussed the evils 
of excessive and unregulated circulation of bank 
paper as currency and strongly advocated the use 
of specie, insisting that if a substitute be per¬ 
mitted it should be rigorously controlled. These 
views were to mature later in his espousal of 
measures insuring a uniform national currency. 

Meanwhile he was called into public life. His 
three years (1851-54) in the Massachusetts 
House of Representatives and one year (1858) 
in the state Senate were unimportant—tentative 
ventures outside the realm of business which still 
demanded his best efforts. But after 1861 he 
ceased being the man of business and became 
whole-heartedly a man of public affairs. In that 
year his partner William Appleton resigned his 
seat in Congress and Hooper was chosen to fill 
out the unexpired term. Reelected six times, he 
sat in the House of Representatives as a Repub¬ 
lican from 1861 until his death in 1875, doing 
significant work on the committees of ways and 
means, banking and currency, and coinage, 
weights and measures. He was most useful in 
the Civil War years. In the full vigor of his life, 
possessed of a robust frame and sturdy health, 
authoritatively informed on financial and com¬ 
mercial topics, he assumed a heavy burden of 
continuous labor and became an invaluable ally 
of the secretary of the treasury, Chase. In gen¬ 
eral he supported the administration's financial 
program. In particular he advocated the issue 
of legal-tender notes and the establishment of a 
national banking system. On both of these meas¬ 
ures his work was significant enough to war¬ 
rant a claim of leadership along with Stevens 
and Spaulding. In the deliberations of Congress 
he spoke rarely, and then only briefly. The 
greater part of his work was in the committee 
room. But chiefly, perhaps, his influence was 
felt through social channels. Wealth and refine- 


203 



Hooper 

ment permitted him to maintain a house in 
Washington renowned for its hospitality, and 
there he shared an intimacy with virtually every 
man of prominence in the Capital. 

After the w T ar, Hooper was a consistent advo¬ 
cate of the steady contraction of the greenbacks 
until parity with gold should be established. He 
was prominent in framing the currency act of 
1873 and invariably stood in defense of “sound” 
money measures. His influence, however, was 
waning as new leaders arose in the House. 
Moreover there were rumblings in his own dis¬ 
trict that the wealthy merchant was somewhat 
disdainful of popular sentiment. Hooper himself 
felt that his health was declining and decided 
that his seventh term in Congress should be his 
last But before he could return to private life 
death intervened and he passed away while he 
was still in Washington. 

[Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of 
Samuel Hooper ,.. . Delivered in the Senate and House 
of Representatives, Feb. 20, 1875 (1875) ; C. H. Pope 
and Thos. Hooper, Hooper Genedl. (1908) ; Biog. Dir. 
Am. Cong. (1928) ; N. Y. Times , Feb. 14, 187s ; N. Y. 
Tribune, Boston Morning Jour., Feb. 15, 1875.] 

P. H.B—k. 

HOOPER, WILLIAM (June 17, 1742-Oct. 
14, 1790), signer of the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence, was a native of Boston, Mass., the eld¬ 
est child of the Rev. William and Mary (Dennie) 
Hooper. Receiving his preparatory education at 
the Boston Latin School, he entered the sopho¬ 
more class of Harvard College and was gradu¬ 
ated in 1760. The following year he began to 
study law under James Otis, and it is likely that 
it was through his association with the latter that 
he became indoctrinated with the liberal ideas 
which shaped his future, for his family remained 
intensely loyal to England throughout the Revo¬ 
lution. Admitted to the bar, Hooper went in 
1764 to Wilmington, N. C., where he found an 
atmosphere of advanced liberalism and a most 
congenial community. He was a man of great 
personal beauty, grace and charm of manner, and 
of brilliant and cultivated mind, and he quickly 
came into high favor among the planters and 
lawyers of the Lower Cape Fear. In 1767 he 
married Anne Clark, the daughter of Thomas 
Clark, one of the early settlers of Wilmington. 
As deputy attorney-general, he incurred the ha¬ 
tred of the Regulators, by whom he was roughly 
treated, and in 1771 he was a member of Tryon’s 
military expedition against them. In 1773 he 
was elected to the Assembly from the borough of 
Campbellton, and by election from New Hanover 
County, he remained a member until the royal 
government was overthrown. There he quickly 
achieved a place of leadership in the popular 
party. He was placed on the Committee of Cor- 


Hooper 

respondence, and when the Boston Port Bill was 
passed, he led the movement to send relief. He 
also presided over the meeting which appointed 
a committee to call the first Provincial Congress 
and was elected to all five of the congresses. In 
all but the last, which he did not attend, he was 
an active leader. By the first, he was elected to 
the Continental Congress and remained a mem¬ 
ber of that body until 1777, serving on many im¬ 
portant committees and taking part in the de¬ 
bates. John Adams classed him as an orator 
with Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry (C. 
F. Adams, The Works of John Adams , II, 1850, 
396). Before he entered Congress, Hooper had 
foreseen the struggle with England and had writ¬ 
ten to James Iredell on Apr. 26, 1774: “They 
[the colonies] are striding fast to independence, 
and ere long will build an empire upon the ruins 
of Great Britain” (G. J. McRee, Life and Cor¬ 
respondence of James Iredell, 1 ,1857, 197). He 
was absent when independence was voted but he 
returned in time to sign the Declaration. 

On Apr. 29, 1777, Hooper resigned from Con¬ 
gress and retired to ‘Tinian,” his home on Ma- 
sonboro Sound near Wilmington. He was eager 
to restore his fortune, ruined by his public serv¬ 
ice, and he began to practise law again. He was 
also borough member of the House of Commons 
from 1777 to 1782. Then the impending capture 
of Wilmington forced him to flee, and he left his 
family in Wilmington in preference to exposing 
them to danger from the British. The period 
which followed was one of great distress of mind 
and body. His family was finally restored to 
him, but much of his property was destroyed and 
he had become dangerously ill with malaria. In 
1782 he moved to Hillsboro and two years later 
he was again in the House of Commons. He 
was a strong advocate of gentle dealing with 
the Loyalists and was opposed to the rapid rise 
in power of the democratic masses. He was an 
advocate of the Federal Constitution and al¬ 
though he was defeated in his attempt to be a 
delegate to the Hillsboro convention, he lived to 
see the Constitution ratified. Hooper was never 
a popular leader, the coldness with which he 
viewed the crowd prevented that. He was essen¬ 
tially an aristocrat, cultivated, fearless, aloof 
from all save the intimates whom he loved and 
who loved him. Lacking somewhat in strength 
of character, he succumbed to the blows of per¬ 
sonal ill fortune, and after several years of pain¬ 
ful decline, he died in Hillsboro. 

[Address by E. A. Alderman ... on the Life of Wtn. 
Hooper, "The Prophet of Am. Independence r (1894) ; 
J. S. Jones, A Defence of the Revolutionary Hist, of 
the State of N . C. (1834) ; S. A. Aske, Biog. Hist. of 
N. C., vol. VII (1908); Mag. of Hist., Nov.-Dee. 1916; 


204 



Hoover 

Col. and State Records of N. C., vols. VII-XX (1800- 
1902), XXII (1907), XXIII (1904), XXIV (1905).] 

J. G. deR. H. 

HOOVER, CHARLES FRANKLIN (Aug. 
2, 1865-June 15, 1927)* physician, was born in 
Miamisburg, Ohio. His father, Abel, of Ger- 
man-Swiss extraction, was a wealthy manufac¬ 
turer of farming machinery. His mother, Clara 
Elizabeth (Hoff) Hoover, came of Dutch stock. 
Charles, reared as a Methodist, had originally 
planned to enter the ministry; but subsequent 
contacts with relatives in the medical profession 
probably influenced his final choice of a career. 
In his later life, however, this adolescent inter¬ 
est in theology was revived and his library grew 
to contain an unusual collection of theological 
and philosophical treatises. He attended Ohio 
Wesleyan University from 1882 to 1885 and re¬ 
ceived from Harvard in 1887 the degree of A.B., 
and in 1892, the degree of M.D. From 1890 to 
1894 he worked with Prof. Edmund von Neusser 
at the University of Vienna and with Prof. Fred¬ 
erick Kraus at the University of Strassburg. In 
1894 a chance visit to Cleveland led to his assum¬ 
ing direction of the summer medical classes at 
the City Hospital. Such was his appeal as a 
teacher that, at the suggestion of his students, he 
was appointed teacher of physical diagnosis and 
visiting physician to the Cleveland City Hospital. 
In 1907 he was made professor of medicine in 
the Medical College of Western Reserve Uni¬ 
versity and visiting physician to the Lakeside 
Hospital. During the World War he served as 
a major in the Medical Reserve Corps and was 
with Base Hospital Unit No. 4 in France from 
May to September 1917. He then resumed his 
duties as teacher and medical consultant in 
Cleveland until an obscure pulmonary malady, 
which remained a mystery even after autopsy, 
terminated his career in 1927 after a half year’s 
invalidism. He was survived by his widow, 
Katherine (Fraser) Hoover of Kincardine, On¬ 
tario, whom he had married on Aug. 9,1900, and 
by his only child, a daughter. 

From the time of his German apprenticeship 
his approach to clinical problems was that of a 
physiologist. His reputation rested on his skill 
as a diagnostician rather than on his ability as a 
therapeutist. Though fully aware of the value of 
laboratory methods, he prided himself on being a 
bedside rather than a laboratory diagnostician, 
and he relied largely on his own highly trained 
special senses aided only by pocket instruments. 
His diagnoses were the result of the careful bed¬ 
side observation of disease symptomatology in¬ 
terpreted in terms of pathological physiology. 
“When convinced of the soundness of his ideas 
he expressed them with forcible, often aggres- 


Hope 

sive,. decision. He believed thoroughly in tlife 
possibilities of internal medicine, and did not 
easily seek surgical intervention for his patients. 
His diagnoses once given were rarely shaken” 
(Transactions of the Association of American 
Physicians, XLIII, 12). His original contribu¬ 
tions dealt with the physiology of the diaphragm 
and the ventilatory function of the lung as well 
as with the examination of the nervous system; 
and he became a prominent consultant in cardio¬ 
respiratory, neurological, and hepatic diseases. 
The bulk of his observations is well reflected in 
his contributions to standard systems of medicine: 
“General Considerations in Cardiovascular Dis¬ 
eases” and “Functional Diseases of the Heart,” 
in Osier’s Modern Medicine, vol. IV (1908); 
“Inflammatory Disease of the Skeletal Muscle” 
in Tice’s Practice of Medicine, vol. VI (1921); 
“Respiratory Excursion of the Thorax” and 
“Diseases of the Bronchi,” in Oxford Medicine, 
vol. II (1920) ; “Respiratory Symptomatology,” 
in Nelson Loose-Leaf Medicine, vol. Ill (1920). 

ITrans. Asso.Am. Phys., XLIII (1928), 10; Bull. 
Acad, of .Medicine (Cleveland), July 1, 1927; Cleve¬ 
land Plain Dealer, June 16, 1927; Cleveland Topics, 
June 18, 1927; Who*s Who in America, 1926-27', in¬ 
formation from Dr. M. A. Blankenhorn and Mrs. C. F. 
Iloover.] A. S .J. 

HOPE, JAMES BARRON (Mar. 23, 1829- 
Sept. 15,1887), poet, son of Wilton and Jane A. 
(Barron) Hope, was bom in Norfolk, Va., 
where his mother had grown up, the daughter of 
Commodore James Barron [g.z/.]. His parents’ 
home was in Hampton, and it was there that he 
spent his childhood. He was in school for a 
while in Germantown, Pa., and later he attended 
the College of William and Mary, from which he 
was graduated in 1847. The next year he re¬ 
mained in Williamsburg as a lawyer, but he was 
soon made secretary to his uncle, Commodore 
Samuel Barron. He spent three years in that 
position, which continued in spite of his almost 
fatal duel in 1849, and which carried him for a 
long cruise in the West Indies. He then returned 
to his home in Hampton, where he practised law, 
and where in 1856, he was elected common¬ 
wealth’s attorney. He had long exhibited a cer¬ 
tain faculty for verse and had indeed turned it 
to account in a series of poetical sketches pub¬ 
lished in a Baltimore paper over the designation, 
“The late Henry Ellen, Esq.” His substantial 
volume, Leoni di Monota and Other Poems, pub¬ 
lished in 1857, contains two of his most notable 
productions, “The Charge at Balaklava,” imita¬ 
tive of Tennyson, and “Three Summer Studies,” 
similarly reminiscent of Keats. That same year, 
before a gathering at Jamestown, he recited a 
long poem in heroic couplets concerning the 


205 



Hopkins 


Hopkins 


founding of Virginia; and in 1858 he twice gave 
similar recitations—in Richmond, to celebrate 
Washington’s birthday, and in Williamsburg, 
before the society of Phi Beta Kappa. These 
compositions, with others more purely lyric, he 
published in 1859 as A Collection of Poems. 
When war came, he went immediately with the 
Confederate army and did not leave it until, as 
a major with Joseph E. Johnston, he surrendered 
at Greensboro. In 1866 he is said to have been 
at work on a “History of Southern Authors,” 
but it was probably never completed, and his 
only literary output of consequence during that 
year is an “Elegiac Ode Read on the Completion 
of a Monument to Annie Carter Lee,” a hur¬ 
riedly composed but stirring poem, quick with 
a passion that he too often excluded from his 
writings. After the war he lived in Norfolk, 
where he did newspaper work first with the Nor¬ 
folk Day Book, next with the Virginian, and at 
last, from 1873 until his death, with his own able 
and energetic Norfolk Landmark. In 1874 he 
published Little Stories for Little People ; and 
in 1878, Under the Empire, a prose story of 
France, based, he says in the preface, on a play 
which he had written but not published In 1881, 
on the invitation of Congress, he prepared and 
read at the celebration of Cornwallis’ surrender 
at Yorktown, a long “Metrical Address,” enti¬ 
tled Arms and the Man (1882). In April 1883, 
without forsaking his newspaper, he became su¬ 
perintendent of the Norfolk schools. When 
death came to him, he had just completed a poem 
which he was v planning to read at the unveiling 
of the Valentine statue of Lee at Washington 
and Lee University. He had married, in 1857, 
Anne Beverly Whiting, of Hampton. 

[Janey Hope Marr, Wreath of Va. Bay Leaves 
(1895), a selection from Hope's poems edited by his 
daughter; Wm. Meade, Old Churches, Ministers and 
Families of Va. (1857), I, 237 ; J. W. Davidson, Living 
Writers of the South (1869); M. L. Rutherford, The 
South in Hist . and Lit. (1907) ; W. P. Trent, Southern 
Writers (1905); L. G. Tyler, Encyc. of Va. Biog. 
(1915), vol. III; C. W. Hubner, Representative South¬ 
ern Poets (1906); Lib. of Southern Lit., vol. VI 
(1909) ; Appletons* Annual Cyc., 1887; Norfolk Land¬ 
mark, Sept. 16, 1887.] J.D.W. 

HOPKINS, ARTHUR FRANCIS (Oct. 18, 
1794-Nov.io, 1865), lawyer, prominent in the 
public affairs of Alabama, was born in Pittsyl¬ 
vania County, Va., the son of James and Frances 
(Carter) Hopkins. Through his paternal grand¬ 
mother he was related to Thomas Jefferson; his 
father served in the patriot army during the 
Revolutionary War. Hopkins was educated at 
several different private academies in Virginia 
and North Carolina and attended the University 
of North Carolina, but did not graduate. He 


studied law under William Leigh of Halifax 
County, Va., and was admitted to the bar, Mar. 
28,1814, in Bedford County, Va. The following 
year he married Pamelia Thorpe Mosley, who 
died in 1852. In 1816 he went to Huntsville, 
Ala., where he became a successful practitioner 
and acquired a reputation for effectiveness in 
appeals to juries. Throughout his life he had a 
wide variety of interests. He not only practised 
law, but he became a large land owner, control¬ 
ling plantations in Alabama and Mississippi. He 
accumulated a considerable fortune through 
speculation in real estate, and ten years before 
his death he gave up his law practice to become 
the president of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad. 

Although he was related to the family of 
Thomas Jefferson, he was throughout his life an 
active opponent of the political principles of that 
great leader. In his young manhood he was an 
ardent supporter of Alexander Hamilton; in his 
later years he was an admirer of Henry Clay, 
and became the acknowledged leader of the Whig 
party in Alabama. He was one of the authors of 
the “Address of the Committee of the Whig Con¬ 
vention to the People of Alabama” in 1840 and 
was on the Harrison electoral ticket in that year. 
In 1844 he was the temporary chairman of the 
Whig national convention. Although he was 
politically ambitious and frequently the candi¬ 
date of his party, his views were so at variance 
with those of most people of his state that he was 
rarely elected to public office. He was a member 
of the first constitutional convention in Alabama 
in 1819 and a member of the state Senate from 
1822 to 1824 inclusive. Here he attracted atten¬ 
tion by his opposition to the establishment of a 
state bank In 1834 he was elected to the su¬ 
preme bench of the state by a Democratic legis¬ 
lature. His colleagues elected him chief justice, 
but he resigned the office within a year to be¬ 
come the candidate of his party for the United 
States Senate. He was a candidate in 1844 and 
again in 1849, after which year until the out¬ 
break of the Civil War he gave his attention 
chiefly to his private affairs. In 1861 he served 
as Alabama’s commissioner to Virginia to ar¬ 
range for cooperation in secession. During the 
war he was state agent for Alabama hospitals, in 
which work he was assisted by his wife, Juliet 
Ann (Opie) Hopkins [q.-z/.], whom he married 
in 1854. He died at Mobile. 

[The papers of Judge Hopkins disappeared during 
the Reconstruction period, but there is in the Ala. Dept, 
of Archives and Hist., among the Pickett papers, a 
sketch of his life which Hopkins gave to Pickett in 1847. 
Brief accounts of his career may be found in W. Gar¬ 
rett^ Reminiscences of Public Men in Ala. (1872), in 
J. E. Saunders, Early Settlers in Ala. (1899), and in 
T. M. Owen, Hist, of Ala. and Diet, of Ala. Biog . 


206 



Hopkins 

(iQ2i), vol. III. For genealogy, see W. L. Hopkins, 
Hopkins of Va. and Related Families (1931) ; and for 
death notice, Mobile Advertiser and Register, Nov. 11, 
1865.] H.F. 

HOPKINS, CYRIL GEORGE (July 22, 
1866-Oct. 6,1919), agricultural chemist, agrono¬ 
mist, was born in a primitive farm home near 
Chatfield in the hills of southeastern Minnesota. 
He was a son of George Edwin and Caroline 
(Cudney) Hopkins, and was one of a family of 
nine children. On this farm and in Deuel Coun¬ 
ty, Dakota Territory, whither the family moved 
in 1880, he grew to manhood, receiving his early 
education in district schools. Before and after 
he entered the Agricultural College at Brook¬ 
ings, S. Dak., he taught in country schools and 
spent his vacations on his father's farm, where 
he always carried his full share of the work. He 
graduated from college in 1890, received the de¬ 
gree of M.S. (1894) and that of Ph.D. (1898) 
from Cornell University, and spent another year 
(1899-1900) in graduate work at the University 
of Gottingen. On May 11,1893, he was married 
to Emma Matilda Stelter of Brookings. His 
earlier scientific work was in chemistry, and in 
connection with this subject and that of phar¬ 
macy he held positions at the South Dakota Agri¬ 
cultural College. He also served as experiment 
station chemist in Cornell University, and at the 
University of Illinois. In 1900 he was made 
professor of agronomy and soil fertility at the 
University of Illinois. This position he held to 
the end of his life, becoming vice-director of the 
experiment station in 1903. 

Early in his career he visioned a permanent 
agriculture, based upon the maintenance of soil 
productivity, to further the realization of which 
he planned and carried forward an investigation 
of Illinois soils along three lines. The first com¬ 
prised classification and mapping of the soils of 
the state; the next a chemical study of the dif¬ 
ferent soils with the thought that the resulting 
data would reveal something of their productive 
capacity as well as their needs; and the third, an 
investigation, by means of field plots, of various 
methods of soil management. More than a decade 
after his death, his name is a household word in 
hundreds of Illinois farm homes and his work 
is known and respected by agricultural scien¬ 
tists throughout the United States. There are 
many who question the economic soundness of 
some of the methods which he advocated for 
putting his principles into practice, but these 
principles themselves, which he cemented to¬ 
gether into the “Illinois System” of permanent 
soil fertility, will stand the test of time. Besides 
many papers he published Soil Fertility and 


Hopkins 

Permanent Agriculture (1910); The Story of 
the Soil, from the Basis of Absolute Science and 
Real Life (1911); and The Farm That Won’t 
Wear Out (1913). He was also the inventor of 
the Hopkins condenser, the Hopkins distilling 
tube, and the Hopkins limestone tester. 

When in 1918 a request came to him from the 
Red Cross to take charge of the agricultural re¬ 
habilitation of Greece, he regarded it as a call to 
duty. Given a year's leave of absence from the 
University, and commissioned a major in the 
Red Cross, he worked desperately to complete 
the necessary investigations and round out a 
program for the restoration of the depleted Gre¬ 
cian soils. For this work he was decorated by 
the King of Greece. Upon embarking for home 
he became violently ill, and was transferred to 
the British military hospital at Gibraltar, where 
he died. 

[Breeder's Gazette, Oct. 23, Nov. 6, 1919; Dakota 
Farmer, Nov. 1, 1919; Orange Judd Farmer, Oct 18, 
1919; Who's Who in America, 1918-19; Thirty-third 
Annual Report, Agricultural Experiment Station, Univ. 
of III. for the Year Ended June 30,1920 (1921) ; Ex¬ 
periment Station Record, Jan. 1920; L. H. Smith in 
the 111 . Agriculturist, Mar. 1927; In Memoriam Cyril 
George Hopkins (Univ. of III, 1922) contains bibliog. 
of his more important writings.] ]? £) e T. 

HOPKINS, EDWARD (1600-March 1657), 
governor of Connecticut, was born at Shrews¬ 
bury, England. He was apparently the son of an 
Edward or Edmund Hopkins who married 
Katherine, sister of Sir Henry Lello, the couple 
having six other children. Practically nothing 
is known of his early life until he had become 
prominent as a Turkey merchant in London. He 
either made or inherited a considerable estate 
and was a wealthy man when he emigrated to 
New England with Theophilus Eaton and John 
Davenport [qq.v.'] in 1637. After a stay of some 
months in Boston his two companions settled at 
New Haven, but Hopkins chose the already es¬ 
tablished town of Hartford. It has been stated 
that he was a son-in-law of Eaton ( Winthrop’s 
Journal, edition of 1908, I, 223, note), but it is 
established that his wife was Ann, sister of 
David Yale and aunt of Elihu Yale. She may 
have been a step-daughter of Eaton. Hopkins' 
wealth, ability, and public spirit soon caused him 
to become one of the leaders of the Connecticut 
colony, and he was elected assistant in 1639 and 
governor in 1640. He was reelected to the for¬ 
mer office in 1641, 1642, 1655, and 1656 and to 
the governorship in 1644, 1646, 1650, 1652, and 
1654. Most of that time he alternated in office 
with John Haynes, since the Connecticut law did 
not allow the same individual to serve two suc¬ 
cessive terms. When not governor, he was usual¬ 
ly deputy governor, as in the years 1643, 1645, 


207 



Hopkins 

1647,1649,1651, and 1653. In July 1643 he was 
appointed one of the Connecticut commissioners 
to go to Boston to “agitate the businesses of the 
Combination ,, which was to become the United 
Colonies ( The Public Records of the Colony of 
Connecticut , vol. 1 ,1850, pp. 90-91). When that 
combination was formed he was elected commis¬ 
sioner in several years. Aside from public af¬ 
fairs, he was engaged in all the pursuits which 
under the simple conditions of the day afforded 
opportunities for the profitable investment of 
colonial capital, such as the fur trade, fishing, 
merchandising, and milling. In 1640 he was 
given the exclusive right for seven years to trade 
at Waranacoe and adjacent places up the Con¬ 
necticut River (Ibid., I, 57). In the same year he 
proposed a plan for importing cotton wool on a 
large scale for the benefit of all the towns. This 
project he evidently carried out, such towns as 
Windsor, Hartford, and others financing their 
purchases from him by taxation (Ibid., pp. 59, 
75). He maintained relations with the Indians 
and was one of the signers of the tri-partite 
agreement of 1638 (New-England Historical and 
Genealogical Register, October 1892, pp. 355 
ff.). For some reason he abandoned the colony 
and returned to England. The Connecticut rec¬ 
ords show that he considered returning as early 
as 1651 (ante, I, 222), and, although he was 
elected governor in 1654 he is entered on the rec¬ 
ords of that election as being absent” (Ibid., p. 
256). In December 1652 Cromwell appointed 
him a navy commissioner, and in November 
1655, an Admiralty Commissioner (Calendar of 
State Papers, Domestic Series, 1652 - 53 , 1878, 
No. 45, p. 44; Ibid., 1655 - 56 , 1882, No. 107, p. 
9). His brother, Henry Hopkins, left him in his 
will, dated Dec. 30, 1654, his offices of warden 
of the fleet and keeper of the palace of West¬ 
minster. He was also elected to the Parliament 
which met in September 1656 as representative 
from Dartmouth in Devonshire. He died in the 
Parish of St. Olave, London, in March 1657, his 
will being dated Mar. 7 and proved Apr. 30 
(New-EnglandHistorical and Genealogical Reg¬ 
ister, July 1884, pp. 315-16). In it he left, among 
other bequests, one of £500 for “public ends” in 
New England, which sum, with accumulated in¬ 
terest, was finally awarded to Harvard College 
in 1710. The college bought a township with it, 
naming it Hopkinton in honor of the donor. He 
also left a considerable part of his Connecticut 
estate to a board of trustees to be used for the 
furtherance of grammar schools or a college in 
the colony. This property was used for the gram¬ 
mar schools of Hartford, Hadley, and New 
Haven, the last named being founded in 1660 


Hopkins 

(Records of the Colony or Jurisdiction of New 
Haven, 1858, pp. 356, 370 ff.). His wife, who 
was insane for fifty years, long survived him, 
and it is not known that they had any children. 

[Sources mentioned above; sketch by Gordon Good¬ 
win, in Dick Nat. Biog., giving references to sources 
for Hopkins’ English career; Cotton Mather, Magnolia 
Christi Americana (1702), vol. I.] J.T.A. 

HOPKINS, EDWARD AUGUSTUS (Nov. 
29, 1822-June 10, 1891), promoter in South 
America, was the son of Melusina (Muller) and 
the Rt. Rev. John Henry Hopkins [q. z/.]. He 
was born in Pittsburgh, Pa., and educated at 
his father’s school in Burlington, Vt. After leav¬ 
ing his home he became midshipman in the 
navy from 1840 to 1845, when he resigned and 
accepted appointment as special agent of the 
United States to report on the recognition of 
Paraguay, but was soon recalled for exceeding 
his instructions by promising President Lopez 
recognition and mediation in the quarrel immi¬ 
nent between Paraguay and Buenos Aires (Ar¬ 
chives of State Department, “Special Missions,” 
Dec. 1$, 1823-Nov. 13, 1852, p. 235). Support¬ 
ing himself all the while by writing for such pub¬ 
lications as the National Intelligencer and Hunt’s 
Merchantsf Magazine, he visited Paraguay twice, 
went to France and England to study the ques¬ 
tion of emigration, and returned to the United 
States late in 1851 to devote himself to promot¬ 
ing the United States and Paraguay Navigation 
Company under a charter from Rhode Island. 
In 1853 he was commissioned consul to Paraguay 
and sailed for Asuncion, where he bought a large 
tract of land for the company, set up a sawmill, 
and began to teach native workmen to cure to¬ 
bacco properly and to make a good grade of 
cigars. Soon, however, he fell out of favor with 
Lopez, who quickly brought the undertaking to 
an end (E. A. Hopkins, Historico-Political Me¬ 
morial upon the Regions of the Rio de la Plata 
and Conterminous Countries, to James Buchan¬ 
an, President of the United States, 1858; T. J. 
Page, La Plata, the Argentine Confederation, 
and Paraguay, 1859, pp. 270-87). Hopkins con¬ 
tinued to devote his abundant energies to pro¬ 
moting trade between the United States and 
South America and to developing modem means 
of communication, especially in the Argentine 
Confederation. He prepared a report on immi¬ 
gration and public lands in the Argentine and in 
the Memorial . . . Sobre el Mejor Modo de 
Abrir Relaciones Comerciales entre la Re public a 
Argentina y lade Bolivia (1871) urged Argen¬ 
tina to adopt measures to develop the vast re¬ 
sources of Bolivia. He established steam navi¬ 
gation on the Parana and built a steam railway 



Hopkins 

between Buenos Aires and San Fernando. In 
1864 Argentina sent him as consul general to 
New York in the hope of obtaining a new line of 
steamships between New York and the Plate 
River, but the United States government refused 
to recognize him. In 1878 in a memorial, The 
Extension of the Proposed U . S. and Brazil 
Steamship-Line, from Rio de Janeiro, to Buenos 
Aires, he pointed out the decline of trade be¬ 
tween the United States and South America 
owing to the lack of transport facilities and urged 
Congress to help the situation by letting a favor¬ 
able contract for carrying the mails. In 1888, 
on one of his trips to interest business men in the 
economic opportunities of South America, he 
made speeches at Chicago, Springfield, Ohio, 
and at New York (An Address delivered . . . 
before the Chamber of Commerce of the State of 
New York at its 120 th Annual Meeting, held 
May 3 , 1888 , 1888). At the time of his death he 
was in Washington as secretary of the Argen¬ 
tine delegation to the intercontinental railroad 
commission. On Mar. 24, 1858, he married at 
Charleston, S. C., Jeanne Arnaud de la Coste, 
who died Oct 9, 1883, and on Apr. 27, 1888, in 
New York, he married Marie Antoinette (de la 
Porterie) de Renthel, Marquise de Sainte Croix 
Molay. 

[Correspondence from members of the family; MS. 
autobiographical sketch in the possession of W. Nelson 
Smith of Reading, Pa., who also supplied a copy of 
Buenos Aires Standard, July 20, 1864; the archives of 
the State Department; biographical details in all the 
writings mentioned; C. A. Washburn, The Hist of 
Paraguay (1871), vol. I; Los Angeles Times, June 28, 
1891; Washington Post, June 11, 1891.] K.E.C. 

HOPKINS, ESEK (Apr. 26, 1718-Feb. 26, 
1802), commander-in-chief of the Continental 
navy, was born and grew up on a farm in the 
hilly, sparsely settled neighborhood known as 
Chopomisk or Chopmist, which was in 1731 set 
off from the town of Providence to make the 
present town of Scituate, R. I. His parents, Wil¬ 
liam and Ruth (Wilkinson) Hopkins, had nine 
children. Like most of his brothers, Esek, too, 
began to follow the sea shortly after his father's 
death in 1738. On Nov. 28, 1741, he married 
Desire Burroughs, the daughter of a well-to-do 
ship-master of Newport. To them were born ten 
children, the eldest of whom was John Bur¬ 
roughs Hopkins [q.vf]. At the time of his mar¬ 
riage Esek was a strong, tall, fine-looking man, 
energetic, dominant, out-spoken, and aggressive. 
Before the Revolution, as a successful sea-cap¬ 
tain, he made trips to every quarter of the globe 
and, like many other New England seamen, com¬ 
manded a privateer during the war between 
France and Great Britain, in which he brought 
home some rich prizes. Between voyages he 


Hopkins 

took a keen interest in local politics and served 
several times as a deputy to the General As¬ 
sembly. About 1772 he abandoned the sea and 
retired to his farm in North Providence, but 
when, in the spring of 1775, the General As¬ 
sembly of Rhode Island felt it necessary to pro¬ 
tect the coast against the approaching war with 
Great Britain he came at once to the front. He 
was familiar with naval affairs, he was used to 
command, and his brother, Stephen Hopkins 
formerly governor, was the most promi¬ 
nent figure in Rhode Island. On Oct 4, 1775, 
Esek Hopkins was put in charge of all the colo¬ 
ny's military forces with the rank of brigadier- 
general. With his customary energy he set about 
doing everything possible in the way of hastily 
improvising defenses. 

At this time the Continental Congress, in 
which Stephen Hopkins was an influential mem¬ 
ber of the Marine Committee, decided to organize 
a fleet to protect American commerce and on 
Dec. 22,1775, confirmed the committee’s appoint¬ 
ment of Esek Hopkins as commander-in-chief of 
the new navy. In January 1776 he left Provi¬ 
dence for Philadelphia to take charge of his little 
fleet of eight small ships, hastily altered to meet 
their new requirements. His directions from 
Congress were explicit: he was to proceed south¬ 
ward and attack the vessels of the enemy off the 
Virginia and Carolina coasts. Unfortunately ice 
in the Delaware delayed him a month. At the 
end of that time, with conditions altered and 
sickness prevalent among his men, he chose to 
adopt a different course. He sailed to the Ba¬ 
hamas and attacked the island of New Provi¬ 
dence, where he knew the British had a supply 
of ammunition which the colonists sorely needed. 
The venture was on the whole successful. New 
Providence with its military stores was taken, 
and on the return voyage a British armed schoon¬ 
er and a brig were captured. Yet, in an encounter 
with the British ship Glasgow in Long Island 
Sound, the American vessels received severe 
damage and were unable to prevent the enemy's 
escape. This failure, due to inexperience and 
lack of esprit de corps on the part of the offi¬ 
cers, aroused much adverse criticism which was 
the beginning of a growing dissatisfaction. On 
reaching port large numbers of the men had to 
be dismissed because of illness, and their places 
could not be filled. The delay in government pay 
and the competition of privateers, which offered 
higher wages and larger shares of prize money, 
made it impossible for Hopkins to man the two 
new ships which had been built in Providence. 
Meanwhile the fleet of which so much had been 
expected was accomplishing nothing. In June 


209 



Hopkins 

of that year Hopkins was summoned to appear 
before the Continental Congress to explain why 
he had failed to carry out his instructions. He 
duly reported himself to that body and was warm¬ 
ly upheld by John Adams but, nevertheless, re¬ 
ceived a formal vote of censure (Journals of the 
Continental Congress , vol. V, 1906, p. 662). 
Later orders of Congress also proved impossible 
of fulfillment. Although two vessels of the fleet, 
one of them commanded by John Paul Jones 
[gw.], made excursions against the enemy the 
navy as a whole remained idle, and in December 
of 1776 it was blockaded in Narragansett Bay by 
the British fleet. Hopkins was now beset on 
every side by criticism, disappointment, and in¬ 
subordination. To whip the infant navy into ef¬ 
fective shape would have required the genius of 
a Washington, but though Hopkins was a capa¬ 
ble seaman, he had no such genius. He was not 
by nature a patient man or fitted to meet adver¬ 
sity with equanimity. There were, no doubt, 
grounds for the reports sent to Congress by some 
of his disgruntled officers that he was acting un¬ 
wisely and speaking slightingly of the authori¬ 
ties in Philadelphia. Finally an officer appeared 
before Congress with definite accusations ( Ibid ., 
vol. VII, 1907, p. 202; Field, post , pp. 187-88), 
and as a result Esek Hopkins was suspended 
from command on Mar. 26, 1777. Formal dis¬ 
missal from service was declared Jan. 2, 1778. 

It is to be said in defense of Hopkins that this 
unfortunate incident did not in the least change 
his devotion to the American cause, nor did it 
seriously affect the esteem in which he was held 
by his fellow citizens, many of whom believed he 
had been unjustly treated. He served as deputy 
to the General Assembly from 1777 to 1786, and 
in 1783 he was collector of imposts. He was a 
trustee of Rhode Island College (now Brown 
University) from 1782 until his death, which 
occurred when he was eighty-four years old. 
The family cemetery where he is buried is now 
a public park bearing his name, and a bronze 
figure of him in the uniform of a naval officer is 
erected over his grave. His old home was deeded 
to the city by a descendant in 1907 and is pre¬ 
served as an historic landmark. 

[Four volumes of Hopkins MSS. in the possession 
of the R. I. Hist. Soc.; Edward Field, Esek Hopkins 
(1898); G. H. Preble, in United Service, Feb. and 
Mar. 1885; S. S. Rider, in Book Notes, July 7, 21, 
Aug. 4, Sept. 15, 1900; G. W. Allen. A Naval Hist, of 
the Am. Revolution (2 vols., 1913) ; The Works of 
John Adams, ed. by C. F. Adams, vol. Ill (1851); S. 
G. Arnold, Hist of the State of R . I., vol. II (i860) ; 
Albert Holbrook, Qeneal. of One Line of the Hopkins 
Family (1881); Essex Institute Hist . Coils., vol. II 
(i860); The Providence Gazette, Mar. 6, 1802.] 

E.R.B. 


Hopkins 

HOPKINS, ISAAC STILES (June 20,1841- 
Feb. 3, 1914), Methodist clergyman, educator, 
was born in Augusta, Ga., the son of Thomas 
Hopkins, a native of Ireland, and Rebecca (Lam¬ 
bert) Hopkins. He graduated from Emory Col¬ 
lege in 1859 and in 1861 received the degree of 
M.D. from the Medical College of Georgia. 
Feeling called to the ministry, he joined the 
Georgia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, in the fall of 1861 and served 
pastorates for eight years, preaching to both 
white and negro congregations. During a part 
of 1864 he was a member of a company of scouts 
in the Confederate service. From 1869 to 1875 
he was professor of natural science in Emory 
College, and for the next two years, professor of 
physics in Southern University, Greensboro, Ala. 
Returning to Emory College, he served from 
1877 to 1882 as professor of Latin and from 1882 
to 1885 as professor of English. In December 
1884 he succeeded his classmate, Atticus G. Hay- 
good as president and became by virtue 

of his new position professor of mental and 
moral science. 

He was naturally skilful in handling tools and 
machines, and as a lad he was frequently called 
on by the neighbors to repair sewing machines 
and clocks. For his own recreation he had while 
at Emory a workshop in the rear of his home. 
Several students, he said, “pleaded to share the 
labors of that little shop and in order that they 
might do so I purchased a few sets of plain car¬ 
penter's tools, and set them to work." Interest 
on the part of students and parents grew and in 
1884 the college catalogue announced that a 
School of Tool Craft and Design would be opened 
in the fall. In 1886 the name was changed to 
School of Technology. Hopkins advocated tech¬ 
nological education not only because of its prac¬ 
tical applications but because “mechanical sci¬ 
ence has in itself an educative value in the 
development of the perceptive powers, the taste, 
the judgment, the reason." According to his plan 
the product of the school was to compete in “the 
market with other products of skilled labor and 
must stand or fall by its excellence." A twenty- 
horsepower Corliss engine made in the Emory 
shops was used by the Atlanta Constitution in 
its job-printing department. In October 1885 the 
Georgia legislature authorized the establishment 
of the Georgia School of Technology as a branch 
of the state university, and in April 1888 Hop¬ 
kins was elected as its first president and profes¬ 
sor of physics, resigning his position at Emory 
in July to assume the new office. The institution, 
established at Atlanta, was opened for students 
in the fall, and has become the largest school of 


210 



Hopkins 

collegiate grade for men in the state, though 
technological education was in its early days the 
object of distrust, opposition, and scoffing. The 
objections of manufacturers caused the sale of 
articles made in the shops to be discontinued. 

Withdrawing from educational work in 1896, 
Hopkins reentered the ministry, serving pas¬ 
torates in Atlanta, Ga., St. Louis, Mo., Chatta¬ 
nooga, Tenn., Athens, Ga., and Lagrange, Ga. 
In 1908 he retired from active work. He had 
little relish for administrative duties but found 
pleasure in his study and workshop. As a min¬ 
ister and instructor who ranged over wide fields 
of learning he illustrated an old type of college 
professor; as a pioneer in technological educa¬ 
tion he was one of the builders of the new South. 
He was twice married: first, in 1861, to Emily 
Gibson; and second, in 1874, to Mary Hinton. 

[Commencement Bulls, of Ga. School of Technology 
for 1913 and 1914; C. E. Jones, Educ. in Ga. (1889), 
pub. by U. S. Bur. of Educ.; Jour, of No. Ga. Confer¬ 
ence for 1914; Who's Who in America, 1912-13; At¬ 
lanta Constitution, Feb. 4, 1914; article by Hopkins, 
“Technical Training for the South,” in Dixie (At¬ 
lanta), Sept. 1885.] E.H.J. 

HOPKINS, JAMES CAMPBELL (Apr. 27, 
1819-Sept. 3, 1877), federal judge, was born in 
Rutland County, Vt., of Scotch-Irish ancestry. 
He was the son of Ervin Hopkins, a farmer who 
had been educated at Middlebury College, and 
the grandson of James Hopkins, an early Ver¬ 
mont settler from Rhode Island who served un¬ 
der Ethan Allen during the Revolution. When 
James Campbell was a small boy his family 
moved across the state line into the adjoining 
county of Washington, N. Y., and settled at 
Granville, where he worked on the farm, attend¬ 
ed the rural school, and, for a brief period, went 
into North Granville to the academy. In 1840 he 
made up his mind to become a lawyer and, as was 
the custom of that time, began to study law in 
a local law office. His education had been 
meager, but five years of earnest study under the 
supervision of friendly counselors, coupled with 
native talent and power of sustained application, 
gave, him no mean equipment for the profession. 
He was admitted to the bar in the January 1845 
term of the supreme court at Albany and that 
same year married Mary Allen at Schaghticoke, 
Rensselaer County, N. Y. He began practice in 
association with his former preceptors and soon 
won standing and reputation. By appointment 
of President Fillmore he served as postmaster at 
the village of Granville for five years. In 1853 
he was elected to the state senate in which he be¬ 
came a member of the important judiciary com¬ 
mittee and an influential senator, but in 1855 he 
was defeated for reelection by his Know-Nothing 
opponent. 


Hopkins 

This political disappointment was probably 
the cause of his removal to the new state of Wis¬ 
consin, where in 1856 he settled at Madison 
in association with Harlow S. Orton [q.v.]. 
Equipped by his experience in the New York 
legal system, which had trained him not only in 
the common law but also in the reformed code of 
procedure, Hopkins performed the principal 
work of arranging that code for Wisconsin and 
of adapting it to the constitutional and judicial 
system of the younger state. Originally a Whig, 
he allied himself with the newly organized Re¬ 
publican party, but he no longer manifested am¬ 
bition for political honors. His interest was his 
profession. He had become a cautious, safe 
counselor, familiar with business life and affairs, 
and endowed with sound, practical judgment. 
While not gifted with marked power of elo¬ 
quence, he was an excellent trial lawyer, win¬ 
ning his cases by thorough preparation, wide 
knowledge of the law, and his ability to persuade. 
On July 9, 1870, he was commissioned by Presi¬ 
dent Grant to the bench of the newly created fed¬ 
eral court for the western district of Wisconsin. 
During the period of legal and economic develop¬ 
ment that followed, his work as judge was 
distinguished by industry, ability, methodical 
promptness, kindly courtesy, and unwearied pa¬ 
tience. He was particularly strong in equity 
cases, and in the administration of the bank¬ 
ruptcy law he had no superiors. During the last 
year of his life he also served as a professor in 
the law school of the state university along with 
such distinguished colleagues as I. C. Sloan and 
William P. Lyon \_qq.v.]. He died at the age of 
fifty-eight His second wife, Cornelia Bradley 
of Beloit, Wis., and his children survived him. 

[J. R. Berryman, Hist, of the Bench and Bar of Wis. 
(1898), vol. II; 44 Wis. Reports, 23; 7 Bissell's Re¬ 
ports (7th U. S. Circuit), 9; A. M. Hemenway, The 
Vt. Hist. Gazetteer, vol. Ill (1877), Wisconsin State 
Journal (Madison), Sept. 3, 1877.] R.W. 

HOPKINS, JOHN BURROUGHS (Aug. 
25, 1742-Dec. 5, 1796), naval officer, was born 
at Providence, R. I., the eldest of the ten children 
of Esek [q.vJ] and Desire (Burroughs) Hopkins. 
He was a nephew of Stephen Hopkins [q.v.] and 
related to many of the prominent Rhode Island 
families. On Oct. 2,1768, he married his cousin, 
Sarah Harris, by whom he had no children. Like 
so many others of his family he followed the sea 
in early life. In 1772 he took part in the destruc¬ 
tion of the British armed revenue schooner Gas - 
pee in the Providence River. On Dec. 22, 1775, 
he was appointed captain of the 14-gun brig 
Cabot of the Continental navy and, the next Feb¬ 
ruary, sailed on the New Providence expedition 


211 



Hopkins 

commanded by his father. After the capture of 
the Island of New Providence the squadron re¬ 
turned north and, near Block Island, fell in with 
the British ship Glasgow . The Cabot, being in 
the lead, received most of the enemy’s fire and 
had four men killed and seven wounded, includ¬ 
ing Hopkins, who was badly hurt. The Glasgow 
escaped. In the list of captains of the Conti¬ 
nental navy, as established by Congress on Oct. 
io, 1776, Hopkins is number thirteen (Peter 
Force, American Archives, 5 ser., vol. II, 1851, 
col. 1394). In 1777 he was appointed to com¬ 
mand the new frigate Warren, which was block¬ 
aded in the Providence River by the British fleet, 
but escaped on a bitter cold night early in March 
1778, took two prizes, then put into Boston, and 
later in the year went to sea again. In 1779 he 
was in command of a squadron, comprising the 
Warren, Queen of France, and Ranger, which 
sailed from Boston in March on a successful 
cruise of about six weeks off the Virginia capes. 
They took the New York privateer schooner 
Hibernia and captured seven out of a fleet .of 
nine sail, including the 20-gun ship Jason with 
several British army officers on board. Hopkins 
brought his prizes to Boston and Portsmouth, 
and both the Jason and Hibernia became suc¬ 
cessful American privateers. On this cruise Hop¬ 
kins showed qualities of a capable officer. The 
Marine Committee was at first highly pleased 
but later, on learning that Hopkins had not strict¬ 
ly followed his instructions, ordered an inquiry. 
He was suspended and never again served in the 
Continental navy, which was unfortunate. The 
Warren was given to Capt Dudley Saltonstall, 
who soon afterwards commanded the fleet on the 
disastrous Penobscot expedition, in which it 
seems likely that Hopkins would have done bet¬ 
ter and could not have done worse. In 1780 
Hopkins commanded the Massachusetts priva¬ 
teer ship Tracy with sixteen guns and a hundred 
men. In this vessel he cruised with some success 
but was finally captured (G. W. Allen, “Massa¬ 
chusetts Privateers of the Revolution,” Massa¬ 
chusetts Historical Society Collections, vol. 77 ? 
1927, p. 304). The next year he commanded the 
Rhode Island privateer sloop Success (United 
States Library of Congress, Naval Records of the 
American Revolution , prepared by C. H. Lin¬ 
coln, 1906, p. 466). After the war he retired to 
the obscurity of private life and died at the age 
of fifty-four. 

[Edward Field, Esek Hopkins (1898); G. W. Allen, 
A Naval Hist, of the Am. Revolution (3 vols., 1913); 
C. 0 . Paullin, Out-Letters of the Continental Marine 
Committee (3 vols., 1914) ,* Albert Holbrook, Geneal. 
of One Line of the Hopkins Family (1881).] 

G.W.A. 


Hopkins 

HOPKINS, JOHN HENRY (Jan. 30, 1792- 

Jan. 9, 1868), first Protestant Episcopal bishop 
of Vermont, only child of Thomas and Elizabeth 
(Fitzakerly) Hopkins, was of English and Irish 
lineage. His father, descended from the Hop¬ 
kinses of Coventry, England, was a merchant in 
Dublin; his mother was the brilliant and accom¬ 
plished daughter of a Fellow of Trinity College. 
In 1800 the family sailed for the New World. 
The talented son was educated by his mother 
(who conducted a successful school for girls in 
Trenton, N. J., and later in Philadelphia) and in 
private schools. His friends were all free-think¬ 
ers, and from his seventeenth to his nineteenth 
year he studied the writings of Paine, Hume, 
and Voltaire; but, determined to know the other 
side of the question, he procured Christian books 
also, and by reading and discussion became con¬ 
vinced of the truth of the Gospel. At twenty-one 
he became superintendent of ironworks near 
Pittsburgh, where on May 8, 1816, he married 
Melusina Muller, of German and French-Hugue¬ 
not descent. 

When peace with England put an end to his 
iron enterprise, he threw himself into the study 
of law and shortly rose to leadership at the Pitts¬ 
burgh bar. Serving without salary as temporary 
organist of Trinity Episcopal Church, Pitts¬ 
burgh, he became a communicant, and in 1823 
the struggling church unanimously elected him 
rector. Regarding this startling call as indicat¬ 
ing divine guidance, and whole-heartedly sup¬ 
ported by his wife, he accepted the invitation, 
exchanging his professional income of $5,000 for 
a salary of $800, and was rapidly advanced to 
full clerical standing. Having considerable 
knowledge of Gothic architecture, he drew plans 
for a church seating a thousand people; the 
building was erected and consecrated in 1825; 
and in that year nearly a hundred and fifty per¬ 
sons were confirmed. In 1831 he accepted a re¬ 
peated call to be assistant minister of Trinity 
Church, Boston, and to cooperate in the opening 
of a divinity school in Cambridge. The follow¬ 
ing year he was elected first Episcopal bishop of 
Vermont, at a salary of $500, and was tendered 
the rectorship of St. Paul’s Church, Burlington, 
which he held, in addition to his episcopal office, 
until he became presiding bishop over a quarter 
of a century later. Always deeply interested in 
church education, he developed a school in his 
home, with theological students as teachers. Its 
rapid growth led him to undertake extensive en¬ 
largement of his buildings, but the financial panic 
of 1837 swept away his property, and for twenty 
years he struggled heroically under a burden of 
debt. It was finally cleared, however, and he had 


212 



Hopkins 

the satisfaction of reestablishing his school. In 
January 1851, at Buffalo, N. Y., he delivered a 
lecture on Slavery: Its Religious Sanction, Its 
Political Dangers , and the Best Mode of Doing 
It Away, published that same year, in which he 
maintained that slavery was not a sin, because 
not forbidden in Scripture, but that its abolition 
was urgently important, and should be effected 
by fraternal agreement. This argument he sev¬ 
eral times reiterated in pamphlets and periodi¬ 
cals. Though loyal to the Union, he maintained 
throughout the Civil War an irenic attitude 
toward the South which enabled him, when he 
became presiding bishop in 1865, to take a lead¬ 
ing part in effecting the reunion of the Church. 

In 1867 he attended the Lambeth Conference 
of bishops in communion with the Church of 
England, and on Dec. 3 of that year was awarded 
the degree of D.C.L. by Oxford University. 
Upon his return to his diocese, he undertook a 
winter visitation during which prolonged ex¬ 
posure to severely cold weather brought upon 
him an attack of pneumonia which resulted in his 
death. 

A dose student of patristic literature in the 
original, Hopkins was a high churchman who 
held that the Reformation was necessitated by 
the innovations of Rome. He was always ready 
to stand quite alone in advocacy of what he be¬ 
lieved to be true or right; but he showed sensi¬ 
tive consideration for the rights of those who 
differed with him. He published more than fifty 
books, sermons, and pamphlets, including Chris - 
tiamty Vindicated (1833) ; The Primitive Creed 
(1834); The Primitive Church (1835); The 
Church of Rome in Her Primitive Purity Com¬ 
pared with the Church of Rome at the Present 
Day (1837) ; Sixteen Lectures on the Causes, 
Principles, and Results of the British Reforma¬ 
tion (1844) ; History of the Confessional (1850); 
a The End of Controversy?* Controverted (2 vols., 
1854), an answer to an argument by the Roman 
Catholic, John Milner; The American Citizen 
(1857); A Scriptural, Ecclesiastical and His¬ 
torical View of Slavery (1864); and The Law 
of Ritualism (1866). Throughout his career 
Hopkins had the devoted cooperation of his wife. 
His Autobiography in Verse (1866) was pub¬ 
lished on the occasion of their golden wedding. 
Of their thirteen children, three became clergy¬ 
men; two, musicians; and one, Edward A. Hop- 
kins [q.z/.], a diplomat. 

[J. H. Hopkins, Jr., The Life of the Late Rt. Rev . 

Henry Hopkins (1873) J Churchman, Jan. 18, 
1868, containing an editorial on Hopkins and an ex¬ 
tended obituary reprinted from the Burlington Times, 
Jan. 11, 1868; estimate in W. S. Perry, The Episcopate 
in America (1895); F. C. Morehouse, Some Am . 
Churchmen (1892); H. C. Williams, Biog. Encyc . of 


Hopk: 


ins 

Vt. of the Nineteenth Century (1885); Hiram Carle- 
ton, Gened, and Family Hist . of the State of Vt . 
(1903), vol. I.] E .D.E. 


HOPKINS, JOHNS (May 19, 1795-Dec. 24, 
1873), merchant, philanthropist, was the second 
son of Samuel and Hannah (Janney) Hopkins. 
His first known ancestor in America in the Hop¬ 
kins line was William, who was living in Anne 
Arundd County, Md., as early as 1657. His 
mother was of the Tucker-Janney family of 
Loudoun County, Va. From Richard Johns, his 
great-great-grandfather, he derived his given 
name. He was born on his father’s tobacco plan¬ 
tation, “Whitehall/* in Anne Arundel County, 
and attended the South River school. Here he 
was influenced by the unusually able master, an 
Oxford graduate. He left school at the age of 
twdve, because his parents, prominent in the 
West River Meeting of Friends, freed their 
slaves in 1807 mid the boys of the family were 
needed to work on the plantation. When he was 
seventeen he was taken into the home of his 
uncle, Gerard Hopkins, in Baltimore, to be 
brought up in the latter’s business, that of a 
wholesale grocer and commission merchant 
When he was nineteen his uncle was absent in 
Ohio for several months, and the young man, 
left in charge of the store, succeeded surprisingly, 
in spite of the alarm which seized the city when 
the British fleet arrived in Chesapeake Bay. By 
1819, when Johns Hopkins was twenty-four, 
differences had developed between uncle and 
nephew. The latter fell in love with his cousin 
Elizabeth, but Gerard Hopkins forbade the mar¬ 
riage on the score of consanguinity. Neither of 
them ever married and they maintained a close 
friendship through life. The financial distress of 
1819, furthermore, led many country customers 
to ask the privilege of paying for their goods in 
whiskey. Johns Hopkins favored this arrange¬ 
ment, but his uncle would not consent “to sell 
souls into perdition.” The result was that Johns 
Hopkins set up in the same business for himself, 
his uncle indorsing for him to the extent of $10,- 
000, and in the first year he sold $200,000 worth 
of goods. After a short partnership with Benja¬ 
min P. Moore, he took his brothers Philip, Ge¬ 
rard, and Mahlon with him into anew firm, Hop¬ 
kins Brothers, in which his mother and uncle, 
John Janney, invested each $10,000. The new 
firm took whiskey in exchange for groceries, sell¬ 
ing it under the brand “Hopkins’ Best” For 
this Johns Hopkins was turned out of Meeting, 
but he was later reinstated. His business extend¬ 
ed rapidly through the Valley of Virginia into 
North Carolina and over the Alleghanies into 
Ohio. Reaching into new ventures, he became a 


213 



Hopkins 

banker, indorsing business paper and buying up 
overdue notes, and built numerous warehouses, 
which added to the facilities of Baltimore as a 
growing commercial center. His principal in¬ 
vestment, however, was in the young Baltimore 
& Ohio Railroad, the possibilities of which were 
clear to him through his experience with wagon- 
trains across the mountains. In 1847 he became 
a director of the road, and in 1855, chairman of 
its finance committee. He grew to be the largest 
stockholder after the State of Maryland and the 
City of Baltimore; in the panic of 1857 he in¬ 
dorsed for it and in that of 1873, lent the road 
$900,000 to enable it to meet its interest pay¬ 
ments. At his death he held over 15,000 shares 
of the stock. For many years, also, he was presi¬ 
dent of the Merchants’ Bank and director in a 
half-dozen others in Baltimore, besides being 
heavily interested in life and fire insurance com¬ 
panies, steamship lines, and a warehouse com¬ 
pany. After twenty-five years he retired from his 
original commission business, leaving it in the 
hands of his brothers. He was one of the bankers 
who advanced $500,000 to the City of Baltimore 
during the Civil War, and after the war and 
during the panic of 1873 did much to avert dis¬ 
aster from the business community by liberal ex¬ 
tension of his credit, often without monetary 
reward. 

Several years before his death he resolved, af¬ 
ter making ample provision for his relatives, to 
leave the bulk of his fortune of about $8,000,000 
for the good of humanity and consulted with nu¬ 
merous friends on this subject, particularly with 
George Peabody and John W. Garrett [ qq.v .]. 
Remembering his own lack of schooling, and 
mindful of the unpreparedness of Baltimore in 
epidemics of cholera and yellow fever, he de¬ 
termined to found a great hospital and university, 
with a medical school and training course for 
nurses in connection with the hospital. In 1870 
he made his will, leaving $7,000,000 equally di¬ 
vided between the Johns Hopkins University 
and the Johns Hopkins Hospital, besides be¬ 
quests of smaller sums to Baltimore agencies for 
the education of youth and the care of the de¬ 
pendent. An abolitionist and a warm friend of 
negroes, he included attention to their needs in 
the hospital and an orphanage. Penurious in 
many personal matters (he never wore an over¬ 
coat and walked wherever he could), he knew 
how to be generous in large matters. He always 
meant to travel, but never went more than a few 
score miles from his home. He read widely, 
however, in part because of a stubborn insomnia. 

[Helen Hopkins Thom, Johns Hopkins, a Silhouette 
(1929); Baltimore: Past and Present (1871), sketch 


Hopkins 

approved by Johns Hopkins; Miles White, Jr., "Some 
Colonial Ancestors of Johns Hopkins,” in Southern 
Hist . Asso. Pubs., vol. IV (1900) ; J. T. Scharf, The 
Chronicles of Baltimore (1874); Bull, of the Johns 
Hopkins Hospital, July 1917; the Sun (Baltimore) 
Dec. 25, 1873.] b. M_1. ’ 

HOPKINS, JULIET ANN OPIE (May 7, 
1818-Mar. 9, 1890), revered for her devotion to 
the Confederacy and especially for her service in 
behalf of the sick and wounded, was born in Jef¬ 
ferson County, Va., the daughter of Hierome 
Lindsay and Margaret (Muse) Opie. She was 
a descendant of Thomas Opie who came to Amer¬ 
ica from Bristol, England, and about 1672 mar¬ 
ried the daughter of Rev. David Lindsay, son of 
Sir Hierome Lindsay of Scotland. Juliet Ann 
was educated by English tutors and in private 
schools until she was sixteen years old. At that 
time the death of her mother made her the mis¬ 
tress of her father’s plantations and hundreds of 
slaves. In 1837 she married Commander Alex¬ 
ander George Gordon of the United States Navy, 
who died a few years later, and in 1854 she mar¬ 
ried Judge Arthur Francis Hopkins [ q.v .] of 
Mobile, Ala. An ardent supporter of the Confed¬ 
eracy, she disposed of most of her land and ex¬ 
pended the proceeds, amounting, it is said, to 
half a million dollars, in its behalf. 

She offered her services to the state of Ala¬ 
bama in 1861 and was sent to Richmond, where 
she established a hospital. When her husband 
was appointed state agent for Alabama hospitals, 
she was made matron. Possessing considerable 
executive ability, she quickly brought these hos¬ 
pitals to a high state of efficiency. Among her 
papers are to be found letters from soldiers in 
other hospitals, begging her to have them trans¬ 
ferred to the Alabama hospitals because they had 
heard of the superior care afforded there. Gen. 
Joseph E. Johnston is reported to have said that 
at Bull Run she was more useful to his army than 
a new brigade. Wounded at Seven Pines while 
rescuing disabled soldiers from the battle-field, 
she was lame for the rest of her life. She passed 
her last years in New York, but died in Wash¬ 
ington while she was on a visit there. She was 
buried at Arlington with military honors. Her 
portrait appears on the twenty-five cent and the 
fifty-dollar bills issued by the state of Alabama 
during the Civil War. 

[Mrs. Hopkins* papers deposited with the Dept of 
Archives and Hist..of the State of Ala.; T. M. Owen, 
Hist of Ala. and Diet. of Ala. Biog . (1921), vol. Ill; 
T. G. DeLeon, Belles, Beaux and Brains of the 60*s 
(1909); J. E. Saunders, Early Settlers in Ala. (1899) ; 
W. L. Hopkins, Hopkins of Va. and Related Families 
(1931 ); Va. Mag. of Hist, and Biog., Jan. 1910; Wil- 
liam and Mary Coll. Quart., Apr. 1912; Evening Star 
(Washington), Mar. 11, 1890; Richmond Dispatch, 
Mar. 12,1890.] tt r* 


214 



Hopkins 

HOPKINS, LEMUEL (June 19, 1750-Apr. 

14, 1801), physician, satirist, was born in that 
part of Waterbury, Conn., which is now Nauga¬ 
tuck, the son of Stephen Hopkins by his second 
wife, Dorothy, daughter of James Talmadge of 
New Haven, Conn. He was a descendant of 
John Hopkins who settled in Cambridge, Mass., 
in 1634, removing to Hartford in 1636. The lat¬ 
ter's grandson, John, was one of the original 
proprietors of Waterbury, where he ground the 
people's corn, ran the tavern, and was a digni¬ 
tary in the church. His grandson, Stephen, was 
a well-to-do farmer, who made his sons work in 
the field, but gave them a good education. A 
tendency to tuberculosis early turned Lemuel's 
attention to medicine, and he studied, first, 
under Dr. Jared Potter of Wallingford, and later, 
under Dr. Seth Bird of Litchfield, in which 
town, about 1776, he began to practise. For a 
brief period he served in the Revolutionary War. 
In 1784 Yale conferred on him the honorary de¬ 
gree of M.A., and about this time he removed 
to Hartford, staying with his friend, Joel Bar- 
low [q: z/.], until he could establish a home there. 

Remaining in this city until his death, some 
seventeen years later, he became one of the most 
eminent practitioners in the state. He was un¬ 
gainly in appearance, eccentric in manner, and 
decidedly original in his methods. Having a 
keen mind, he could perceive the truth almost in¬ 
stantaneously, and an unusual memory enabled 
him to quote fluently from any book he had read. 
He hated sham and quackery, and expressed his 
thoughts bluntly, with nervous conciseness, and 
frequently with pungent wit and devastating 
irony. In his day, his methods of treatment were 
viewed as dangerously original. He employed 
the “cooling treatment in fevers, in the puerperal 
especially, and wines in fevers since called ty¬ 
phus.” Tuberculosis, however, was his specialty. 
He asserted that it could be cured, and prescribed 
fresh air and good food. His knowledge was 
“far ahead of that time” and proves him “to be 
a rival with Rush for honors in treating the 
great white plague" (W. R. Steiner, in H. A. 
Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Dictionary of Amer¬ 
ican Medical Biography, 1928). Many students 
came to him for instruction. He was an honor¬ 
ary member of the Massachusetts Medical Soci¬ 
ety and one of the founders of the Connecticut 
Medical Society. 

Although a much better physician than poet, 
he is generally remembered chiefly for his col¬ 
laboration with the other “Hartford Wits” in 
the production of certain political satires, which 
had no little influence in the unsettled and con¬ 
tentious period in which they were written; and 


Hopkins 

for a few brief poems of his own. Although he 
is said to have had “infidel leanings” at one time, 
he righted himself and became a stanch Calvin- 
istic-Federalist supporter of the established or¬ 
der, bitterly attacking whatever seemed to him 
political quackery. With John Trumbull, Joel 
Barlow, and David Humphreys [qq.vJ] he wrote 
“The Anarchiad, a Poem, on the Restoration of 
Chaos and Substantial Night,” satirizing an¬ 
archistic tendencies of the day. It was published 
in The New-Haven Gazette, and the Connecticut 
Magazine, the first number appearing in the is¬ 
sue of Oct 26, 1786, and the last in that of Sept. 
13,1787; and was edited by L. G. Riggs and re¬ 
printed under the title, The Anarchiad: a New 
England Poem, in 1861. He also collaborated 
with Richard Alsop, Theodore Dwight Iqqju .], 
and others in writing “The Echo,” a series of 
papers which appeared in the American Mercury 
in the years 1791 to 1805, and were reissued in 
abridged form in 1807. Hopkins is credited with 
the authorship of No. XVIII, which was pub¬ 
lished separately in 1795 under the title, The 
Democratiad, a Poem in Retaliation, for the 
“Philadelphia Jockey Club? Another work in 
which he had a hand was The Political Green¬ 
house for the Year 1798 (1799). The Guillotina, 
or a Democratic Dirge, a New Year's poem for 
Jan. 1, 1796, was published separately that year. 
His “Epitaph on a Patient Killed by a Cancer 
Quack,” is said to have helped banish such a 
quack from Hartford (Elisha North, Outlines of 
the Science of Life, 1829, p. 113); “The Hypo¬ 
crite's Hope,” satirizes pious pharisaism; and 
his “Verses on General Ethan Allen” arraign 
that personage for telling “the world the Bible 
lies.” He also wrote for Joel Barlow in 1785 a 
paraphrase of Psalm CXXXVII, “Along the 
banks where Babel's current flows.” In March 
1801 he became very ill with cough, pain in his 
side, and fever. He partially recovered, but died 
Apr. 14, in his fifty-first year. 

[W. R. Steiner, “Dr. Lemuel Hopkins,” The Johns 
Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, Jan. 1910, is based in part 
upon unpublished letters and manuscripts; see also 
ames Thacher, Am. Medic. Biog. (1828) ; J. W. Bar¬ 
er, Conn. Hist. Colls. (1836); Henry Bronson, The 
Hist, of Waterbury, Conn . (1858) ; The Town and City 
of Waterbury , Conn. (3 vols., 1896), ed. by Jos. Ander¬ 
son; Am. Poems (1793); C. W. Everest, The Poets of 
Conn. (1843) ; F. Sheldon, “The Pleiades of Connecti¬ 
cut/' Atlantic Mo., Feb. 1865; Annie R. Marble, Her¬ 
alds of Am. Lit (1907) ; H. A. Beers, The Connecticut 
Wits (1920); V. L. Parrington, The Connecticut Wits 
( 19 * 6 ).! H.E.S. 

HOPKINS, MARK (Feb. 4, 1802-June 17, 
1887), educator, theologian, son of Archibald 
and Mary (Curtis) Hopkins, was bom in Stock- 
bridge, Mass. His father, a farmer in humble 
circumstances, was a nephew of Samuel Hopkins 


2I 5 



Hopkins 

\_q.v.], from whom the New England Theology 
derived the name “Hopkinsianism,” and was re¬ 
lated also to John Sergeant [q.vf], first mission¬ 
ary to the Stockbridge Indians, and to Col. Eph¬ 
raim Williams [q.v.], founder of Williams Col¬ 
lege. After a rather desultory preparation, Mark 
Hopkins entered Williams as a sophomore, and 
received the degree of A.B. in 1824. In the same 
year he began the study of medicine, but in 1825 
was recalled to Williams where he served two 
years as tutor. Resuming his medical studies, he 
graduated from the Berkshire Medical College, 
Pittsfield, Mass., receiving the degree of M.D. in 
1829. He opened an office in New York City but 
soon removed to Binghamton, N. Y., where he 
practised a few months in partnership with Dr. 
Silas West. In 1830 he was again called back to 
Williams, this time as professor in moral philos¬ 
ophy and rhetoric. Taking up his duties in the 
autumn of 1830, he was connected with the col¬ 
lege from that time until his death, teaching reg¬ 
ularly, and from 1836 to 1872 serving as presi¬ 
dent. On Dec. 25, 1832, he married Mary Hub- 
bell of Williamstown; ten children were born of 
the marriage. From 1857 to 1887 he was presi¬ 
dent of the American Board of Commissioners 
for Foreign Missions. Although he never at¬ 
tended a theological school, he was licensed to 
preach by the Berkshire Association of Congre¬ 
gational Ministers in 1833, and was ordained on 
Sept. 15,1836 ( Congregational Year Booh, 1888, 
p. 28). He delivered many sermons and re¬ 
ligious addresses, some of which are included in 
Baccalaureate Sermons and Occasional Dis¬ 
courses (1862). He also gave four courses of 
lectures before the Lowell Institute in Boston, 
which were published in Lectures on the Evi¬ 
dences of Christianity (1846), Lectures on Moral 
Science (1862), The Law of Love and Love as a 
Law (1869), and An Outline Study of Man 
( i 873 )- These passed through several editions, 
and Evidences was republished in 1909 as the 
first volume of Lectures on the Bross Founda¬ 
tion. His last important book, The Scriptural 
Idea of Man , consisting of lectures given in vari¬ 
ous theological seminaries, was published in 
1883. 

Hopkins* fame rests mainly upon his skill as 
a teacher. He was neither a great scholar nor 
an original thinker. The remark made by Presi¬ 
dent James A. Garfield at a dinner of Williams 
alumni in New York to the effect that his ideal 
of a college would be fully met by a log in the 
woods with a student at one end and Mark Hop¬ 
kins at the other has an implication which the 
speaker did not intend. As a matter of fact, 
Hopkins did not feel the 9 f the 


Hopkins 

resources of a college, and in the early years 
of his teaching did not have the run even of a 
good library. He had not read widely but he had 
reflected deeply. In his own words, moral science 
“appeals directly to the consciousness of the 
hearer. No learning is needed; no science, no 
apparatus, no information from distant coun¬ 
tries” ( Lectures on Moral Science , p. 39). His 
own thought was governed by three principles or 
laws which he discovered in the constitutions of 
man and nature alike: the law of ends, the law 
of the conditioned and conditioning, the law of 
limitation. Whatever owes its existence to a ra¬ 
tional being must have and serve a rational end. 
As created by God, the world and man must have 
an end which can be ascertained by studying the 
structure of each. In nature, there are distinct 
strata, unified by coordination and subordina¬ 
tion : the inorganic with its forces of gravitation, 
cohesion, and chemical affinity; the organic, di¬ 
vided into vegetable, animal, and human organ¬ 
isms. In man, above these levels is mind, com¬ 
prising intellect, sensibility, and will. These 
grades, or levels, are so coordinated that each is 
an indispensable condition for the one immedi¬ 
ately above it, and gathers into itself the values 
of all lower grades in accordance with the law of 
the conditioned and the conditioning. The end 
of each level is to serve the interests of the one 
above it, and all conspire to serve the interests 
of the structure as a whole. In man, the body is 
for the mind and the physical processes and ap¬ 
petites are limited in their proper exercise and 
indulgence by the interests of the mind. In mind, 
the intellect with its ideas, and the sensibility 
which by apprehending good supplies motives, 
condition the will with its power of free choice 
among ends and motives. Man’s highest good 
lies in the harmonious cooperation of all his 
powers under the dominion of his supreme end, 
which is to love God and his fellows. The crown¬ 
ing evidence for Christianity as a revealed re¬ 
ligion is that it declares as the chief end of man 
that which is revealed also in his constitution. 

It was this system, ingeniously wrought out 
in detail and illustrated by diagrams, which Hop¬ 
kins taught year after year to the senior class in 
Williams College. At certain points, e.g ., the 
doctrine of levels, he approximated the theory of 
evolution, particularly in its “emergent” form, 
but he decidedly rejected the hypothesis of de¬ 
velopment, saying that: “So far as these forces 
are concerned, if the universe had been consti¬ 
tuted for the purpose of excluding the idea of 
development, it could not have been more effec¬ 
tually done” (An Outline Study of Man, p. 26). 
Hence the fflaitpr of fri§ .scjietnp ip ^jtjfipial 



Hopkins 

of organic, and the system itself seems mechan¬ 
ical and labored. There can be no doubt, how¬ 
ever, that his method of teaching was singularly 
effective. It was Socratic, not only because it 
was in dialogue form, but also because it directed 
a student's attention to his own mind and helped 
him make explicit what was implicit there. If 
the Williams men of his time forgot or rejected 
his elaborate system, they did not forget the re¬ 
spect due to their own minds and the duty of 
using them. Besides the books previously men¬ 
tioned, Hopkins published: Miscellaneous Essays 
and Discourses (1847), Strength and Beauty 
(1874), Teachings and Counsels (1884). 

[Franklin Carter, Mark Hopkins (1892); L. W. 
Spring, Mark Hopkins , Teacher (1888) ; M. A.’ De- 
Wolfe Howe, Classic Shades; Five Leaders of Learn¬ 
ing and Their Colleges (1928) ; A. L. Perry, Williams- 
town and Williams College (1899); Ray Palmer, re¬ 
view of Lectures on Moral Science in No. Am. Rev. 
Apr. 1863 ; Proc. Am. Acad. Arts and Sci., n.s., vol. XV 
(1888) ; G. S. Hall, Life and Confessions of a Psychol¬ 
ogist (19 23); Early Letters of Mark Hopkins (cop. 
1929) ; Springfield Republican , June 18, 1887.] 

W.W.F. 

HOPKINS, SAMUEL (Sept. 17, 1721-Dec. 
20, 1803), theologian, was born in Waterbury, 
Conn., the son of Timothy and Mary (Judd) 
Hopkins. He was a descendant of John Hopkins 
who emigrated from England and settled at Cam¬ 
bridge, Mass., in 1634, removing to Hartford, 
Conn., two years later. Timothy Hopkins was an 
influential person in his community and was 
many times sent to the General Court. Reared on 
a farm, Samuel fitted for college with the Rev. 
John Graham of the adjoining town of Wood¬ 
bury, and graduated from Yale in 1741. After 
receiving licensure as a Congregational minister 
from the Fairfield East Association on Apr. 29, 
1742, he returned to the family of Jonathan Ed¬ 
wards at Northampton, Mass., where he had 
spent the previous winter, and remained in its 
stimulating mental and spiritual atmosphere un¬ 
til December. About a year later, Dec. 28,1743, 
he was settled over a church of five members in 
a parish of about thirty families, now known as 
Great Barrington, Mass. Here on Jan. 13,1748, 
he married a member of his parish, Joanna In- 
gersol, and here his five sons and three daugh¬ 
ters were born. The severity of the preacher's 
logic and his dullness as a sermonizer finally 
alienated his people and he was dismissed from 
his charge on Jan. 18,1769. The most important 
fact of this pastorate from the point of view of 
Hopkins' subsequent career was the seven years 
of intimate association with Jonathan Edwards, 
who in 1751 was appointed over the church in 
the adjoining town of Stockbridge. This close 
connection between two such strong and kindred 
minds greatly influenced the thinking of both. 


Hopkins 

Obliged to seek a new settlement, Hopkins was 
installed as minister of the First Congregational 
Church of Newport, R. I., on Apr. 11, 1770, in 
which office he was continued until his death 
thirty-three years later. In 1776 Newport was 
occupied by the British who held it for more than 
three years, and Hopkins was compelled to 
seek refuge in Newburyport, Mass., Canterbury, 
Conn., and Stamford, Conn. In 1780 he returned 
to find his parsonage burned, the church edifice 
nearly ruined, and his people impoverished. Re¬ 
fusing an attractive call to Middleboro, Mass., he 
decided to remain in Newport, living on such 
weekly contributions as his people chose to give 
—a sum which seldom exceeded $200 a year. 
His congregations were small, for few had a 
“high relish for truth" so profound and subtle, 
uttered in a manner without animation and 
heavy. In the pews, however, sat a superior 
youth, William Ellery Charming, whose spiritual 
nature was sensibly moulded by what he heard. 
While declaring “he was the very ideal of bad 
delivery" and that “such tones never came from 
any human voice within my hearing," Channing 
adds, “he lived in a world of thought above all 
earthly passions . . . the sight of such (men) 
has done me more good, has spoken more to my 
head and heart, than many sermons and vol¬ 
umes" ( The Works of W. E. Channing , voL IV, 
1841, pp. 34 S-S 3 )- He was an indefatigable stu¬ 
dent, spending some fourteen hours a day in his 
study, taking no exercise, living abstemiously; 
yet the interests of this recluse were broader than 
those of most of his contemporaries. His is the 
distinction of being one of the first Congrega¬ 
tional ministers to denounce slavery; an act re¬ 
quiring unusual heroism, for Newport at the 
time was one of the centers of the slave-holding 
interests, and many of his congregation were 
slave-owners and financially identified with the 
trade. He also raised money to free a number 
of slaves in the neighborhood, and in 1773 joined 
with a ministerial friend, Ezra Stiles [q.v.], in 
an appeal for funds to train colored missionaries 
for Africa; he even perfected a plan, which he 
was prevented from carrying out, of establishing 
colonies of negroes in that continent. 

Hopkins is chiefly remembered, however, for 
his profound influence on New England theol¬ 
ogy. The pupil and intimate friend of Jonathan 
Edwards, he carried the principles of the New 
Divinity to their logical conclusions. This he 
did in a fashion so complete and acceptable to 
large numbers of thinking men of his day that his 
school of thought was called “Hopkinsianism,” 
and its philosophy, which quickened the spiritual 
life of New England, largely prevailed until 


217 



Hopkins 


Hopkins 


different modes of thinking discredited its prem¬ 
ises and antiquated its methods. He was the 
first of the New England theologians to form his 
teachings into a closely articulated scheme, and 
his System of Doctrines Contained in Divine 
Revelation , Explained and Defended (2 vols., 
1793) is the presentation of the matured thought 
which he had preached and written in pamphlets 
during his long life. He taught that a sovereign 
God does all things for his own glory and the 
greatest happiness of the whole; sin and evil are 
the occasion of great good as through his deal¬ 
ings with them the Deity displays his divine jus¬ 
tice and mercy. Every one should gladly take 
his place in the divine plan, live for the good of 
the whole, and love God supremely without mak- 


died in 1793, and in 1794, when he was seventy- 
three years of age, he married Elizabeth West, 
a member of his congregation, long a boarding- 
school principal in Newport, and learned in the¬ 
ology. 


* P y E / Park) Published as an introduction 

to The Works of Samuel Hopkins (3 vols., 1852) * Ste- 
phen West, Sketches of the Life of the Late Samuel 
Hopkins (1805), containing Hopkins’ autobiography 
John Ferguson, Memoir of the Life and Character of 
Rev. Samuel Hopkins, D.D. ’(1830); F. B. Dexter 
Sketches Grads. Yale Coll 1701-45 (1885); Win 
A. Patten, Reminiscences of Samuel Hopkins Illustra¬ 
tive of his Character cmd Doctrines (1843) : Williston 
Walker, Ten New England Leaders (1901): W. B 
Sprague, Annals Am. Pulpit , vol. I (1857): F. H Fos- 
ter, A Genetic Hist, of the New England Theology 
(1907) ,* Early Religious Leaders of Newport (1018V 
Newport Mercury, Dec. 24, 1803.] c A D J ' 


ing any personal conditions whatever, even be¬ 
ing willing to be among the reprobate, if such a 
fate would make for the glory of God. This “will- 
ing-to-be-damned” doctrine was not original 
with Hopkins, and Edwards had repudiated it, 
but critics seized upon it as making too strenuous 
a demand upon frail human nature. Extreme and 
irrational though this feature was, the “system” 
as a whole, with its teaching of disinterested 
benevolence as the supreme motive of the indi¬ 
vidual, was of great ethical value, and its concep¬ 
tion of a universe steadily set towards the great¬ 
est happiness of all had real spiritual grandeur. 
In power of comprehensive and thoroughgoing 
reasoning, in sustained elevation of tone, and in 
ability to bring ideas to bear persuasively upon 
the will it was a solid contribution to advancing 
ethical thought. The System of Doctrines had 
an unusual sale of twelve hundred copies and 
brought to the author the needed and substantial 
sum of nine hundred dollars. Hopkins was a 
voluminous and controversial writer, and among 
his other published works are: Sin, thro’ Divine 
Interposition, an Advantage to the Universe 
( I 7 S 9 ) i An Enquiry Concerning the Promises 
of the Gospel . Whether Any of Them Are Made 
to the Exercises and Doings of Persons in an 
Unregenerate State (1765) ; The True State and 
Character of the Unregenerate, Stripped of AU 
Misrepresentation and Disguise (1769); Re¬ 
marks on President Edwards's Dissertation Con¬ 
cerning the Nature of True Virtue (1771) ; An 
Inquiry into the Nature of True Holiness 
(*773) 9 A Dialogue Concerning the Slavery of 
the Africans; Shewing It To Be the Duty and 
Interest of the American States to Emancipate 
all Their African Slaves (1776) ; A Discourse 
upon the Slave Trade and the Slavery of Afri¬ 
cans (1793) f A Treatise on the Millennium 
(*793)> aad The Life and Character of the Late 
Rev. Jonathan Edwards (1765). His first wife 


HOPKINS, SAMUEL (Apr, 9, 1753-Sept. 
16, 1819), soldier, senator, was bom in Albe¬ 
marle County, Va., the son of Dr. Samuel Hop¬ 
kins and Isabella (Taylor) Hopkins. His father 
was the son of Dr. Arthur Hopkins of Gooch¬ 
land; his mother, a daughter of John and Cath¬ 
erine (Pendleton) Taylor of Caroline County. 
Having reached young manhood by the time of 
the Revolution, he took an active part in the 
struggle and through his resourcefulness and 
daring won the good opinion of General Wash¬ 
ington. He fought in the battles of Trenton, 
Princeton, Monmouth, Brandywine, and Ger¬ 
mantown. In the last-named engagement he 
commanded a battalion of light infantry which 
was nearly annihilated. He himself was badly 
wounded. When the British transferred the war 
to the South, he became lieutenant-colonel of the 
10th Virginia and took part in the defense of 
Charleston. On the death of his colonel, he suc¬ 
ceeded to the command of the regiment. When 
Charleston fell he was taken prisoner and trans¬ 
ported by sea back to Virginia. Transferred to 
the 1st Virginia, he served till the end of the 
war. On Jan. 18, 1783, he married Elizabeth 
Branch Bugg, daughter of Jacob Bugg of Meck¬ 
lenburg County, Ky. He was one of the original 
members of the Society of the Cincinnati. In 
1797 he settled in the newly opened Green River 
country of Kentucky which was to play a promi¬ 
nent part in the history of the state. Here he 
practised law and took an interest in politics, 
though he was never politically ambitious. Like 
most other Kentuckians, he favored the Ken¬ 
tucky Resolutions of 1798 and of 1799. He also 
favored constitutional reform, which found ex¬ 
pression in the constitution of 1799. He repre¬ 
sented Henderson County in the lower branch 
of the legislature at four different times between 
1800 and 1806 and he served in the state Senate 
from 1809 to 1813. In 1809 he was one of Ken- 


2l8 



Hopkins 

At the Albany Congress of I 754 > where Benja¬ 
min Franklin was urging his plan of colonial 
union, Hopkins and Franklin became firm 
friends. After the passage of the Stamp Act 
Hopkins was chairman of a committee to draft 
instructions to the Providence deputies in the 
General Assembly and in 1768 was again chair¬ 
man of a committee to consider the circular letter 
addressed to the colonies by Massachusetts. In 
the five years preceding the Revolution he was a 
member of the Rhode Island General Assembly 
and chief justice of the superior court of the col¬ 
ony. When the Rhode Islanders—some of them 
his own kinsmen—burned the schooner Gaspee, 
Joseph Wanton, governor of the colony, was in¬ 
structed by the Crown to arrest the destroyers 
and send them to England for trial, but the Chief 
Justice frustrated action by declaring that he 
would “neither apprehend” any of the offenders 
“by his own order, nor suffer any Executive Of¬ 
ficers in the Colony to do it” (Foster, post, II, 
246 and Appendix T). It was in 1774, the year 
of the convening of the First Continental Con¬ 
gress at Philadelphia, that Stephen Hopkins in 
association with his former political foe, Samuel 
Ward, made formal entry upon the national 
stage. Although this Congress avoided any dec¬ 
laration looking toward American independence, 
Hopkins did not hesitate to say, “Powder and 
ball will decide this question” (Foster, post, II, 
131). In the Second Continental Congress 
(1775) he was a member of a committee charged 
with submitting a plan for furnishing the col¬ 
onies with a navy. He was also a member of the 
committee for preparing articles of confedera¬ 
tion. On May 4, 1776, Rhode Island had on its 
own account renounced allegiance to the King of 
Great Britain, and two months thereafter was 
framed the American Declaration of Indepen¬ 
dence, which Hopkins signed. His acts in con¬ 
nection with the Articles of Confederation were 
the last he performed on the national stage, for 
in September 1776 he was compelled- to return 
home because of declining health. Between 1776 
and 1780 he was locally alert in the cause of in¬ 
dependence, serving as delegate to conventions 
of New England states, and in 1777 serving as 
a member of the Rhode Island General Assem¬ 
bly. 

The tastes of Stephen Hopkins were not only 
political; they were literary and scientific as 
well. Although he was without systematic edu¬ 
cation he had an insatiable relish for reading 
and was influential in establishing, about 1754, 
a public subscription library. In 1762 he helped 
found the Providence Gazette ; and Country 
Journal as a patriotic counterpoise to the Loy- 


Hopkinson 

alist Newport Mercury } or, the Weekly Adver¬ 
tiser, and he contributed to its contents through 
a series of years. In its columns were printed 
the initial chapters of “An Historical Account 
of the Planting and Growth of Providence” (Oct. 
20, 1762, and Jan. 12 to Mar. 30, 1765; reprinted 
in Rhode Island Historical Society Collections, 
vol. II, 1885, and in Massachusetts Historical 
Society Collections, 2 ser., vol. IX, 1822) and 
“The Rights of Colonies Examined” (Dec. 22, 
1764; reprinted in Records of the Colony of 
Rhode Island, vol. VI, 1861), which was issued 
as a pamphlet the next year and widely reprinted 
throughout the American colonies and in Eng¬ 
land. In this latter contribution he attacked such 
measures as the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, 
then imminent, on the ground that direct taxa¬ 
tion of an unconsenting people was tyrannous, 
and he haltingly expressed the theory of colonial 
home rule which was later to find its fullest elab¬ 
oration in the work of John Dickinson. Himself 
a merchant in private life he, however, did much 
to make Rhode Island a manufacturing center. 
He was the first chancellor of Rhode Island Col¬ 
lege (Brown University), founded at Warren 
in 1764, and was instrumental in obtaining its 
removal to Providence. He was a member of the 
Philosophical Society of Newport, having been 
admitted early as an out-of-town member, and 
in 1769 was concerned in erecting a telescope in 
Providence for observing the transit of Venus. 

In 1726 he married Sarah Scott, descendant of 
Richard Scott, Rhode Island’s earliest Quaker. 
Seven children were the result of this marriage. 
Of his five sons four followed the sea, and three 
became masters of vessels. His first wife died in 
1753, and *755 he married Mrs. Anne (Smith) 
Smith. 

[W. E. Foster, “Stephen Hopkins,” R. I. Hist. Tracts, 
no. 19 (2 pts., 1884) ; Edward Field, State of R. I . (a 
vols., 1902); S. G. Arnold, Hist, of the State of R. 
vol. II (i860); G. S. Kimball, The Correspondence of 
the Colonial Governors of R. I. (2 vols., 1902-03) ; The 
Narragansett Hist. Reg., Apr. and July 1885; Essex 
Institute Hist. Colls., vol. II (i860); Albert Holbrook, 
Gened . of One Line of the Hopkins Family (1881).] 

I B R. 

HOPKINSON, FRANCIS (Oct. 2, 1737- 
May 9, 1791), statesman, musician, author, fa¬ 
ther of Joseph Hopkinson came of good 

English stock. His father, Thomas Hopkinson, 
migrated from London to Philadelphia about 
1731 and took up the practice of law. He rose 
rapidly in his profession and held numerous pub¬ 
lic offices, the most important of which was that 
of judge of the vice-admiralty for the province. 
He was a member of the governor’s council and 
one of the founders of the American Philosoph¬ 
ical Society, the Library Company, and the Col- 


220 



Hopkinson 

lege of Philadelphia. Among his contempora¬ 
ries he was distinguished for public spirit, good 
sense, and integrity. On Sept. 9, 1736, he was 
married to Mary Johnson, daughter of Baldwin 
Johnson, an Englishman of distinguished fam¬ 
ily. Francis was the eldest of eight children, two 
of whom died in infancy. He was the first stu¬ 
dent to enroll in the Academy of Philadelphia, 
which opened in 1751, and six years later he re¬ 
ceived the first diploma granted by the College 
of Philadelphia. After his graduation from col¬ 
lege he studied law under Benjamin Chew, at¬ 
torney-general of the province, and in April 
1761 he was admitted to the supreme court of 
Pennsylvania. In November 1763 he was ap¬ 
pointed collector of customs at Salem, N. J. He 
attempted to build up a conveyancing business 
but was apparently not very successful, for in 
the summer of 1766 he sailed for England to 
seek political preferment through the influence 
of friends and relatives there. He visited Frank¬ 
lin and Benjamin West in London and was hos¬ 
pitably entertained at Hartlebury Castle by his 
mother’s cousin, the Bishop of Worcester. Lord 
North, a relative by marriage, showed a disposi¬ 
tion to befriend him but was unable to do so at 
once because offices in America were being re¬ 
served for those who had suffered by the repeal 
of the Stamp Act Consequently Hopkinson, 
after a year abroad, came home without the cov¬ 
eted office. 

Being talented musically, Hopkinson in 1754 
took up the study of the harpsichord, and by Jan¬ 
uary 1757 he had become proficient enough to 
appear at the College in a public performance. 
This was the presentation of Thomson and Mal¬ 
let’s Alfred, a Masque, revised for the occasion. 
Hopkinson probably helped with the revision 
and composed some original music for the affair. 
In 1759 he set to music Thomas Parnell’s “Love 
and Innocence,” which he renamed “My Days 
Have Been So Wondrous Free,” and in 1763 he 
published a collection of Psalm tunes, followed 
two years later by a translation of the Psalter for 
the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of New 
York City. He also displayed literary ambitions 
by writing numerous poems, many of which ap¬ 
peared in the American Magazine in 1757 and 
1758. Of these the most interesting are “The 
Treaty” (1761), an Indian poem; two “Exer¬ 
cises” presented at the College in 1761 and 1762; 
“Science” (1762), a poem foretelling a glorious 
future for the College; and “Dirtilla” (1772), 
a humorous poem. On Sept. 1, 1768, Hopkinson 
was married to Ann Borden, daughter of Col. 
Joseph Borden, the leading citizen of Borden- 
town, N. J. In the meantime he had opened 


Hopkinson 

a shop in which he sold drygoods imported from 
England. On May 1, 1772, he became collec¬ 
tor of customs at New Castle on Delaware, 
but he apparently was still dissatisfied with his 
position and prospects, for about a year and a 
half later he removed to Bordentown. Here he 
returned to the law, in which he rose rapidly. In 
1774 he was appointed a member of the gov¬ 
ernor’s council and in 1776 he was elected to the 
Continental Congress. 

Hopkinson’s literary ambitions were revived 
in 1775 by the appearance of the Pennsylvania 
Magazine , to which he contributed verses, old 
and new, and a series of Addisonian essays. Of 
the latter the most interesting are one entitled 
“A New Plan of Education” and three on the 
joys and sorrows of bachelorhood. He showed 
much promise in this field, but the leisurely ca¬ 
reer of a literary essayist was not for him. July 
1776 saw the end of the magazine and brought 
him new and serious responsibilities. At the be¬ 
ginning of the conflict with England Hopkinson 
came out openly for the Whigs. In September 
1774 he began his long career as a political sati¬ 
rist by publishing A Pretty Story, which records 
in allegory the history of the quarrel down to the 
appointment of General Gage as governor of 
Massachusetts. This work is reminiscent of 
Swift and Arbuthnot, but it has original quali¬ 
ties : it presents the grievances of America with¬ 
out exaggeration, and it has a style that is vigor¬ 
ous without being ill-natured. Other essays fol¬ 
lowed, the most important of which was “A 
Prophecy,” written before the Declaration of 
Independence, and predicting that event. On 
June 28, 1776, Hopkinson arrived in Philadel¬ 
phia to represent New Jersey in the Continental 
Congress. He voted for and signed the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence. From November 1776 to 
August 1778 he was chairman of the Continental 
Navy Board; from July 1778 to July 1781 he 
held the office of treasurer of loans; and in July 
1779 he became judge of admiralty for Pennsyl¬ 
vania. His responsibilities in these offices were 
great, and his vexations were numerous. When 
the British were in possession of Philadelphia, 
they plundered his house at Bordentown. A 
quarrel with the Board of Treasury, in which he 
was not the aggressor, caused him to resign his 
position as treasurer of loans; and the disciplin¬ 
ing of a subordinate in the court of admiralty led 
to an impeachment trial in which he was ac¬ 
quitted. 

During the war Hopkinson was an active pam¬ 
phleteer. In A Letter to Lord Howe ( 1777 ) he 
protested against brutality to non-combatants; 
in A Letter Written by a Foreigner (1 777 ) he 


221 



Hopkinson 

satirized the character of John Bull; in An 
Answer to General Bwrgoyne’s Proclamation 
(1777) he ridiculed the address of the General 
to the American people; in A Letter to Joseph 
Galloway (1778) he drew an unflattering por¬ 
trait of an eminent Loyalist; in an Advertise¬ 
ment (1781) he announced the retirement from 
business of James Rivington, King’s Printer, 
for New York; and in numerous other letters 
and essays he encouraged the Americans, derided 
the British, and excoriated the Tories. Some of 
his most effective Revolutionary writings are in 
verse. “The Battle of the Kegs” (1778), which 
celebrates the first attempt to employ mines in 
warfare, is the best known of all his works. Al¬ 
most as good is “Date Obolum Bellesario” 
(1778), a political allegory, in which England 
in the guise of a beggar enumerates the woes 
brought upon her by George, her worthless 
youngest son. Hopkinson’s collected works con¬ 
tain half a dozen of these “political ballads,” as 
he calls them, and the Hopkinson manuscript, 
owned by the Henry E. Huntington Library, 
several more. In December 1781 Hopkinson cel¬ 
ebrated the alliance between France and Amer¬ 
ica in The Temple of Minerva, which he calls 
an “oratorical entertainment,” but which O. G. 
T. Sonneck calls a “dramatic allegorical can¬ 
tata.” Hopkinson composed music for the can¬ 
tata and directed the performance, which was at¬ 
tended by General Washington, the French 
minister, and other notables. 

Hopkinson had natural artistic ability and 
while in England probably received some train¬ 
ing from Benjamin West. He made crayon pic¬ 
tures, particularly portraits, the best of which 
are two of himself copied from an oil portrait by 
Robert Edge Pine. Frequently his artistic tal¬ 
ents were employed in making heraldic devices. 
In 1770 he served on a committee that designed 
the seal of the American Philosophical Society; 
in 1776 he designed or helped to design the 
Great Seal of New Jersey; and in 1782 he pre¬ 
pared a seal for the University of the State of 
Pennsylvania. After the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence he designed state papers and seals for 
various departments of the new government. In 
1777 he designed the American flag. 

Hopkinson held the position of judge of ad¬ 
miralty until 1789, when the Admiralty Court 
was abolished and he was appointed by Wash¬ 
ington judge of the United States court of the 
eastern district of Pennsylvania. This position 
he held until the end of his life. His work was 
congenial, and light enough to allow him time 
for his various avocations. He corresponded 
with Franklin, Washington, and particularly 


Hopkinson 

with Jefferson, who during his mission to France 
kept him informed of the progress of science and 
letters in Europe. He was an active churchman 
and in 1789 served as secretary of the conven¬ 
tion that organized the Protestant Episcopal 
Church. He kept up his interest in art, music, 
and literature; he read papers before the Amer¬ 
ican Philosophical Society; and he invented use¬ 
ful articles, among which were a ship’s log, a 
shaded candlestick, and an improved “quill” or 
pick for the harpsichord. His later political 
writings are numerous, but most of them deal 
with subjects of local and temporary interest 
In the days of the Constitutional Convention he 
supported the Federalists so effectively that he 
was made director of the “Grand Federal Pro¬ 
cession,” which celebrated the ratification of the 
Constitution by Pennsylvania. Of his Federal¬ 
ist writings the most notable is “The New Roof,” 
published in the Pennsylvania Packet, Dec. 29, 
1787. During his latter years he produced some 
of his best literary essays. “Modern Learning 
Exemplified” (1784) ridicules faddish methods 
in education; “A Plan for the Improvement of 
the Art of Paper War” (1786) is one of several 
satires on newspaper quarrels; and “A Letter 
from a Gentleman in America on White-wash¬ 
ing” (1785) and “Nitidia’s Answer” (1787) are 
amusing examples of social satire. After 1786 
two new magazines, the Columbian Magazine 
and the American Museum vied with each other 
not only in publishing everything he wrote for 
them but in republishing most of his earlier 
works. In November 1788, he published a vol¬ 
ume entitled Seven Songs , which contains his 
best lyrical poetry. He claimed for it the dis¬ 
tinction of being the first book of music published 
by an American composer. 

On May 9, 1791, Hopkinson died suddenly of 
apoplexy. Before his death he had prepared for 
publication a collection of his works, which in 
1792 was published under the title The Miscel¬ 
laneous Essays and Occasional Writings of 
Francis Hopkinson. Though he was not pre¬ 
eminent in any one field the bulk of his attain¬ 
ments is sufficient to make his place in American 
history secure. 

[The material for this sketch was taken from Geo. E. 
Hastings' The Life and Works of Francis Hopkinson 
(1926), which is provided with a bibliography. Hop- 
kinson's works in manuscript are owned by the Henry 
E. Huntington Lib.; Edward Hopkinson, Esq.; the 
Am. Phil. Soc.; the Hist. Soc. of Pa.; the Lib. of 
Cong.; and the Mass. Hist. Soc. Of these collections 
the first three are much the most important. Of the 
many short biographical sketches of Hopkinson three 
are noteworthy: Chas. R. Hildebum, “Francis Hopkin¬ 
son,the Pa. Mag. of Hist, and Biog ., vol. II, no. 3 
(1878); Moses Coit Tyler, The Lit. Hist. of the Am. 
Revolution (copyright 1897) ; and Annie Russell Mar¬ 
ble, Heralds of Am. Lit. (1907). The final authority 


222 



Hopkinson 

on Hopkinson’s musical career is 0 . G. T. Sonneck, 
Francis Hopkinson, the First Am. Poet-Composer 
< i 905)-3 G.E.H. 

HOPKINSON, JOSEPH (Nov. 12, 1770- 
Jan. 15, 1842), congressman, jurist, author of 
“Hail Columbia,” was born in Philadelphia, Pa., 
the son of Francis Hopkinson [g.z/.], signer of 
the Declaration of Independence, and Ann (Bor¬ 
den) Hopkinson. He was educated at the Uni¬ 
versity of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1786. He 
married Emily Mifflin, daughter of the first gov¬ 
ernor of the state of Pennsylvania. Choosing a 
legal career, he was admitted to the bar in 1791 
and soon made a notable reputation as a lawyer. 
He was attorney for Dr. Benjamin Rush in his 
successful libel suit in 1799 against William Cob- 
bett, and he was one of the three lawyers engaged 
by Justice Samuel Chase in his defense when im¬ 
peached in 1804. In the latter case he was com¬ 
plimented by Aaron Burr as being the most ef¬ 
fective lawyer in the case ( Pennsylvania Law 
Journal, post, pp. 101-07)* In 1814 he was elect¬ 
ed to Congress as a Federalist. He became the 
leading minority member of the committee ap¬ 
pointed by Speaker Clay to consider the question 
of a revived federal banking system and opposed 
the plan of the Republicans. He also challenged 
the view of the Republicans that a treaty involv¬ 
ing fiscal matters necessitated action by the 
House of Representatives and contended that a 
treaty made by the president and the Senate un¬ 
der their constitutional treaty-making mandate 
automatically superseded any national law not in 
harmony with it (. Annals of Congress, 14 Cong., 
1 Sess., pp. 485, 639, 1095, and passim ). He 
participated extensively in congressional debates 
on varied subjects, generally on the losing side. 
He was a member of Congress during the period 
of disintegration of his party and during the rise 
of a democratic spirit with which he had little 
sympathy. Nor did his character permit him to 
act well the role of an opportunist As a result, 
his congressional career was not particularly 
fruitful. In 1820, the year after he retired from 
Congress, he removed to Bordentown, N. J., but 
in 1823 he returned to Philadelphia. 

In 1828 Hopkinson was commissioned by 
President Adams judge of the federal district 
court for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, a 
position his father had held by appointment from 
President Washington. This position he re¬ 
tained until his death in 1842. His opinions as 
district judge were marked by unusual clarity 
and literary skill. He was in no sense a path¬ 
finder, and his interpretations of law and prec¬ 
edent were in accord with his conservative 
outlook. His opposition to innovation found ex¬ 
pression also in his work as a member of the 


Hopkinson 

state constitutional convention of 1837. One of 
the principal reasons for calling the convention 
was a desire to democratize the judiciary in ac¬ 
cord with the general tendencies of the Jacksoni¬ 
an era. Out of deference to Hopkinson’s age and 
recognized ability as a lawyer and a judge, he 
was made chairman of the judiciary commit¬ 
tee of the convention. But in spite of his ar¬ 
dent and masterly arguments against what he 
termed the surrender of the independence of 
judges under restricted tenure and popular elec¬ 
tion, the convention adopted many of the pro¬ 
posed innovations. 

Hopkinson’s varied interests and activities are 
indicated by his connections with leading cul¬ 
tural institutions. He was at one time secretary 
of the board of trustees of the University of 
Pennsylvania and was long a member of the 
board. He was vice-president of the American 
Philosophical Society, president of the Academy 
of the Fine Arts and a patron of artists, and one 
of the founders in 1827 of the Pennsylvania Hor¬ 
ticultural Society. His popular reputation de¬ 
pends most largely upon a casual episode of his 
earlier life—the writing of “Hail Columbia.” 
His own account explains that it was written in 
the spring of 1798 at the request of a young actor 
and singer of his acquaintance, Gilbert Fox 
[q.v.]. The young man “was about to take a 
benefit” at a local theatre and was in need of a 
popular song. Hopkinson, among others, was 
asked to write words, preferably of a patriotic 
nature, to be sung to the tune of “The Presi¬ 
dent’s March.” His object in complying, he 
states, aside from favoring the actor, was “to get 
up an American spirit, which should be inde¬ 
pendent of, and above the interests and passions, 
and policy of both belligerents, and look and feel 
exclusively, for our own honour and rights” 
(Pennsylvania Law Journal, post, p. 103). He 
referred, of course, to England and France and 
to the bitterly hostile anti-English and anti- 
French groups in America. In his own aristo¬ 
cratic circles, war with France was thought to 
be inevitable. His object in avoiding partisan¬ 
ship and in appealing to the patriotism of both 
groups was attained, “The song found favour 
with both parties,” he wrote, “for both were 
American” (Sonneck, post, pp. 43 ~ 7 2 )- 

[See the Pa. Law Jour., Jan. 1848; Univ. of Pa., 
Biog. Cat. of the Matriculates of the Coll., 1749^-1893 
(1894); E. P. Oberholtzer, Philadelphia: A Hist, of 
the City and Its People, vols. I and II (1912); Proc. 
and Debates of the Convention of the Commonwealth 
of Pa. . . . Held at Harrisburg . . . May 1837 > voL 
I (1837) ; O. G. T. Sonneck, Report on “The Star- 
Spangled Banner ” “Hail Columbia,” “America,” “Yan- 
kee Doodle” <1909); B. A. Konlde, Joseph Hopkinson, 
1770-1842 (1931); and the. Pennsylvanian, Jan. 17» 
1842. For Hopkinson’s opinions as district judge see 
Gilpin's Reports, 1828-36(1*37) and Crabbers Reports, 


223 



Hopper 

1836-46 (1853). Letters and other manuscripts are 
a variable in the archives of the Pa. Hist. Soc.] 

W.B. 

HOPPER, ISAAC TATEM (Dec. 3, 1771- 
May 7, 1852), humanitarian, abolitionist, was 
bom in Deptford, Gloucester County, N. J., the 
son of Levi and Rachel (Tatem) Hopper. His 
father came of a Quaker family, his mother was 
a member of the Presbyterian Church. Isaac 
settled in Philadelphia in 1787 at the age of six¬ 
teen, served a period of apprenticeship as a tailor, 
and then opened a tailor-shop on his own ac¬ 
count. He was profoundly influenced in his re¬ 
ligious life by William Savery [q.v.], a promi¬ 
nent Philadelphia Quaker preacher of that pe¬ 
riod, and he joined the Society of Friends by 
his own request, at the age of twenty-two. On 
Sept 18, 179 S> he married Sarah Tatum, a dis¬ 
tant relative. He had imbibed in his early youth 
a strong sympathy for negro slaves and as a 
young man became a member of the Pennsylva¬ 
nia Abolition Society. Before 1800 he had begun 
the work of assisting runaway slaves to escape. 
He became thoroughly familiar with the “under¬ 
ground” methods of procedure in Philadelphia 
and from 1800 until 1829, when he moved to New 
York, he was one of the foremost promoters of 
the secret transmission of slaves through the city 
on their way northward. He became an expert 
in all the intricacies of the laws affecting slaves 
and he handled many slave cases in the Phila¬ 
delphia courts as voluntary advocate. He was 
tactful, quick in the discovery of expedients, de¬ 
void of fear, and he soon acquired nnncnal pres¬ 
tige as the defender of the friendless and op¬ 
pressed. 

In 1822 his wife, the mother of ten children, 
died. Two years later, in 1824, he married Han¬ 
nah Attmore. When in 1827 the "Separation” 
occurred in the Society of Friends in Philadel¬ 
phia, Hopper affiliated himself with the so-called 
Hicksite section and became one of the leaders 
of that branch. Moving to New York City in 
1829, he became manager of a bookshop and 
transferred his anti-slavery activities to the New 
York center of operations. He often sent es¬ 
caping slaves by water from New York to Provi¬ 
dence and Boston. Both he and his son John 
were set upon by mobs, the father in New York 
the son in Charleston, S. C., but they both es¬ 
caped without serious injury. His daughter, Abi¬ 
gail Hopper Gibbons [q.v.] and his son-in-law, 
James Sloan Gibbons [q.v.] were also active in 
anti-slavery activities. In 1841, Hopper became 
associated with Lydia Maria Child [q.v.] in’the 
editorship and management of the National Anti- 
Slavery Standard. His public work in connec¬ 
tion with this extreme anti-slavery journal and 


Hopper 

his reputation in connection with the “Under¬ 
ground Railroad” aroused an opposition to him 
A section in the Quaker Meeting (the “Hicksite 
Branch”) led by a conservative minister of the 
Society disapproved of public reform work car¬ 
ried on by Friends. Furthermore, the press of 
the city and its churches generally, reflected the 
feeling of its merchants, who had a large and 
profitable Southern trade and did not wish that 
trade disturbed. The Society of Friends, which 
had, eighty years previous, disowned the last few 
of its members who would not manumit their 
slaves, was at this time, and for the next decade 
much influenced by the pervading pro-slavery 
sentiment Hopper, his son-in-law Gibbons, and 
Charles Marriott were “disowned from member¬ 
ship” in 1841 by the New York Monthly Meet¬ 
ing. An appeal was made by these three Friends 
to the Quarterly Meeting and the Yearly Meet¬ 
ing, both of which narrowly sustained the action 
of the Monthly Meeting. Hopper continued 
throughout his life to wear the Quaker garb and 
to use the Quaker form of speech and he was 
always popularly known as “Friend Hopper.” 
Work for prison reform paralleled his anti-slav¬ 
ery work and equally absorbed his attention. 
During his period of life in Philadelphia he had 
been an inspector of prisons and in the New 
York period he gave much time to the work of 
the prison association of the state. As he grew 
older and his anti-slavery work slackened, he be¬ 
came agent of the Prison Association of New 
York and gradually acquired the reputation of 
being one of the foremost experts in penology in 
the United States. His work fell into three 
parts: first, protecting and defending persons 
who were arrested and held without suitable legal 
counsel; second, advising and instructing con¬ 
victs while in prison; and third, aiding dis¬ 
charged prisoners in their return to normal so¬ 
cial and business relations. His work in this field 
was of a high order and entitles him to a pla c e 
among the notable reformers of prison systems 
and prison methods. He had become everywhere 
recognized as the prisoner’s friend and helper as 
he had been throughout his life the friend and 
helper of persons of color when he died in New 
York City. 


[L M. Chri(V Isaac T. Hopper: A True Life (1853); 
Sarah Hopper Emerson, Life of Abby Hopper Gibbons 
(2 vols., 1807); William Still, The Underground Rail- 
road (1872); W. H. Siebert, The Underground Rail- 
road (1898); R„ P. Tatum, Tatum Narrative 1626— 
JP *5 was); Narrative of the Proc. of the Monthly 
Meeting of N. Yand Their Subsequent Confirmation 
by the Quarterly and Yearly Meetings t in the Case of 
Isaac T. Hopper (1843); files of the National Anti- 
slavery Standard; obituaries in that journal. May 13, 
1852, and in the N . Y. Tribune, May 8,1852.] 

R.M.J. 


224 



Hoppin 

HOPPIN, AUGUSTUS (July 13, 1828-Apr. 

I, 1896), illustrator, born in Providence, R. I., 
was descended from Thomas Hoppin who came 
to Massachusetts early in the history of that col¬ 
ony, through his son Stephen, who married Han¬ 
nah Makepeace in Boston in 1647. The son of 
Thomas Coles Hoppin, a merchant engaged in 
the China trade, and of Harriet D. (Jones) Hop¬ 
pin, Augustus was one of the younger members 
of a family of fourteen children, several of whom 
became prominent. Among his first cousins were 
William Warner Hoppin and James Mason Hop¬ 
pin [qq.vf]. He received his early education in 
the schools of Providence, and entered Brown 
University in the class of 1848. He then studied 
at the Harvard Law School, 1848-50, and was 
admitted to the bar of Rhode Island, but after a 
short time devoted to the practice of his profes¬ 
sion in Providence, he abandoned the law and 
turned his attention to making illustrations. His 
work in this line met with immediate success. 
Early in the fifties his drawings began to appear 
frequently in several periodicals, among them 
Putnam's Magazine, the Illustrated American 
News, Yankee Notions, and Yankee Doodle or 
Young America. He also furnished illustrations 
for several books of a satirical or humorous char¬ 
acter, notably George William Curtis' Potiphar 
Papers (1853), Benjamin P. Shillaber's Life and 
Sayings of Mrs. Partington (1854), William Al¬ 
len Butler's Nothing to Wear (1857), Oliver Wen¬ 
dell Holmes's Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 
(1858). An extensive tour in Europe and Egypt 
in 1854 and 1855 provided material for several 
entertaining books of travel with original illus¬ 
trations by the author— Ups and Downs on Land 
and Water (1871), Crossing the Atlantic (1872), 
and On the Nile (1874). In addition to these 
amusing sketches, his original publications in¬ 
cluded a brochure entitled Carrot-Pomade, with 
his own illustrations, published in 1864; an illus¬ 
trated volume called Hay Fever (1873) J ^ Fash¬ 
ionable Sufferer (1883); an< ^ Two Compton 
Boys (1885). He was also the author of an 
anonymous romance, Married for Fun (1885). 
He was one of the illustrators of an edition of 
Washington Irving's Sketch Book which was 
published in 1852, and illustrated an edition of 
Old Grimes, published in Providence in 1867. 
In 1870-71 he contributed some drawings to 
Punchinello. 

Something as to the character and quality of 
Hoppin's drawings may be inferred from the 
titles and subjects. His sarcastic vein was al¬ 
ways in conformity with good taste and good 
nature, never going beyond the bounds of amen¬ 
ity. The humor was not of an extravagant sort, 


Hoppin 

and much of it might be called mild and obvious. 
His draftsmanship was facile and expressive, 
giving, with economy of line, characteristic form 
and action. His illustrative work carried out 
faithfully and often amplified the conceptions of 
his authors, with more than ordinary sympathy 
and understanding, while his light and signifi¬ 
cant touch was peculiarly adapted to bring out 
the humorous phases of the subject in hand. He 
died at Flushing, L. I., in the sixty-eighth year 
of his age. 

[ N. Y. Tribune, Apr. 3, 1896 ; F. Weitenkampf, Am. 
Graphic Art (1912); C. E. Clement and Laurence Hut¬ 
ton, Artists of the Nineteenth Century (1880) ; Repre¬ 
sentative Men and Old Families of R. I. (1908), I, 10; 
G. F. Jones, Family Record of the Jones Family of Mil¬ 
ford, Mass. and Providence, R. I. (1884) ; Hist. Cat. 
Brown Univ. (1905); Quinquennial Cat. of the Law 
School of Harvard Univ. (1920).] W.H.D. 

HOPPIN, JAMES MASON (Jan. 17, 1820- 
Nov. 15, 1906), teacher of religion and of art, 
was bom in Providence, R. I., the youngest son 
of Colonel Benjamin Hoppin and Esther Phil¬ 
lips (Warner) Hoppin. His grandfather, Ben¬ 
jamin Hoppin, served as a commissioned officer 
in the Revolutionary Army. A brother, William 
Warner Hoppin [q.v.], graduated from Yale Col¬ 
lege in 1828 and became governor of Rhode 
Island; and a first cousin, Augustus Hoppin 
[q.v.], attained some note as an illustrator. James 
Mason Hoppin prepared for Yale College and 
took his degree with the class of 1840. He was 
first attracted to law and received the degree of 
bachelor of laws from the Harvard Law School 
in 1842. More and more, however, he had found 
himself drawn toward the ministry; and, turn¬ 
ing aside from a calling in which he might have 
had a brilliant career, he spent two years at the 
Union Theological Seminary in New York City, 
a third at Andover Seminary, and a fourth at 
the University of Berlin. Here he won the es¬ 
teem of his instructors, notably that of Professor 
Neander. His account of some of his experi¬ 
ences of this period was published as Notes of a 
Theological Student (1854). His years of study 
were followed by extensive travels, especially in 
Germany, Palestine, and Greece. He was fasci¬ 
nated by the realm of art but did not permit him¬ 
self to be distracted from his main interest Re¬ 
turning to America, he was ordained to the 
Christian ministry, Mar. 27, 1850, and installed 
as pastor of the Crombie Street Congregational 
Church in Salem, Mass., which he served until 
May 1859. On June 13, 1850, he married Mary 
Deming Perkins, daughter of Charles and Cla¬ 
rissa (Deming) Perkins of Litchfield, Conn, 
Two sons were bom to them. On leaving Salem, 
Hoppin spent fifteen more happy months in Eu¬ 
rope. In 1861 he returned to accept the chair of 


225 



Hoppin 

homiletics and pastoral charge in the Yale Di¬ 
vinity School, a position which he held until 
1879. During the first two years he was called 
upon to share with President Woolsey, Professor 
(afterward President) Dwight, and Professor 
George P. Fisher the work of preaching in the 
College Chapel, and his services among the 
churches were in constant demand. His success 
as a speaker and teacher won him an invitation 
from the Yale Law School to lecture on forensic 
eloquence from 1872 to 1875, in 1880 Union 
Theological Seminary counted him among its in¬ 
structors. The literary fruitage of these years 
may be found in The Office and Work of the 
Christian Ministry (1869), a work which he later 
rewrote and enlarged, issuing it in two vol¬ 
umes, Homiletics (1881) and Pastoral Theology 
(1884). Two biographies also came from his 
pen: the Life of Rear-Admiral Andrew Hull 
Foote (1874), and a Memoir of Henry Armitt 
Brown (1880). Later he issued some of his 
characteristic utterances under the title Sermons 
on Faith, Hope and Love (1891). 

During these years his interest in art became 
so absorbing that in 1879 he left the Divinity 
School to accept a professorship in the history of 
art in the Yale School of Fine Arts. That chair 
he held for twenty years, becoming professor 
emeritus in 1899. The change of occupation did 
not mean a lessening interest in religion; for ac¬ 
cording to his theory art is a great moral influ¬ 
ence, a power by which men may bring in the 
reign of truth and of light. He soon won high 
rank in his new field, proving himself to be an 
authority in the subjects which he taught, a wise 
and discerning critic, and a true artist in all save 
the manual skill which expresses itself in form 
and color. Some of his publications in this field 
are The Early Renaissance, and Other Essays on 
Art Subjects (1892); Greek Art on Greek Soil 
(1897); and Great Epochs in Art History 
(1901). He delved deeply into Greek thought, 
publishing his Notes on Aristotle's Ethics (1882) 
and annotating copiously an interleaved copy of 
Riddle’s edition of Plato’s Apology . His broad 
interests had led him to publish in 1867 a vol¬ 
ume on Old England; its Art, Scenery and Peo¬ 
ple, of which the twelfth edition appeared in 1893. 
His last book was The Reading of Shakespeare 
(1906), issued in the last year of his life. Be¬ 
sides these publications he contributed many ar¬ 
ticles to various magazines—the Forum, the Bib¬ 
liotheca Sacra, the New Englander, the Congre¬ 
gationalism and others. He died at his home in 
New Haven in his eighty-seventh year. By his 
will he left generous bequests to the Yale Foreign 
Missionary Society and to the Yale School of 


Hoppin 

Fine Arts for the endowment of a chair in archi¬ 
tecture. 

IHist. Record of the Class of 1840, Yale College 
(1897) ; Obit. Record Grads. Yale Univ., 1907; Who's 
Who in America, 1906-07; Yale Univ. (1900), in the 
Universities and Their Sons series, ed, by J. L. Cham¬ 
berlain; Yale Alumni Weekly, Nov. 21, 1906; New 
Haven Evening Register, Nov. 15, 1906; meager ma¬ 
terial in article by W. O. Partridge in the Coming Age, 
Mar. 1900; alumni files of Yale University.] 

H.H.T. 

HOPPIN, JOSEPH CLARK (May 23,1870- 
Jan. 30, 1925), archeologist, nephew of Augustus 
Hoppin [q.v.], was born in Providence, R. I, the 
son of Dr. Courtland Hoppin and Mary Frances 
(Clark) Hoppin. His father died when the boy 
was six years old, and in 1878 the family went to 
Europe and lived for three years in Stuttgart, 
where Hoppin was for a time a student at the 
Real-Schule. On his return to America he at¬ 
tended Groton School and Harvard College. At 
Harvard he developed the interest in ancient 
civilization which determined his later career. 
He took his bachelor’s degree in 1893; in the 
autumn of that year he entered the American 
School of Classical Studies at Athens, and in the 
following spring he took part in the excavations 
at the Heraeum near Argos under the direction 
of Prof. Charles Waldstein (later Sir Charles 
Walston). In 1894-96 he studied at Berlin and 
Munich and took his doctor’s degree at Munich, 
presenting a dissertation on the vase painter, 
Euthymides, published in Munich in 1896. Al¬ 
ready his interest in ancient vase painting had 
become dominant, and Dr. Waldstein naturally 
assigned to him the task of publishing the vases 
and fragments from the Heraeum. On the study 
of these he spent a great part of the years 1897 
and 1898, being associated in both years with the 
School of Classical Studies at Athens and ap¬ 
pointed lecturer on Greek vases for the session 
of 1897-98. Although his manuscript was pre¬ 
pared at this time, the actual publication of his 
portion of the work did not occur until 1905, 
when it appeared in Volume II of The Argive 
Herceum, edited by Professor Waldstein. 

In 1898 Hoppin returned to America and was 
immediately appointed instructor in Greek art 
at Wellesley College. After one year there he 
was called to Bryn Mawr, where he taught until 
1904, when he resigned. He then for several 
years made his home in Washington, though in 
1904-05 he was again in Athens as professor of 
the Greek language and literature in the Amer¬ 
ican School, and in 1910-11, was a member of 
the expedition to explore ancient Cyrene in 
North Africa, under the direction of his life-long 
friend, Richard Norton. The outbreak of the 
World War found him in Paris, where his ample 


226 



Hoppin 

means enabled him to do much for the relief of 
suffering. He made several attempts to discover 
a more official way of giving service but was 
refused because of age. At last, in 1917, he ac¬ 
cepted an offer to take the place of the professor 
of classical archeology at Bryn Mawr during the 
absence in service of Professor Rhys Carpenter. 
Thus for two years he was again engaged in 
teaching. Meanwhile, besides several short ar¬ 
ticles, he had brought out a new and enlarged 
edition of his thesis under the title Euthymides 
and His Fellows (1917) and had conceived the 
plans of what will probably be regarded as his 
greatest contributions to science, A Handbook 
of Attic Red-Figured Vases, which was pub¬ 
lished in two volumes in 1919, and A Handbook 
of Greek Black-Figured Vases, published at 
Paris in 1924. These contain very complete and 
carefully compiled lists of all vases signed by 
Greek potters and painters or attributed to an¬ 
cient painters, and have become standard refer¬ 
ence books for all workers in the field. 

Long before the completion of the Black-Fig¬ 
ured Vases, Hoppin was stricken with a fatal 
disease, but he kept at work in spite of a series 
of operations and increasing pain. In the last 
year of his life he worked at his final publication, 
a volume of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum 
devoted to his own excellent collection of Greek 
vases and that of his friend Albert Gallatin of 
New York. Final proofs he was unable to read, 
and the book was brought out in 1926 under the 
supervision of Mr. Gallatin. Hoppin's collection 
of vases, together with a collection of Greek 
terra-cotta figures and Etruscan gold work and 
bronzes, he bequeathed to his Alma Mater, as 
well as his very complete working library on 
Greek ceramics. These are now deposited in the 
Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University. He 
was twice married, first to Dorothy Woodville 
Rockhill in 1901, and second to Eleanor Dennis- 
toun Wood in 1915. His career as an archeolo¬ 
gist is significant because it shows that the 
“private scholar/' so familiar in Europe, may 
also thrive under American conditions. 

[Edmond Pottier, in Revue Archeologique, Apr.- 
June 1925 ; Sir Charles Walston, in the Times, London, 
Feb. 4, 1925 ; G. H. Chase, in Am. Jour. ArchaeoL, vol. 
XXIX (1925) ; Harvard Grads . Mag., Mar. 1925 ; pub¬ 
lished reports of the Harvard College class of 1893, 
especially the Fourth (1910), Fifth (1913), and Seventh 
(1923); N . X. Times, Feb. 1, X925.] G.H. C. 

HOPPIN, WILLIAM WARNER (Sept. 1, 
1807-Apr. 19, 1890), lawyer, legislator, and gov¬ 
ernor of Rhode Island, brother of James Mason 
Hoppin [g.z;.], was born in Providence. His 
English ancestor, Thomas Hoppin, settled in 
Massachusetts about 1635. Descendants removed 


Hoppin 

to Rhode Island before the Revolution, when 
Benjamin Hoppin proved his patriotism by re¬ 
signing a colonelcy under the King to become a 
captain in the Continental Army. Benjamin 
Hoppin's son, another Benjamin, was a pros¬ 
perous man of affairs in Providence. He and his 
wife, Esther Phillips Warner, who came from 
Middletown, Conn., had six children of whom 
William was the third. William Hoppin re¬ 
ceived his college education at Yale, graduating 
in the class of 1828. He continued at Yale in the 
study of law, and in 1830 was admitted to the bar. 
While a student in New Haven he had met Fran¬ 
ces Street of that city, and on June 26,1832, they 
were married Hoppin's political life began in 
1838 when he became a common councilman in 
Providence; he served in that capacity four 
years. Following an interval of foreign travel, 
he was alderman from 1847 to 1852. The suc¬ 
ceeding year, 1853, he was a state senator, and in 
1854, 1855, and 1856 he was elected governor of 
Rhode Island. 

These were the years in which the moribund 
Whig party was virtually put out of existence by 
the Know-Nothing party. In Rhode Island, just 
previous to this time, the state had been stirred 
by the Dorr War [see sketch of Thomas Wilson 
Dorr], and by 1854 reaction had set in. The 
Dorrites, counting in their ranks both foreigners 
and Catholics, were supported by the Democratic 
party, but by reason of the birth or creed of many 
of their number, were the natural opponents of 
the Know-Nothing group whose slogan was 
“America for the Americans.” The Know-Noth¬ 
ings were also strongly in favor of prohibition 
legislation. William Hoppin, nominally a Whig, 
was a native-born American and an ardent advo¬ 
cate of temperance; he was thus assured the new 
party's backing and won all three of his elections 
without serious opposition. His success was not 
entirely due to political conditions, however; his 
proven honesty and ability were contributory 
causes. He refused a fourth term as governor, 
and in 1857 declined nomination as United States 
senator. On being pressed to become a candidate 
for the same office in the following year he yield¬ 
ed, but lost by a narrow margin. He continued 
to serve the state in various capacities, allying 
himself with the new Republican party when it 
came into being. In 1861 he was appointed state 
delegate to the Peace Congress in Washington. 
In 1866 he was again a state senator, and from 
1867 to 1872 he held the judicial position of 
registrar in bankruptcy. In 1874-75 he was a 
member of the state House of Representatives 
for one year. The enumeration of his terms of 
office does not adequately suggest his activities; 


227 



Hop wood 

for years he was a member of the Providence 
School Board, and he was instrumental in hav¬ 
ing gas and water introduced into the city. At 
the presidential conventions which nominated 
Clay, Fremont, and Grant he represented Rhode 
Island 

Hoppin was small of stature, but he carried 
himself with dignity, and showed a never failing 
courtesy to all with whom he came in contact. 
His most outstanding characteristic was loyalty 
—to his state, whatever its demands upon him, 
to his church—the Beneficent Congregational 
Church of Providence—which received his un¬ 
failing support, and to his college, of which he 
proved himself a faithful and generous alumnus. 

IBiog. Cyc. of Representative Men of R. I. (1881) ; 
J. G. Vose, Memorial Sermon on William Warner Hop- 
pin (1890); Charles Stickney, “Know-Nothingism in 
Rhode Island,” R. I. Hist. Soc . Pubs., n.s., vol. I 
(1894) ; Representative Men and Old Families of R. J. 
(1908), vol. I; Biog. Sketches of the Class of 1828, 
Yale College, and College Memorabilia (1898) ; Provi¬ 
dence Daily Jour., Apr. 21 , 1890.] E.R.B. 

HOPWOOD, AVERY (May 28,1882-July 1, 
1928), playwright, bom in Cleveland, Ohio, was 
the son of James and Jule (Pendergast) Hop- 
wood and was christened James Avery. He was 
graduated from the University of Michigan in 
1905 with the degree of A.B., and immediately 
entered newspaper work. A few months later he 
was sent to New York as special correspondent 
for the Cleveland Leader , and shortly after reach¬ 
ing New York, his first play, Clothes , a modern 
comedy written in collaboration with Channing 
Pollock, was accepted for production. Its first 
performance was in 1906, with Grace George in 
the leading role. Thereafter for eighteen years 
Hopwood turned out plays rapidly, nearly all of 
them being financially successful. Many were en¬ 
tirely original, some were adapted from the work 
of foreign dramatists and some were written in 
collaboration with other authors. He wrote sev¬ 
eral mystery melodramas, but he became best 
known for a type of “smart,” ultra-modern, and 
usually risque farce-comedy. He had the remark¬ 
able record of eighteen successful plays in fifteen 
years. In 1920 four of his plays, all decided 
“hits,” were running simultaneously in New 
York playhouses. These were The Bat, Spanish 
Love, The Gold Diggers, and Ladies’ Night . His 
earlier plays were Clothes (1906); The Powers 
that Be (1907) > This Man and This Woman 
(1909); Seven Days (1909), in collaboration 
with Mary Roberts Rinehart; Judy Forgot 
(1910); His Mother’s Son (1910); Nobody’s 
Widow (1910); Somewhere Else (1913) ; Fair 
and Warmer (1915); Sadie Love (1915) ; The 
Mystic Shrine (1915); Our Little Wife (1916); 
Double Exposure (1918); The Gold Diggers 


Horn 

(1919) j and The Girl in the Limousine (1919)^ 
with Wilson Collison. In 1920 he and Mary 
Roberts Rinehart wrote The Bat, perhaps the 
most widely performed of all mystery dramas 
and one of the most profitable plays ever written! 
It was translated into several foreign languages 
and has been played on every continent on the 
globe, paying its writers and producers profits 
amounting to millions of dollars. In the year of 
its first production, 1920, Hopwood collaborated 
with Mrs. Rinehart in the writing of Spanish 
Love and with Charlton Andrews in Ladies’ 
Night . He also wrote A Thief in the Night 
(1920); The Great Illusion (1920), from the 
French; Getting Gertie’s Garter (1921), with 
Wilson Collison; The Demi-Virgin (1921); 
Why Men Leave Home (1922); Little Miss 
Bluebeard (1923); The Alarm Clock (1923), 
from the French; The Best People (1924), with 
David Gray; and The Harem (1924), from the 
Hungarian. In 1925 he announced that after 
completing two plays on which he was then 
working, Naughty Cinderella and Four Stuffed 
Shirts , he would write no more for the stage. 
Apparently he kept his word, for nothing more 
came from his pen during the remaining three 
years of his life. Unspoiled by his remarkable 
success, he did not over-rate his own plays but 
knew them for the clever, ephemeral things they 
were. Genial, kindly, tolerant, he had a sort of 
modern Epicurean philosophy and lived by it. 
Throughout his career he had worked with furi¬ 
ous energy and played almost as intensely; per¬ 
haps these energies conspired to shorten his days. 
While summering at Juan-les-Pins in the French 
Riviera in 1928, he went bathing in the sea one 
day, too soon it is believed, after eating dinner, 
was seized with cramps, and drowned before help 
could reach him. 

[See Who’s Who in America, 19 26-27 J John Parker, 
Who’s Who in the Theatre, 1925; TJniv. of Mich. Cat 
of Grads. (1923); Mich, Alumnus, Aug. 1928; Sun 
(N. Y.) and N. Y. Times, July 2 , 1928; N. Y. Herald 
Tribune, July 3, 1928. In the earlier accounts of him¬ 
self Hopwood gave 1882 as the year of his birth; in 
later accounts he gave 1884.] A F H 

HORN, EDWARD TRAILL (June 10,1850- 
Mar. 4,1915), Lutheran clergyman, was born at 
Easton, Pa., the son of Melchior Hay and Ma¬ 
tilda Louisa (Heller) Horn. While he was still 
a boy the family moved to Catasauqua, where for 
years his father was president of a bank. After 
graduating from Pennsylvania College in 1869 
and from the Philadelphia Theological Seminary 
in 1872, Horn was ordained by the Ministerium 
of Pennsylvania and served as pastor of Christ 
Church, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, 1872-76, 
of St. John's, Charleston, S. C., 1876-97, and of 
Trinity ; Reading, Pa., 1897-1911. While in 


228 



Horn 

Charleston he became the most influential Lu¬ 
theran minister of the South Atlantic states. On 
June is, 1880, he married Harriet Chisolm of 
Charleston, by whom he had four sons and three 
daughters. He was president of the South Caro¬ 
lina Synod, 1882-84, of the United Synod of the 
South, 1887-91, of the Ministerium of Pennsyl¬ 
vania, 1909-13, and of the General Council board 
of foreign missions, 1907-15. In 1910 he visited 
Europe. In 1911 he was made professor of 
ethics and missions in the Philadelphia Theo¬ 
logical Seminary. Three years later he developed 
a fatal disease of the heart. He died at Mount 
Airy, Philadelphia, and was buried at Reading. 
His wife and five of their children survived him. 

He was an efficient, urbane, scholarly clergy¬ 
man and a distinguished liturgiologist The pub¬ 
lication in 1871 of a new edition of the General 
Council's Church Book first aroused his interest 
in liturgies and led him to make a careful study 
of the materials and principles on which the 
Church Book was founded. When he went to 
Charleston he threw himself whole-heartedly into 
the movement, begun in his old age by John 
Bachman and ably continued by Junius B. Rem- 
ensnyder, to secure a common service for all 
English-speaking Lutherans. Horn himself, in 
the Lutheran Quarterly for April 1881, was the 
first to use the term “Common Service" as it is 
now understood. He was secretary from 1886 
till his death of the joint committee of the United 
Synod of the South, the General Synod, and the 
General Council which prepared the Common 
Service, and was likewise secretary of the 
sub-committee, consisting of Beale Melancthon 
Schmucker George U. Wenner, and him¬ 

self, which did the actual work. “The first and 
final preparation of material was in his hands. 
He held the balance of power in the Committee 
and used it with rare judgment and effectiveness. 
His were the initiative and the energy which 
pushed the project to completion, and his the 
taste and judgment which determined many of 
its details” (L. D. Reed, in Lutheran Church 
Review ; October 1917, p. 517). The Common 
Service, first published in 1888 by the United 
Synod of the South, is now widely used in the 
English Lutheran churches of North America 
and has been translated into Telugu, Japanese, 
Spanish, and Italian. Horn also did much of the 
work on the Common Service Book (1917). He 
contributed to the Lutheran, the Lutheran Church 
Review, the Lutheran Quarterly, and the Mem¬ 
oirs of the Lutheran Liturgical Association. A 
number of his articles on liturgical subjects were 
of great influence and are of permanent interest. 
He w$s the translator pf Wilhelm Lobe's Cate- 


Horn 


chism (1893) and Three Books Concerning the 
Church (1908), and was the author of The Chris¬ 
tian Year (1876), The Evangelical Pastor 
(1887), an Outline of Liturgies (1890, 1912), 
the sections on Philippians, Colossians, Thes- 
salonians, and Philemon in the Lutheran Com¬ 
mentary, vols. IX and X (1896-97), and Sum¬ 
mer Sermons (1908). 


[Sources of information include L. D. Reed, The 
rhua. Seminary Biog.Record 1864-1923 (1923); Who's 
Who in America, 1914-15 ; T. E. Schmauk, editorial in 
Luth. Ch. Rev., Apr. 1915; L. D. Reed, “Hist. Sketch 
of tibe Common Service ” in Luth. Ch. Rev., Oct. 1917; 
• * T’ ,? rn ’ St. John s Evangelical Lutheran Church,” 
“ ™*ygZ B °° h . ( i88 4 ) of the City of Charleston, S. 
C., and The United Synod of the South,” in The Dis¬ 
tinctive Doctrines and Usages of the Gen. Bodies of 
the Ev. Luth Ch. (1893); Proc. and Addresses Pa. 
pj; S T 0C y > Philo. Enquirer, and 

-it* tr (Flnla. 5 , I 9 I 5 ) correspondence 

Horn’s son Prof. Robert C, Horn of Muhlenberg 
Cohege and with Prof. Andrew G. Voigt of the Lu¬ 
theran Theological Seminary, Columbia, S. C. Horn’s 
papers are in the library of the Phila. Theol. Sem.] 

G.H.G. 


HORN, GEORGE HENRY (Apr. 7, 1840- 
Nov. 24, 1897), entomologist, physician, was 
bom in Philadelphia and lived there nearly all 
his life. He was the oldest child of Philip Henry 
Horn and Frances Isabella Brock and the grand¬ 
son of Philip Horn, born in Rhenish Prussia, 
who came to America in 1798. He graduated 
from the Philadelphia High School and received 
his doctorate in medicine from the University of 
Pennsylvania in 1861. In 1862 he went to Cali¬ 
fornia. In 1863 he became assistant surgeon in 
an infantry regiment of California volunteers, 
becoming surgeon in 1864. Mustered out with 
the staff of his regiment in April 1866, he re¬ 
turned to Philadelphia and began the practice of 
medicine, which he continued for the rest of his 
life, specializing in obstetrics. During his army 
service in the West and Southwest he had col¬ 
lected Coleoptera extensively. He had been at¬ 
tracted to this group of insects at an earlier date, 
and his first paper was published in Volume XII 
(1861) of the Proceedings of the Academy of 
Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. From the time 
of his return to Philadelphia he was constantly 
engaged, aside from his medical practice, in the 
study of Coleoptera. He was made president of 
the Entomological Society of Philadelphia in 
1866. He was associated in his earlier work with 
Dr. John L. LeConte [#.#.], and the great work. 
The Classification of the Coleoptera of North 
America, was published by the Smithsonian In¬ 
stitution ( Miscellaneous Collections, vol. XXVI) 
in 1883 under their joint authorship. He had 
been greatly interested in the Academy of Natu¬ 
ral Sciences from his earlier days, and after the 
death of LeConte in 1883 & e w ^ s elected his sue- 



Horn 

cessor as director of the entomological section of 
the Academy, holding this office until his death. 
He was made professor of entomology in the 
University of Pennsylvania in 1889, but the po¬ 
sition was purely honorary, unconnected with 
teaching or lecturing. He died at Beesley’s 
Point, N. J., in his fifty-eighth year. 

Horn’s life was one of incessant labor, and his 
output as a scientific worker was very large. He 
was considered the most distinguished of Amer¬ 
ican coleopterists after the death of LeConte, and 
he was looked upon as a world authority in this 
group. His very large collection and his library 
were left to the American Entomological So¬ 
ciety. His bibliography includes more than 150 
important papers in addition to very many minor 
notes. He was responsible for the erection of 
150 genera and for the naming and description of 
more than 1,550 species. Horn never married. 
He visited Europe in 1874* 1882, and 1888, for 
the purpose of study in European museums. He 
was an honorary member of the Entomological 
Society of France. 

[Sketch by P. P. Calvert, in Trans. Am, Entomol. 
Soc,, vol. XXV (1898-99), app., pp. i-xxiv, to which 
is appended (pp. xxv-lxxii) a full bibliography by Sam¬ 
uel Henshaw, with an index to the genera and species 
of Coleoptera described and named by Horn; Entomo¬ 
logical News, Jan, 1898; Psyche, Jan. 1898; Public 
Ledger (Phila.), Nov. 26, 1897.] L.O.H. 

HORN, TOM (Nov. 21, i86o-Nov. 20, 1903), 
government scout and interpreter, was born near 
Memphis, Scotland County, Mo. As a boy he 
neglected school and avoided work, spending 
most of his time in hunting. In his fourteenth 
year, after a severe beating from his father, he 
ran away from home. A few months later he 
reached Santa Fe, where he got work as a stage 
driver, and whence he was afterward sent with 
a drove of mules to the Verde River, Ariz. Hav¬ 
ing learned to speak Spanish, he got a job as in¬ 
terpreter under the scout Al. Sieber, at Fort 
Whipple (Prescott), and with his new employer 
went to the San Carlos Agency in July 1876. In 
this region he remained for fourteen years. He 
made friends with the Apache chiefs, Geronimo 
and Chihuahua, and learned to speak their lan¬ 
guage. Sometimes as scout, at other times as 
interpreter, he served under Chaffee, Crook, and 
Miles. In the negotiations leading to the sur¬ 
render of Geronimo in the summer of 1886 he 
bore a part which, though much less important 
than would appear from his posthumous autobi¬ 
ography, was of a nature to draw the warm com¬ 
mendation of Miles, who calls Horn his “chief of 
scouts.” 

At the end of the Apache wars he served for a 
time as a deputy sheriff and later engaged in 


Hornblower 

mining. In 1890 he joined the Pinkerton Agency 
in Denver, and four years later became a stock 
detective for the Swan Land and Cattle Com¬ 
pany in Wyoming. He was in the Spanish- 
American War as a packmaster with Shaffer’s 
army and took part in the battle of San Juan 
Hill. Recovering from a severe attack of “Cu¬ 
ban fever,” he again became a stock detective in 
Wyoming. He was active in the bitter warfare 
between the cattlemen and the “rustlers,” and 
became known as a “killer.” For the murder of 
a fourteen-year-old boy, William Nickell, in the 
Iron Mountain region, on July 19, 1901, he was 
tried and convicted in the following year, and in 
spite of earnest efforts in his behalf was hanged 
at Cheyenne. His autobiography, written ap¬ 
parently during his confinement, was edited by 
his friend, John C. Coble, and published in 1904. 

Horn was six feet two in height, broad-shoul¬ 
dered and deep-chested, with an erect carriage 
and of great physical strength. His character 
has been a subject of much controversy. By his 
friends, who have maintained his innocence of 
the crime charged against him, he is described as 
a man of unfailing good nature, courteous, con¬ 
siderate, generous, and thoroughly honest. 

[John C. Coble, ed., Life of Tom Horn, Govt, Scout 
and Interpreter, Written by Himself (1904) ; N. A. 
Miles, Personal Recollections (1896) ; Arthur Chap¬ 
man, “Tom Horn—Wyoming’s Death Rider,” Fron¬ 
tier, Oct. 1925; correspondence in the Frontier, Dec. 
1925, and Apr. 1926.] w. j m 

HORNBLOWER, JOSEPH COERTEN 

(May 6, 1777-June 11, 1864), lawyer, jurist, 
twelfth and last child of Josiah [ q.v .] and Eliza¬ 
beth (Kingsland) Hornblower, was born in 
Belleville, N. J. His father was a native of Eng¬ 
land and a distinguished engineer. Because 
Joseph was a frail and delicate boy, his early 
education was fragmentary. Such academic 
training as his health would permit was gained 
at Orange Academy. In his sixteenth year he 
suffered a paralytic stroke which for a time seri¬ 
ously impaired his physical and mental powers. 
After a tedious period of convalescence, he be¬ 
came associated in business in New York with 
his brother-in-law, James H. Kip, a merchant. 
Business did not prove congenial to his tastes, 
however, and in 1798 he entered the law office of 
David B. Ogden [g.z\] in Newark. When Ogden 
opened offices in New York in 1800, Hornblower 
was placed in charge of the Newark office, al¬ 
though he was not admitted to the bar until 1803. 
Native ability, coupled with untiring industry, 
grasp and knowledge of the law, honesty of pur¬ 
pose and integrity of character, soon placed him 
in the front ranks of his profession. He was 
elected to the legislature in 1829, but a strictly 


230 



Hornblower 

political office was apparently distasteful to his 
refined and sensitive nature. At any rate, he 
would not accept reelection to that body. Fol¬ 
lowing the death of Chief Justice Charles Ewing 
[ q.v .] in 1832, the legislature elected him to fill 
the vacancy, in spite of objections to his appoint¬ 
ment based upon his impulsive and emotional 
nature. Reelected by the legislature in 1839 he 
served as chief justice for fourteen years. 

The cases with which his name is most fre¬ 
quently identified are Stevens vs. Enders, 1833 
(13 A. 7 . or 1 Green , 271 ), which had to do with 
the law of remainders; State vs. Spencer , 1846 
(21 N. 7 . or 1 Zabriskie, 196) and State vs. The 
Sheriff of Burlington, decided Mar. 4, 1836 (not 
published in the regular court reports, but dis¬ 
cussed in detail by R. S. Field, post). In the 
Spencer case, the Chief Justice ruled, despite the 
prevailing doctrine to the contrary, that in a 
trial for murder a juror is not disqualified by 
previous expressions of opinion as to the guilt 
of the accused unless the opinion expressed was 
such as to indicate ill will or malice. The rule 
thus established has since been followed in New 
Jersey (State vs. Fox, 1856, 25 N. 7 . 566, 587) 
and has received the approval of jurists else¬ 
where. In the Burlington case a fugitive-slave 
case, the Chief Justice took a stand which is in¬ 
teresting in the light of subsequent events. He 
held: first, that if Congress had the right to leg¬ 
islate upon the subject of fugitive slaves at all, its 
jurisdiction was exclusive; second, that the Fu¬ 
gitive-Slave Law, enacted by Congress in 1793, 
which related to the surrender of slaves, being 
addressed to the states and conferring no juris¬ 
diction upon Congress over the subject-matter, 
was unconstitutional. In 1844 was elected a 
delegate to the convention which framed the 
New Jersey constitution of that year. As chair¬ 
man of the committee on the executive depart¬ 
ment, he took a leading part in its proceedings 
(Journal of the Proceedings of the Convention 
to Form a Constitution for the State of New Jer¬ 
sey, 1844). He was especially instrumental in 
securing the adoption of a bill of rights, setting 
forth the so-called natural and inalienable rights 
of the individual. Hornblower hoped and be¬ 
lieved that this provision would put an end to 
slavery in New Jersey, but his associates on the 
supreme court held that it had no such effect 
(State vs. Post, 1845, 20 N . 7 . or Spencer, 368; 
21 N. 7 . or 1 Zabriskie, 699.) 

After retiring from the bench in 1846, Horn¬ 
blower resumed the practice of law in Newark. 
He was the first president of the New Jersey 
Historical Society, serving 1845-64. In 1847, 
was called to a professorship of law in the Col¬ 


li ornblower 

lege of New Jersey (Princeton), but resigned in 
1855 without having succeeded in building up a 
school of law. In politics, he was first a Federal¬ 
ist, then a Whig, and finally a Republican. A 
strong believer in and supporter of the Union, 
he was president of the electoral college of New 
Jersey in i860 which cast its vote for Lincoln 
and Hamlin. He was twice married. His first 
wife, whom he married Apr. 9, 1803, was Mary 
Burnet, daughter of Dr. William Burnet, Jr., 
of Belleville, and grand-daughter of Dr. William 
Burnet [q.t\], member of the Continental Con¬ 
gress. She died Dec. 18, 1836, and on Mar. 9, 
1840, he married Mary Ann Kinney, daughter of 
Maj. John Kinney of Speedwell, Morris County, 
who survived him several years. He had eight 
children, all by his first marriage. His youngest 
daughter, Mary, married Joseph P. Bradley 
[#.£>.], associate justice of the United States Su¬ 
preme Court. 

[William Nelson, Joseph Coer ten Hornblower (1894), 
and sketch by Nelson in Memorial Biogs. of the New- 
Eng. Hist. Gened. Soc., vol. V (1894); R. S. Field, 
Address on the Life and Character of Joseph C. Horn¬ 
blower, n in Proc. N. J. Hist. Soc., yol, X (1867); L. Q. C. 
Elmer, The Constitution and Gov. of the Province and 
State of N. J. (1872); John Whitehead, The Judicial 
and Civil Hist, of N. J. (1897), vol. I; Newark Daily 
Advertiser, June 11, 1864.] ATM 

HORNBLOWER, JOSIAH (Feb. 23, 1729, 
N.s.-Jan. 21, 1809), engineer, legislator, judge, 
fourth son of Joseph and Rebecca Hornblower, 
was bom in Staffordshire, England. His father 
was an engineering associate of Thomas New¬ 
comen, and his nephew, Jonathan Carter Horn- 
blower, was the inventor of the double cylinder 
or compound engine and other improvements 
later taken over by James Watt (see sketch of 
Jo si ah’s brother, Jonathan Hornblower, and his 
sons, in Dictionary of National Biography ). 
After elementary schooling Josiah mastered 
mathematics, electricity, and astronomy at home 
and absorbed the engineering technology of his 
family. Hired to erect a steam engine for Col. 
John Schuyler at the copper mine on the Pas¬ 
saic River near Belleville, N. J. (then Second 
River), he took passage, apparently in the snow 
Irene, Nicholas Garrison, master, arriving Sept 
9, I 753 J with engine parts in duplicate and tripli¬ 
cate. This illegal export of the first steam engine 
to be erected in America had taken four years, 
despite Schuyler’s wealth and influence. The 
pumping plant was in operation by March 1755 
and became a marvel to travelers. 

In 1755 Hornblower married Elizabeth Kings- 
land (1734-1808), daughter of Col. William and 
Margaretta (Coerten) Kingsland. To them were 
born eight sons and four daughters. Schuyler 
persuaded Hornblower to stay in America and 


23I 



Hornblower 

manage the copper mine. During the French and 
Indian War he was commissioned captain, Jan. 
26, 1756, but was not in active service. In 1758 
he helped manage the Biles Island church lottery 
(Episcopal), though himself a Baptist. Having 
leased the house and store of Peter Bayard, de¬ 
ceased, at Belleville, and, from the Van Cort- 
landts, a ferry over the Passaic River, by 1770 
he had bought these properties and 115 acres of 
land nearby, and led in building a new school. 
With John Stearndall he leased the Schuyler 
mine for fourteen years from July 1, 1761, at 
one-seventh the ore, the mine producing at the 
average rate of $3,500 annually until the engine 
house burned in 1773. 

Hornblower served on a war committee of 
twenty-one in 1776, in 1778 as commissioner for 
tax appeals, and in 1779 on a committee to pre¬ 
sent the grievances of Newark to the legislature. 
Elected to the Assembly, he took his seat at Tren¬ 
ton, Oct. 26, 1779, and worked on committees to 
draft an election law, settle the treasurer’s ac¬ 
counts, regulate enemy intercourse, and com¬ 
plete troop quotas, voting steadily for all meas¬ 
ures to raise money and push the war. Reelect¬ 
ed in 1780, he was chosen speaker and narrowly 
escaped capture by the enemy. Elected to the 
Council, 1781-84, he took part in the protest 
against claims of Virginia and other states to the 
western lands, headed a committee to urge that 
Congress locate the federal capital in New Jer¬ 
sey, and became a valued leader. He was elected 
to the Congress of the Confederation Oct. 28, 
1785, and during his year’s service worked stead¬ 
ily to strengthen the Union and protect the small 
states. 

Retiring to his farm, he took part (i 793 “ 94 ) 
in an unsuccessful revival of the copper mine and 
helped experiment with the steamboat Polacca 
(trial trip on Oct 21, 1798). He was appointed 
judge of the Essex court of common pleas in 
1790, and held that office until his death in 1809. 
During his later years he presided at many pub¬ 
lic meetings. He built a fine new house, though 
he and his wife would not leave the old one, and 
set up a gorgeous coach-and-four, but walked 
himself. Nine months after the death of his wife, 
"a very beautiful woman,” he died of “a long and 
painful illness.” Tall and commanding, a digni¬ 
fied judge, a courtly gentleman, noted for hospi¬ 
tality, energy, courage, wide knowledge, con¬ 
ciliatory nature, and honesty of purpose, he was 
characterized by the Newark Centinel of Free¬ 
dom (Jan. 24, 1809) as “a useful, benevolent cit¬ 
izen.” His youngest son, Joseph Coerten Horn¬ 
blower [q.v.], became chief justice of New Jersey. 

[See William Nelson, “Josiah Hornblower and the 


Hornblower 

First Steam Engine in America,” with many references 
to other sources, in Proc. N . J. Hist. Soc., 2 ser., VII 
(1883) ; Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928). ^.L. W_y. 

HORNBLOWER, WILLIAM BUTLER 

(May 13, 1851-June 16, 1914), jurist, was born 
in Paterson, N. J., and was a descendant of no¬ 
table ancestry on both sides of his house. His 
great-grandfather was Josiah Hornblower [q.v.] } 
member of the Congress of the Confederation 
and a judge of the court of common pleas of Es¬ 
sex County, N. J.; his grandfather was Joseph 
C. Hornblower who for fourteen years 

was chief justice of the supreme court of New 
Jersey; and his father was the Rev. William 
Henry Hornblower, pastor of the First Presby¬ 
terian Church in Paterson and later professor of 
sacred rhetoric in Western Theological Semi¬ 
nary, Allegheny City, Pa. William Butler Horn- 
blower’s mother, Matilda Butler, the daughter 
of Asa Butler, a Connecticut manufacturer, was 
a descendant of Revolutionary leaders and colo¬ 
nial judges. The influence of two uncles, Joseph 
P. Bradley [<?.#.], justice of the United States 
Supreme Court, and Lewis B. Woodruff, United 
States circuit judge, played a strong part in 
Hornblower’s choice of the law for his profes¬ 
sion. His schooling was obtained at the Quack- 
enbos Collegiate School and at the College of 
New Jersey (Princeton). At college he won a 
number of literary, oratorical, and scholarship 
honors and received the degree of A.B. in 1871. 
In 1873 he began the study of law at Columbia 
and in 1874, after a time in the employ of Sanford, 
Robinson & Woodruff, he became a clerk in the 
law firm of Carter & Eaton. 

His talents in both the court room and the of¬ 
fice early marked him for professional distinc¬ 
tion. Two years after his graduation from Co¬ 
lumbia in 1875 with the degree of LL.B., and his 
admission to the bar, he was taken into partner¬ 
ship by his employers and became the trial law¬ 
yer for the firm of Carter & Eaton. At the age 
of thirty-six he received strong indorsements 
for an appointment to the New York court of 
appeals, and in 1888 he founded the firm of 
Hornblower & Byrne, which, with its successors, 
continued for twenty-six years under his leader¬ 
ship. At various times he represented the New 
York Life Insurance Company, the Otis Eleva¬ 
tor Company, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. 
Paul Railway Company, and the New York Se¬ 
curity & Trust Company. He was also counsel 
to the receiver of Grant & Ward, former Presi¬ 
dent Grant’s firm, and was one of the personal 
counsel of Joseph Pulitzer. Although he was a 
trustee of the New York Life Insurance Com¬ 
pany in 1891 and 1906, when the management of 


232 



Hornblower 

that company was bitterly assailed, no serious 
imputation was ever directed against him. He 
appeared as counsel in many important cases, 
such as United States vs. American Tobacco 
Company , et aL, 221 U. S, 106 (1911), the “to¬ 
bacco trust dissolution suit.” He served on many 
public commissions, was an officer of state and 
national bar associations, and was active in fur¬ 
thering the cause of the Democratic party. 

In the year 1893, Hornblower nearly achieved 
the goal which would be to most members of the 
bar the supreme achievement of their profes¬ 
sional careers. He was nominated by President 
Cleveland to succeed Samuel Blatchford [q.v.], 
who had just died, as associate justice of the 
United States Supreme Court. The opinion of 
the bar was almost unanimous in holding that 
Hornblower was exceptionally well equipped for 
the post, but between Hornblower and the asso¬ 
ciate justiceship stood the powerful figure of 
Senator David B. Hill of New York. 

The previous year Hornblower had been ap¬ 
pointed, at the suggestion of counsel for Judge 
Isaac H. Maynard, a member of a committee of 
the New York City Bar Association to inves¬ 
tigate Maynard's conduct in abetting the re¬ 
moval of an important certificate in a contested 
election. At the time of the offense, Maynard 
was deputy-attorney general of New York and a 
close friend of Hill, who was governor. The 
committee decided unanimously against May¬ 
nard and he was defeated in 1893 in his cam¬ 
paign for election to the New York court of ap¬ 
peals. Hill regarded Hornblower's acquiescence 
in the verdict as a betrayal, since he had been ap¬ 
pointed to the committee to represent Maynard. 
The campaign led by Hill in the Senate was suc¬ 
cessful and the nomination of Hornblower was 
rejected by a small majority. In 1895, when an¬ 
other vacancy occurred, Cleveland again contem¬ 
plated his nomination, but Hornblower declined 
it because the pecuniary sacrifice involved in 
giving up his practice would have been too 
great In 1914 his appointment to the New York 
court of appeals was unanimously confirmed by 
the state Senate. He took his seat on Mar. 30, 
and for a single week participated in the delib¬ 
erations of the court, retiring at the end of that 
time because of illness. It so happened that the 
cases assigned to him did not call for written 
opinions. 

Hornblower was married, Apr. 26, 1882, to 
Susan Sanford, daughter of William E. Sanford 
of New Haven and New York. In 1886, shortly 
after the birth of their third child Mrs. Horn¬ 
blower died, and in 1894 Hornblower mar¬ 
ried her sister Emily, the widow of Col. A. D. 


Horner 

Nelson. He died of heart disease at Litchfield, 
Conn. 

[Sources include unpublished memoranda of Wm. 
-Butler Hornblower and George S. Hornblower; com¬ 
munications from Mrs. Dorothy M. Hornblower; G. S. 
Hornblower, Wm. Butler Hornblower; A Synopsis of 
His Life by His Son (1925) ; B. N. Cardozo, in The 
Asso. of the Bar of the City of N. Y.: Year Book 1015 
(1915), PP- 186-93 ; Proc. N. Y. State Bar Asso., 1915, 
pp. 831-36. See also genealogy of the Hornblower 
family, in Proc. N. J. Hist. Soc ., z ser. VII (1883), 
237-47; D. S. Alexander, Four Famous New Yorkers 
(1923); N. V. Times, June 17, 1914. For the most 
that a hostile witness can make of Hornblower’s con¬ 
duct as trustee of the New York Life Insurance Com¬ 
pany, see Gustavus Myers, Hist, of the Supreme Court 
of the U.S. (1912), pp. 739-40.] H q 

HORNER, WILLIAM EDMONDS (June 
3, 1793-Mar. 13, 1853), anatomist, author of 
the first text of pathology to be published in 
America, was bom at Warrenton, Fauquier 
County, Va. His grandfather, Robert Horner, 
emigrated from England and settled first in 
Maryland and later in Virginia. He died young, 
leaving a widow and two sons, the younger of 
whom, William, married Mary, daughter of 
William and Elizabeth (Blackwell) Edmonds, 
and was the father of William Edmonds Horner. 
As a boy Homer was delicate and physically de¬ 
ficient. This fact led to his avoidance of the 
sports which usually enter into a boy's life and 
to finding companionship in books. When he 
was twelve years old he entered the academy of 
the Rev. Charles O'Neill, at Warrenton, and 
later at Dumfries. O'Neill was a clergyman of 
the Episcopal Church, and had been educated at 
Trinity College, Dublin, and at Oxford. It was 
owing to his instruction that Homer acquired, 
and retained through life, an interest in the clas¬ 
sics. In 1809, Horner began the study of medi¬ 
cine as a house student under the direction of 
John Spence of Dumfries, who had studied medi¬ 
cine at Edinburgh, but, having developed tuber¬ 
culosis, did not graduate. Homer continued a 
pupil of Spence until 1812, and during this time 
he attended two sessions of the University of 
Pennsylvania. In July 1813, before he had com¬ 
pleted his medical studies, he was commissioned 
surgeon's mate in the hospital department of the 
United States Army, and served in the cam¬ 
paigns in northern New York. During the win¬ 
ter of 1813-14 he obtained a furlough and com¬ 
pleted his medical studies, graduating from the 
University of Pennsylvania in April 1814, his 
thesis being entitled “Gunshot Wounds.” On the 
declaration of peace with Great Britain, Homer 
resigned his commission. Mar. 13,1815, and for 
a short time practised medicine in Warrenton, 
Va. Becoming dissatisfied with conditions there 
he applied for a surgeoncy in the East India serv- 


233 



Horner 

ice. Failing to receive an appointment, he set 
out, Dec. 3, 1815, for Philadelphia. 

Here he devoted his time to lectures and to 
practical anatomy. His skill in dissection and 
the neatness of his preparations attracted the at¬ 
tention of Caspar Wistar [g.z/.], at that time 
professor of anatomy at the University of Penn¬ 
sylvania, who offered Horner the position of 
prosector at a salary of five hundred dollars. 
Following Wistar's sudden death, Jan. 22, 1818, 
his successor, John Syng Dorsey [q.z/.], not only 
continued Horner in his former position, but 
also turned over to him the entire dissecting 
class and its emoluments. After Dorsey's death 
the next fall, his uncle, Philip Syng Physick 
undertook to carry not only his own 
course in surgery, but also the course in anat¬ 
omy and Horner was continued in the same po¬ 
sition he had occupied under Dorsey. In 1819, 
Physick exchanged the chair of surgery for that 
of anatomy and on Nov. 17, 1819, Horner was 
appointed adjunct professor of anatomy. In 1831, 
Physick resigned and Horner was elected pro¬ 
fessor of anatomy, a position which he held dur¬ 
ing the remainder of his life. For some thirty 
years he also served as dean of the medical 
department, resigning in 1852. Under his lead¬ 
ership Pennsylvania “maintained the highest 
standards of medical education then existent in 
America” (W. S. Middleton, post, p. 39), and 
it was said the finances of the medical school had 
never been better administered. 

Homer's writings were confined chiefly to 
anatomical subjects. In 1823, he published Les¬ 
sons in Practical Anatomyffor the Use of Dis¬ 
sectors, and edited the third edition of Wistar's 
System of Anatomy; in 1824, he described for 
the first time the tensor tarsi, a special muscle 
connected with the lachrymal apparatus; in 1826, 
he issued A Treatise on Special and General 
Anatomy, in two volumes; in 1829 A Treatise 
on Pathological Anatomy, the first work on this 
subject to appear in America; in 1835, he pub¬ 
lished in the American Journal of the Medical 
Sciences a special study of Asiatic cholera based 
on the 1832 epidemic in Philadelphia. For his 
services in this epidemic the city council present¬ 
ed him with a silver pitcher. He also contributed 
numerous articles to various medical journals. 
The anatomical museum at the university was 
founded by Caspar Wistar, and was largely 
made up of preparations which he had made. 
From time to time Homer presented numerous 
preparations to the museum and on his death 
he bequeathed an extensive collection to the 
medical school. In consequence of this bequest 


Horr 

the trustees designated the collection thus con¬ 
stituted the “Wistar and Horner Museum." 

On Oct. 26, 1820, Horner married Elizabeth 
Welsh of Philadelphia. Ten children were bom 
to them; four daughters and two sons outlived 
him. Originally a communicant of the Episcopal 
Church, in later life, influenced by the devotion 
of priests and sisters to their patients during the 
cholera epidemic in 1832, he became in 1839 a 
communicant of the Roman Catholic Church. 
He also played an important part in founding St. 
Joseph's Hospital. Beginning in 1819, he suf¬ 
fered from repeated attacks of dyspnea that 
were eventually found to be of cardiac origin. In 
1848, in company with Joseph Leidy [q.v.], he 
visited Europe, and returned somewhat improved 
in health. After resuming his duties, however, 
he felt a gradual loss of strength. In 1852, he 
was again obliged to take a short rest in the 
South. On Jan. 27, 1853, he delivered his last 
lecture, and on the evening of Mar. 13, 1853, he 
died. The necropsy showed old cardio-vascular 
lesions, but an enterocolitis with gangrene and 
peritonitis was the immediate cause of death. 

[Frederick Horner, The Hist, of the Blair, Banister, 
and Braxton Families (1898); C. R. Bardeen, in H. A. 
Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Am. Medic. Biogs. (1920); 
Joseph Carson, A Hist, of the Medic. Dept, of the Univ. 
of Pa. (1869) ; William Homer, in S. D. Gross, Lives 
of Eminent Am. Physicians and Surgeons (1861); 
Samuel Jackson, A Discourse Commemorative of the 
Late William E. Homer (1853); W. S. Middleton, 
“William Edmonds Horner,” Armais of Medic . Hist., 
Mar. 1923.] W.S.M. 

HORR, GEORGE EDWIN (Jan. 19, 1856- 
Jan. 22, 1927), Baptist clergyman, editor, edu¬ 
cator was bom in Boston, Mass., to George 
Edwin and Elsie Matilda (Ellis) Horr. He 
was descended from John Hoar, a Revolutionary 
soldier who was at Concord Bridge; his great¬ 
grandfather, Joseph, changed the patronymic to 
Horr. Soon after the younger George's birth 
his father was ordained to the Baptist ministry 
and the boy's home was a shifting one. At the 
high school in Newark, N. J., he prepared for 
college, ranking first in his class and winning 
a scholarship prize which enabled him to enter 
Brown University. Here he made a high record 
and pursued extra-curricular studies in the clas¬ 
sics, philosophy, and history. Graduating in 
1876, he spent one year at Union Theological 
Seminary and completed his ministerial prepa¬ 
ration at Newton Theological Institution in 1879. 
His first pastorate was at Tarrytown, N. Y., 
where he was ordained Dec. 2, 1879. Early in 
1884 he became pastor of the First Baptist 
Church, Charlestown, Mass., and spent the re¬ 
mainder of his life in Boston and vicinity. On 
Mar. 16, 1886, he married Mrs. Evelyn Olmsted 


234 



Horrocks 

Sacchi, who survived him two years. After some 
avocational service as associate editor, he was in 
1901 chosen editor of the Watchman , the leading 
New England Baptist weekly. The words which 
President Lowell of Harvard used in conferring 
an honorary degree, though specifically asserted 
of his influence in education for the Christian 
ministry, are peculiarly applicable to his work 
for the Christian cause through a denominational 
paper,—“broad in outlook, rich in sympathy, a 
wise leader.” 

From his first association with Newton Theo¬ 
logical Institution, Horr was actively interested 
in its development. He became a member of its 
board of trustees in 1892; professor of church 
history in 1904; president, by unanimous choice, 
in 1908. In this position he did most valuable 
constructive work. In addition to securing a 
considerable increase in the endowment, he made 
a larger and more direct use of the educational 
environment and brought the seminary into more 
vital contact with the changing requirements of 
the churches. He served on many boards and 
committees and possessed a business acumen 
which was a recognized asset in his counsel, 
constantly sought in a broadening range of re¬ 
ligious and educational affairs. He became a 
fellow of Brown University in 1896 and a trus¬ 
tee of Wellesley College in 1904. He wrote im¬ 
portant portions of Dr. Thomas Armitage's His¬ 
tory of the Baptists (1887); among the more im¬ 
portant of his other writings are The Christian 
Faith and Human Relations (1922), and The 
Baptist Heritage (1923). In 1910 he delivered a 
Dudleian lecture at Harvard on “Sacerdotal¬ 
ism,” published in the Harvard Theological Re¬ 
view, July 1910; and in 1923, the Ingersoll lec¬ 
ture, The Christian Faith and Eternal Life 
(x9 2 3)* He retired from active service imme- 
dicately after the centenary of Newton in June 
1925, remaining as president emeritus until his 
death. 

[H. S. Grose, George Edwin Horr — A Biographical 
Memoir (1928), published for private circulation, con¬ 
tains a bibliography of his printed works (exclusive 
of most of his editorial contributions) and of many 
of his unprinted MSS.; see also Who's Who in Amer¬ 
ica, 1926-27; Watchman Examiner, Feb. 3, 1927; Bos¬ 
ton Transcript, Jan. 22, 1927.] W.H.A. 

HORROCKS, JAMES ( c . 1734-Mar. 20, 
J 77 2 ), president of the College of William and 
Mary, commissary of the Bishop of London, 
and member of the Council of Virginia, was the 
son of James Horrocks of Wakefield, Yorkshire, 
England. He graduated from Trinity College, 
Cambridge, in 1755 with the degree of B.A., and 
received that of M.A, in 1758- He became usher 
in the Wakefield School in 1757, In 1761 he was 


Horrocks 

licensed to preach in Virginia, and the next 
year he became master of the grammar school 
connected with the College of William and Alary. 

His career in Virginia reflected the turbulent 
spirit of the period. When he was chosen presi¬ 
dent of the college in 1764, much bitterness was 
engendered because the visitors ignored Mr. 
Graham, who had taught there twenty years, on 
account of his activities against the two-penny 
act. Furthermore, it appears, Horrocks had 
stooped to win. The visitors of the college had 
previously inaugurated rules which greatly cur¬ 
tailed the rights of the president and professors 
and which provided that they might be removed 
from office at the will of the visitors. The mem¬ 
bers of the faculty, including Horrocks, had vig¬ 
orously protested; but Horrocks swore obedience 
to the objectionable statutes as the price of elec¬ 
tion, and afterwards apologized to the faculty for 
doing so. “Thus,” wrote Commissary Robinson, 
“Mr. Horrocks has obtained a profitable and 
honorable Post by favour granted to compli¬ 
ance” (Perry, post , p. 518). Nevertheless his 
administration was reasonably successful. The 
scholar and Revolutionary patriot, Richard Bland 
[q.v.], wrote in 1771 that Horrocks had been a 
“tolerable Pedagogue in the Grammar School of 
Our College . . . but unfortunately for his repu¬ 
tation, as well as for the College, he was re¬ 
moved from the only place he had abilities to fill 
to be President of the College. This laid the 
Foundation for his other exaltations, and by a 
Sycophantic Behavior he has accumulated unto 
himself” the offices of rector of Bruton Parish, 
commissary of the Bishop of London, and mem¬ 
ber of the Council of the Colony ( William and 
Mary Quarterly, post, January 1897, p. 154). 

In 1771 he raised a storm in the colony by ad¬ 
vocating the establishment of an American epis¬ 
copate, an institution not wanted by Virginians 
because it would curtail some of their cher¬ 
ished rights. Horrocks summoned the clergymen 
(about one hundred) to consider the scheme. 
Only eleven complied; and four of these opposed 
the plan. A war on paper ensued. Finally, in 
July 1771, the House of Burgesses declared 
unanimously against an American episcopate. 
Bland and others believed that Horrocks was 
simply scheming to become “First Right Rever¬ 
end Father of the American Church” (Ibid.). 
Not long afterwards, driven by ill health, he left 
with his wife for England. He died on the way 
at Oporto, Portugal. His obituary in the Vir¬ 
ginia Gazette of July 23, 1772, describes him as 
“a gentleman well versed in the several branches 
of sound learning, particularly mathematics, and 
eminently possessed of those virtues which in- 


235 



Horsfield 

crease in value as they are farthest from osten¬ 
tation.” 

[J. and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantdbrigienses ■, pt. i, 
vol. II (1922), but statement that he was minister in 
Petsworth and Kingston Parishes, in Gloucester Coun- 
ty, is probably wrong (see E. L. Goodwin, The Colonial 
Church in Virginia, 1927, p. 279) ; Wm. S. Perry, Pa¬ 
pers Relating to the Hist . of the Ch. in Va. (1070) ; 
IVm. and Mary Coll Quart. Hist . Mag., esp. Journal 
of the Meetings of the President and Masters of/Wil¬ 
liam and Mary College,” July 1894-Apr. 1897, continued 
July 1904-Jan. 1905, and additional material m issues 
for Jan. 1895, Jan. 1896, Jan. 1897, Apr. 1901, Apr. 
1926, and Oct. 1927 *, Va. Mag. of Hist, and Biog., Oct. 
1898: L. G. Tyler, Encyc. of Va. Biog . (i 9 x 5 )» L i6 3 -j 

R.L.M—n. 

HORSFIELD, THOMAS (May 12, 1773- 
July 24, 1859), East India explorer, naturalist, 
and physican was born on a farm near Bethle¬ 
hem, Pa., the son of Timothy and Juliana Sarah 
(Parsons) Horsfield, and a descendant of Tim¬ 
othy Horsfield, a native of England, who settled 
in Bethlehem some time before 1756- Thomas’ 
early schooling was received in the schools of 
Bethlehem and Nazareth. In the former town 
he also acquired a knowledge of pharmacy under 
Dr. Otto. He received his medical degree from 
the University of Pennsylvania in 1798. His 
thesis, An Experimental Dissertation on Rhus 
Vernix, Rhus Radicans and Rhus Glabrnm 
(1798), published at Philadelphia, is remarkable 
for its painstaking clinical description of the 
toxic symptoms of the poisoning produced by 
sumac and poison ivy, and for the record of well- 
conceived experiments, carried out upon himself 
and upon animals, concerning the pharmacologi¬ 
cal action of this interesting group of poisons. 
It ranks as a pioneer contribution in the history 
of experimental pharmacology in America. 

In 1799-1800 Horsfield made a trip to Java as 
ship surgeon on a merchant vessel. The richness 
of the vegetation there immediately roused his 
interest, and his attention was drawn to certain 
drugs, in common use by the natives, which 
were extracted from local plants. He decided to 
investigate these substances and went back to 
Philadelphia in order to obtain books, instru¬ 
ments, and paraphernalia necessary for collect¬ 
ing. “An Account of a Voyage to Batavia in the 
Year 1800,” by Horsfield, was published in the 
Philadelphia Medical Museum , vol. I (1805). 
In 1801 he returned to Java as surgeon in the 
Dutch colonial army, and remained in the Island 
for eighteen years, collecting and describing the 
rich flora which he found on every side. In the 
prefaces to his various works he tells the story 
of his collections and travels. It appears that be¬ 
tween 1802 and 1811 his facilities were discour¬ 
aging and many of his precious specimens de¬ 
cayed owing to inadequate preservation. In the 


Horsford 

latter part of 1811, however, after the occupancy 
of the Island by the British, Sir Stamford Raffles, 
the lieutenant-governor, directed Horsfield to 
continue his researches for the East India Com¬ 
pany. This connection enabled him to pursue his 
studies on a more elaborate scale. In 1819 he 
returned to London carrying his enormous col¬ 
lections with him. The East India Company 
made him curator of their museum, and he re¬ 
mained in this post without interruption from 
1820 until his death in 1859. It was during this 
period that his chief literary activity was carried 
out He published five important monographs, 
the most important, the Plantae Javanicae 
Rai'iores (1838-52), was a beautifully illustrated 
work, prepared with the assistance of the bota¬ 
nists Robert Brown and J. J. Bennett; in it 2,196 
species were described, all of which Horsfield 
had collected himself. His other works, elabo¬ 
rately illustrated and drawn from his Javanese 
experience, included two catalogues of lepi- 
dopterous insects (1828-29, 1857-59), a cata¬ 
logue of mammals (1851), and another of birds 
(1854) and joint monographs with W. S. Mac- 
leary, Annulosa Javanica (1825), and Sir Wil¬ 
liam Jardine, Illustrations of Ornithology (3 
vols., 1826-35). 

[See prefaces to Horsfield’s works, especially the 
catalogues of insects; Proc. of the Linnean Soc. of Lon¬ 
don, May 24, i860 (vol. V, 1861); J. Carson, A Hist, 
of the Medic. Department of the XJni% of Pa. (1869) > 
H. A. Kelly and W. L.. Burrage, Am. Medic. Biogs. 
(1920); Pa. Mag. of Hist, and Biog., July 1909; the 
Times, London, July 29, 1859. The Museum of the East 
Indm Company has been incorporated into the South 
Kensington Museum, London.] J.F.F. 

HORSFORD, EBEN NORTON (July 27, 
i8i8~Jan, 1, 1893), chemist, was born at Mos¬ 
cow, N. Y., the son of Jerediah and Charity 
Maria (Norton) Horsford. After graduation 
from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, 
N. Y., as a civil engineer in 1838, he worked for 
a year or more on the geological survey of New 
York State. In 1840 he was appointed professor 
of mathematics and natural sciences in the Al¬ 
bany Female Academy, where he remained four 
years. During this period he also delivered an¬ 
nually a course of lectures on chemistry at 
Newark College in Delaware. He went to Ger¬ 
many in 1844 and studied analytical chemistry 
two years with Liebig at Giessen. On his re¬ 
turn to the United States early in 1847 he was 
appointed Rumford Professor and Lecturer on 
the Application of Science to the Useful Arts in 
Harvard University, but was almost immediately 
transferred to the newly established Lawrence 
Scientific School. Here he taught chemistry and 
carried on investigations for sixteen years in- 


236 



Horsmanden 

dependently of the chemistry department of Har¬ 
vard College, which was started about the same 
time by Josiah P. Cooke [ q.v .]. The laboratory 
of the Lawrence Scientific School was one of the 
first in the United States to be organized and 
equipped for teaching analytical chemistry sys¬ 
tematically to individual students and exerted a 
profound influence on the development of analyti¬ 
cal chemistry in America. 

In 1863 Horsford resigned to engage in in¬ 
dustrial chemistry. Up to this time he had pub¬ 
lished over thirty original articles starting in 
Liebig’s Annalen in 1846 and continuing in Silli- 
man’s American Journal of Science and Arts, in 
the Proceedings of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science, and in the Memoirs 
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 
Several articles relate to phosphates (particular¬ 
ly the restoration of phosphates lost in milling), 
condensed milk, control of fermentation in mild¬ 
ly alcoholic beverages, emergency rations, and 
acid phosphates as medicinal agents. He was 
deeply interested in the chemistry of foods, an 
interest shown by many published articles, by 
his pamphlet on The Theory and Art of Bread¬ 
making (1861), and by his development of proc¬ 
esses for manufacturing condensed milk and 
baking powder. In later life he became inter¬ 
ested in historical and archeological subjects, 
and wrote articles and books on the settlements 
by the Northmen in America and on the Indian 
language. He was president of the board of visi¬ 
tors of Wellesley College, and gave this institu¬ 
tion money for books, scientific apparatus, and a 
pension fund. He attended the Priestley Cen¬ 
tennial at Northumberland, Pa., in 1874, and was 
among the earliest members of the American 
Chemical Society. He was twice married: first, 
in 1847, to Mary L’Hommedieu Gardiner, who 
died in 1855, and second, in 1837, to her sister, 
Phoebe Dayton Gardiner. Both were educated 
and cultivated women, and were specifically help¬ 
ful to Horsford in his scientific work. By the 
former he had four daughters, and by the latter, 
one. He died in Cambridge, Mass. 

[New-England Hist . and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1895; 
Proc. Am. Acad . Arts and Sciences, n.s., vol. XX 
(1893) J In Memoriam: Eben Norton Horsford (1893) ; 
Quinquennial Cat. . . . Harvard Univ . {1925) ; Boston 
Daily Advertiser, Jan. 2, 1893.] L.C.N. 

HORSMANDEN, DANIEL (June 4, 1694- 
Sept. 23,1778), last chief justice of the province 
of New York, was born in Purleigh, Essex, Eng¬ 
land, the son of the Reverend Daniel Horsman¬ 
den, brother-in-law of William Byrd, 1652-1704 
[#.£>.], who in 1690 had married Mrs. Susannah 
Bowyer. The younger Daniel was admitted to 


Horsmanden 

the Middle Temple in May 1721 and to the Inner 
Temple three years later, and by 1731 he was 
settled in New York, where he was sworn at¬ 
torney of the supreme court in March 1731/32. 
Having been “bred to the law,” he had strong 
backing in England and had brought letters to 
leading figures in the province. He promptly 
ranged himself with the governmental clique in 
New York politics and was soon rewarded by 
appointment to the council, Sept. 29,1733, to the 
office of recorder of New York City in 1736, and 
to that of third judge of the supreme court and 
admiralty judge in the same year. In 1734 he 
began a service of thirty-eight years as vestry¬ 
man of Trinity Parish. Apparently it was the in¬ 
fluence of Chief Justice James DeLancey which 
was his chief reliance in his career as a courtier, 
for when DeLancey in 1746 turned the whole 
force of his far-reaching power in the province 
against Governor Clinton, Horsmanden was a 
conspicuous figure in “the faction.” In fact he 
was the writer of the portentous mass of labored 
communications from the Assembly. But as De- 
Lancey’s was the only commission granted “dur¬ 
ing good behavior,” Horsmanden was the easiest 
mark for the Governor’s displeasure, and in 1747 
he was stripped of all his offices. His enemies 
affected to look upon his marriage at this time to 
Mary Reade, the widow of Rev. William Vesey, 
the first rector of Trinity, as the only thing which 
saved him from the horror of the debtors’ jail. 
His one avowed literary production was A Jour¬ 
nal of the Proceedings in the Detection of the 
Conspiracy Formed by Some White People , in 
Connection with Negro and other Slaves, relat¬ 
ing to the episode known as the Negro Plot of 
1741. This was published in 1744, partly to jus¬ 
tify the measures taken at the time, partly to 
rouse the citizens to feel a need for greater care 
in the regulation of the negro population, and 
partly, no doubt, for personal profit 
By 1755 Horsmanden was restored to his seat 
in the council. He had in 1753 been reappointed 
to the supreme court and in 1763 reached the 
chief-justiceship, being obliged, however, to ac¬ 
cept a commission running only “during pleas¬ 
ure.” This office he held until his death—several 
years after the infirmities of age had prevented 
him from rendering active service on the bench. 
In 1765, as chief justice, he took exception to 
appeals from the supreme court to the governor 
and council on grounds of anything but error in 
law. The legal profession in the province was a 
unit in support of his position and the issue was 
skilfully used for political purposes. Horsman¬ 
den not only promoted popular agitation of the 
subject but by an ingenious use of technicalities 


237 



Horton 

succeeded in evading* a direction from the King 
in Council to forward the record in a case. His 
last conspicuous public activity was as a member 
of the commission to inquire into the destruction 
of the Gaspee . He is said to have suffered in¬ 
dignities in the disorders of 1776. He lost his 
second wife, Anne Jevon, sometime before his 
own death which occurred in 1778 at Flatbush. 

[See J. G. Wilson, The Memorial Hist, of the City of 
N. Y., vol. II (1892) ; Wm. Smith, The Hist, of the 
Late Province of N. Y. (1829), vol. II; E. B. O'Cal¬ 
laghan, Docs. Relating to the Col. Hist, of the State of 
N. Y., vols. V-VIII (1855-57) ; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Colls., 
JPub. Fund Ser., vols. Ill (1871), XXVIII (1896), 
XXXIII (1901), LI-LIII (1919-21), LXI (1928) ; E. 
A. Jones, Am. Members of the Inns of Court (1924) J 
I. N. P. Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 
VI (1928), 171 ; Scots Mag., Oct. 1776, p. 540; Essex 
Rev., Apr. 1893 ; Va. Mag. of Hist, and Biog., July 
1917, July-Oct. 1919. Evidence regarding the date o£ 
Horsmanden's birth is conflicting. The date given in 
this biography is taken from Jones, ante.] Q t w. S. 

HORTON, SAMUEL DANA (Jan. 16,1844- 
Feb. 23,1895), economist, came of New England 
stock, and was the youngest child of Valen¬ 
tine Baxter Horton [ q.v .] and Clara Alsop Pom¬ 
eroy. He was born in Pomeroy, Ohio, and was 
educated at the Pomeroy Academy and at a 
classical school in Cincinnati. He graduated 
from Harvard University in 1864 and then trav¬ 
eled extensively. Before entering the Harvard 
Law School in 1866 he won the Bowdoin prize 
for resident graduates and later received the de¬ 
gree of A.M. in 1867 and LL.B. in 1868. Until 
1870 he studied Roman law at the University of 
Berlin. He was admitted to the Ohio state bar 
on Jan. 1, 1871, and remained in active practice 
until 1885, fi rst ' m Cincinnati, and then in Pom¬ 
eroy. In 1873 he wrote three pamphlets advo¬ 
cating proportional representation, but after the 
Greenback craze of 1875 he devoted himself to 
the advancement of bimetalism. His first mone¬ 
tary treatise, Silver and Gold in Their Relation 
to the Problem of Resumption, was published in 
1876. On Aug. 28, 1877, he married Blanche 
Hariot Lydiard, the daughter of a British army 
officer. In 1878 he was appointed secretary of 
the American delegation to the International 
Monetary Conference at Paris, the American 
report of which he edited. He was made a dele¬ 
gate to the second Paris Monetary Conference 
in 1881 and in 1882 and 1889 was sent on official 
missions to Europe where he spent most of his 
later years meeting many distinguished men. 

4 Horton was a large, tall, blond man with ar¬ 
tistic tastes and a courteous bearing. He pos¬ 
sessed a retentive memory and a remarkable 
knowledge of ancient and modern languages. Of 
a very ardent temperament, he threw himself into 
his chosen crusade with poetic enthusiasm. To 


Horton 

him silver was not an inert substance but some¬ 
thing endowed with personal qualities, which 
had been wrongfully “disinherisoned” and which 
could be restored to its former importance as a 
money metal by the formation of an international 
monetary union. He was an indefatigable but 
not a popular writer on bimetalism as his style 
suffered through being too replete with infor¬ 
mation, while his inclination to use words in an 
unusual sense often obscured his meaning. His 
principal work, The Silver Pound and England's 
Monetary Policy Since The Restoration, was 
published in 1887 and was followed in 1890 by 
Silver In Europe, the revised edition of which 
(1892) contains a complete bibliography of his 
writings. Horton died in Washington, D. C. 

[Harvard Coll. Class of 1864, Secretary's Report No. 
6, 1864-89 (1889) ; A. A. Pomeroy, Hist, and Geneal 
of the Pomeroy Family (1912); F. A. Walker, tribute 
m the Econ. Jour., June 1895 ; F. W. Holls, article in 
the Rev. of Revs., Apr. 1895 ; Evening Star (Washing¬ 
ton), Feb. 25, 1895; information as to certain facts 
from Horton’s son, Lydiard H. Horton.] H G V 

HORTON, VALENTINE BAXTER (Jan. 
29, 1802-Jan. 14, 1888), pioneer bituminous coal 
operator, builder of “Condor” towboats, was born 
in Windsor, Vt., the son of Zenas and Nancy 
(Seaver) Horton. As a boy he attended the local 
schools, then he went to Partridge’s Military 
Academy (later Norwich University) at Nor¬ 
wich, Vt. After his graduation in 1825 he taught 
mathematics and ultimately philosophy and po¬ 
litical economy and was teaching when the school 
was temporarily situated in Middletown, Conn. 
On leaving the institution he studied law and 
was admitted to the Connecticut bar. For a time 
he practised law in Pittsburgh, Pa., then in Cin¬ 
cinnati, Ohio, where in 1833 he married Clara 
Alsop Pomeroy, and in 1835 he settled in Nyes- 
ville, Ohio, which he renamed Pomeroy. While 
yet a law student he had become interested in the 
coal deposits in the Ohio districts and went to 
see the outcropping veins. He carried samples 
of the coal to Boston and succeeded in interest¬ 
ing his friend Samuel W. Pomeroy, later his 
father-in-law, from whose ground he had taken 
the coal. Pomeroy and some friends thereupon 
accompanied Horton to the region. They mined 
about one thousand bushels of coal but their first 
attempts at shipping it were unsuccessful. Later, 
however, Pomeroy with his two sons and two 
sons-in-law, C. W. Dabney and Horton, formed 
a company and began to operate the mines. The 
coal which was shipped from the region was 
loaded on rafts and sent down the Ohio River, 
but the current of the river made the return of 
the rafts impossible and new barges had to be 
built for each trip. Horton conceived the idea 


238 



Hosack 

of having the empty barges towed upstream and 
built the first towboat to ply inland waters. It 
was driven by a single engine and was a “side¬ 
wheeler.” It was named the Condor and during 
the forty years which followed the “Condor” 
idea spread and Horton profited immensely. 

The presence of numerous salt wells in this 
region made the salt trade increasingly impor¬ 
tant. Horton was among the first to enter the 
business on a large scale and in 1851 organized 
the Pomeroy Salt Company. Among the wells 
which he drilled was one which remained in 
operation for forty years and produced salt esti¬ 
mated at ten million barrels during that time. 
The Civil War increased the growth of the trade 
especially since foreign importation stopped. 
The opening of the Michigan and New York 
supplies, however, brought about keen competi¬ 
tive conditions and led to the reorganization of 
the Ohio River Salt Company with Horton as 
president. This company was regarded as one of 
the early trusts. Horton was a member in 1850 
of the Ohio constitutional convention and served 
in Congress in 1854 as an anti-slavery Whig, 
capturing what was ordinarily a Democratic 
stronghold. He was reelected two years later 
but refused a third nomination. In i860, how¬ 
ever, he was nominated by the Republicans with¬ 
out his knowledge or consent and accepted only 
for “the good old cause of human liberty.” He 
served on the ways and means committee and in 
1861 he was a member of the Peace Congress in 
Washington. For forty years he was a trustee 
of the Ohio University at Athens, Ohio. He had 
six children, one of whom was Samuel Dana 
Horton [q.v.]. One daughter, Clara Pomeroy 
Horton, married John Pope [q.v.], and another 
daughter, Frances Dabney Horton, married 
Manning Ferguson Force [ q.v .]. 

[G. M. Dodge and W. A. Ellis, Norwich Umv., 1819— 
1911, Her Hist, Her Grads., Her Roll of Honor (1911), 
II, 141-42; C. B. Galbreath, Hist, of Ohio (1925), II, 
S7~58; Biog. Dir . Am. Cong . (1928); J. G. Blaine, 
Twenty Years of Cong., I (1884), pp. 416^.; A. A. 
Pomeroy, Hist and Geneal. of the Pomeroy Family 
(1912); Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, Jan. 14, 15, 
x888.] a.I. 

HOSACK, ALEXANDER EDDY (Apr.*6, 
1805-Mar. 2, 1871), surgeon, was bom in New 
York City, the son of Dr. David Hosack [ q.v .] 
and his second wife, Mary Eddy, adopted daugh¬ 
ter of Caspar Wistar [q.v."]. Under an intensive 
course of private instruction he developed in¬ 
cipient tuberculosis which interfered with his 
college program, but he was able to take a degree 
in medicine in 1824 at the University of Penn¬ 
sylvania, where he was the last private pupil of 
Dr. Philip Syng Physick [q.v.]. He at once 
went to Paris for the study of surgery, where he 


Hosack 

was exteme for eighteen months and interne for 
one year at the Hotel Dieu. With Ricord and 
Nelaton he was a private pupil of Dupuytren, but 
his health did not permit him to study under 
Amussat, who required his pupils to rise at 3 
a. m. Returning to New York in 1827, Hosack 
plunged at once into a surgical career. He seems 
to have brought with him knowledge of the tech¬ 
nic of Syme’s new operation for exsection of the 
elbow and by 1833 he was distinguished for im¬ 
provements in the technic of cleft palate opera¬ 
tion. Operating in all regions of the body, he 
was a pioneer urological surgeon. By 1839 he 
had operated on twenty-three patients for stone 
in the bladder and was successful in employing 
a technic which did not leave the male patient 
sexually impotent. In that year appeared his 
paper on the removal of sensitive tumors of the 
female urethra (New York Journal of Medicine 
and Surgery, July 1839), which is regarded as a 
classic. When Dr. J. C. Warren of Boston an¬ 
nounced his memorable discovery of the value of 
sulphuric ether as an anesthetic, Hosack tested 
the new resource promptly (1847), and in a 
single session amputated a limb, removed two 
breasts, and operated for stone (“Cases Illustra¬ 
tive of the Beneficial Effects of Ether,” Boston 
Medical and Surgical Journal, Aug. 11, 1847). 
He operated successfully for malignant disease 
of the head by ligating the carotids. Although 
he had begun to operate at the early age of nine¬ 
teen and had a brilliant though not extensive 
operative record, he seems in the end to have 
turned against surgery, and he once stated that 
he would never devote another life to it. He was 
not in any way active during the Civil War and 
his last years were passed uneventfully in New¬ 
port, R. I. As a medical practitioner he was un¬ 
fortunate in contracting diseases and suffered 
attacks of typhus, cholera, and yellow fever. He 
was greatly interested in suicide and in execution 
by hanging. He made a number of experiments, 
some of which seemed to indicate that those thus 
executed did not suffer pain. His writings were 
few in number, restricted to clinical papers. In 
1889 his widow, Celine B. Hosack, presented 
Hosack Hall to the New York Academy of Medi¬ 
cine, as a memorial. 

[S. W. Francis, in Medic, and Surgtc. Reporter, Dec. 
2, 1865, repr. in his Biog. Sketches of Distinguished 
Living N. Y. Surgeons (1866); J. J. Walsh, Hist, of 
Medicine in N. Y. (1919), vol. V; John Shrady, The 
Coll, of Phys. and Surgeons, N. Y . (n.d.), vol. I; H. 
A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Am. Medic . Btogs. (1920) ; 
Medic, and Surgic. Reporter, Mar. 25, 1871; N. Y. 
Times, Mar. 7, 1871.] E.P. 

HOSACK, DAVID (Aug. 31, 1769-Dec. 22, 
1835), physician, son of Alexander and Jane 
(Arden) Hosack, was bom at the home of his 


239 



Hosack 

maternal grandfather, Francis Arden, in New 
York City. His father, a native of Elgin, Scot¬ 
land, came to America as a British artillery of¬ 
ficer and fought at the capture of Louisbourg. 
David entered Columbia College in 1786, but 
took his degree in arts at the College of New 
Jersey (Princeton) in 1789. He began his medi¬ 
cal studies in New York under Nicholas Ro- 
mayne, Philip Wright Post, and Samuel Bard, 
continued them in Philadelphia under Benjamin 
Rush, and in 1791 began practice in Alexandria, 
Va., expecting that city to become the federal 
capital. The following year, having meanwhile 
married Catharine Warner of Princeton, who 
bore him one child, he left his wife and child with 
his parents and sailed, in August, for further 
study abroad. Visiting his father’s relatives in 
Scotland, he met socially most of the notables of 
Edinburgh and studied medicine and botany in 
that city. In London, later, he added mineralogy 
to his studies, and during his sojourn there read 
before the Royal Society a paper on vision which 
was published in the Philosophical Transactions 
for 1794. In that year he returned to America, 
bringing with him a mineralogical collection 
which he gave in 1821 to the college at Prince¬ 
ton. During the voyage he won distinction 
which contributed to his later professional repu¬ 
tation, by his successful handling of an outbreak 
of typhus among the steerage passengers. 

In 1795 he became professor of botany at Co¬ 
lumbia College and two years later, of materia 
medica, holding both positions until 1811. The 
success attending his treatment of his patients in 
the yellow fever epidemic of 1797 gained him a 
partnership with his former preceptor, Samuel 
Bard [g.z>.], to whose practice he succeeded. In 
1804 he was attending surgeon at the Burr- 
Hamilton duel. He was one of the first phy¬ 
sicians in America to use the stethoscope, to ad¬ 
vocate vaccination, and to limit the use of the 
lancet, and was the first surgeon in America to 
ligate the femoral artery for aneurysm (1808). 
He taught materia medica in the newly chartered 
College of Physicians and Surgeons, 1807-08, 
and in 1811 resigned from Columbia to become 
professor of the theory and practice of physic in 
the new institution. He held annual lectureships 
in materia medica and obstetrics, and from 1822 
to 1826 was vice-president, but in the last-named 
year withdrew, with four other members of the 
faculty, to found the short-lived Rutgers Medical 
College, of which he was president till 1830. In 
1820 he was in great part responsible for the 
founding of Bellevue Hospital. 

With his pupil, later his partner, John W. 
Francis [g.i>.], Hosack established the American 


Hoshour 

Medical and Philosophical Register, published 
1810-14. He wrote a number of professional pa¬ 
pers, some of them collected in Essays on Vari¬ 
ous Subjects of Medical Science (vols. I, II, 
1824; vol. Ill, 1830), and published A System of 
Practical Nosology (1819). His Lectures on the 
Theory and Practice of Physic , delivered at the 
College of Physicians and Surgeons, was issued 
posthumously in 1838. He was also the author 
of A Tribute to the Memory of the Late Caspar 
Wistar, M.D . (1818), A Biographical Memoir 
of Hugh Williamson (1820), and a Memoir of 
DeWitt Clinton (1829), and was one of the edi¬ 
tors of William Smith’s History of the Late 
Province of New York (2 vols., 1829-30), pub¬ 
lished by the New York Historical Society. 

Although, according to his pupil Francis, Ho¬ 
sack “was acknowledged ... to have been the 
most eloquent and impressive teacher of scien¬ 
tific medicine and clinical practice this country 
has produced” (Old New York , p. 84), he was 
as prominent in the social and cultural life of his 
city as in the professional field. At his summer 
home in Hyde Park he established the Elgin Bo¬ 
tanical Garden, which has since become famous. 
He was a founder of the New York Historical 
Society and its president, 1820-28, and was an 
incorporator, 1808, of the American Academy of 
Fine Arts. “His house was the resort of the 
learned and the enlightened,” says Francis, add¬ 
ing that it was once observed that DeWitt Clin¬ 
ton, Bishop Hobart, and Dr. Hosack “were the 
tripod upon which our city stood.” Hosack’s 
first wife died only a few years after their mar¬ 
riage, and in 1797 he married Mary Eddy of 
Philadelphia, the adopted daughter of Caspar 
Wistar [g.z/.]. She was the mother of nine chil¬ 
dren, one of whom was Alexander Eddy Hosack 
[g.vj. After her death, Hosack married as his 
third wife Mrs. Magdalena Coster, a cousin of 
Philip Hone [g.£\], in whose diary he figures 
frequently. He died suddenly of apoplexy in the 
midst of his manifold activities. 

[Sketch by A. E. Hosack, in S. D. Gross, Lives of 
Eminent Am. Physicians and Surgeons (1861) ; sketch 
by J. W. Francis, in S. W. Williams, Am. Medic. Biog. 
(1845), and in Hist . Mag. (N. Y.), June i860; J. W. 
Francis, Old New York (ed. of 1866); Autobiog. of 
Samuel D. Gross (1887), II, 876:.; The Diary of Philip 
Hone (2 vols., 1889), ed. by Bayard Tuckerman; 
sketch, with A. B. Durand's engraving of portrait by 
Sully, in James Herring and J. B. Longacre, The Nat. 
Portr. Gallery of Eminent Americans , vol. II (1835) ; 
Pop. Sci . Monthly , Oct. 1895; Evening Post (N. Y.), 
Dec. 23, 24, 1835.] E. P. 

HOSHOUR, SAMUEL KLINEFELTER 

(Dec. 9, i8o3-Nov. 29, 1883), clergyman, pi¬ 
oneer educator in eastern Indiana, was born in 
Heidelburg township, York County, Pa., his 
great-great-grandfather having immigrated to 


240 



Hoshour 

that state from Alsace early in the eighteenth 
century. Left fatherless at fourteen, the eldest of 
six children, Samuel was hired out to neighbor¬ 
ing farmers as a helper. He received about three 
months’ schooling each year, however, and at the 
age of sixteen was appointed teacher of the local 
school. Aspiring to become a German Lutheran 
minister, in 1822 he entered the academy at York 
where he remained until 1824, and then studied 
for two years more at Newmarket, Shenandoah 
County, Va., under Dr. Samuel S. Schmucker 
[q.v.1. On Feb. 7, 1826, he married Lucinda, 
daughter of Jacob Savage. After serving as prin¬ 
cipal of New Market Academy for a year, in the 
spring of 1828 he became pastor of the newly 
formed Lutheran parish at Smithsburg, Wash¬ 
ington County, Md., having been ordained Oct. 
23, 1827. In 1831 he removed to Hagerstown 
where he taught in a private school for a time 
but soon accepted a call to St. John’s Lutheran 
Church of that place. While here he embraced 
the views of the Disciples of Christ, and in 1835 
his name was expunged from the rolls of the 
Synod. 

Having sacrificed his professional prospects 
and lost many of his friends by being true to his 
convictions, he decided to make a new start in the 
West. Accordingly, in September 1835, he and a 
brother-in-law, putting their families into two 
covered wagons and a carriage, slowly made 
their way through the mountains and across Ohio 
to Indiana, where they settled at Centreville, 
Wayne County. Although he preached almost 
every Sunday for years, the remainder of his 
long life was devoted chiefly to education. His 
first work was in connection with private schools, 
and in the. annals of the state he is numbered 
among a little group of pioneer teachers who 
brought these schools to such a degree of ef¬ 
ficiency as to set a standard for the whole edu¬ 
cational, system. In the spring of 1836 he be¬ 
came principal of the Wayne County Seminary. 
This school was then the center of learning for 
much of eastern Indiana. Among his pupils were 
Oliver P. Morton and Lew Wallace [qq.v. ]. In 
1839 he was asked to establish a similar insti¬ 
tution in Cambridge City, and in November of 
that year he opened Cambridge Seminary, which 
he conducted successfully until 1846, when ill 
health compelled him to seek less exacting duties. 
For the next five or six years he was principally 
engaged in giving special German courses in the 
colleges and cities of the West. Partly for the 
benefit of his health, in 1851 he bought a farm in 
Wayne County, which he superintended until 
1858 when he was elected president of North 
Western Christian University (now Butler Uni- 


Hosmer 

versify), Indianapolis, the institution, although 
opened in 1855, having had no head previously. 
In 1861 he resigned, but remained as professor 
of languages for fourteen years more. From 
May 15 to Nov. 25,1862, he was also state super¬ 
intendent of public instruction. In 1875, to use 
his own figure, the faculty tree was shaken, and 
having attained a ripe age, he fell off. The clos¬ 
ing years of his life were spent in Indianapolis, 
where he gave private lessons in German. An 
Autobiography published in 1884, with an intro¬ 
duction by Isaac Errett and an appendix by Dr. 
Ryland T. Brown, contains several of his ad¬ 
dresses. He was also the author of Letters to 
Esq. Pedant in the East by Lorenzo Altisonant, 
an Emigrant to the West (1844), a work intend- 
ed.to teach the meaning of unusual words on the 
principle of association of ideas. It went through 
several editions. 

[R. G. Boone, A Hist.ofEduc. in Ind. (1802) : H. M. 

Sk ? tc { les of the Superintendents of Pub¬ 
lic Instruction of the State of Ind. (1884)- F D 

foZnal !Nov 30,1883.]^”^" : 

HOSMER, FREDERICK LUCIAN (Oct. 
16, 1840-June 7, 1929), Unitarian clergyman, 
hymn-writer, was born in Framingham, Mass., 
the son of Charles and Susan (Carter) Hosmer, 
and a descendant of James Hosmer of Hawk- 
hurst, Kent, England, who came to America in 
1635 and settled in Concord, Mass. For some 
years during Frederick’s boyhood, his father was 
an unsuccessful fanner, and thereafter engaged 
in sundry occupations. Frederick prepared for 
college in his native town and graduated from 
Harvard in 1862. He had taught school before 
and during his college course, and from 1862 to 
1864 was master of Houghton School, Bolton, 
Mass., and from 1864 to 1866, of Adams School, 
Dorchester, now Harris School, Boston. He then 
entered the Harvard Divinity School from which 
he graduated in 1869. 

Ordained to the Unitarian ministry on Oct. 
28 of that year, he became associated with Rev. 
Joseph Allen in the pastorate of the First Con¬ 
gregational Church, Unitarian, Northboro, Mass. 
In 1872 he accepted a call to the Second Congre¬ 
gational Church, Unitarian, Quincy, Ill. Re¬ 
signing in April 1877, he spent eighteen months 
in travel and study, and then from 1878 to 1892 
was pastor of the Church of the Unity, Cleve¬ 
land, Ohio. After a brief term as general mis¬ 
sionary of the Western Unitarian Conference, 
with headquarters in Chicago, he was pastor in 
St. Louis until 1899. The later years of his life 
were spent in Berkeley, Cal., where he was in 
charge of the First Unitarian Church from 1900 
to 1904. He never married. 


241 



Hosmer 

Like his friend, William Channing Gannett 
[#.^.], with whom he was closely associated, he 
was both a radical liberal and a mystic; a thinker 
and a poet. As the latter he enriched private 
devotion and public worship. Of his numerous 
hymns some have come into general use both in 
this country and abroad. The latest Unitarian 
hymnal contains more than thirty. With Gan¬ 
nett he published The Thought of God in Hymns 
and Poems (three series, 1885,1904, and 1918). 
He also prepared The Way of Life (1877), a 
service book for Sunday schools, and edited, in 
collaboration with Gannett and J. Vila Blake, 
Unity Hymns and Carols (1880), and with the 
former a much enlarged edition of the same in 
1911. In the spring of 1908 he gave a series of 
ten lectures in church hymnody at the Harvard 
Divinity School. 

[G. L. Hosmer, Hosmer Geneal. (1928) ; Who's Who 
in America, 1928-29; Class Report, Class of Sixty-two, 
Harvard Univ., Fiftieth Anniversary (1912); Chris¬ 
tian Register, June 27, July 25, Aug. 1, 1929; E. S. 
Ninde, The Story of the American Hymn (1921); G. 
W. Cooke, Unitarianism in America (1902).] 

H E S 

HOSMER, HARRIET GOODHUE* (Oct. 
9, 1830-Feb. 21, 1908), sculptor, was bom in 
Watertown, Mass., the second child of Hiram 
and Sarah (Grant) Hosmer and a descendant of 
James Hosmer, an early emigrant from Hawk- 
hurst, Kent, England. When Harriet was four, 
her mother died of tuberculosis. Her father, a 
physician, having lost three children, gave his 
one remaining child an outdoor life. She had 
horse, dog, gun, boat, and liberty; she rowed, 
raced, climbed, and hunted; she studied birds 
and stuffed them, and made images in clay. She 
grew up hardy and likable, but she was often a 
pest to the neighbors and a terror to her teachers. 
In her sixteenth year she was sent to Lenox to 
be taught by Mrs. Sedgwick, whose methods 
proved successful. Lenox was a cultural center, 
where notable persons met; Fanny Kemble was 
a resident, Emerson a visitor. The little Water- 
town tomboy became a favorite. After three 
years at Lenox she studied drawing and model¬ 
ing in Boston, then, in order to study anatomy 
in a school to which women were admitted, she 
attended the medical department of St. Louis 
University. In St Louis she lived in the home 
of a Lenox schoolmate, whose father, Wayland 
Crow, became interested in her art and gave her 
her first commission for a life-size marble 
statue. Finishing her studies, she took a steam¬ 
boat trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans 
and up again as far as the Falls of St. Anthony. 
She smoked a peace-pipe with the Indians and 
on a wager climbed a bluff since known as Mt. 
Hosmer. Once more in her Watertown home, 


Hosmer 

she modeled an ideal bust, “Hesper,” and prac¬ 
tised marble-cutting. She formed a lasting friend¬ 
ship with Charlotte Cushman, later her com¬ 
panion in Rome. In 1852 she went to Rome, and 
for seven years she studied under the Eng¬ 
lish sculptor John Gibson, with the advantage, 
shrewdly noted by Hawthorne, of showing her 
works in one of the Gibson studios. Her first 
productions were a pair of ideal busts, “Daphne” 
and “Medusa”; her first life-size marble statue 
the “QEnone,” placed in the St. Louis Museum. 
Fanny Kemble’s prophecy to Crow that “Hatty’s 
peculiarities will stand in the way of her success 
with people of society and the world” proved 
untrue. The “peculiarities” were an asset. Gib¬ 
son’s only pupil, she won favor as a piquant per¬ 
sonage, a true artist, yet a good sport, too, not 
afraid to gallop alone at twilight across the Cam- 
pagna! Small, quick, and frank, the Yankee girl 
had character as well as charm. “A great pet of 
mine and of Robert’s,” wrote Elizabeth Brown¬ 
ing (F. G. Kenyon, Letters of Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning, 1898, II, 166). 

In 1854 Miss Hosmer received through Crow 
the order for her second marble statue, the “Bea¬ 
trice Cenci” for the St. Louis Mercantile Li¬ 
brary. The work proved to be one of her best. 
The figure is shown lying asleep, one hand under 
her head, the other holding a rosary. In spite of 
details too emphatically carved, the work has 
merit. “The conception, and in the main the 
execution, could hardly have been surpassed in 
the Roman colony of the fifties” (Taft, post, p. 
205). In contrast with this tragic figure were 
her next works, “Puck” and “Will-o’-the-Wisp.” 
The former was a bat-winged elf astride a mush¬ 
room, a beetle in one hand, a lizard in the other, 
and mycologic specimens all about. The Prince 
of Wales, afterward Edward VII, bought a copy 
and so increased its popularity that thirty rep¬ 
licas were made, it is said, at a thousand dollars 
each. 

After a brief visit to America in 1857, Miss 
Hosmer devoted herself to a recumbent memorial 
figure of the daughter of Madame Falconet, an 
English Catholic resident in Rome. The monu¬ 
ment was placed in the church of S. Andrea delle 
Fratte in 1858. Meanwhile her best-known pro¬ 
duction, the marble statue of Zenobia, captive 
queen of Palmyra, was well advanced. It was 
shown at the London exhibition of 1862, where 
it was favorably placed in the fourth niche of a 
little temple in the center of a gallery, the other 
three niches being given to tinted statues hy 
Gibson. Hawthorne, seeing the unfinished model 
in day, found it full of beauty and life—“a high, 
heroic ode.” Taft, at a later day, found the fin- 


242 



Hosmer 

ished marble copy disappointing, with “not one 
grateful touch, not one suggestion of half-tone 
and tenderness of chiselling—nothing but ridges 
and grooves” (Taft, post,?. 208). 

Called home in i860 by the illness of her fa¬ 
ther, she received from the state of Missouri an 
order for a colossal bronze statue of Thomas H. 
Benton, a work placed eight years later in La¬ 
fayette Park, St. Louis. From a distance, the 
statue has “the dignity of great bulk,” but it 
lacks vitality; the sculptor, a confirmed pseudo¬ 
classicist, swathed her subject in a pseudo-toga. 
Her monumental creations were not always suc¬ 
cessful: her invited competitive design for the 
national Lincoln monument at Springfield, Ill., 
was rejected in favor of Larkin Mead’s (1867), 
and more then twenty years later her ambitious 
project for the “Crerar” Lincoln at Chicago was 
declined. She was happier in such inventions as 
her “Siren Fountain” for Lady Marian Alford 
(1861), her chimney-piece, “Death of the Dry¬ 
ads,” for Lady Ashburton’s drawing-room at 
Melchet Court, and her marble reclining figures, 
the “Sleeping Faun” and the “Waking Faun.” 
In the Dublin exhibition of 1865, the “Sleeping 
Faun” so pleased Sir Benjamin Guinness that he 
offered a thousand guineas for it. Learning that 
it was not for sale, as the artist wished to show 
it in the United States, he doubled his offer; 
whereupon Miss Hosmer, original as ever, sold 
it to him at his first price. Her artistic pursuits 
ranged from close supervision of marble carving 
in Rome to the study of a drowned girl in the 
Paris Morgue. Her summer vacations, combin¬ 
ing business with pleasure, were spent in the 
British Isles, where she passed from castle to 
castle; from Ashby to Raby, from Ashridge to 
Melchet Court. In 1869 she began her full- 
length statue of the former Queen of Naples, cos¬ 
tumed as she was at the battle of Gaeta, a two- 
years’ work pursued with romantic fervor, and 
resulting in a friendship with the Queen and with 
her sister, the Empress of Austria. In the latter 
part of her life she gave herself largely to the 
problem of perpetual motion, at first in England 
and later in America. She went West, too, and 
there spoke on art to enthusiastic audiences. She 
was the most famous woman sculptor of her day. 
Her many decorations from European royalties 
she regarded as “souvenirs of friends rather than 
as decorations.” John Gibson said that she had 
“a passionate vocation for sculpture.” She had 
also a genius for friendship and an unquenchable 
zest for enhancing life through many kinds of 
intellectual and physical effort. 

[Harriet Hosmer: Letters and Memories (1912), ed. 
by Cornelia Carr; Lorado Taft, The Hist . of Am . 
Sculpture (1903); W. H. Bidwell, “Harriet G. Hos- 


Hosmer 

mer,” Eclectic Mag., Aug. 1871; R. A. Bradford, “The 
Life and Works of Harriet Hosmer/ 1 New England 
Mag., Nov. 1911; G. L. Hosmer, Hosmer Gened. 
(1928); Nathaniel Hawthorne, Passages from the 
French and Italian Notebooks (1871); N. Y. Times, 
Feb. 22, 1908.] A A" 

HOSMER, HEZEKIAH LORD (Dec. 10, 
1814-Oct. 31, 1893), judge, author, was born at 
Hudson, Columbia County, N. Y., the son of 
Hezekiah Lord and Susan (Throop) Hosmer 
and a great-grandson of Titus Hosmer [q.v.]. 
As a boy he followed his inclination to go West. 
He tarried for a time in Chenango County, N. 
Y., but at sixteen he moved on to Cleveland, 
Ohio, where a relative named John W. Allen was 
practising law. In 1835 he was admitted to the 
bar. He began to practise at Willoughby, Ohio, 
then removed successively to Painesville, Mau¬ 
mee City, and Perrysburg, riding the circuit of 
the northwestern Ohio counties but also giving 
part of his time to newspaper work. In 1844 he 
settled at Toledo and became editor and part pro¬ 
prietor of the Toledo Blade. He also entered the 
Masonic order and was active in its proceedings. 
After 1855 he resumed the practice of law but he 
also continued to write and in 1858 he published 
at Toledo his Early History of the Maumee Val¬ 
ley, followed by Adela , the Octoroon (i860), 
from which Dion Boucicault is said to have 
taken part of the plot for his play of that name. 

A Whig by heredity, Hosmer became a Re¬ 
publican and actively supported Lincoln in i860. 
When the new administration was inaugurated 
he went to Washington “hoping to secure the 
position of Congressional Librarian.” That hope 
was not realized; but through James M. Ashley, 
a representative from his district, who was chair¬ 
man of the House committee on territories, Hos¬ 
mer was appointed secretary of that committee. 
This proved the turning point in his career, for 
in 1864 the territory of Montana was organized 
and Hosmer succeeded in securing an appoint¬ 
ment on June 30, 1864, as chief justice of the 
territorial supreme court. Unfortunately, how¬ 
ever, the organic act failed to provide also a sys¬ 
tem of law for the territory and when Hosmer 
reached Virginia City in October 1864, he had 
no workable jurisprudence to apply. The law of 
the Louisiana Purchase, out of which Montana 
had been largely formed, was the Spanish civil 
law, and theoretically it continued; but Hosmer 
knew only the common law, and this he adopted 
as the legal system. In matters of procedure he 
decided to follow the practice act passed by the 
Idaho legislature the previous winter, and later, 
when questions of priority in water rights arose 
in mining litigation, he followed the decisions 
previously handed down in California cases. 


243 



Hosmer 

The three newly appointed judges who con¬ 
stituted the territorial supreme court were to sit 
separately at nisi priiis, as well as in banc . Hos¬ 
mer opened his court on the first Monday in De¬ 
cember 1864 in the dining hall of the Planters’ 
House in Virginia City. The first term of the 
supreme court began in the following May, and 
it soon appeared that the frontier community 
was none too sympathetic with legal modes of 
thought. Before long the court was engaged in 
a conflict with the legislature which culminated 
in a legislative resolution calling upon the chief 
justice to resign. Hosmer ignored it, serving 
his full term of four years. In the autumn of 
1865 he went East on a visit, and while in New 
York he delivered before the Travellers’ Club an 
address on Montana, descriptive of the territory’s 
resources, which was later published. On his re¬ 
turn he wrote an account of his journey under 
the title A Trip to the States . In 1869, the year 
following the expiration of his term as chief jus¬ 
tice, he was appointed postmaster at Virginia 
City and served till 1872 when he removed to 
San Francisco. There he resided until his death, 
holding positions in the custom-house and in the 
state mining bureau. He also continued his lit¬ 
erary work and in 1887 published Bacon and 
Shakespeare in the Sonnets, exploiting the Ba¬ 
conian cipher theory. He likewise continued his 
Masonic activities until his death. Hosmer was 
three times married: to Sarah Seward, who died 
in 1839; to Jane Thompson, who died in 1848; 
and to Mary Stower, who died in 1858. 

[The most authentic account of Hosmer’s life, con¬ 
tained in Contributions to the Hist. Soc . of Mont., vol. 
Ill (1900), is partially reprinted in Tom Stout, Mon¬ 
tana: Its Story and Biog. (1921), vol. I. See also R. 
G. Raymer, Montana: The Land and the People (1930), 
vol. I; J. B. Hosmer, Geneal. of the Hosmer Family 
(1861); and the Morning Call (San Francisco), Nov. 
1,1893d C.S.L. 

HOSMER, JAMES KENDALL (Jan. 29, 
1834-May 11, 1927), author, librarian, was bom 
in Northfield, Mass., the son of George Wash¬ 
ington and Hanna Poor (Kendall) Hosmer. He 
was descended from James Hosmer, a native of 
Hawkhurst, Kent, England, who emigrated to 
America in 1635 and settled at Concord, Mass. 
At seventeen Hosmer entered Harvard, and for 
four years after his graduation in 1855 he re¬ 
mained in Cambridge as a theological student 
In i860 he was ordained minister of the Uni¬ 
tarian Church at Deerfield, Mass. Two years 
later he enlisted as a private in the 52nd Massa¬ 
chusetts Volunteer Infantry. After his regiment 
was mustered out, in 1863, he prepared for pub¬ 
lication his war-time journal under the title The 
Color-Guard (1864). It elicited warm praise 


Hosmer 

from eminent critics of the time, was read widely 
in both England and America, and opened the 
way to contacts with persons of distinction, 
which Hosmer kept up during most of his life. 

Hosmer returned to his parish in Deerfield, 
but he had long felt that, because of his some¬ 
what unorthodox ideas, he was unsuited for the 
ministry. It was therefore without hesitation 
that in 1866 he accepted a position as professor 
of rhetoric and English literature in Antioch Col¬ 
lege, Ohio, which he retained until 1872. The 
next twenty years he spent in Missouri, as pro¬ 
fessor of history at the state university at Co¬ 
lumbia from 1872 to 1874 and as professor of 
English and German literature at Washington 
University at St Louis from 1874 to 1892. From 
1892 to 1904 he was librarian of the Minneapolis 
Public Library and for the rest of his life he re¬ 
mained in Minneapolis, except for brief periods 
of residence in Boston and in Washington, D. C. 

In spite of his arduous duties as college pro¬ 
fessor and librarian, Hosmer still found time for 
considerable literary activity. Many of his sto¬ 
ries and articles appeared in magazines and 
newspapers. His third book, A Short History of 
German Literature , published in 1878, did much 
toward establishing his reputation as a scholar 
and has been widely used by students of German. 
The favorable reception of this work led to an 
invitation to contribute to the Story of the Na¬ 
tions series a volume on The Story of the Jems 
(1885), a vivid and sympathetic account of the 
history of that people. Three biographies by 
Hosmer, Samuel Adams (1885, American States¬ 
men series), The Life of Young Sir Henry Vane 
(1888), and The Life of Thomas Hutchinson 
(1896), written at a time when impartiality and 
restraint were not the fashion among biog¬ 
raphers, are noteworthy for those qualities. 
Among Hosmer’s other historical publications 
are: A Short History of Anglo-Saxon Freedom 
(1890); A Short History of the Mississippi Val¬ 
ley (1901) ; The History of the Louisiana Pur¬ 
chase (1902) ; and two volumes, The Appeal to 
Arms, 1861-63 (1907) and Outcome of the Civil 
War , 1863-65 (1907), in the American Nation 
series. Though they make little contribution to 
historical knowledge, they are well written and 
some of them have been widely read. Hosmer 
also wrote two novels, The Thinking Bayonet 
(1865) and How Thankful Was Bewitched 
(1894), and a book of reminiscences, The Last 
Leaf (1912). He edited a reprint of the 1814 
edition of the History of the Expedition of Cap¬ 
tains Lewis and Clark (1902), a reprint of the 
1811 edition of Gass’s Journal of the Lewis and 
Clark Expedition (1904), and Winthrop’s Jour- 


244 



Hosmer 

nd (1908). He was a member of several his- 
torical societies, a fellow of the American Acad¬ 
emy of Arts and Sciences, and, in 1902, president 
of the American Library Association. He was 
twice married; on Oct. 15,1863, to Eliza A. Cut¬ 
ler, who died in 1877, and on Nov. 27, 1878, to 
Jenny P. Garland. 

[In the last years of his life Hosmer wrote an exten¬ 
sive autobiography, a copy of which is in the possession 
of the Minn. Hist. Soc. Other sources include: Report 
of the Secretary of the Class of 1855 of Harvard Coll. 
(1865) ; Apocrypha Concerning the Class of 1855 of 
Harvard Coll . (1880) ; G. L. Hosmer, Hosmer Geneal. 
(1928) ; Proc. of the Am. Antiq. Soc., n.s., XXXVII 
(1928); Who's Who in America, 1926-27; Library 
Jour., June 1, 1927 ; Libraries, June 1927 ; the Christian 
Reg., June 2, 1927 ; New Eng. Hist, and Gened . Reg., 
Oct. 1928 ; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, Nov. 26, 
1902, May 12, 13, 1927.] S.J.B. 

HOSMER, TITUS (1737-Aug. 4, 1780), 
statesman, lawyer, was bom at Middletown, 
Conn., the third son and eighth child of Capt 
Stephen and Deliverance (Graves) Hosmer. He 
was descended from Thomas Hosmer of Hawk- 
hurst, Kent, England, who settled at Newtown 
(Cambridge, Mass.) before 1632 and went with 
Thomas Hooker to Hartford in 1636. After re¬ 
ceiving his preliminary education, Hosmer en¬ 
tered Yale College and was granted the degree 
of A.B. in 1757, receiving a Berkeley scholarship 
at graduation. He then studied law and upon 
his admission to the bar settled in Middletown 
to practise his profession. A year later, in No¬ 
vember 1761, he was married to Lydia Lord. 
They had seven children, the eldest of whom was 
Stephen Titus Hosmer, later chief justice of the 
supreme court of Connecticut. A lawyer of abil¬ 
ity, Hosmer speedily won for himself a success¬ 
ful practice as well as sundry civil offices. After 
holding several town offices and serving as jus¬ 
tice of the peace, he was elected in October 1773 
a representative to the General Assembly. He 
was repeatedly reelected until May 1778 when 
he was elected an Assistant, and this office he 
held by annual reelection up to the time of his 
death. As speaker of the House of Representa¬ 
tives in 1777, he did much to influence the legis¬ 
lature to prosecute vigorous measures against 
Great Britain. During part of the Revolutionary 
War he was a member of the Committee of Safe¬ 
ty and in 1778 was a member of the Continental 
Congress and one of the signers of the Articles 
of Confederation (July 9, 1778). 

Hosmer had a natural taste for good literature 
and collected a library of more than two hundred 
books. His home was a rendezvous for people of 
culture for he was a courteous and genial host 
and found great pleasure in intelligent company. 
Joel Barlow credits the writing of his chief poet¬ 
ical attempt, The Vision of Columbus, to the in- 


Hosmer 

terest and encouragement given him by Hosmer 
(Joel Barlow, post). In deliberative bodies, 
Hosmer commanded attention and admiration 
by his clear and logical argumentation. Noah 
Webster ranked him with William Samuel John¬ 
son of Stratford, and Oliver Ellsworth of Wind¬ 
sor, chief justice of the United States. By an act 
of Congress of Jan. 15, 1780, a court of appeals 
consisting of three judges was formed, its prin¬ 
cipal function being the revision of maritime and 
admiralty cases. To this court Hosmer was elect¬ 
ed a member, but he never entered upon the du¬ 
ties of the office for he died suddenly within a 
few months after his appointment 
[Joel Barlow, An Eulogy on the Late Hon. Titus 
Hosmer (1780) ; David D. Field, Centennial Address 
( 1 Ss3), pp, 96-98; F. B. Dexter, Biog. Sketches of the 
Grads, of Yale Coll., vol. II (1896); J. B. Hosmer, 
Geneal. of the Hosmer Family (1861) ; G. H. Hollister, 
Hist, of Conn . (1855), II, 643; C. B. Todd, Life and 
Letters of Joel Barlow (1886) ; Conn. Hist. Soc. Colls., 
vol. II (1870); The Pub. Records of the Colony of 
Conn., vol. XV (1890), ecL by C. J. Hoadly.] 

L H S 

HOSMER, WILLIAM HOWE CUYLER 

(May 25, 1814-May 23, 1877), poet, was born 
at Avon, N. Y., the son of George and Elizabeth 
(Berry) Hosmer, and the sixth in descent from 
Thomas Hosmer of Hawkhurst, Kent, who emi¬ 
grated to Newtown (Cambridge, Mass.) before 
1632 and followed Thomas Hooker to Hartford 
in 1636. His grandfather, Timothy Hosmer, a 
brother of Titus Hosmer [q.v.], served as a sur¬ 
geon in the Continental Army, migrated from 
Farmington, Conn., to the Genesee Valley in 
1792-93, and became the first judge of the court 
of common pleas of Ontario County. His father 
was a lawyer; his mother spoke several Indian 
languages and imparted her sympathy for the 
Indians to her son, who studied them not only in 
western New York but in Wisconsin (1836) and 
Florida (1838-39). Hosmer was educated at 
Temple Hill Academy, Geneseo, and Geneva 
(now Hobart) College (A.B., 1837) and spent 
the greater part of his life in the practice of law 
at Avon. His local reputation as a poet began in 
his student days. He married Stella Hinchman 
Avery of Owego, Oct. 16, 1838; was a clerk in 
the New York custom house, 1834-58; enlisted 
Nov. 12, 1862, as a private in the 26th Battery 
of New York Volunteers; and, though rejected 
by the surgeon, managed to accompany the bat¬ 
tery to New Orleans and on Gen. N. P. Banks’s 
Red River expedition. Meanwhile his son Wil¬ 
liam was drowned; another son Charles was 
killed, May 3,1863, at Chancellorsville; his wife 
died in 1864; and Hosmer, with his health enfee¬ 
bled by dysentery, returned home forlorn and 
prematurely old. Beginning as a young man, he 
had contributed poems to newspapers, maga- 


245 



Hotchkiss Hotchkiss 


zines, and the sessions of various societies. His 
separate pamphlets and volumes include The Pio¬ 
neers of Western New-York (Geneva, 1838); 
The Prospects of the Age (Burlington, Vt., 1841) ; 
Themes of Song (Rochester, 1842); Yonnondio, 
or Warriors of the Genesee: A Tale of the Sev¬ 
enteenth Century (New York, 1844); “Genun- 
dewah,” in Henry Schoolcraft's Address Deliv¬ 
ered Before the Was-Ah Ho-De-No-Son-Ne 
(Rochester, 1846) ; The Months (Boston, 1847) ; 
“Lament for Sa-sa-na,” in A Memorial for 
Sa-sa-na, the Mohawk Maiden , Who Perished 
in the Rail Road Disaster at Deposit, N. Y., 
Pel. 18 , 1852 (Hamilton, N. Y., 1852); The 
Poetical Works of William H. C. Hosmer (2 
vols., New York, 1854); Agricultural Ode 
(Lansing, Mich., 1864); and Later Lays and 
Lyrics (Rochester, 1873). His originality lay 
in his enthusiastic attempt to embody in his verse 
the legends, traditions, and spirit of the Seneca 
Indians; the seven cantos of Yonnondio contain 
some good narrative, and the “Legends of the 
Senecas” and the “Indian Traditions and Songs” 
can be read with interest He is at his best, how¬ 
ever, in the poems descriptive of his native 
region, particularly in “Bird-Notes” and “The 
Months,” in which his affectionate observation 
of nature overcomes a clumsy, rhetorical style. 
He died at Avon at the close of his sixty-third 
year. 

[Geneal. Records of the Pioneer Families of Avon, 
N. Y. (1871) ; E. M. and C. H. T. Avery, The Groton 
Avery Clan (1912), 362; R. W. Griswold, The Poets 

and Poetry of America (16th ed., 1855); L. R. Doty, 
Hist, of Livingston County, N. Y. (1905); Hobart 
Coll. Gen. Cat. of Officers, Grads., and Students, 1825— 
97 (1897); Ann. Report of the Adjutant-Gen. of the 
State of N. Y. for the year 1897. Serial No. 15 (1898); 
N. Y. Tribune, May 24, 1877.] G.H.G. 

HOTCHKISS, BENJAMIN BERKELEY 

(Oct 1, 1826-Feb. 14, 1885), inventor, manu¬ 
facturer, was born in Watertown, Conn., the son 
of Asahel A. and Althea (Guernsey) Hotch¬ 
kiss and a descendant of Samuel Hotchkiss who 
settled in New Haven about 1641. When Ben¬ 
jamin was three years old his parents moved to 
Sharon, Conn., where the elder Hotchkiss en¬ 
gaged in hardware manufacture. Benjamin early 
displayed an unusual aptitude in mechanics, and 
after completing the common school curricula he 
entered a machine shop and learned the ma¬ 
chinist's trade. During that time an older broth¬ 
er, Andrew, was experimenting with a new form 
of cannon projectile, and after completing his 
apprenticeship Benjamin joined with him in 
perfecting it. Their experiments were conducted 
more or less as a side issue to their regular occu¬ 
pations in the hardware factory, and it was not 
until around 1855 that they had progressed far 


enough with their new projectile to try to inter¬ 
est possible purchasers. In that year they gave 
an exhibition at the Navy Yard, Washington, 
D. C., but failed to arouse the interest they ex¬ 
pected Although somewhat discouraged they 
continued experimenting and finally in 1859, 
after staging a demonstration of the accuracy of 
their product, they deliberately made a present 
of a supply of projectiles to the Liberal govern¬ 
ment of Mexico. The following year they fur¬ 
nished several hundred to the Japanese govern¬ 
ment, and then, toward the close of i860, suc¬ 
ceeded in obtaining a small order from the 
United States. Thereafter, Hotchkiss devoted 
his energy chiefly to improvements in ordnance. 
With the outbreak of the Civil War large orders 
for projectiles and other ordnance were received 
from the Federal government and to fill these 
Hotchkiss established a manufactory in New 
York City. During the war he supplied a larger 
number of cannon projectiles than all other mak¬ 
ers combined. Besides managing the factory he 
carried on extensive experiments and secured 
many patents. His inventions included an im¬ 
proved percussion fuse; a punch projectile for 
use against ironclads; improvements in time 
fuses; an improved rifling for guns; and a new 
projectile superior to the earlier one. He even 
found time to devise new products for the hard¬ 
ware factory, such as a machine for riveting 
curry combs. After the war, he continued his 
inventive work, patenting among other things 
an explosive shell and a packing for projectiles, 
as well as an improved snap hook for harnesses. 
He also became interested in street-railways 
and devised a railway track and pavement. With 
the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, he 
contracted with the French government to man¬ 
ufacture his patented metallic cartridge cases 
for small arms. While engaged in this work in 
France, his attention was called to the defects 
of the machine gun then used by the French 
army and he set about designing a more practi¬ 
cal one. This he completed and patented in 1872. 
It was distinguished by having five rifled bar¬ 
rels grouped around a common axis which re¬ 
volved in front of a solid breech-block having in 
one part an opening to introduce the cartridge 
and another through which to extract the empty 
shells. Immediately adopted by France and sub¬ 
sequently by the larger nations of the world, it 
entirely altered the sphere of action of the ma¬ 
chine gun from a defensive to an offensive 
weapon. Following this war Hotchkiss con¬ 
tinued his residence and factory branch in 
France so as to be in a better position to intro¬ 
duce his machine guns and projectiles into Eu- 


246 



Hotchkiss 

ropean countries. In 1875 he perfected a maga¬ 
zine rifle, which he brought to the United States 
in 1876 and exhibited at the Centennial Exhibi¬ 
tion in Philadelphia, Pa. Shortly thereafter he 
sold the patent rights to the Winchester Repeat¬ 
ing Arms Company, New Haven, Conn., and 
after certain improvements had been made and 
patented by this firm, it was adopted first by the 
United States army and later by the navy. 
Hotchkiss did not live to see his gun become 
the standard rifle of England and France. In 
1882 he organized the firm of Hotchkiss & Com¬ 
pany, with headquarters in the United States 
and branch factories in England, Germany, Aus¬ 
tria, Russia, and Italy. Out of the thousands of 
guns made in these factories prior to his death, 
only two failed to meet the required standard. 
Such was the quality and extent of his work that 
he won the reputation of being the most expert 
artillery engineer in the world. He was an inde¬ 
fatigable worker and was engaged in making 
improvements on his machine gun when his sud¬ 
den death at Paris occurred. He was buried in 
Sharon, Conn.; his wife, Maria H. (Bissell) 
Hotchkiss, whom he had married May 27, 1850, 
survived him. 

[J. L. Bishop, A Hist. of Am. Manufactures, vol. II 
(1864) ; C. B. Norton, Am. Inventions and Improve¬ 
ments in Breech-Loading Small Arms and Heavy Ord¬ 
nance (1880); E. W. Very, The Hotchkiss Revolving 
Cannon (1885); E. S. Farrow, Farrow's Military En- 
cyc. (1885), vol. II; W. R. Cutter, Geneal. and Family 
Hist, of the State of Conn. (4 vols., 1911) ; Journal des 
Dehats, Paris, Feb. 16, 1885; National Museum cor¬ 
respondence ; Patent Office records.} c. W. M. 

HOTCHKISS, HORACE LESLIE (Mar. 
27, 1842-May 10, 1929), financier, promoter, a 
descendant of Samuel Hotchkiss who settled in 
New Haven, Conn., about 1641, was bom at Au¬ 
burn, N. Y., the son of Clark Beers and Caroline 
(Bennett) Hotchkiss. He received his school¬ 
ing at the Albany Academy, and when he was 
fourteen years old he went to New York, where 
he became a clerk in the old American Exchange 
Bank at 50 Wall St. During the Civil War he 
served in the United States navy, participating 
in the battle of Mobile Bay. In 1867 he was one 
of the organizers of the Gold & Stock Telegraph 
Company, serving as its secretary and treasurer 
until 1871, and was active in promoting the suc¬ 
cess of the stock quotation ticker, invented in 
1867 by E. A. Calahan, a telegraph operator, the 
rights to which were acquired by the Gold & 
Stock Telegraph Company. He also organized 
the American District Telegraph Company in 
1871 and assisted in developing the Exchange 
Telegraph Company of London, England, in 
1873, I* 1 this company he continued as a director 
until the time of his death. 


Ho tz 

After resigning as treasurer of the Gold & 
Stock Telegraph Company, he interested him¬ 
self in financial undertakings, becoming a mem¬ 
ber of the New York Stock Exchange in 1874. 
He inaugurated the system of branch offices of 
New York Stock Exchange firms, running a 
telegraph wire from his firm’s office at 30 Broad 
St. over the housetops uptown to the Fifth Ave¬ 
nue Hotel at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 
Twenty-third Street. Among his many promo¬ 
tions was the Nicaragua Canal Construction 
Company, which was organized in 1886 and con¬ 
tinued in existence until 1891, during which pe¬ 
riod about $4,000,000 was expended in an unsuc¬ 
cessful attempt to build a canal. He was also a 
director of the Standard Assets Company, the 
Cotton Gathering Corporation, the Cotton & 
Harvesting Machine Company, and was actively 
interested in a number of other business corpora¬ 
tions. He remained active in financial under¬ 
takings. He also took a prominent part in the 
Grant Memorial Association, acting for some 
time as its treasurer. 

An enthusiastic sportsman, he was particular¬ 
ly interested in promoting golf in the United 
States. He organized both the Senior Golf Tour¬ 
nament and the United States Senior Golf Asso¬ 
ciation, of which he was the honorary president. 
He was a former vice president of the Union 
League Club and a life member of the New York 
Yacht Club. In politics he was a Republican and 
in religion, a Christian Scientist. 

He was twice married: on June 26, 1867, to 
Clara Taylor of Stamford, Conn., who died in 
1921; and on Oct 28,1922, at the age of eighty, 
to Lucy May Johnson, a former teacher at Fort 
Worth, Tex. His death occurred at San An¬ 
tonio, Tex., when he was in his eighty-eighth 
year. 

r Who's Who in America, 1928-29; N. Y. Times, and 
N. Y. Herald-Tribune, May 11, 1929; Joseph Ander¬ 
son, The Town and City of Waterbury, Conn . (1896), 
II, 204; H. L. Hotchkiss, “The Stock Ticker,” in E. C. 
Stedman, The N. Y. Stock Exchange, vol. I (1905).] 

A.M.S. 

HOTZ, FERDINAND CARL (July 12,1843- 
Mar, 21, 1909), ophthalmologist, was bom at 
Wertheim, Baden, Germany, the son of Gott¬ 
fried and Rosa Hotz. At the age of nine he en¬ 
tered the Lyceum of Wertheim and was gradu¬ 
ated in his eighteenth year, having received the 
first prize for scholarship each year during his 
course. In October 1861 he entered the Univer¬ 
sity of Jena and two years later he entered the 
University of Heidelberg (M.D., 1865) where 
he was soon appointed first assistant He worked 
under Helmholz in physiology, Knapp in oph¬ 
thalmology, and Friedrich in surgery, tinder 


247 



Houdini 


Houdini 


whom he received the training that was to fit 
him for the field in which he became widely 
known in later life—plastic surgery of the eye. 
In the fall of 1865 he received his state license to 
practise medicine, but he remained in Heidel¬ 
berg as first assistant in the surgical clinic. After 
serving as surgeon during the Austro-Prussian 
War, he went to Berlin in 1867 to study ophthal¬ 
mology under Albrecht von Graefe and in 1868 
he went to Vienna for further work in ophthal¬ 
mology and otology under Professors Arlt, Po- 
litzer, and Jaeger. In August 1868 he accepted 
the position of first assistant to Professor Knapp 
in the eye clinic in Heidelberg. The following 
year he went to London, where he did further 
work in the eye clinics, and from London he 
went to Edinburgh to acquaint himself with the 
work of Joseph Lister who was then just intro¬ 
ducing his antiseptic agents into surgery. Re¬ 
turning to London, he met a friend who per¬ 
suaded him to settle in America and later in the 
same year, 1869, he arrived in Chicago, where he 
opened an office on Clark Street and established 
himself as a general surgeon. In 1871 he de¬ 
cided to specialize in ophthalmology and otology 
and was appointed oculist and aurist to the Cook 
County Hospital, Chicago. He resigned as sur¬ 
geon to the Cook County Hospital in 1876 and 
accepted a similar position at the Illinois Char¬ 
itable Eye and Ear Infirmary. Two years later 
he performed for the first time the plastic opera¬ 
tion for the entropion (described in the Archives 
of Ophthalmology, vol. VIII, no. 2, 1879). He 
also performed the first recorded mastoid opera¬ 
tion in Chicago. In 1898 he was appointed to 
the chair of ophthalmology and otology at Rush 
Medical College and of ophthalmology at the 
Presbyterian Hospital, Chicago, which position 
he held until his death. He had married, in 1873, 
Emma Rosenmerkel, the daughter of a pioneer 
druggist and chemist of Chicago. His broad 
training in the different fields of medicine and 
surgery was evidenced in his teachings, his 
writing, and in his practice. He made many val¬ 
uable contributions to the literature of ophthal¬ 
mology and his work in the field of plastic sur¬ 
gery of the eyelids gave him an international 
reputation. 


Who s Who in America, 1908-09; Jour, of Oth- 
thalmol.,.Otol, and Laryngol., May 1909; IlLMedic. 
^ ay if? 0 ?-’ Ophthalmic Record, May 1898; Jour 

Cht^'r ^f diCt & S °‘* Mar> 27 i 1909 > Chicago News, 
Chicago Tribune, Mar. 22, 1909.] W G R 


HOUDINI, HARRY (Apr. 6, 1874-Oct. 31, 
1926), magician, author, was the fifth child of 
Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weiss and Cecelia Steiner 
of Budapest He was born not long after his 


parents had emigrated to Appleton, Wis., and 
was named Ehrich. Early in his career as a ma¬ 
gician he took the name of Harry Houdini. As 
the opportunities for a Jewish scholar were few 
in Wisconsin, the boy had to contribute to the 
family income at an early age. At twelve he ran 
away, in time reaching New York, and later the 
family moved there. Upon the death of Rabbi 
Weiss in 1892 Ehrich contributed largely to the 
family income. He worked at a variety of odd 
jobs, but from his earliest years his great inter¬ 
est was in magic and feats of dexterity. He 
gleaned the rudiments of his profession in side¬ 
shows, circuses, and from books, and was al¬ 
ready giving public entertainments in magic be¬ 
fore his father s death. He had a brief partner¬ 
ship with his brother Theodore, known as Har- 
deen, but that terminated in June 1894 upon his 
sudden marriage to Wilhelmina Rahner, who 
took the name of Beatrice Houdini and became 
his assistant. Until 1900 the Houdinis led a pre¬ 
carious existence, although they were engaged 
at Tony Pastor’s theatre in 1895 and later 
through Martin Beck secured an engagement on 
the Orpheum circuit. For the most part they ap¬ 
peared in circuses and small shows, doing a va¬ 
riety of minor tricks. Even with his skill, Hou¬ 
dini was unable to draw large contracts and in 
1900 he determined to go abroad. By a sensa¬ 
tional escape from Scotland Yard he became a 
headliner at the Alhambra Theatre in London 
and then set out on a tour which lasted four years 
and which took him about the Continent. 

Upon his return to the United States he soon 
gained wide publicity. In all types of theatrical 
magic he was a master, but it was as an escape 
artist that he built up his reputation. By his ex¬ 
pert knowledge of mechanics and his ability to 
invent the most intricate devices, he was able 
to extricate himself from handcuffs, safes, and 
locked and sealed containers of all kinds , When 
his escapes depended upon sheer strength and 
dexterity, or when they depended upon the use 
of instruments which he could employ without 
being detected, he executed them in full view of 
the audience. For more difficult escapes he made 
use of a cabinet and occasionally a confederate, 
out of sight of the audience. He was a superb 
trickster, not above using any means for deceiv¬ 
ing the public, but he always emphasized the 
fact that he never resorted to supernatural phe¬ 
nomena for the accomplishment of his acts. A 
large part of his success was the result of mere 
showmanship. 

Having named himself for Robert-Houdin, 
self-acclaimed as the greatest magician of all 
time, Houdini decided to write 4 book on his 


248 



Hough 

prototype. In searching for material on his sub- 
ject he found him to be a much overrated person 
and published his study as The Unmasking of 
Robert-Houdin (1908). His search for old play¬ 
bills, papers, books, and prints, in connection 
with the book, started him on a career as a col¬ 
lector, and at his death he left a remarkable col¬ 
lection of material on magic and spiritualism to 
the Library of Congress in Washington. He had 
also a fine drama library and collection of man¬ 
uscripts. An intense desire to communicate 
with his mother, who died in 1913, led him into 
an investigation of spiritualism. Finding no me¬ 
dium whose results he could credit, he launched 
a strenuous campaign against spiritualists as a 
class. As a result of his investigations he pub¬ 
lished A Magician Among the Spirits (1924). 
Among his other activities, Houdini for two 
years, 1906-08, edited and wrote most of the 
contents of the Conjurer’s Monthly, and in 1920 
he published Miracle Mongers and Their Meth¬ 
ods. He organized the Magicians* Club of Lon¬ 
don and was president for several years of the 
Society of American Magicians. He starred in 
three motion picture serials after the war. He 
was a curious combination of aggressiveness and 
sentimentality. Though he was capable of in¬ 
dulging in bitter feuds and violent bursts of tem¬ 
per, he was devotedly fond of his wife during 
their thirty years together and, after 1913, spent 
hours at the grave of his mother when he was 
in New York. He died in Detroit of peritonitis 
brought on by an unexpected blow on the ab¬ 
domen. 

[In addition to Houdini’s books mentioned in the text 
see: Harold Kellock, Houdini (1928), compiled from 
the diaries and papers of the magician; W. B. Gibson, 
Houdini*$ Escapes (1930); the Outlook, Nov. 10, 1926; 
Who's Who in America, 1924-25 ; J. B. Kennedy, 
“Houdini Made Himself the Master Magician,” N. Y. 
Times, Nov. 7, 1926; obituary in N. Y. Times, Nov. 1, 

K.H.A. 

HOUGH, CHARLES MERRILL (May 18, 
1858-Apr. 22, 1927), jurist, son of Brig.-Gen. 
Alfred Lacey Hough and Mary (Merrill) 
Hough, was bom in Philadelphia, Pa. His fa¬ 
ther was of Quaker stock; Thomas Hough of 
Macclesfield, England, the original settler, emi¬ 
grated to Pennsylvania about 1685 and later set¬ 
tled in central New Jersey. His mother was de¬ 
scended from Nathaniel Merrill, who settled at 
Salem, Mass., in 1632. Life at frontier army 
posts afforded meager educational opportuni¬ 
ties, but he had the advantage of a year at the 
Kimball Union Academy, Meriden, N. H., be¬ 
fore entering Dartmouth College, from which he 
graduated in 1879. Debarred by defective eye¬ 
sight from army life, he taught school for a year 


Hough 

after graduation and then studied law in the of¬ 
fice of Richard C. McMurtrie in Philadelphia. 
Admitted to the bar in 1883, he removed to New 
York City the following year to join the firm 
of Biddle & Ward (later Robinson, Biddle & 
Ward), with which he was associated through¬ 
out his professional career. After twenty years 
of active practice, during which he attained 
a leading position in maritime law, he was ap¬ 
pointed by President Roosevelt in 1906 United 
States district judge for the southern district 
of New York. Although a Republican in poli¬ 
tics, he was appointed by President Wilson in 
1916 United States circuit judge for the 2nd 
circuit. 

Hough’s health was precarious throughout his 
twenty years of judicial service, but his dynamic 
personality made a deep impression upon his 
contemporaries. The steady concentration of lit¬ 
igation in his jurisdiction imposed an incredible 
task. In ten years as a trial judge he conducted 
more than 1,200 trials and filed 1,809 written 
opinions. As an appellate judge, in the course 
of a decade he participated in the hearing of 
2,047 cases, in 675 of which he wrote the opin¬ 
ion of the court. Only a vigorous and decisive 
mind could cope with such labors; there was lit¬ 
tle opportunity for reflection. His mind was 
never tortured by doubt, and his courage in his 
convictions was unfaltering. He was at his best 
as a trial judge. There the high initial velocity 
of his mind was conspicuously effective in mas¬ 
tering facts, analyzing evidence, and applying 
general principles to concrete cases. The force 
of common sense and caustic humor could go no 
further than in his drastic treatment of any ef¬ 
fort to evade an issue. While he had a well- 
stored mind, his distinction was due to the com¬ 
bination of gifts not less essential than learning 
to the successful discharge of his varied duties. 
His reported opinions are scattered through 174 
volumes of the Federal Reporter. Characteris¬ 
tic specimens of his clarity of thought and vigor 
of expression may be found in his exposition of 
the constitutionality of the New York Housing 
Law of 1920 (269 Fed., 306); and in his opin¬ 
ions rendered in Associated Press vs. Interna¬ 
tional News Service (245 Fed., 244), on prop¬ 
erty rights in news; The Saturnus (250 Fed., 
407), on admiralty jurisdiction; and The Napoli 
(278 Fed., 770), on novel problems of war risk 
insurance. From 1919 to 1927 Hough was pres¬ 
ident of the Maritime Law Association of the 
United States and in 1922 was a delegate to the 
International Conference on Maritime Laws at 
Brussels. He made some noteworthy contribu¬ 
tions to law reviews and lectured on legal sub- 


249 



Hough 

jects at Harvard, Cornell, and Pennsylvania. 
In 1925 he published under the auspices of a 
committee of the bar Reports of Cases in the 
Vice-admiralty of the Province of New York 
and in the Court of Admiralty of the State of 
New Yorkj 1715 - 88 . He died in New York 
City and was buried in the family burying 
ground near Mount Holly, N. J., among five 
generations of his ancestors. He had married, 
on Nov. 21, 1903, Ethel Powers, by whom he 
had two children. 

[ Who’s Who in America, 19 26-27; Annals of the 
Class of Eighteen Seventy-Nine, Dartmouth Coll., 
1879-1924 (1924) ; The Asso. of the Bar of the City of 
New York, Year Book, 1928 (1928); N. Y. Times, Apr. 
23,1927.] v.v.v. 

HOUGH, EMERSON (June 28, 1857-Apr. 
30,1923), journalist, author, was the son of Jo¬ 
seph Bond and Elizabeth (Hough) Hough and 
a descendant of John Hough of Chester, Eng¬ 
land, who landed near the mouth of the Dela¬ 
ware River in 1683. Emerson was born at New¬ 
ton, Iowa, whither his father had emigrated 
from Virginia. After graduating with only two 
other pupils from the little high school at New¬ 
ton, he taught a country school for a brief sea¬ 
son, then entered the State University of Iowa 
where he graduated in 1880. His father, who 
had been a Virginia schoolmaster, had chosen his 
college course and now insisted that he read law. 
The young man was admitted to the bar in New¬ 
ton, but when he prepared to practise, his natural 
bent led him toward the frontier. He set up his 
little office in Whiteoaks, “half cow town and 
half mining camp,” in south-central New Mex¬ 
ico, midway between the Rio Grande and the 
Pecos River. A better atmosphere for the nour¬ 
ishment of his own peculiar gifts could scarcely 
have been found. He was far more interested in 
hunting and fishing and in the rugged human life 
about him than he was in law. He began selling 
little sketches and articles on these subjects to 
the magazines devoted to sport and the outdoors 
and finally decided to make writing his profes¬ 
sion. After brief experiences in newspaper work 
at Des Moines and at Sandusky, Ohio, he ob¬ 
tained in 1889 the job of looking after the Chi¬ 
cago office of Forest and Stream, receiving a 
weekly salary of fifteen dollars which he pieced 
out by doing newspaper and syndicate writing. 

In 1895 Hough published his first book, The 
Singing Mouse Stories , a series of studies or 
reveries upon outdoor life. In the winter months 
of that year he explored the Yellowstone Park 
on skis, and his observations on this trip are 
largely responsible for an act of Congress pro¬ 
tecting the park buffalo, Thereafter he became 


Hough 

more and more widely known as a propagandist 
for the conservation of wild life and the preser¬ 
vation of the integrity of the national parks. On 
these subjects he wrote hundreds of newspaper 
and magazine articles. In 1897 he brought out 
The Story of the Cowboy , which was a favorite 
book of Theodore Roosevelt's. In 1900 appeared 
Hough's first novel, The Girl at the Half-way 
House, and in 1902, his first great success, The 
Mississippi Bubble , which became one of the 
year's best sellers. He said that he was holding 
four jobs at the time this book was produced, 
and that it was partly dictated at his office, part¬ 
ly written at home between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. 
Thereafter he was able to devote more and more 
of his time to free-lance writing, and his books 
appeared rapidly. The more important were: The 
Way to the West (1903); The Law of the Land 
(1904); Heart's Desire (1905); The Story of 
the Outlaw (1907) ; The Way of a Man (1907) ; 
54-40 or Fight! (1909); The Sowing (1909); 
The Purchase Price (1910); John Rawn 
(1912) ; The Lady and the Pirate (1913); The 
Magnificent Adventure (1916) ; The Man Next 
Door (1917); The Passing of the Frontier 
(2:918), Volume XXVI of the Chronicles of 
America series; The Way Out (1918); The 
Sagebrusher (1919); The Webb (1919); The 
Covered Wagon (1922); North of 36 (1923) 
and Mother of Gold (1924). The Covered Wag¬ 
on was made into one of the most popular mo¬ 
tion pictures which had been produced up to that 
time. Hough also wrote a series of books for 
boys chronicling the adventures of “The Young 
Alaskans.” For many years he was a contribu¬ 
tor to the Saturday Evening Post for which he 
conducted a regular page entitled “Out of Doors.” 
He was a good story teller and drew some clever 
pictures of Western characters, being particular¬ 
ly apt at catching the dialect and point of view 
of those numerous cowboys and ranchmen who 
were of Southern origin; but it is as a lover of 
nature and as a guardian of the national parks 
that he will be best remembered. He was married 
on Oct. 26, 1897, to Charlotte Amelia Cheesebro 
of Chicago, who was a descendant of the founder 
and first white settler of Stonington, Conn. 

[L. A. Stone, Emerson Hough; His Place in Am. 
Letters (1925); Who’s Who in America, 1922—23 > The 
Annals of Iowa, Oct. 1925; obituary notices in the 
American newspapers, May 1, 1923.] A.F.H. 

HOUGH, FRANKLIN BENJAMIN (July 
22, i822-June 11, 1885), forester, physician, was 
born in Martinsburg, Lewis County, N. Y., the 
§on of Dr. Horatio G. Hough, the first physician 
to settle in the county, and Martha (Pitcher) 
Hough. He was christened Benjamin Franklin, 


250 



Hough 

but when he was eight the order of the names 
was reversed. He was prepared for college at 
Lowville Academy and later at the Black River 
Institute at Watertown, N. Y. In 1840 he en¬ 
tered Union College with advanced standing, 
graduating in 1843. After a year's teaching at 
the Academy of Champion, N. Y., he became 
principal of Gustavus Academy in Ohio, but in 
1846 he decided upon a medical career and en¬ 
tered Western Reserve Medical College, where 
he received the degree of M.D. in 1848. He then 
returned to New York state and practised medi¬ 
cine in Somerville. 

Hough was interested not only in scientific 
studies, but also in historical research. He col¬ 
lected local historical data and edited documents 
of the Revolutionary and Indian Wars. In 1854 
he was chosen to direct the New York state cen¬ 
sus and carried on this work in Albany while 
continuing his work as a practising physician. 
In the early part of the Civil War he acted as 
inspector of the United States Sanitary Com¬ 
mission. In 1862 he enlisted as regimental sur¬ 
geon of the 97th New York Volunteers, serving 
until Mar. 10, 1863, during the Maryland and 
Virginia campaigns. After the war he settled 
in Lowville, N. Y. He superintended the New 
York state census of 1865 and edited a New York 
Convention Manual (2 vols., 1867) and an anno¬ 
tated copy of the prevailing constitution for the 
use of the convention assembled in 1867 to re¬ 
vise the constitution of New York state. He was 
then called upon to supervise the census of the 
District of Columbia in 1867, and subsequently 
he was selected as the superintendent of the 
United States census of 1870. These census 
studies revealed to him the rapid depletion of the 
nation’s forest resources. He recognized the 
danger of the popular impression that the timber 
of the United States was almost inexhaustible 
and undertook to place before the public the need 
of action to check the destructive agencies that 
were operating to devastate the forests. At the 
meeting of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science in Portland, Me., in 
1873, Hough presented a paper “On the Duty 
of Governments in the Preservation of Forests.” 
It resulted in Hough’s being appointed with 
George B. Emerson [g.z/.], to prepare a suitable 
memorial to Congress. The report of this com¬ 
mittee advocating the enactment of laws to en¬ 
courage forestry was indorsed by President 
Grant who transmitted the plan to Congress in 
February 1874. Two years later Congress took 
action and Hough was chosen to investigate the 
consumption of timber and the preservation of 
forests, receiving the appointment as forestry 


Hough 

agent in the Department of Agriculture on Aug. 
30, 1876. 

Hough's first report was completed in Decem¬ 
ber 1877. In 1881 he received a new commission 
carrying a larger appropriation from Congress. 
His work included travel in Europe where he 
studied the German system of forestry and of 
forest education. During the next two years, he 
issued his second and third official reports. This 
investigation, covering the timber and forest 
products of the whole period of our government, 
aroused wide international interest and was 
awarded a diploma of honor at the International 
Geographical Congress in Venice a few years 
later. When Nathaniel H. Egleston was appoint¬ 
ed the chief of the division of forestry in 1883, 
Hough remained as forestry agent to assist in the 
preparation of the fourth volume of the official 
forestry reports. In March 1885 he drafted a 
bill for the New York state legislature which 
created a comprehensive forestry commission 
for the state. Some of his more important books 
are: A Catalogue of Indigenous, Naturalized 
and Filicoid Plants of Lewis County, N. Y. 
(1846) ; History of St. Lawrence and Franklin 
Counties, N. Y. (1853); History of Duryee’s 
Brigade in 1862 (1864) ; Washingtoniana, or 
Memorials of the Death of George Washington 
(1865) i American Biographical Notes (1875) l 
and Elements of Forestry (1882). He has to his 
credit seventy-eight publications, including gov¬ 
ernment reports and bulletins on history, me¬ 
teorology, climatology, education, law, and civil 
records. In addition to these he edited numer¬ 
ous colonial documents and translated Lucien 
Baudens’ Guerre de Crimee under the title: On 
Military and Camp Hospitals (1862). He pub¬ 
lished the first American Journal of Forestry in 
October 1882, but he was forced to abandon this 
project within about a year on account of lack of 
subscribers. He was also interested in geology 
and is said to have discovered the mineral known 
as houghite. Although he was not a professional 
forester, his contribution to the forestry move¬ 
ment was outstanding, particularly in educating 
public opinion toward a more conservative use 
of forest resources. He was the first federal of¬ 
ficial in forestry, and he efficiently prepared the 
way for the work of his successors. On July 9, 
1845, Hough married Maria S. Eggleston of 
Champion, N. Y., who died on June 2, 1848, 
leaving an infant daughter. On May 16, 1849, 
he was married to Mariah E. Kilham of Turin, 
N. Y. They had eight children. 

£T. H. Fearey, Union CoU. Alumni in the Civil War 
(1915); B. E. Femow, A Brief Hist, of Forestry 
(1911 ); “Franklin B. Hough/' Am. Forests and Forest 
Life, July 1922; F. B. Hough, Hist, of Lewis County, 


251 



Hough 

N. Y. (i860), and Letters and Extracts from Testi¬ 
monials Accompanying the Application of Dr. Franklin 
B. Hough for Appointment as Superintendent of the 
Ninth Census (1870); R. B. Hough, “Indpiency of 
the Forestry Movement in America,” Am. Forestry, 
Aug. 1913 ; N. Y. Geneal . and Biog. Record, Apr. 1886 ; 

J. H. Hickcox, “A Bibliog. of the Writings of Frank¬ 
lin Benj. Hough ” 99th Ann . Report of the Regents of 
the Univ . of the State of N. Y. (1886).] H. S.G. 

HOUGH, GEORGE WASHINGTON (Oct. 
24, 1836-Jan. 1, 1909), astronomer, was espe¬ 
cially noted for his systematic study of Jupiter, 
begun in 1879 and continued to the time of his 
death; for his discovery and measurement of 
many difficult double stars; and for his inven¬ 
tion and construction of astronomical and me¬ 
teorological instruments. Born at Tribes Hill, 
N. Y., the son of William and Magdalene (Selm- 
ser) Hough, he was descended from German 
ancestors who were early settlers in the Mohawk 
Valley. The boy evidently grew up with the idea 
of becoming an astronomer. It is said that he 
devised a contrivance of fish poles to measure 
the right ascensions and declinations of the stars 
when he was nine years old. His mechanical 
genius, inherited from his father, found early ex¬ 
pression in the harnessing of the brook to run his 
mother’s churn. He attended school at Water¬ 
loo and Seneca Falls, N. Y., and then entered 
Union College. After graduating in 1856 with 
high honors, he taught school in Dubuque, Iowa, 
for two years. He then took a year of graduate 
work in mathematics and engineering at Harvard 
University. In 1859 he went to the Cincinnati 
Observatory as assistant astronomer under 0 . 
M. Mitchel, and in the following year he went 
with Mitchel to the Dudley Observatory, where 
he succeeded the latter as director in 1862 and 
remained until 1874. Meanwhile, in 1870, he 
married Emma C. Shear, the daughter of Jacob 
H. Shear. From 1874 until 1879 he was engaged 
in commercial pursuits, then in 1879 he was ap¬ 
pointed director of the Dearborn Observatory, 
holding this position for the last thirty years of 
his life. 

At the Dudley Observatory Hough’s syste¬ 
matic astronomical and meteorological observa¬ 
tions suggested many instrumental improvements. 
He invented a machine for mapping and cata¬ 
loguing stars, and in 1865 he invented his record¬ 
ing and printing barometer in which the rising 
and falling of a float, resting on the surface of 
the mercury, was transmitted electrically to the 
recording device. He also devised a simpler ma¬ 
chine, called the meteorograph, which registered 
the height of the barometer and the temperatures 
by the wet and dry bulb thermometers. Another 
important invention was his automatic anemom- 


Hough 

eter for recording the direction and velocity of 
the wind. His study of batteries led him to the 
substitution of lead for copper in the Daniell 
cell and to the conclusion that the current in the 
exterior circuit depended on the specific gravity 
of the zinc sulphate. He was also interested in 
photography and invented a sensitometer for 
testing plates. In Chicago he perfected his print¬ 
ing chronograph and when the Dearborn Ob¬ 
servatory was moved to Evanston he had the 
great dome built on new and original plans, ap¬ 
plied an electric control to the telescope, and de¬ 
vised a very convenient observing chair. 

In 1869 the Dudley Observatory fitted out an 
expedition to observe the solar eclipse at Matoon, 
Ill. Hough, who was chief of the party, made at 
that time the first accurate record of the duration 
of “Baily’s Beads.” As early as 1867 he had be¬ 
come interested in double stars and had meas¬ 
ured a few close pairs at the Dudley Observa¬ 
tory. At the Dearborn Observatory he found S. 
W. Burnham measuring double stars with the 
18-inch telescope. He became fired with 
Burnham’s zeal for this field of observation with 
the result that he measured a large number, pay¬ 
ing especial attention to very difficult pairs, and 
discovered over six hundred new ones. It was 
at Dearborn, too, that he began and carried on 
throughout the rest of his life the systematic ob¬ 
servation of the surface details of Jupiter. 
Hough’s influence in scientific circles was wide¬ 
spread and he was an active member of many 
learned societies. 

[Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Soc., 
Feb. 1910; four, of the British Astronomical Asso., 
Feb. 19, 1909; the Observatory, Mar. 1909; Popular 
Astronomy, Apr. 1909; Pubs, of the Astronomical Soc. 
of the Pacific, Apr. 1909; Science, Apr. 30, 1909; 
Astrophysical Jour., July 1909; Who's Who in Amer¬ 
ica, 1908-09; N . y. Times, Jan. 3, 1909.] r. $.0, 

HOUGH, THEODORE (June 19,1865-Nov. 
30,1924), physiologist, was born at Front Royal, 
Va., the son of Rev. Robert Hough and Virginia 
(Baer) Hough. In 1886 he received the degree 
of A.B. from Johns Hopkins University and in 
1893, the degree of Ph.D., his major subject of 
study being physiology, under Prof. H. Newell 
Martin [ q.v .]. After obtaining the doctor’s de¬ 
gree, he entered at once on the teaching of bi¬ 
ology and physiology at the Massachusetts Insti¬ 
tute of Technology, first as instructor, then as 
assistant professor, being associated with Prof. 
William T. Sedgwick [ q.v .] in the course in bi¬ 
ology given at that institution. In 1903 he severed 
his connection with the Institute of Technology 
and went to the newly founded Simmons College, 
where he served as associate professor and later 
as professor of biology, resigning in 1907 to ac- 


252 



Hough 

cept the professorship of physiology at the Uni¬ 
versity of Virginia. While in Boston, Hough in 
collaboration with Sedgwick published The Hu - 
man Mechanism (1906), a noteworthy book on 
physiology, hygiene, and sanitation, which gained 
wide recognition. In February 1916, he assumed 
the duties of the deanship of the department of 
medicine at the University of Virginia, in addi¬ 
tion to his work as professor. During the period 
of his incumbency as dean, 1916 to 1924, the 
number of students was doubled, women were 
admitted to the department for the first time, the 
faculty was greatly enlarged, and the scope of 
instruction broadened. Hough made signal con¬ 
tributions to the general subject of medical edu¬ 
cation, the most conspicuous of which were his 
studies upon the proposed location of a state-sup- 
ported medical school in Virginia. His cogent 
arguments have permanent value in support of 
the principle that medical education is properly 
conceived as an integral part of a university 
scheme, and that its interests are best served un¬ 
der the conditions of close physical association 
between medical school and university. (See 
Alumni Bulletin of the University of Virginia , 
January 1921.) 

Hough was exceedingly well trained in the 
methods of experimental physiology and, so far 
as freedom from other duties permitted, he de¬ 
voted himself to research work in this field. He 
was especially interested in problems of respira¬ 
tion, and some thoroughly sound work came from 
his laboratory. Problems connected with hygiene 
likewise appealed to him and occupied much of 
his time. His first scientific paper was On the 
Escape of the Heart from Vagus Inhibition 
(1895), worked out while he was a graduate 
student, under the guidance of Martin. He also 
solved the problem of the physiology of the ex¬ 
ternal intercostal muscles. As stated by his bi¬ 
ographer, “his scientific work was not large in 
volume, but it was admirable in quality” (How¬ 
ell, post , p. 199). As a teacher he possessed 
the power to attract and hold the attention of his 
students, while as an administrator he had the 
confidence of his colleagues, his thoroughness 
and accuracy making him a dependable guide 
and leader. It was the combination of these sev¬ 
eral qualities, joined to his sincerity of character 
and pleasing personality, that gave Hough his 
standing in the scientific world and made him a 
force in the field of medical education. Thorough¬ 
ly scientific, with a keen appreciation of the rela¬ 
tive values of the fundamental sciences in medi¬ 
cal training and possessing sound judgment and 
clear vision, he was a safe guide in matters of 
medical curriculum, and during the later years of 


Hough 

his life his energies were devoted largely to 
furthering the activities of the national confer¬ 
ences on medical education. In 1909 he married 
Ella Guy Whitehead of Richmond, Va. He died 
suddenly in his office at the University of Vir¬ 
ginia. 

[W. H. Howell, “Memorial of Theodore Hough,” 
Science, Feh 20, 1925; Who’s Who in America, 1924- 
25 ; N. Y. Times, Dec. 2, 1924; information as to cer¬ 
tain facts furnished by Dr. H. E. Jordan, University of 
Virginia.] R H C 

HOUGH, WARWICK (Jan. 26, 1836-Oct. 
28, 1915)* Missouri lawyer, soldier, judge, son 
of George W. and Mary (Shawen) Hough, both 
natives of Loudoun County, Va., was born in 
that county, a descendant of Richard Hough, of 
Cheshire, England, who settled in Pennsylvania 
in 1683. The family moved to Missouri in 1838, 
settling in Jefferson City, the capital of the state. 
After graduating from the University of Mis¬ 
souri, Hough became chief clerk to the secretary 
of state at Jefferson City, where he studied law 
and was admitted to the bar in 1859. From 1858 
to 1861 he was secretary of the Missouri Senate. 
In January of the latter year he was appointed 
adjutant-general of the state, then a position of 
importance, because Gov. Claiborne Jackson was 
determined to maintain the doctrine of state 
rights, by arms if necessary. After the outbreak 
of the Civil War, there were two contending 
state governments in Missouri, the secessionist 
government of Jackson, supported by the state 
legislature, eventually realized by the Con¬ 
federacy, and the anti-secessionist government of 
Provisional-Gov. Hamilton R. Gamble, support¬ 
ed by the state convention and recognized by the 
federal authorities. Accepting the economic prin¬ 
ciples of the agricultural section of that part of 
the state in which he lived, the fertile Missouri 
Valley with large estates and slave labor. Hough 
adhered to the secessionist government, serving 
part of the time in the field with the state army 
under Gen. Sterling Price and part of the time as 
secretary of state. When the secessionist gov¬ 
ernment of Missouri was overthrown, Hough 
went south, was commissioned a captain in the 
Confederate army, and served until his surren¬ 
der in May 1865. For the next two years, 1865- 
67, he practised law in Memphis, Tenn., but after 
the drastic test-oath requirement for practising 
certain professions in Missouri was nullified by 
the Supreme Court of the United States (Cum¬ 
mings vs. Missouri, 4 Wallace* 277), he returned 
to Missouri and for several years was an active 
member of the bar of Jackson County. Elected 
judge of the supreme court of Missouri in 1874, 
he served a full term of ten years, being chief 
justice for two years. From 1884 until his death 


2 53 



Houghton 

the Mississippi. Before entering Rensselaer In¬ 
stitute, when but seventeen years of age, Hough¬ 
ton had studied medicine under a local physician 
and in the spring of 1831 he had qualified as a 
practitioner. After his return from the explor¬ 
ing expedition he practised for five years (1832- 
37 ) as physician and surgeon in Detroit. It is 
stated that he was also an adept in dentistry. 
Throughout this time, however, he carried on 
studies in the natural sciences, and in 1838 he 
was appointed professor of geology and min¬ 
eralogy in the University of Michigan. This po¬ 
sition he held until his death. In 1842 and in 
1843 he was elected mayor of Detroit. 


Houghton 

he lived in St Louis, where except during the 
years from 1900 to 1906, when he served a term 
as judge of the circuit court, he enjoyed a lucra¬ 
tive law practice. 

Always proclaiming himself faithful to the 
doctrine of state rights, Hough, after the war, by 
common sense and judicial temperament reduced 
the doctrine to a theory reminiscent of sectional 
loyalty instead of a practical program of political 
action. In 1881, during his judgeship on the su¬ 
preme court, he concurred in a decision holding 
that state courts must respect as valid a judgment 
of a federal court against a municipality on its 

bonds, declining to dissent with one of his col- 1043 ne was elected mayor of Detroit 

1»" « rd. IVisor. vs. Ra„ey, 74 Uo„ ceiv J by ttj Sj”• 

£?>• Houeh martisd Nto Massey, a taed wi* H^C SZZ 7 ? 

? ,!s ~ of Virginia ancestry, who with their was short owing to failure of 

1841. Houghton then conceived the idea of a 
thorough geological, mineralogical, topographi- 
cal,. and magnetic survey of the wild lands of the 
United States, contemporaneously and conjointly 
with the linear survey of the public domain al¬ 
ready projected by the government. In advocacy 
of this plan he went to Washington where he 
finally convinced Congress of its feasibility 
though not until he had given his personal guar¬ 
antee to carry it out at the cost estimated. Field 
work was begun in 1844. What might have been 
accomplished must remain conjectural owing to 
his death by drowning the year following, when 
he and four others, in an open boat, were over¬ 
taken by a storm on Lake Superior. 

Houghton was of slender build, quite boyish in 
appearance, and a trifle lame owing to a severe 
hip trouble which he suffered in boyhood. Be¬ 
cause of burns occasioned by the accidental ex¬ 
plosion of gunpowder in one of his youthful ex¬ 
periments his ears, nose, and mouth were slightly 
scarred. He was a man of unusual power of per¬ 
ception, and of independent thought. His social 
and conversational powers were also exceptional 
and he had more than common capacity for 
friendship; “the little doctor” and “the boy geolo¬ 
gist of Michigan” were terms applied to him. 
His local popularity is further shown by the fre- 
quent recurrence of his name as applied to lake 
and township. He was an honorary member of 
the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadel¬ 
phia and the Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen, 
and a member of the Literary and Historical So¬ 
ciety of Quebec, the Boston Society of Natural 
History, and other societies of local importance. 
In 1833 he had married Harriet Stevens of Fre- 
donia, by whom he had two children, both girls. 
IBela Hubbard, “A Memoir of Dr. Douglass Hough- 


five children survived him. 

[Wm. Hyde and H. L. Conard, Encyc. of the Hist, of 
St. Louts _ (1899), vol. II; 267 Mo. Reports, xxxii- 
xxxvii; Who s Who tn America, 1914-15; St. Louis 
Republic, Oct. 29, 1915; newspaper clippings relating 
to Hough m the Mo. Hist. Soc. Lib.] T W 

HOUGHTON, DOUGLASS (Sept. 21, ^809- 
Oct. 13, 1845), geologist, the fourth child of 
Jacob and Mary Lydia (Douglas) Houghton, 
was bom in Troy, N. Y. He was a descendant 
of John Houghton who came to America from 
England before 1650 and finally settled at Lan¬ 
caster, Mass. Jacob Houghton moved from Troy 
to Fredonia in 1812 and there established him¬ 
self as a lawyer, soon becoming one of the coun¬ 
ty judges. When he was bom, Douglass was un¬ 
dersized and feeble, but he increased in health 
and strength as he grew to boyhood. His early 
training was gained at the then newly established 
Fredonia Academy where his record was that of 
a good student, high-spirited, and well meaning. 
He was early recommended as a candidate for 
the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, N. 
Y., from which he graduated as a bachelor of 
arts in 1829, a few months later receiving through 
the influence of Amos Eaton [g.w.] an appoint¬ 
ment as assistant professor in chemistry and 
natural history. In 1830 when Eaton was asked 
by Gov. Lewis Cass [q.v.] and members of the 
Michigan legislature to recommend to them a 
person to deliver a course of lectures on chemis¬ 
try, botany, and geology at Detroit, he promptly 
named Houghton, somewhat to their astonish¬ 
ment, owing to his youth and still more youthful 
appearance. His success as a lecturer was im¬ 
mediate and in 1831 he was given an appoint¬ 
ment as surgeon and botanist to an expedition 
Henry R. Schoolcraft organized 

for the purpose of discovering the sources of 


254 



Houghton 

ton/’ Am. Jour. of Sci. and Arts, Mar. 1848; Alvah 
Bradish, Memoir of Douglass Houghton (1889) ; R. C. 
Allen, memoir of Houghton, in Mich. Hist. Colls., vol. 
XXXIX (1915); 0 . P. Merrill, “Contributions to a 
Hist, of Am. State Geol. and Natural Hist. Surveys,” 
U. S. Nat. Museum Bull. log (1920); full bibliog. of 
Houghton’s writings m J. M. Nickles, “Geologic Litera¬ 
ture on North America,” U. S. Geol. Survey Bull. 746 
(1923) ; H. R. Schoolcraft, Narrative of an Exped. 
through the Upper Mississippi to Itasca Lake (1834); 

H. B. Nason, Biog. Record of the Officers and Grads, of 

the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 1824-86 (1887) ; 
J. W. Houghton, The Houghton Geneal. (1912); Demo - 
cratic Free Press (Detroit), Oct. 28, 1845, and follow¬ 
ing issues; Geol. Reports of Douglass Houghton (1928). 
ed. by G. N. Fuller.] G.P.M. 

HOUGHTON, GEORGE HENDRIC (Feb. 

I, 1820-Nov. 17, 1897), Protestant Episcopal 
clergyman, founder and rector of the Church of 
the Transfiguration in New York City, was bom 
at Deerfield, Mass., the son of Edward Clark and 
Fanny (Smith) Houghton and a descendant of 
Ralph Houghton who emigrated from England 
in the middle of the seventeenth century to Mas¬ 
sachusetts. At the age of fourteen George 
Houghton left his Puritan home for New York. 
After varied experiences, including that of teach¬ 
ing, he entered the University of the City of New 
York and was graduated in 1842. He studied 
theology under the direction of William A. Muh¬ 
lenberg [q.v.] at the same time teaching Greek 
in St. Paul's College, Flushing, Long Island, of 
which Muhlenberg was headmaster. The Ox¬ 
ford (High-Church) Movement, which began in 
England in 1833, made a lasting impression on 
him. He was ordained deacon in 1845 aad priest 
in 1846, and was Muhlenberg’s curate at the 
Church of the Holy Communion in New York 
until 1847. Then, after a period of non-parochial 
activity, when he ministered to the sick and dying 
in Bellevue Hospital and devoted his time to the 
underprivileged, he established regular religious 
services at 48 East Twenty-Fourth Street, the 
furnishings for the improvised church consisting 
of borrowed school benches, a wheezy parlor or¬ 
gan, and a reading desk of pine wood. The parish 
was organized Feb. 12, 1849, as the Church of 
the Transfiguration in the City of New York 
Later a site on Twenty-ninth Street, just east of 
Fifth Avenue, was purchased, and a new building 
was erected which was first occupied on Mar. 10, 
1850. The present building was completed in 
1864. Houghton’s salary was augmented, be¬ 
ginning in 1850, by five hundred dollars a year, 
received as professor of Hebrew in the General 
Theological Seminary. 

Houghton responded in every way to the needs 
of those who called upon him for help. During 
the Civil War, it is said, he harbored negroes on 
their way to the Canadian border ; he established 
a war hospital, and during the Draft Riots of 


Houghton 

1863 he sheltered hundreds of helpless negro 
children driven by a mob from the Colored Or¬ 
phan Asylum at Fifth Avenue and Forty-third 
Street. Events following the death of the fa¬ 
mous comedian, George Holland [9.^.], in 1870, 
gave Houghton’s church its popular name and 
made it famous throughout America. Joseph 
Jefferson and Holland’s son called on the Rev. 
William T. Sabine, rector of the Church of the 
Atonement on Fifth Avenue, to make arrange¬ 
ments for Holland’s funeral. On learning that 
Holland had been an actor, Sabine refused to 
take the service. What followed, Joseph Jeffer¬ 
son recorded in these words: "I paused at the 
door and said: "Well, sir, in this dilemma is 
there no other church to which you can direct 
me, from which my friend can be buried?’ He 
replied that ‘there was a little church around the 
corner’ where I might get it done; to which I 
answered: ‘Then, if this be so, God bless “the 
little church around the comer,” 9 and so I left 
the house” (The Autobiography of Joseph Jef¬ 
ferson, 1890, p. 340). News stories, editorials, 
and songs on the variety stage gave emphasis to 
the incident, which endeared the rector to the 
people of the stage and has ever since made the 
Little Church around the Comer a shrine to the 
acting profession, who were known to Houghton 
thenceforth as “the kindly folk.” Houghton’s 
wife was Caroline Graves Anthon, the daughter 
of John Anthon of New York. 

[Geo. MacAdam, The Little Church Around the Cor - 
ner (1925) ; J. W. Houghton, The Houghton Geneal. 
(1912) ; Jv. 7 . Times, Dec. 29,1870, Nov. 18,1897.] 

G E S 

HOUGHTON, HENRY OSCAR (Apr. 30, 
1823-Aug. 25, 1895), publisher, was bom in the 
village of Sutton, in northeastern Vermont, the 
youngest but one of the twelve children of Capt 
William and Manila (Clay) Houghton. He was 
descended from John Houghton who settled at 
Lancaster, Mass., in 1650, His father, a tanner 
by trade, was instinctively a rover and rardy 
remained long in any community. At Bradford, 
on the upper Connecticut River, Henry attended 
the local academy, but at thirteen he became a 
printer’s apprentice in the office of the Burling¬ 
ton Free Press, in Burlington, Vt. Here he once 
met Noah Webster, whose dictionaries he was 
later to publish. He studied evenings and in 
1839, through the initiative of his older brother 
Daniel, he was allowed to prepare himsdf for 
the University of Vermont, which he entered at 
the age of nineteen. He worked his way in part, 
being assisted also by his brother-in-law, David 
Scott Graduating in 1846, with a debt of three 
hundred dollars to pay off, he secured employ¬ 
ment in Boston as a newspaper reporter and 


25s 



Houk Houk 


proof-reader and eventually joined with his 
friend Bolles in establishing a printing office on 
Remington Street, in Cambridge. In 1852 the 
firm became H. O. Houghton & Company, with 
headquarters on the Charles River, at what was 
soon known as the Riverside Press. For the re¬ 
mainder of his life, Houghton was a printer and 
publisher and made a special study of artistic 
typography. Because of his good taste and high 
standards of craftsmanship, he built up a large 
and lucrative business. He actively opposed the 
movement for the free admission of foreign books 
into the United States. 

Houghton's fondness for everything relating 
to books led him to form in 1864 a partnership 
with Melancthon M. Hurd, of New York, under 
the firm name of Hurd & Houghton. Various 
changes in personnel were effected until 1878, 
when, with Hurd's retirement, the business was 
merged with James R. Osgood Sc Company, as 
Houghton, Osgood, & Company. This, in turn, 
after Osgood's withdrawal in 1880, became 
Houghton, Mifflin, Sc Company, and eventually, 
Houghton Mifflin Company. The firm acquired 
many literary franchises formerly controlled by 
Ticknor Sc Fields, including rights to the works 
of Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, Holmes, Low¬ 
ell, Thoreau, and Hawthorne, and also published 
the Riverside Classics and other series. 

Houghton was married, on Sept. 12, 1854, to 
Nanna W. Manning, by whom he had one son, 
Henry Oscar Houghton, Jr., who became a part¬ 
ner in the firm, and three daughters. He was 
greatly interested in local affairs in Cambridge, 
serving on the school committee, as a member of 
the common council, and as alderman and mayor 
(1872). In his later life he traveled extensively, 
both in the United States and abroad. Infirmi¬ 
ties came upon him gradually, but he coura¬ 
geously resisted them and was still active in busi¬ 
ness at the time of his death. He possessed a 
vigorous and positive personality and in business 
relations was somewhat autocratic and watchful 
of small details. He died in North Andover, 
Mass., at the country home of his partner, George 
H. Mifflin. He established by his will a fund for 
the relief of the worthy poor of Cambridge. 

[Horace E. Scudder, Henry Oscar Houghton, A Biog. 
Outline (1897); J. W. Houghton, The Houghton GeneaL 
(1912) ; the New England Mag., Oct. 1895; the Out¬ 
look, Nov. 2, 1895 ; information as to certain facts from 
Miss Alberta Houghton and Mr. Edward B. Houghton.] 

C.M.F. 

HOUK, LEONIDAS CAMPBELL (June 8 , 
1836-May 25, 1891), congressman, was bom 
near Boyds Creek in Sevier County, Tenn. His 
father, a poor mechanic, died when Leonidas was 
only three years old and his mother married 


again in a few years without bettering herself 
financially. His early life, accordingly, was not 
an easy one and he went to school for only about 
three months in an old-field school. He learned 
the trade of cabinetmaking, was for a time a 
Methodist preacher, and was admitted to the bar 
of Tennessee at the age of twenty-three. When 
the Civil War broke out two years later he was 
a leader in the group that held the East Tennes¬ 
see union convention and later organized the 1st 
Tennessee Infantry, which was incorporated in¬ 
to the Federal army in the state of Kentucky. 
He, himself, enlisted as a private, soon became 
lieutenant and quartermaster of the regiment, 
and then became colonel of the 3rd Tennessee 
Volunteer Infantry. After he was forced to re¬ 
sign in April 1863 on account of ill health, he 
began to write for the loyal press with the same 
vigor and force that had been so marked in all 
his other undertakings. 

In 1864 he was an elector for the Lincoln- 
Johnson ticket and the next year was a member 
of the state convention, whose radical reorgani¬ 
zation of the state government he, however, dis¬ 
approved. While he was judge of the 17th ju¬ 
dicial circuit of Tennessee, from 1866 to 1870, he 
ordered that all treason cases be stricken from 
his docket as he held that the state of Tennessee 
ceased to exist on May 6, 1861, and he was prob¬ 
ably the first Republican who publicly advocated 
equal rights for former Confederates. Yet in 
spite of such moderation he was emphatically 
a partisan. His opinions and his expression of 
opinions were strongly and often bitterly Re¬ 
publican. In the Republican National Conven¬ 
tion in 1868 he supported Grant, and he was one 
of the “Stalwarts” who continued to support him 
in 1880. After his resignation from the bench 
Houk moved to Knoxville, where he took up 
again the practice of law, but was soon drawn 
into political life. He served as a member of the 
Southern claims commission in 1873 and was 
elected to the Tennessee legislature. In 1879 he 
began his long term in Congress, which ended 
only with his death. In Congress he served on 
many important committees and by his charm 
of person and manner won for himself the same 
kind of popularity, which he enjoyed so abun¬ 
dantly in East Tennessee. When he died of an 
accidental dose of poison the mountain people 
traveled on horseback and on foot for long dis¬ 
tances to be present at his funeral, and the dis¬ 
trict that he had made his own Republican 
stronghold showed its loyalty to his memory by 
sending his son to sit in his seat in Congress. 

[O. P. Temple, Notable Men of Tenn . (1912) ; J. W. 
Caldwell, Sketches of the Bench and Bar of Tenn. 
(1898) ; J. T. Moore, Tenn . the Volunteer State (19^3) > 


256 



Hourwich 

vol. II; Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character 
of Leonidas Campbell Honk (1892) ; also in Cong . Rec¬ 
ord, 52nd Cong., 1 Sess., pp. 690-703 and 967-970; 
Knoxville Jour., May 26 , 2%, 29, 1891; Nashville Daily 
Am., May 26, 1861.] F.L. 0 . 

HOURWICH, ISAAC AARONOVICH 

(Apr. 26, 1860-July 9, 1924), statistician, law¬ 
yer, was born in Vilna, Russia, the son of Adolph 
and Rebecca (Sheveliovich) Hourwich. After 
graduation from the Gymnasium at Minsk in 
1877 h e began the study of medicine at St. Peters¬ 
burg. There he became interested in social and 
political questions and at the age of nineteen he 
wrote a pamphlet, “What is Constitutionalismt” 
which caused his arrest and imprisonment on a 
charge of treason. Upon his discharge nine 
months later he became an active worker in the 
cause of revolution. Abandoning medicine he 
took up law as a career, receiving the degree of 
LL.M. from the Demidov Juridical Lyceum at 
Yaroslav in 1887. After a second arrest for po¬ 
litical reasons he fled to Sweden and thence emi¬ 
grated to the United States. He was then thirty 
years old. Columbia College awarded him the 
Seligman fellowship in political science and in 
1893 conferred upon him the degree of Fh.D. 
For two years, 1893-95, he taught statistics at 
the University of Chicago. Then he returned to 
New York, was admitted to the bar, and began 
the practice of law. After several years he gave 
up legal work to enter government service. 
From 1900 to 1913 he was employed by the 
United States Bureau of the Mint, the United 
States Census Bureau, and the New York Pub¬ 
lic Service Commission. After the war he was 
retained as counsel by the New York Bureau of 
the Russian Soviet Government. 

Hourwich was a talented and prolific writer. 
He published in 1888, in Russian, a study of the 
peasant migration to Siberia, and in 1892 The 
Economics of the Russian Village , in which he 
analyzed the problems of individual and collec¬ 
tive land-holding in relation to crop production 
and peasant welfare. The publication which at¬ 
tracted most attention was Immigration and La¬ 
bor (1912, 1921), which was denounced by one 
reviewer as “a very ingenious, clever and dan¬ 
gerous book” (H. P. Fairchild, in the National 
Municipal Review , October 1913). In it Hour¬ 
wich attacked the arguments for the restriction 
of immigration contained in the Reports of the 
United States Immigration Commission (41 
vols., 1911). He denied that the data gathered 
by the Commission proved that immigration had 
reduced the wages of native labor or had in¬ 
creased unemployment and, rejecting theoretical 
argument, he adduced statistical support of his 
position from the Commission's reports. Al- 


House 

though lacking in balanced reasoning, the vigor¬ 
ous style of Hourwich's book made it a formi¬ 
dable controversial weapon and it was given ex¬ 
tended consideration in reviews. (See partic¬ 
ularly R. F. Foerster in the Quarterly Journal 
of Economics, August 1913.) His other publi¬ 
cations include a Digest of the Commercial Laws 
of the World (1902); a study, in Russian, of the 
development of American democracy (1905); 
another study in Yiddish, of mooted questions in 
Socialism (1917), and a Yiddish translation of 
Das Kapital . At the time of his death, in New* 
York City, he is said to have left an unfinished 
autobiography entitled “Memoirs of a Heretic.” 
Hourwich was connected with a number of Jew¬ 
ish philanthropies and was interested in move¬ 
ments for reform in city government. He was 
twice married: in 1881 to Helen Kushelevsky of 
Minsk, Russia, and in 1893 t0 Louise Joffe of 
New York. 

[ Who's Who in America, 1924-25; the Outlook, July 
26, 1913; the Jewish Tribune and Hebrew Standard 
(N. Y.), July 18, 1924; the Reform Advocate (Chi¬ 
cago), July 19, 1924; N. Y . Times, July 11, 1924.] 

P.W.B. 

HOUSE, EDWARD HOWARD (Sept. 5, 
1836-Dec, 17, 1901), journalist, author, and mu¬ 
sician, Japan’s first official foreign publicist, was 
born at Boston, Mass., the son of Timothy and 
Ellen Maria (Child) House. His father was a 
banknote engraver and desired his son to follow 
the same vocation. Young House preferred mu¬ 
sic, however, and for three years after 1850 stud¬ 
ied orchestral composition, producing a few 
pieces which were occasionally performed. In 
1854 he became music and dramatic critic for the 
Boston Courier, transferring in 1858 to the New 
York Tribune which he served in the same ca¬ 
pacity. The following year this paper sent him 
to report the John Brown raid, and during the 
Civil War he was a special correspondent with 
the Federal armies in Virginia. After the res¬ 
toration of peace he spent three years in New 
York and London in theatrical management, re¬ 
turning in 1868 to the Tribune . In 1870, he 
joined the staff of the New York Times. Earlier, 
while in New York, he had met Richard Hil¬ 
dreth [q.vJ], author of Japan As It Was and Is 
(1855), who had excited his imagination by tales 
of the Perry Expedition and given him a strong¬ 
ly pro-Japanese bent As a result he sought and 
obtained appointment as “Professor of the Eng¬ 
lish Language and Literature” at the Nanko 
( Kaisei Gakko ), in Tokyo, an institution now 
forming part of the Imperial University. 

He arrived in Japan in 1871, but found the title 
of his position unduly ornate for the almost ele¬ 
mentary work involved. He devoted his leisure 


257 



House House 


to writing 1 on topics connected with Japanese 
drama, and to explanations of current political 
affairs. His theory of the identity of Ghenghis 
Khan with the Japanese hero Yoshitsune (later 
worked out in great detail by his pupil, Suye- 
matsu), flattered Japanese pride, and a brilliant 
defense of Japan for protecting 200 Macao coo¬ 
lies who had escaped from the Peruvian slave- 
ship, Maria Luz, in Yokohama harbor in 1872, 
won him the warm friendship of Shigenobu 
Okuma, an imperial councilor and later marquis. 
When, in 1873, Okuma was sent to Formosa in 
charge of a punitive expedition, House resigned 
his professorship and accompanied the army as 
a correspondent. His dispatches to the New 
York Herald were reprinted in Tokyo in 1875. 
On his return from Formosa the Satsuma Civil 
War was imminent, and House eagerly accepted 
the proposal that Okuma subsidize for him a 
weekly English-language newspaper, the Tokyo 
Times, to offset the three pro-rebel English pa¬ 
pers published in Yokohama. During all of 1877 
the Times fought a vigorous journalistic cam¬ 
paign to secure immediate abolition of extra¬ 
territorial rights, to gain customs freedom for 
Japan, and to secure a high protective tariff. It 
also demanded the return to Japan of the indem¬ 
nities exacted by the Powers for expenses in¬ 
curred at the bombardment of Shimonoseki in 
1863, when the daimyo of Choshu attempted to 
close the straits. Through House's efforts, the 
Japanese believe, the American share was re¬ 
mitted. In the interest of these objects the Times 
insisted on the recall of Sir Harry S. Parkes, the 
British minister, whom House made the scape¬ 
goat for all alien residents. 

House's predilection for Japan was strength¬ 
ened by his acquaintance with the foreigners 
resident in Yokohama and in Tsukiji, the foreign 
settlement in Tokyo. Diplomatic attaches, busi¬ 
ness men, and missionaries were favorite targets 
for his caustic wit. His antagonism to mission¬ 
aries was later embodied in a novel, Yone Santo, 
a Child of Japan, serialized in the Atlantic 
Monthly in 1888 and published in book form in 
1889. Respite his brilliant and doggedly per¬ 
sistent service in Japan's behalf, the tall, robust, 
and sallow-faced newspaperman stirred up too 
many enmities among the foreigners whose 
friendship the Japanese government desired to 
cultivate. Accordingly, at the close of 1877, when 
the subsidy expired, the Tokyo Times ceased 
publication, and government support was trans¬ 
ferred to Capt. Frank Brinkley, a more tactful 
publicist, whose paper, the Japan Mail, continued 
as the government organ until Brinkley's death 
in 1912. House returned to America in 1880 and 


the following February moved to London, where 
he lived with Charles Reade. According to his 
own story (published in the Century Magazine 
December 1897), he helped to launch Edwin 
Booth's British tour of 1881. He then became 
connected with the management of St. James's 
Theatre, London, but was incapacitated by a 
stroke in 1883. Through Okuma's influence he 
was awarded a life pension by the Japanese gov¬ 
ernment, and was decorated by the Order of the 
Sacred Treasure, Second Class. After complet¬ 
ing a number of magazine articles and publish¬ 
ing his novel, he returned to Japan with the pur¬ 
pose of popularizing Western music. He trained 
the Imperial Band and aided in the founding of 
the Meiji Musical Society, which developed into 
the Imperial Conservatory of Music. He died in 
Tokyo. 

In addition to Yone Santo, House published 
in America, Japanese Episodes (1881), a collec¬ 
tion of his Atlantic, Harper's, and Tokyo Times 
articles, and Midnight Warning and Other Sto¬ 
ries (1892). In Japan, he published The Kago¬ 
shima Affair (1874), The Shimonoseki Affair, 
A Chapter of Japanese History (1875), and The 
Japanese Expedition to Formosa (1875). Two 
magazine articles appeared in the New Princeton 
Review, “The Tariff in Japan" (January 1888) 
and “Foreign Jurisdiction in Japan" (March 
1888). 

[The best brief biography is in the Japan Mail (To¬ 
kyo), Dec. 2i, 1901; see also the succeeding week’s 
issue, in which the question of the Okuma subsidy to 
the Tokyo Times is thoroughly discussed. W. B. Ma¬ 
son, in The New East (Tokyo), Mar. 1910, gives a 
reminiscence of House, attempting to explain why “few 
foreigners remember him now.” H. E. Wildes, Social 
Currents in Japan (1927), pp. 266-68, discusses the 
Tokyo Times. The Nation (N. Y.), Nov. 3, 1881, and 
Jan. 10, 1889, gives a critical estimate of his literary 
abiHty.] H.E.W. 

HOUSE, HENRY ALONZO (Apr. 23,1840- 
Dec. 18, 1930), inventor, manufacturer, son of 
Ezekial Newton and Susan (King) House, and 
nephew of Royal Earl House [q.z'.J, was born in 
Brooklyn, N. Y., where his father practised his 
profession as an architect. A few years after 
Henry's birth his parents moved to Pennsylvania 
where the youth obtained his primary education 
and began the study of architecture with his fa¬ 
ther. When he was seventeen years old he went 
to Chicago and for two years worked in an archi¬ 
tect's office. Late in 1859 the muscles of his right 
hand were severed in an accident, so that it was 
impossible for him to continue his architectural 
work, and he became interested in various inven¬ 
tions. About this time he removed to Brooklyn 
and was granted his first patent, Aug. 20, i860, 
for a partly self-operating farm gate. With the 


258 



House House 


outbreak of the Civil War and the curtailment of 
the manufacture and sale of all products except 
necessities, he turned his attention to sewing ma¬ 
chines and, with his brother James, sought to per¬ 
fect a machine to work button-holes. In this en¬ 
deavor they were successful, obtaining their first 
patent (No. 36,932) for such a contrivance on 
Nov. 11, 1862. After patenting four improve¬ 
ments in the summer of 1863, the brothers sold 
them, under a royalty agreement, to the Wheeler 
& Wilson Sewing Machine Company of Bridge¬ 
port, Conn. Thereupon they moved to Bridgeport 
and entered the employ of that company as exper¬ 
imenters and inventors. Here House continued 
for more than seven years and with his brother 
devised and sold to their employers forty-five in¬ 
ventions pertaining to the sewing machine. In 
addition, they designed (1866) a “horseless car¬ 
riage” equipped with a twin-cylinder, double¬ 
acting, slide-valve steam engine of twelve horse¬ 
power, which, using friction drive, propelled the 
carriage at a speed of about thirty miles an hour. 
In 1867 House and his brother were at the Paris 
Exposition, where they demonstrated all of the 
Wheeler & Wilson products, including their 
own button-hole machines, and were awarded 
gold medals for their inventions. House had also 
patented a number of other devices and in 1869, 
resigning his position, he organized at Bridge¬ 
port the Armstrong & House Manufacturing 
Company to produce them. The company con¬ 
tinued active for the succeeding twenty years un¬ 
til its shops were destroyed by fire. During this 
time all kinds of knitting machinery were made 
and sold; also a contrivance for automatically 
bundling kindling wood, which House devised in 
1872; and a machine for making compressed pa¬ 
per boxes, as well as one for plucking fur. After 
1889 he was not engaged actively in manufac¬ 
turing, but continued to indulge his inventive 
genius; he also developed a consulting practice. 
In this capacity he was associated with Hiram 
and Percy Maxim in England in many of their 
technologic experiments and inventions, includ¬ 
ing the building of the Maxim steam-propelled 
flying machine of 1896. For the last thirty years 
of his life he carried on his inventive work in his 
home laboratory, and, at the time of his death, 
he had to his credit more than three hundred 
patents covering a wide range. For one year, 
1872, he was a member of the Bridgeport Com¬ 
mon Council. House was married, Nov. 24,1861, 
to his cousin, Mary Elizabeth House. He died 
in Bridgeport, survived by a son and two daugh¬ 
ters. 

{Bridgeport Times Star, Dec. 18,1930 ; N. Y. Times , 
Dec. 19, 1930; Bridgeport Post, April 29, 1928, May 
lS f 1930, June 14, 1930; correspondence with Mr. 


House in 1929; information as to certain facts from 
Miss Rose E. House, Bridgeport.] C W.M. 

HOUSE, ROYAL EARL (Sept. 9,1814-Feb. 
25, 1895), inventor, was born in Rockland, Vt, 
the son of James N. and Hepsibah (Newton) 
House. While he was still an infant his parents 
moved to Little Meadows, Susquehanna County, 
Pa., then virgin country, and here House and his 
two brothers grew up, obtaining their whole ele¬ 
mentary education from their mother. House 
showed a decided preference for mechanics and 
science at an early age and while still in his teens 
devised a submerged water wheel of the type 
now known as the “scroll wheel.” As far as can 
be determined, he remained at home until he was 
twenty-five years old, always experimenting, and 
on Aug. 12, 1839, secured a patent (No. 1284) 
for a machine to saw barrel staves. With the in¬ 
tention of studying law, he went about 1840 to 
live with a relative in Buffalo, N. Y. He had 
been there but a short time when through several 
books on natural philosophy he became so inter¬ 
ested in the subject of electricity that he gave up 
all thought of law and returned to his home to 
undertake electrical experiments. For some four 
years, 1840-44, he concentrated his effort upon 
the production of an electric-telegraph record in 
printed Roman characters. He possessed the 
unusual capacity of designing mechanical struc¬ 
tures without setting them forth in drawings, and 
when, early in 1844, the various parts of his 
printing telegraph had been formulated in his 
mind, he proceeded to New York to have them 
constructed. They were made in several dif¬ 
ferent establishments, assembled by House, and 
in the autumn of 1844, at the American Institute 
Fair in New York, first exhibited as a printing 
telegraph in operation. Through this demonstra¬ 
tion House secured the necessary funds to perfect 
his device. He worked on it continuously for 
two years and finally, Apr. 18, 1846, obtained 
patent No. 4464, As improved, the instrument 
was capable of printing messages at the rate of 
more than fifty words a minute. Again House 
was successful in interesting capital, with the 
result that between 1847 and 1855 an extensive 
range of telegraph lines equipped with his print¬ 
ing telegraph was erected from New York to 
Boston and Washington, and west to Cleveland 
and Cincinnati, and operated with great com¬ 
mercial success. House himself had much to do 
with the construction and installation of the lines. 
He was the first to employ stranded wire. He 
succeeded in spanning the Hudson River at Fort 
Lee in 1849 and thus established permanent tele¬ 
graphic communication between New York and 
Philadelphia. He also designed a glass screw 


*59 



House 


House 


socket insulator and the machine to make it. In 
1849 he was sued for infringement by the owners 
of the Morse patents and won the suit (see Sci¬ 
entific American , Oct 26, Nov. 2, 1850). After 
the general consolidation of competitive tele¬ 
graphic interests took place, around 1850, 
House's apparatus gradually went out of use. In 
the early fifties House settled in Binghamton, 
N. Y., where he resided for many years, contin¬ 
uing his experimental work in electricity and 
patenting many of his devices. In 1885 he re¬ 
moved to Bridgeport, Conn., where he passed 
the remainder of his days. He was married in 
New York City, in 1846, to Theresa Thomas of 
Buffalo, N. Y., and was survived by an adopted 
daughter. Henry Alonzo House [- q.v .] was his 
nephew. 

[F. L. Pope, “Royal E. House and the Early Tele¬ 
graph, u Electrical Engineer (N. Y.), Mar. 6, 1895, 
abstracted in the Electrician (London), Mar. 22, 1895 ; 
N. Y . Times, Feb. 27, 1895; Electrical Rev . (N. Y.), 
Mar. 13, 189s; E. C. Blackman, Hist, of Susquehanna 
County, Pa. (1873) ; G. B. Prescott, Hist., Theory and 
Practice of the Electric Telegraph (i860) and Elec- 
tricity and the Electric Telegraph (1877) ; J. D. Reid, 
The Telegraph in America (1879); National Museum 
correspondence; Patent Office records.] C.W.M. 

HOUSE, SAMUEL REYNOLDS (Oct. 16, 
1817-Aug. 13, 1899), physician, Presbyterian 
clergyman, was the first medical missionary sent 
to Siam by the Presbyterian Church in the United 
States of America. To House and his co-worker, 
Rev. Stephen Mattoon [g.?;.], belong the honor 
of having permanently established the mission. 
House was born at Waterford, N. Y., the second 
son of John and Abby (Platt) House. He was 
educated at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 
Troy, N. Y., at Dartmouth College, and at Union 
College, Schenectady, graduating from the last- 
named institution in 1837 with the degree of A.B. 
and Phi Beta Kappa honors. He took his medi¬ 
cal course at the University of Pennsylvania 
(1841-42), the Albany Medical College (1842- 
43), and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, 
New York, which graduated him with the de¬ 
gree of M.D. in 1845. 

Commissioned in 1846, he reached Bangkok 
in March 1847 after a voyage of eight months. 
For four and a half years he conducted a dispen¬ 
sary in a floating house on the Menam. During 
the cholera epidemic of 1849, the fatalities of 
which were officially estimated at 40,000 in 
Bangkok alone, he was busy night and day min¬ 
istering to any who would accept his services. 
Discovering a nascent interest in Western sci¬ 
ence on the part of several nobles and princes, he 
planned a series of chemical and physical ex¬ 
periments for the employees of the mission in 
order to “awaken their minds.” These experi¬ 


ments aroused a lively interest on the part of the 
progressive group, several of whom sought the 
privilege of attendance. Among these men were 
the prince who later became King Mongkut and 
others who entered his government. When King 
Mongkut ascended the throne in 1851 and opened 
the country to Western influence, House became 
one of his friendly councilors. When Sir John 
Bowring sought a revision of the treaty with 
England in 1855 the King wished House to act 
as advisor to the Siamese commissioners. This 
honor he declined, but he consented to serve as 
one of the translators of the English proposals. 

Experience convinced him that much of the 
common suffering of the people was due to igno¬ 
rance of nature, and he soon discerned that the 
ignorance was entrenched in religious beliefs. 
Persuaded that, in the long run, he could do more 
to alleviate distress by inculcating the Christian 
philosophy of the universe in the Siamese mind, 
he abandoned his profession and after a period 
of language study pursued the educational phase 
of the missionary's work. In 1852 he was placed 
in charge of a school for boys established by the 
mission in that year, and, except for a short peri¬ 
od, he continued to be its superintendent to the 
termination of his service. On two occasions the 
King invited him to take service under him for 
the education of the princes. The mission school 
popularized Western education, and thus even¬ 
tually led the way to the establishment of a pub¬ 
lic-school system in Siam. The school itself de¬ 
veloped by stages into the present Bangkok 
Christian College. 

House discovered two varieties of shells previ¬ 
ously unknown to naturalists, to which his name 
has been given: Cyclostoria Housei and Spirac- 
ulum Housei . In 1879 he published Notes on 
Obstetric Practises in Siam, a pamphlet. Five 
religious tracts in Siamese are also credited to 
him, and several chapters in Siam and Laos as 
Seen by Our American Missionaries (1884), is¬ 
sued by the Presbyterian Board of Publication. 
During furlough he married Harriet Maria Pet¬ 
tit, Nov. 27,1855, and was ordained by the Pres¬ 
bytery of Troy in January 1856. He resigned 
from the mission in 1876 and retired to Water¬ 
ford, N. Y., where his death occurred some twen¬ 
ty-three years later. 

[Journal and letters of S. R. House, in the archives 
of the Presbyt. Board of Foreign Missions, N. Y. City; 
G. H. Feltus, “The Man with the Gentle Heart j* Samuel 
Reynolds House of Siam (1924) ; G. B. McFarland, 
Hist. Sketch of Protestant Missions in Siam , 1828^ 
1928 (Bangkok, 1928); H. B. Nason, Biog. Record Of¬ 
ficers and Grads. Rensselaer Poly. Inst. (1887) ; Mis¬ 
sionary Rev. of the World, Oct. 1899; AT. Y. Observer, 
Aug. 24, 1899; Troy Daily Times, Aug. 14, 1899.] 

G.H.F. 


260 



Houston 

HOUSTON, EDWIN JAMES (July 9,1847- 
Mar. 1, 1914), educator and electrical engineer, 
was born at Alexandria, Va., the son of John 
Mason and Mary (Larmour) Houston. He at¬ 
tended the public grammar schools and the Cen¬ 
tral High School of Philadelphia, from which he 
was graduated with the degree of A.B. in 1864. 
For a year he taught at Girard College, Phila¬ 
delphia, of which he was prefect in 1865. He 
then spent a short time at the universities of Ber¬ 
lin and Heidelberg, returning in 1867 to accept 
appointment to the newly established chair of 
physical geography and civil engineering at the 
Central High School. Shortly afterwards civil 
engineering was separated from physical geog¬ 
raphy and Houston’s department became physical 
geography and natural philosophy, which sub¬ 
jects he taught until his resignation from the 
High School in 1894. A tireless worker, ap¬ 
parently, he planned courses of study for his de¬ 
partment, designed methods of instruction, and 
finding that textbooks in the natural sciences 
were inadequate or lacking, wrote most of those 
used in his courses. Among them are Elements 
of Physical Geography (1&75), Elements of Nat¬ 
ural Philosophy (1879), and Outlines of For¬ 
estry (1893). He was one of the earliest edu¬ 
cators to appreciate the value of the laboratory 
method of instruction, and through his efforts the 
school became notably well equipped. He is said 
to have done as much as any other one person in 
raising the Central High School to the high po¬ 
sition which it held among the schools and col¬ 
leges of the country at the end of the nineteenth 
century. 

Both Houston and his colleague Elihu Thom¬ 
son, professor of chemistry, were particularly 
interested in the practical applications of elec¬ 
tricity; and they worked together to produce, in 
1879, the Thomson-Houston system of arc light¬ 
ing. This system, which was the first to maintain 
constant current in the circuit by the shifting of 
the brushes of the generator as the load varied, 
offered such an improvement over the wasteful 
method then in use of adding lights to the circuit 
at the power station as lights were taken out of 
the exterior circuit, that it met with immediate 
success. The Thomson-Houston patent of Mar. 
1, 1881 (No. 238,315) describes a device for 
shifting the brushes automatically. The Ameri¬ 
can Electric Company of Philadelphia, organized 
to commercialize the Thomson-Houston inven¬ 
tions, went through several reorganizations, be¬ 
coming, much later, a part of the General Electric 
Company. Though Houston was not associated 
with the business after 1882, the success of the 
enterprise focused his efforts, as an educator and 


Houston 

scientist, upon electricity, and he became inter¬ 
nationally known in that field. In 1884 he was 
a member of the United States Electrical Com¬ 
mission which met at Philadelphia; he was the 
chief engineer of the International Electrical Ex¬ 
position, there, and was president of Section C of 
the International Electric Congress at Chicago 
in 1893. He was the first president of the elec¬ 
trical section of the franklin Institute and editor 
of the Institute’s Journal. He was a charter 
member of the American Institute of Electrical 
Engineers and its president in 1893 and 1894. 

^ Besides his continuous research in the scien¬ 
tific problems of electricity, he devoted much 
time to the popular exposition of electrical theory 
through lectures and textbooks. With A. E. Ken- 
nelly he wrote what were probably the first ele¬ 
mentary electrical textbooks, published as the 
Elementary Electro-Technical Series (10 vols., 
1895-1906). Among the subjects treated were 
the electric telegraph, electric railways, incan¬ 
descent lighting, and electric heating. Resigning 
from the High School in 1894, he began practice 
as a consulting electrical engineer, in association 
with Kennelly, maintaining an office in Phila¬ 
delphia until his death in 1914. His important 
writings other than those mentioned were Elec¬ 
trical Engineering Leaflets (3 vols., 1895) and 
Recent Types of Dynamo-Electric Machinery 
(1898), both written with Kennelly; and his 
Dictionary of Electrical Words , Terms, and 
Phrases (1889). Towards the end of his life he 
wrote many boys’ books of adventure. He never 
married. He died at Philadelphia. 

[Proc. Am. Inst. Electrical Engrs., vol. XXXIII, no. 
4 JApr, 1914); F. S. Edmonds, Hist, of the Central 
High School of Phila. (1902) ; Studies in Applied Elec¬ 
tricity (1901) ; Electrical World (N. Y.), Sept. 13, 
1890, May 14, 1892, Mar. 7, 1914; Electrical Rev. 
(London), Mar. 20, 1914; lour, of the Franklin Inst., 
Apr. 1914; Who's Who in America , 1912-13; Public 
Ledger (Phila.), Mar. 2, 1914.] F.A.T. 

HOUSTON, GEORGE SMITH (Jan. 17, 
1811-Dec. 31, 1879), governor of Alabama, 
United States senator, was born in Williamson 
County, Tenn., the son of David Houston, a 
farmer, and his wife, Hannah Pugh Reagan. 
Houston’s father’s family was one of many which 
left Ireland in the eighteenth-century migration, 
his paternal grandparents having come to North 
Carolina about 1750 from County Tyrone. His 
mother was of Welsh ancestry. In 1821 David 
and Hannah Houston moved to Lauderdale 
County, Ala., and here their son was educated. 
He read law and was admitted to the bar in 1831. 
Admission to the bar led him directly into a po¬ 
litical career, for he was quickly recognized as 
one of the most effective stump speakers in the 



i 


Houston 

state. In 1832 he represented his county in the 
state legislature and he held the office of district 
solicitor repeatedly during the next ten years. 
Elected to Congress, he took his seat in 1841, 
and, save for the years 1849-51, served there un¬ 
til the secession of Alabama. 

Houston was opposed to secession, and during 
the ten years preceding the Civil War worked 
without ceasing to prevent the destruction of the 
Union. In 1850 he was the Unionist candidate 
for Congress, on a platform denying the consti¬ 
tutional right of secession, and was elected. He 
supported Douglas in i860 and served as a mem¬ 
ber of the Committee of Thirty-three. When Ala¬ 
bama seceded, however, he bowed to the will of 
his state and surrendered his seat in Congress. 
He was the author of the statement which the 
Alabama delegation presented to the speaker of 
the House at the time of its withdrawal from 
membership in that body. Although he refused 
to serve in the Confederate army, he also refused 
to take the oath of allegiance to the government 
of the United States. This independence did not 
alienate the people of Alabama from him, for in 
1865 he was elected to represent the state in the 
United States Senate, though he was not per¬ 
mitted to take his seat 

In 1874 Houston became governor of Ala¬ 
bama, the first Democrat to be chosen for that 
office after the Civil War. The state was bank¬ 
rupt and the people were burdened with debt and 
discouraged. With shrewd business sense and 
untiring energy the Governor set to work to bring 
order out of chaos. He adopted a rigid program 
of retrenchment and reform. Offices were abol¬ 
ished, state employees were discharged, and sal¬ 
aries and appropriations for state departments 
were drastically reduced. It was the Governor 
who recommended the establishment of a state 
debt commission and became the most influential 
member of that commission after it was organ¬ 
ized. In 1878 he resigned his executive position 
to take the seat in the United States Senate to 
which he had been elected by the state legislature. 
He died in office one year later. 

Houston was married in 1835 to Mary Beatty 
and in 1861 to Ellen Irvine. He was the father 
of ten children. 

[T. M. Owen, Hist, of Ala. and Diet, of Ala. Biog. 
(1921), vol. Ill; B. F. Riley, Makers and Romance of 
Ala. Hist, (n.d.) ; W. L. Fleming, Civil War and Re¬ 
construction in Ala. (1905); Memorial Addresses on 
the Life and Character of George S. Houston (1880) ; 
A. B. Moore, Hist, of Ala. and Her People (1921), vols. 

I and II; Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928) ; S. R. Houston, 
Brief Biog. Accounts of Many Members of the Houston 
Family (1882), p. 289; Washington Post. Jan. 1, 1880.] 

H F 

HOUSTON, HENRY HOWARD (Oct. 3, 
1820-June 21, 1895), railroad executive, the son 


Houston 

of Samuel Nelson and Susan (Strickler) Hous¬ 
ton, was born on his father's farm at Wrights- 
ville, York County, Pa. He was a great-grand¬ 
son of John Houston who emigrated from Ireland 
about 1725 and settled near Gap, Lancaster 
County, Pa.; his grandfather was Dr. John Hous¬ 
ton of Pequea, Pa., who served as a surgeon in 
the Colonial army. Henry attended the schools 
of Wrightsville and Columbia, Pa., and at the 
age of fourteen obtained employment in the gen¬ 
eral store of John S. Futhey, Wrightsville, re¬ 
maining there until 1839. From 1840 to 1843 he 
was employed by James Buchanan at Lucinda 
Furnace, Clarion County, Pa. In the latter year 
he joined Edmund Evans in rebuilding and op¬ 
erating Horse Creek Furnace, on the Allegheny 
River, in Venango County. Returning to Co¬ 
lumbia in January 1845, he remained there until 
1846, when he started upon a tour of the South¬ 
ern and Western states. In 1847 he became a 
clerk in the canal and railroad transportation 
office of David Leech & Company, Philadelphia. 
After three years he resigned to take up the or¬ 
ganization and management of the freight line of 
the Pennsylvania Railroad Company between 
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. On Nov. 23, 1852, 
he was appointed general freight agent of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad and held this office until 
July 1, 1867, when he resigned because of poor 
health. Subsequently he was one of the promot¬ 
ers of the Union Line, a private organization 
which ran through cars over the lines of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad and its connections to the 
West. He was similarly connected with the Em¬ 
pire Line, which furnished like facilities in con¬ 
nection with the Lake Shore Railroad and its 
allied roads. These fast freight lines proved very 
efficient in the development of freight business 
and incidentally contributed to the development 
of the country, since prior to their organization 
there had been no interchange of freight cars be¬ 
tween railroads. He became a member of the 
board of directors of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
Company in March 1881 and remained as such 
until his death. He was also a director in many 
other railroad and transportation companies. In 
the early days of the Pennsylvania oil fields, he 
made careful investments which resulted in hand¬ 
some profits, so that he became known as a 
prosperous producer and operator in petroleum. 
Interested also in Western gold mines, he ac¬ 
cumulated a large fortune. 

He was actively connected with many other 
interests besides those of a commercial nature, 
frequently taking a prominent part in movements 
connected with public welfare. He contributed 
largely to the development of Wissahickon 


262 



Houston 

Heights, a Philadelphia suburb. He erected 
many houses in the vicinity of his residence and 
built the Wissahickon Inn and the Protestant 
Episcopal Church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. 
He was a generous benefactor of Washington 
and Lee University and the University of Penn¬ 
sylvania, being a trustee of both institutions from 
1886 to the time of his death, and presenting the 
latter institution with Houston Hall—a club 
house “for the daily use of the students of the 
University”—as a memorial to his oldest son, 
Henry Howard Houston, who graduated in 1878 
and died the following year while traveling in 
Europe. The elder Houston’s wife, whom he 
married in 1856, was Sallie Sherred Bonnell, and 
they had six children. His death, occasioned by 
heart disease, occurred suddenly at his home in 
Philadelphia. 

[E. R. Huston, Hist, of the Huston Families and 
Their Descendants (1912) ; E. P. Oberholtzer, Phila¬ 
delphia (1912), vol. IV; W. B. Wilson, Hist, of the 
Pa. Railroad Company (2 vols., 1899); Public Ledger 
(Phila.)j and Philo. Press, June 22, 1895.] jj. p. 

HOUSTON, SAMUEL (Mar. 2, 1793-July 
26, 1863), soldier and statesman of Texas, was 
bom in Rockbridge County, Va., seven miles 
from Lexington. His paternal ancestors were 
Ulster Scots who in the first part of the eigh¬ 
teenth century had migrated to Philadelphia and 
thence, some time later, to Virginia. Houston’s 
father, Maj. Sam Houston, was a veteran of the 
Revolution who had continued to follow the pro¬ 
fession of a soldier and who died in 1807 while 
on a tour of inspection of frontier army posts. 
The widow, Elizabeth (Paxton) Houston, re¬ 
moved with her large family of six sons and three 
daughters to the vicinity of Maryville, Tenn., 
where her older sons helped her to make a home 
only a few miles from the river which separated 
the settlements of the pioneers from the eagerly 
coveted lands of the Cherokees. Houston’s for¬ 
mal education was limited to a few short terms 
in neighborhood schools. When he was sixteen, 
his brothers secured for him a position in the vil¬ 
lage store, but a business life did not appeal to 
his adventurous spirit, and he spent the greater 
part of three years in the more congenial com¬ 
pany of the Indians across the river. In the free¬ 
dom of the forest he learned the Indian language 
and customs and developed a deep sympathy for 
the Indian character. Early in 1813 he volun¬ 
teered for service in the war with Great Britain. 
Before the end of the summer he had received 
his commission as ensign. His first active serv¬ 
ice was in the campaign against the Creeks 
under Andrew Jackson. In the decisive engage¬ 
ment at Horseshoe Bend, in Alabama, Mar. 28, 
1814, Houston bore his part bravely and received 


Houston 

wounds from which he never fully recovered. 
After the war, he continued in the army and in 
1817, through the influence of Jackson, to whom 
he had been presented, he received an important 
assignment as sub-agent among the Cherokees 
(American State Papers; Indian Affairs, vol. II, 
1834, p. 464). 

In March 1818 he resigned from the army and 
spent a few months in the study and practice of 
law. He had all the qualities to appeal to a 
frontier community. In later years, among the 
many legends that attached to his career one of 
the most persistent was that of his almost gigan¬ 
tic size. Actually, the records of the War De¬ 
partment show that he was tall, six feet, two 
inches in height, with the brown hair and the 
keen, gray eyes that characterize his stock. His 
abounding vigor, his army record, and his genius 
for dramatic contrasts in speech and dress seemed 
to raise even his size above its generous propor¬ 
tions. As a stump speaker he was probably un¬ 
excelled. His personal popularity was soon un¬ 
bounded, and in the first year of his practice he 
was elected district attorney for the Nashville 
district 

In the summer of 1823, without opposition, he 
was elected to Congress, and was easily reelect¬ 
ed in 1825. He estimated justly to one of his 
friends the reasons for his success: “Five years 
since I came to this place without education more 
than ordinary—without friends—without cash— 
and almost without acquaintances—consequently 
without much credit—and here among talents 
and distinction I have made my stand! or rather 
the people have made it for me” (Foreman Photo¬ 
stats, Austin, Tex.). In Congress he made few 
speeches, and those unimportant, but he was evi¬ 
dently well liked by his colleagues and did much 
to build the new party which was later to send 
Jackson to the White House. In 1827, with un¬ 
diminished popularity, on a platform which em¬ 
phasized the great need for internal improve¬ 
ments, Houston was elected governor of Ten¬ 
nessee. 

In his high position, with manners of great 
charm and dignity—which he may have learned 
in part from his friends the Indians—he was in 
a fair way to become a social lion. With free 
use of capitals, he wrote: “I am making myself 
less frequent in the Lady World than I have 
been. I must keep up my Dignity, or rather I 
must attend more to politics and less to love...” 
(Houston Papers, Rice Institute,Houston,Tex.). 

When early in 1829 his old friend Jackson 
commenced his lonely trip to Washington, Hous¬ 
ton had begun his campaign for reelection. His 
opponent was experienced and popular, and sue- 


263 



Houston 

cess was by no means certain; but the chances 
seemed to favor Houston, and he was about to 
be married (Jan. 22) to Eliza Allen, a daughter 
of a wealthy and influential family. Scarcely was 
Jackson established in the White House when 
he heard that his friend’s wife had gone back to 
her father’s house and refused to return, and that 
Houston, on Apr. 16,1829, had sent his resigna¬ 
tion to the secretary of state and had left for the 
Indian country, where he was planning to revolu¬ 
tionize Texas with the aid of the western In¬ 
dians. No wonder Jackson wrote: “I must have 
really thought you deranged to have believed you 
had such a wild scheme in contemplation; and 
particularly, when it was communicated that the 
physical force to be employed was the Cherokee 
Indians!... Your pledge of honor to the con¬ 
trary is a sufficient guaranty that you will never 
engage in any enterprise injurious to your coun- 
try, or that would tarnish your fame” (Yoakum, 
post, I, 307). This confidential letter, written in 
June 1829, seems to indicate that Jackson had 
some grounds to fear that Houston had really 
considered the possibility of the career of a fili¬ 
buster, and Jackson was clearly opposed to any 
such action. For a man in Houston’s very dif¬ 
ficult position, however, a change of scene to the 
Indian country was by no means the act of a 
madman. His enemies were saying that Mrs. 
Houston had left him on account of his unreason¬ 
able jealousy, a charge which, with perfect good 
taste, he refused to challenge. He later received 
a divorce on the grounds of abandonment, but 
neither Houston nor Mrs. Houston ever gave any 
reasons for the catastrophe (J. C. Guild, Old 
Times in Tennessee, 1878, pp. 269-85; J. H. 
Reagan, Memoirs, 1906, pp. 48,101; James, post, 
p. 299). He was now almost sure to be defeated 
in Tennessee, but in the western country, next to 
politics, the life of an Indian^ trader had been for 
a century one of the chief avenues to wealth and 
power. For such a career Houston seemed to be 
well fitted. 

After arriving in the Indian country, one of 
his first acts was to use his influence to prevent 
a ruinous war between the Cherokees and the 
more distant Pawnees. Before the end of the 
year he was established at a trading post which 
he called the Wigwam, on the Verdigris near 
Fort Gibson. There he was soon living with an 
Indian wife, Tiana Rogers, after the fashion of 
the typical trader (Stokes to Crawford, Mar. 19, 
1839, Foreman, post, p. 260; James, post, p. 152). 
His formal adoption by the Cherokees also ap¬ 
pears in the documents as an expedient to facili¬ 
tate his new profession. Like other traders he 
was the friend and adviser of the Indians, and 


264 


Houston 

though he drank heavfly, even according to fron¬ 
tier standards, he made almost yearly the Ion? 
trip to Washington, pleading, and no doubt sin 
cerely, the wrongs of the Indians, seeking a prof¬ 
itable contract, and engaging in bitter disputes 
with rivals. Of these disputes, that which led in 
April 1832 to a personal assault on Representa¬ 
tive Stanberry of Ohio, followed by a trial in the 
House of Representatives, was merely the most 
famous. 

The records now available indicate that for six 
years Houston’s fundamental interest was in the 
diplomatic and business opportunities of the In¬ 
dian country In spite of the facts that as early 
as 1822 he had joined with others in applying’ for 
a grant of lands in Texas (Dunn Transcripts 
Library of Congress) and that in 1829 he was 
bemg invited by old acquaintances like John A 
Wharton to settle there, his interest in Texas 
remained incidental. Even his well-known jour¬ 
ney thither in 1832 was made chiefly to secure 
peace between the Indians among whom he lived 
and the dangerous Comanches who had their 
headquarters near San Antonio. His attendance 
m the spring of 1833 at the Texas convention 
which sent Austin to Mexico to secure statehood 
seems to have been a mere interlude in his In- 
ian i e. In the next year, we catch occasional 
glimpses of him, once in Louisiana, again at Fort 
Gibson then in a tavern in western Arkansas; 
but when he made his annual pilgrimage to 
Washington in 1834 he was still talking to Cass 
then secretary of war, much about the Indians 
and their rights and not at all about Texas. 

1 here is not a hint in his letters that he was then 
or ever an agent of President Jackson to revolu- 
tionize Texas (Houston to Cass, Mar. 12, 1834, 
MSS., Library of Congress). He was counted 
m the census of 1833 at Nacogdoches, Texas 
(James, p. 199), although not till the spring of 
t* ^ ev ^ent that he was definitely estab¬ 
lished at that place, which he had visited more 
man once in the last two years (Nacogdoches 
Archives, Mar. 4,1835). Even now he seems to 
have been an agent for the Cherokees and for 
certain New York interests regarding lands in 
Texas. Here he was caught by the rising storm 
which he had probably done little or nothing to 
arouse. 

As the necessity for an armed struggle with 
Mexico became more clear, Houston, with his 
commanding presence and capacity to arouse 
confidence and enthusiasm, was promptly se¬ 
lected commander, first of the local volunteers 
and then of the regular army under the pro¬ 
visional government. He had no part, however, 
in the occupation of San Antonio in December 



Houston 

1835, and finding his authority flouted over the 
proposed expedition to Matamoros, to which he 
was opposed, he spent the month of February in 
the north arranging with the Indians a treaty 
which might at least serve to keep them quiet 
during the struggle which was soon to open. In 
March 1836, after the formal declaration of inde¬ 
pendence, Houston’s selection as commander-in- 
chief was reaffirmed, and on Mar. 11 he arrived 
at Gonzales to take command of the little force 
of 400 men which was to be the nucleus of the 
army of defense. Two days later, the news that 
the Alamo had fallen led to a retreat. Similar 
news from the ill-fated Janies Walker Fannin 
[q.z/.] arrived when Houston was on the Colo¬ 
rado, and though his army had been increased 
by recruits, and in spite of much opposition, 
Houston again retreated and finally halted to 
await the movements of the victorious enemy in 
the tangled country opposite the broad planta¬ 
tions of Jared Groce on the upper Brazos. In 
the meantime, the settlers were streaming back 
to safety in the adventure known in quieter times 
as the “runaway scrape.” 

After a delay of two weeks, aided by the con¬ 
venient presence of a steamer which was loading 
cotton, Houston crossed the Brazos. Almost at 
the same moment, with an advance guard of 750 
men, Santa Anna crossed the river farther down 
and pushed on towards the temporary capital at 
Harrisburg. Encouraged by the arrival of two 
small cannon, Houston marched towards the 
same point In later years his enemies always 
said that even now Houston had no intention to 
meet the enemy, but all the strictly contemporary 
letters point the other way. Houston had been 
doing what he could to minimize the forces of 
the enemy and to train and encourage his men. 

On Apr. 20 , 1836, with 783 men, he overtook 
Santa Anna with an almost equal force at the 
point where Buffalo Bayou enters the San Ja¬ 
cinto River. For one day, broken by an inde¬ 
cisive cavalry skirmish, the two little armies lay 
in sight of each other. On the morning of Apr. 
21, Santa Anna was reenforced by 500 men. In 
the afternoon, the over-confident Mexicans were 
surprised in their camp and completely defeated 
in an engagement lasting about fifteen minutes. 
The Texans lost six men killed and twenty-five 
wounded, while almost the whole Mexican force 
was killed or captured. Houston himself, shot 
through the ankle, was among those severely 
wounded. Santa Anna was made a prisoner and 
was easily persuaded to sign an order for the 
retreat of his other forces, an order which the 
Mexicans had already anticipated. On May 5, 
after writing a clear account of his campaign 


Houston 

and advising President David G, Burnet [ q.v .] 
to use Santa Anna as a hostage for peace, Hous¬ 
ton left his victorious and now increasing army 
to seek surgical attention in New Orleans. 

Soon after his return to Texas, he was elected 
president and on Oct. 22, 1836, took the oath of 
office at Columbia. Early in his term he man¬ 
aged against great opposition to send Santa 
Anna back safely to Mexico, and a few months 
later to secure the recognition of the new repub¬ 
lic by the United States. Mexico was in no po¬ 
sition to renew the war, and Houston’s term, 
marked by conservatism and executive abil¬ 
ity, was comparatively uneventful. Under Van 
Buren, the United States refused to consider 
annexation. 

The administration of Mirabeau Buonaparte 
Lamar [q.v.], who now came into office for three 
years, was extravagant and unlucky. Houston 
was not allowed to spend much time in retire¬ 
ment, and as a member of Congress he set his 
face against such ventures as the disastrous ex¬ 
pedition to Santa Fe. In 1840 he was married 
to Margaret Lea of Alabama. His marriage to 
a woman of intense religious enthusiasm, much 
younger than himself, was a turning point in 
Houston’s easy-going personal life, but, in spite 
of the great disparity in age, the marriage 
proved very happy (Houston’s letters to his 
wife, in private possession, Houston, Tex.). The 
Houstons had eight children born between 1843 
and i860. With all his opportunities to become 
wealthy, it is significant that when he died in 
1863, Houston left an estate appraised in de¬ 
preciated Confederate money at only $89,000 in¬ 
cluding twelve negro slaves who were valued at 
$10,000 (Houston’s will, MSS., Austin). 

When at the close of 1841 Houston was again 
elected president, the circumstances were those 
of unusual difficulty. The national debt was esti¬ 
mated at at least seven million dollars, the In¬ 
dians were in an ugly mood and had to be con¬ 
ciliated, and Mexico showed signs of renewing 
the war. Twice in 1842, predatory expeditions 
reached San Antonio. Houston cut all expenses 
to the bone, and with the aid of his able secre¬ 
tary of the treasury, William Henry Dainger- 
field, soon placed the currency on a sound basis, 
though Daingerfield shortly reported that a for¬ 
eign loan for an aggressive policy was quite im¬ 
possible (Daingerfield Letters, St. Louis). 

When Houston retired from office at the close 
of 1844, Texas was again fairly prosperous, and 
there are indications that he no longer regarded 
annexation to the United States as an unmixed 
blessing (Houston to Donelson, Apr. 9, 1845; 
F. R. Lubbock, Six Decodes in Texas, 1900, pp. 


265 



Houston 

160-62). The failure of Tyler’s proposed treaty 
had not come as a complete surprise, and Hous¬ 
ton had even gone so far as to authorize a 
joint alliance with Great Britain and France on 
the basis of independence (Houston to Jones, 
Sept. 24, 1844, Jones Manuscripts, San Antonio, 
Tex.). When annexation was at length certain, 
however, he made light of the doubts and hesi¬ 
tations in which he had necessarily passed the 
last three years (Niles’ National Register, June 
1845, P- 2 3 ° >* Dec. 27,1848, p. 413). His ene¬ 
mies were soon able to prove that he had con¬ 
sidered more than one alternative, but they could 
not deny to him his place as the one commanding 
figure in the history of the Republic of Texas, 
whose brief career was now coming to a glorious 
and unexpectedly successful end. 

In March 1846, Houston was again in Wash¬ 
ington, to serve for almost fourteen years as 
a senator from the recently admitted state of 
Texas. He was still a great talker, his clothes 
were still showy and unusual, once at least he 
made a speech when under the influence of un¬ 
dignified excitement, but the man had mellowed 
with the passing years, and his personal enmities 
were chiefly those that he had inherited from 
earlier stages of his career. He spoke seldom, 
sometimes with careless lack of preparation; but 
in support of the Union and again when the 
rights of the Indians were at stake he rose more 
than once to real heights of impassioned and 
well-controlled eloquence. During the Mexican 
War he, as well as his old friend and colleague, 
Thomas J. Rusk, cordially supported the policies 
of Polk. Houston was offered a generalship in 
the army but declined. He was bitterly disap¬ 
pointed with Trist’s treaty of peace, and to the 
end of his life continued to advocate at least a 
protectorate over the whole of Mexico. 

As time went on, he found himself an increas¬ 
ingly lonely figure among his Southern col¬ 
leagues. On the organization of Oregon under 
the anti-slavery provisions of the Northwest Or¬ 
dinance of 1787, from all the South only Thomas 
Hart Benton [ q.v .] voted with him. Houston 
was the only Southern senator who voted for 
every item in the compromise measures of 1850, 
and only John Bell [q.v.] of Tennessee agreed 
with him in opposing the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise. On this heated question Houston 
made the ablest, because the most moderate and 
prophetic, speech. On only one question, that of 
a railroad to the Pacific by a Southern route, did 
he occupy a position that was distinctly South¬ 
ern. When in 1856 he became an advocate of the 
principles of the Enow-Nothing party and was 
mentioned for the presidency, he had alienated 


Houston 

even the Germans, who on other questions often 
agreed with him. Two years before the close of 
his term, the legislature of Texas signified its 
displeasure by electing his successor. In an elo¬ 
quent valedictory to the Senate, Feb. 28, 1859, 
Houston summed up his career (Congressional 
Globe, 35 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 1433-39). Some 
weeks before, Jan. 13, 1859, in a colloquy with 
his new colleague, Ward, he had said: “I make 
no distinction between southern rights and north¬ 
ern rights. Our rights are rights common to the 
whole Union. I would not see wrong inflicted 
on the North or on the South, but I am for the 
Union, without any ‘if 1 in the case; and my motto 
is, it shall be preserved!” To which Ward re¬ 
plied : “I will only remark to my honorable col¬ 
league, that there is a difference of that ‘if be¬ 
tween us” (Congressional Globe, 35 Cong., 2 
Sess., p. 355). 

Houston’s name was still one to conjure with 
in Texas. In 1857, while still in the Senate, and 
resting under the obloquy of his recent Know- 
Nothing heresy, he put his popularity to the test 
by running for the governorship, and though 
defeated he managed to poll a vote that was in 
the circumstances quite surprising. Two years 
later, as he was leaving the Senate, the result 
was reversed, and he was elected over the same 
opponent on a platform which called for a new 
Indian policy to make the frontiers safe and for 
the preservation of the Union. His brief term 
as governor coincided with the heated canvass 
which resulted in the election of Abraham Lin¬ 
coln. Houston believed that even now, with 
smaller sacrifices than had been necessary to 
establish it, the Constitution might be preserved. 
Again and again, before excited audiences, he 
pointed out the certainty of war and the danger 
of defeat. He did not believe that even the elec¬ 
tion. of a “blade Republican” would justify se¬ 
cession. Unfortunately for his policies, how¬ 
ever, the tide was running strong against him. 
Even before his inauguration, the bloody con¬ 
flicts in Kansas, John Brown’s Harper’s Ferry 
raid, and the indorsement of Helper’s Impending 
Crisis by prominent Republicans had set the 
stage for secession. Indian raids continued and 
weakened the normal Union sentiment of the 
frontier. A series of unusual fires were charged 
to Abolitionists, and in the heated atmosphere 
of the times such charges gained credence. In 
the circumstances, after the election, Houston’s 
devices to delay or limit the effects of secession 
proved mere straws in the course of the advanc¬ 
ing current. 

He first hoped to initiate a movement for a 
Southern convention to arrange some compro- 


266 



Houston 

mise, but this idea was generally disregarded. 
Although he obeyed the order of the legislature 
and submitted the question of secession to a 
popular vote, he refused to recognize the au¬ 
thority of the secession convention, and as late as 
Jan. 20, he advised Gen. David E. Twiggs not 
to hand over the Federal forces to an “unau¬ 
thorized mob” On Feb. 23, when the people by 
a large vote accepted secession, Houston refused 
to believe that mere secession carried with it any 
necessary adherence to the Confederacy, and on 
this ground declined to take any oath of alle¬ 
giance to the new general government He re¬ 
garded Texas as again an independent republic. 
When he was deposed, however, on Mar. 18, 
1861, he quietly relinquished his office, and on 
Mar. 29 positively refused to accept the aid of 
Union soldiers in reestablishing his lost au¬ 
thority (War of the Rebellion: Official Records, 
Army, 1 ser., I, 551). 

Houston was no man to start a counter revolu¬ 
tion at the cost of bloody civil war among his 
own people and now, when he was called a “hoary 
haired traitor,” he retired quietly to his farm at 
Huntsville. In one of his last speeches he an¬ 
nounced his position: He had been opposed to 
secession; even now he regarded it as a grave 
mistake, but the people had set their hands to 
the plow, and it would be ignominy to turn back; 
his last prayers would be for the happiness of his 
people and for the safety of Texas. Three weeks 
after the fall of Vicksburg, surrounded by all 
his family except his eldest son, who was then 
wounded and a prisoner in a Northern camp, 
Sam Houston died. His faults were obvious. 
The real greatness of the man was not to be 
recognized again until, beyond the heat and pas¬ 
sion of a bitter conflict, a new generation had 
arisen. 

[Houston was a prolific letter writer. The manu¬ 
script materials for his life are abundant and widely 
scattered. The chief collections are in Austin and have 
been conveniently calendared by A. J. Stephens in an 
unpublished thesis at the University of Texas. Other 
important letters are in Houston, Washington, St. 
Louis, and New York. Printed sources are to be found 
in H. K. Yoakum, Hist, of Texas (2 vols., 1855), writ¬ 
ten by a close friend of Houston, and especially valuable 
for the period of the revolution; in W. C. Crane, Life 
and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston (2 vols., 
1884) ; in G. P. Garrison, “Diplomatic Correspondence 
of the Republic of Texas,” Ann. Report Am. Hist. Asso . 
for 1907 and 1908 (3 pts. in 2 vols., 1908-11) ; in Niles’ 
Weekly Register; in the Cong. Globe; and especially in 
the files of the Texas and S. W. Hist. Quart. Grant 
Foreman, Pioneer Days in the Early Southwest (1926), 
contains most of the materials necessary for a study of 
Houston’s Indian life. Biographies are: C. E. Lester, 
Sam Houston (1846), expanded anonymously into a 
campaign biography (1855); Crane, op. cit.; Henry 
Bruce, Life of Gen. Houston (1891) ; A. M. Williams, 
Sam Houston (1893); and George Creel, Sam Houston 
(1928). None of these lives is based on an adequate 
critical examination of available documents; much 


Houston 

more satisfactory is Marquis James, The Raven, a Biog. 
of Sam Houston (1929). See also S. R. Houston, Brief 
Biog. Accounts of Many Members of the Houston Fam~ 
ily (1882).] R G C 

HOUSTON, WILLIAM CHURCHILL 

(c. 1746-Aug. 12, 1788), teacher and Revolu¬ 
tionary leader, was a son of Margaret and Archi¬ 
bald Houston, who in 1753 and 1764 received 
patents of land in that part of North Carolina 
that is now Cabarrus County. Prepared for col¬ 
lege at the Poplar Tent academy and by Joseph 
Alexander, William rode off to the College of 
New Jersey with fifty pounds and his clothes. 
Teaching in the college grammar school for sup¬ 
port, he was graduated (A.B.) in 1768, was made 
master of the grammar school, and then tutor. 
In 1771 he became professor of mathematics and 
natural philosophy. In 1776 he was recorded 
captain of the foot militia of Somerset County 
and saw active service around Princeton. He 
resigned on Aug. 17, 1777. In 1775 and 1776 he 
was deputy secretary of the Continental Congress 
and the following years sat in the New Jersey 
Assembly, where he served on the committee to 
settle public accounts and acted as clerk pro 
tempore . In 1778 he was a member of the New 
Jersey Council of Safety. The next year he was 
elected to the Continental Congress, where he 
took a leading part in matters of supply and fi¬ 
nance. Keeping up his teaching he signed, with 
John Witherspoon, the various advertisements 
as to the “State of the College” (New Jersey 
Gazette, May 5, Oct. 13, 1779) • Meanwhile he 
had found time to study law and in 1781 was 
admitted to the bar. He was appointed clerk of 
the New Jersey supreme court the same year. 
He was receiver of Continental taxes in New 
Jersey from 1782 to 1785, took over Jonathan 
Dickinson Sergeant's affairs at Trenton in 1782, 
and in that year served on the commission to 
adjust for New Jersey troops the deficiencies in 
pay due to depreciated currency, on a committee 
to prevent trade with the enemy, and on the com¬ 
mission that issued the famous “Trenton decree” 
in the attempt to settle the Wyoming land dis¬ 
putes between Connecticut and Pennsylvania. 
In 1783 he resigned from the college, receiving 
“the thanks of the Board” at Commencement, 
and built up a considerable law practice at Tren¬ 
ton. In 1784 and 1785 he again served in Con¬ 
gress, where he interested himself in John Fitch's 
steamboat. He was a delegate at the Annapolis 
Convention and then at the Philadelphia Federal 
Convention. He did not sign the Constitution 
but did sign the report to the New Jersey legis¬ 
lature. Worn out and ill with tuberculosis he 
traveled south to recover but died suddenly at 
Frankford, Pa., leaving his wife, Jane (Smith), 


267 



Houstoun 

the grand-daughter of Jonathan Dickinson, the 
first president of the College of New Jersey, and 
their two sons and two daughters. 

[Files of the Congressional Joint Committee on 
Printing; T. A. Glenn, W. C. Houston (1903); N . J. 
Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. IX (1916); E. F. and W. S. 
Cooley, Geneal. of Early Settlers in Trenton and Ewing 
(1883) ; Archives of ... N. I., especially ser. 2, vol. 
II (1903), III (1906), and V (1917)1* John Maclean, 
Hist, of the College of N. J. (2 vols., 1877); V. L. 
Collins, President Witherspoon (2 vols., 1925) ; re¬ 
ferred to as Euston in Works of John Adams, vol. II 
(1850), p. 355; John Hall, Hist, of the Presbyterian 
Church in Trenton (1859), which copies part of a biog. 
notice in New York Observer, Mar. 18, 1858; E. R. 
Walker, Hamilton Schuyler, and others, A Hist, of 
Trenton ( 2 vols., 1929); J. O. Raum, Hist, of the City 
of Trenton, N. J. (1871); Pa. Packet, and Daily Ad¬ 
vertiser, Aug. 13, 1788.] W.L.W_y. 

HOUSTOUN, JOHN (Aug. 31,1744-July 20, 
1796), Revolutionary leader, twice governor of 
Georgia, was the son of Sir Patrick Houstoun 
who emigrated with Oglethorpe and was a mem¬ 
ber of the council under the royal government of 
Georgia. Born in Georgia near the present town 
of Waynesboro, he studied law and commenced 
practice in Savannah. As the Revolution ap¬ 
proached, he became one of a group—the others 
being Noble Wymberly Jones, Archibald Bulloch 
[qq.v.], and John Walton—who took it upon 
themselves to organize the liberty sentiment in 
the colony. In July 1774 these men called the 
first revolutionary meeting. Houstoun was a 
leader in promoting the first provincial congress, 
held in January 1775, and was by it elected a 
delegate to the Continental Congress. Since only 
five of the twelve parishes were represented in 
the provincial congress—so powerful was the 
royalist influence—the delegates felt that they 
could not justly claim to represent the province, 
and did not attend the Continental Congress. 
Houstoun, with his associates above mentioned, 
except that George Walton [ q.v .] was now sub¬ 
stituted for John Walton, called another meet¬ 
ing for June 1775, which set up a Council of 
Safety, an informal executive committee of the 
Revolutionary element. The Council successfully 
agitated for another provincial congress, which 
met in July 1775, at which all the parishes were 
represented. Elected by this body a delegate 
to the Continental Congress, Houstoun went to 
Philadelphia, and would have had the honor of 
signing the Declaration of Independence but for 
the necessity of returning home to counteract the 
efforts of his colleague, John J. Zubly, who was 
bent on defeating the movement for independence. 

In January 1778 Houstoun was elected gov¬ 
ernor of Georgia. His administration was sig¬ 
nalized by a military effort against St. Augustine, 
Fla., the headquarters of an important force of 
British and Indians who were ravishing south- 


Hove 

era Georgia. An agreement was entered into 
with General Robert Howe [q.v.], in command 
of the Southern Department with headquarters 
in Savannah, to concentrate all forces for a move¬ 
ment against Florida to take place in the summer 
of 1778. The available forces consisted of the 
Georgia militia, numbering 330, an undisciplined 
and poorly equipped group under the personal 
command of die Governor; certain Continental 
forces, approximately 550 men, under General 
Howe; 250 Continental infantry and thirty ar¬ 
tillerists with two field pieces, from South Caro¬ 
lina, under the command of C. C. Pinckney; and 
some South Carolina militia under Colonels Bull 
and Williamson. None of the commanders would 
take orders from any other; there was no spirit 
of cooperation; malaria broke out; stores and 
transportation were miserably inadequate. The 
expedition was a fiasco and was abandoned. By 
the end of the year the British had overrun south 
Georgia and taken Savannah. Houstoun was 
elected governor a second time in 1784. During 
his second administration an act was passed 
chartering the University of Georgia and setting 
apart lands for its endowment; and Houstoun 
became a member of the first board of trustees 
of the institution. His other public services were 
as chief justice of Georgia, 1786; commissioner 
to settle the boundary dispute with South Caro¬ 
lina, 1787; justice for Chatham County, 1787; 
mayor of Savannah, 1789 and 1790; judge of the 
superior court of the eastern circuit, 1792. 

Houstoun married a daughter of Jonathan 
Bryan, one of the largest planters in Georgia. 
He died at “White Bluff/' near Savannah, in his 
fifty-second year, leaving no children. 

[C. C. Jones,. Biog. Sketches of the Delegates from 
Ga. to the Continental Cong . (1891) and The Hist . of 
Ga. (1883), vol. II; A. D. Candler, The Revolutionary 
Records of the. State of Ga. (3 vols., 1908); L. L. 
Knight, Georgia's Landmarks, vols. I and II (1913- 
14); George White, Hist. Colls, of Ga. (1855) ; W. B. 
Stevens, A Hist, of Ga., vol. II (1859); A. D. Candler 
and C. A. Evans, Georgia (1906), vol. II.] 

R.P.B. 

HOVE, ELLING (Mar. 25, 1863-Dec. 17, 
1927), Lutheran theologian, was born at North- 
wood, Iowa, the son of Ole and Kari (Olson) 
Hove. As a lad of fifteen he entered Luther Col¬ 
lege, Decorah, Iowa, from which he received the 
degree of A.B. in 1884. He then pursued studies 
in Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and in 1887 
received the degree of candidate of theology. Af¬ 
ter short pastorates at Portland, Ore. (1887-89), 
and Astoria, Ore. (1890-91), he was called to 
the large and exacting pastorate of the First Lu¬ 
theran Church, Decorah, Iowa. In 1894 he was 
sent to Mankato, Minn., where he found more 
time for study. He married in 1893, Didrikke 


268 



Hove 

Wulfsberg. Though he had taught a few classes 
in religion at Luther College, he attained to his 
theological professorship at Luther Seminary, 
St Paul, Minn., in 1901 by delivering a paper 
on “Justification/* prepared in his character¬ 
istically thorough manner and delivered at a pas¬ 
toral conference. When at the union of churches 
in 1917, the seminary was dissolved and rees¬ 
tablished under the name, Luther Theological 
Seminary, he was retained as a professor in the 
new institution and served until 1926, when he 
was forced to retire on account of failing health. 

Hove was widely known as an eloquent preach¬ 
er. Possessing a strong voice, he at one time, 
without mechanical aids, spoke to an audience of 
10,000 and at another time to an audience of 15,- 
000, and made himself heard. As a theologian he 
ranks high in Lutheran circles. Although modest 
and unassuming, he did not hesitate to take a 
firm stand on the questions of the day, but he was 
averse to carrying controversies into the press. 
He preferred to work at the fundamentals rather 
than on the peripheries, and besides his lecture 
on “Justification/* he wrote another on “Con¬ 
science.** An accomplished linguist, he read wide¬ 
ly in original sources. In the later period of his 
life his interest was centered largely in the field 
of dogmatics, and he utilized his sabbatical year 
(1925-26) in translating his notes on this sub¬ 
ject from Norwegian into English, hoping that 
they might be published some time in the future. 
His son, Rev. O. Hjalmar Hove, completed the 
work and in 1930 it was issued under the title, 
Christian Doctrine . In this book of nearly 500 
pages, which puts Hove in the front rank of 
Lutheran theologians in America, he summarizes 
Norwegian Lutheran dogmatics in its various 
orthodox tendencies up to the present time. 

Active in denominational affairs, he was in 
1901 a member of the committee on calls in the 
Norwegian Synod, and in 1908 and 1909 of the 
committee on Christian education, having, no 
doubt, much to do with the issuance in Nor¬ 
wegian and English of the popular editions of the 
Explanations to Luther's Catechism . From 1905 
to 1910 he was a member of the Norwegian Syn¬ 
od’s committee on union. Although it was an¬ 
other committee which brought about the Madi¬ 
son Agreement in 1912 and the formation of the 
Norwegian Lutheran Church of America at the 
union in 1917, the earlier committee of which 
Hove was a member had laid the foundations on 
which the articles of union were built. 

[ 0 . M. Norlie, Norsk Lutherske Prester i Amerika, 
1843-1913 (1914), translated and revised by Rasmus 
Malinin, O. M. Norlie, and O. A. Tingelstad, as Who's 
Who Among Pastors in All the Norwegian Lutheran 
Synods of America, 1843-1927 (1928) ; N. Luth. Pres - 


Hovenden 

ter i Amerika (3rd ed., 1928) ; Lutheran Church Her- 
aid, Jan. io, 1928; Lutheraneren, Jan. 25, 1928.] 

J.M.R. 

HOVENDEN, THOMAS (Dec. 23, 1840- 
Aug. 14, 1895), historical and genre painter, 
was born in Dunmanway, County Cork, Ireland, 
and died at Plymouth Meeting, Pa. His father, 
Robert Hovenden, keeper of the bridewell at 
Dunmanway, was of English descent; his moth¬ 
er’s maiden name was Ellen Bryan. Both parents 
died when he was six, and he was placed in the 
Cork orphanage. At fourteen he was apprenticed 
to a “carver and gilder** of Cork with whom he 
served a seven years* apprenticeship. His mas¬ 
ter, recognizing the boy*s talent for drawing, 
sent him to the Cork School of Design. Coming 
to America in 1863, Hovenden continued his 
training in New York at the School of the Na¬ 
tional Academy of Design. In 1874 he went to 
Paris for further study, remaining for six years 
and entering the Lcole des Beaux-Arts, where 
he worked under Cabanel. Once more in Amer¬ 
ica, he had a studio in New York for a time but 
came to be more permanently associated with 
Philadelphia, where he taught in the school of 
the Pennsylvania Academy. In 1881 he married 
a talented young American artist, Helen Corson; 
their daughter, Martha Hovenden, became a 
painter of merit. In his teaching, as in his own 
painting, Hovenden remained the man formed 
by the academic school of France. The fineness 
and warmth of his personality, however, united 
with a conscientious effort to help his pupils, 
caused him to be greatly respected by them. 
Among their number, one may recall the name 
of Robert Henri [#.z/.]. Hovenden was elected 
to the National Academy in 1882. He met his 
death while trying to save a little girl who was in 
front of a railroad train near Norristown, Pa. 

Hovenden was represented almost yearly at 
the exhibitions of the National Academy of De¬ 
sign and had a number of pictures shown at the 
Paris Salon. Among his best-known works are: 
“The Last Moments of John Brown** and “Jeru¬ 
salem the Golden** (both in the Metropolitan 
Museum, New York), “Breaking Home Ties/* 
“The Image-Seller, Brittany/* “Bringing Home 
the Bride/* “Elaine/* and “The Harbor Bar Is 
Moaning.** Numerous studies of negro life show 
his interest in the colored people of the land of 
his adoption, and his deep sympathy with their 
story and that of one of their champions gives to 
his picture of John Brown its very genuine inter¬ 
est as illustration. It is the faithful pictorial pres¬ 
entation of John Greenleaf Whittier’s famous 
verse on the death of the hero of Harper’s Ferry, 
and its sentiment has touched the imagination of 
thousands. 



Hovey 

Although a wider understanding of the old 
masters and of the men who continue their art in 
modem times has at present discredited literary 
pictures such as Hovenden painted, his patient 
study gives value to his work as a historical rec¬ 
ord of the manners and appearances of his time. 
He is typical of the sincere toilers of a school 
based on nineteenth-century photographic real¬ 
ism. The sentiment which he offered as a sub¬ 
stitute for the craft of the painter was genuine 
and could well be appreciated by a public un¬ 
aware of the slender artistic basis of the work. 

[W. G. Strickland, A Diet, of Irish Artists (1913) ; 
Samuel Isham, The Hist, of Am. Painting (rev. ed., 
1927); Press and Public Ledger , both of Phila., Aug. 
iS»i 895 J W.P. 

HOVEY, ALVAH (Mar. 5, 1820-Sept. 6, 
1903), Baptist clergyman, educator, traced his 
ancestry back to Daniel Hovey, son of Richard, 
a glover, of Waltham Abbey, Essex, England. 
Daniel emigrated to America and settled in Ips¬ 
wich, Mass., in 1635. One line of his descend¬ 
ants, migrating through Connecticut, established 
themselves in Thetford, Vt. Here Alfred, of 
the sixth generation, married Abigail Howard. 
With three daughters they moved to Greene, 
Chenango County, N. Y., but soon after Alvah, 
their fifth child, was born, they returned to Thet¬ 
ford, which remained the family home until after 
the mother's death in 1837 and the father's re¬ 
marriage. Charles E. Hovey [q.v.] was a young¬ 
er brother. Alvah attended local schools and at 
the age of sixteen secured his father's permission 
to seek broader educational opportunities. Dur¬ 
ing the next twelve years, three of which were 
spent in teaching to gain necessary funds, he 
studied at Brandon, Vt., and pursued the courses 
at Dartmouth College and Newton Theological 
Institution, graduating from the former in 1844, 
and from the latter in 1848. For a year he sup¬ 
plied the Baptist Church of New Gloucester, Me., 
but was not ordained until Jan. 13, 1850. 

In 1849 be was called back to Newton as as¬ 
sistant instructor in Hebrew, beginning a fifty- 
four-year term of service in that institution, 
where he taught, at one time or another, church 
history, theology, ethics, and Biblical interpre¬ 
tation. From 1868 to 1898 he was its president. 
He was by nature stanchly conservative, but 
spoke and wrote with candor, believing that truth 
would ultimately bring its own vindication. This 
conviction created an irenic atmosphere even 
when he dealt with controversial subjects. Prob¬ 
ably no other American Baptist ever spoke with 
more ex cathedra influence than he, yet he was 
the least assertive of any such authority. His 
publications include Outlines of Christian The - 


Hovey 


ology (iboi), for the use of his students; Manual 
of Systematic Theology, and Christian Ethics 
(1877) ; Manual of Christian Theology (revised 
edition, 1900); God With Us (1872) ; Studies in 
Ethics and Religion (1892), a collection of es¬ 
says ; A Memoir of the Life and Times of the 
Rev . Isaac Backus (1858) ; and Barnas Sears, A 
Christian Educator, His Life and Work (1902). 
He was editor of the American Commentary, for 
which he wrote an introduction to the New Tes¬ 
tament and the commentaries on the Gospel of 
John and the Epistle to the Galatians. With his 
wife, Augusta Rice, whom he married Sept. 24, 
1852, he was long and constructively influential 
in the foreign missionary enterprise. He served 
as trustee of Worcester Academy from 1868; of 
Wellesley College from 1878; and as fellow of 
Brown University from 1874. 

[The Hovey Book (1913) ; G. R. Hovey, Alvah Hov¬ 
ey: Hts Ltfe and Letters (1928); Gen, Cat. of Dart¬ 
mouth Coll. , . .1769-1925 (1925) ; The Newton Theol. 
Inst. Gen. Cat. (1890) ; Who’s Who in America. 1003— 
OS; Watchman (Boston), Sept. 10, 17, 1903; Boston 
Herald, bept. 7,1903; Boston Evening Transcript, Sent. 

8 ' 1903 ' ] W.H.A 


HOVEY, ALVIN PETERSON (Sept. 6, 
1821-Nov. 23, 1891), jurist, Union soldier, gov¬ 
ernor of Indiana, was the youngest of the eight 
children of Abiel and Frances (Peterson) Hov¬ 
ey, and the grandson of Rev. Samuel and Abi¬ 
gail (Cleveland) Hovey. His father, a native of 
New Hampshire, was descended from Daniel 
Hovey who settled at Ipswich, Mass., in 1635; 
his mother was a native of Vermont. The Hov- 
eys moved to Indiana in 1818, and Alvin was 
born in that state, near Mount Vernon, Posey 
County. Two years later his father died, and 
when he was fifteen, his mother also died. He 
was apprenticed to his brother, a brick-layer, 
but at nineteen years of age had so improved his 
meager opportunities for study that he began 
teaching school, and two years later, having read 
law in the office of Judge John Pitcher, was ad¬ 
mitted to the bar. He became at once a success¬ 
ful lawyer, winning considerable local fame by 
ousting the executors of the estate of the eccen¬ 
tric philanthropist, William McClure of New 
Harmony, and himself becoming the administra¬ 
tor. On the outbreak of the war with Mexico he 
became first lieutenant of a company of volun¬ 
teers but never saw actual service. He was elect¬ 
ed a member of the Indiana constitutional con¬ 
vention of 1850, and from 1851 to 1854 served as 
circuit judge under the appointment of Governor 
Wright. In the latter year he was chosen a mem¬ 
ber of the Indiana supreme court, to fill a va¬ 
cancy, being the youngest man, up to that time, 
to serve on the Indiana supreme bench. During 


270 



Hovey 

his service (1854-55), he rendered a decision, 
speaking for the court, which declared uncon- 
stitutional a part of the new law establishing the 
Indiana public school system. This decision was 
condemned by the friends of the schools and 
Hovey was characterized by them as narrow¬ 
minded and reactionary (Esarey, post, II, 702). 
During this period of his life he was an ardent 
Democrat and he served as president of the Dem¬ 
ocratic state convention in 1855. In 1856 he was 
appointed United States district attorney by 
President Pierce, but was removed in 1858 by 
President Buchanan for his support of Stephen 
A. Douglas. In that year he ran for Congress 
as a Republican, but was defeated. 

At the opening of the Civil War he was made 
colonel of the 1st Regiment of the Indiana Le¬ 
gion, and later colonel of the 24th Indiana Infan¬ 
try. He was advanced to the rank of brigadier- 
general, Apr. 28, 1862, for gallantry at the bat¬ 
tle of Shiloh, and in General Grant's official re¬ 
port of the Vicksburg campaign, was credited 
with winning the key battle, that of Champion's 
Hill, where his brigade lost one third of its 
strength in killed and wounded (War of the Re - 
hellion: Official Records, Army, 1 ser. XXIV, pt. 
x, pp. 44 ff.). In July 1864 he was brevetted 
major-general of volunteers and directed to raise 
10,000 recruits. This he did by asking for the en¬ 
listment of unmarried men only, and as a result 
this command came to be known as “Hovey's 
Babies." In 1864-65 he was placed in command 
of the district of Indiana, then considered a diffi¬ 
cult post because of the supposed danger from 
the “Sons of Liberty" and “Knights of the Golden 
Circle" who were thought at the time to be nu¬ 
merous in Indiana. 

After the war he was appointed (December 
1865) minister to Peru, and held that post until 
1870, when he returned to his law practice at 
Mount Vernon, Ind. In 1872 he refused the 
Republican nomination for governor, but in 
1886 was elected to Congress and two years later 
was chosen to the governorship. In this cam¬ 
paign he was accused of being exclusive, aristo¬ 
cratic, and unpopular. It was said that he claimed 
to be the reincarnation of Napoleon, and it was 
his custom to retire to solitary contemplation on 
the anniversary of Napoleon's death (Dunn, 
post, I, 481-82). He died in office. 

Hovey was a man of distinguished appearance 
and soldierly bearing, and maintained a reputa¬ 
tion throughout his life for integrity and public 
spirit. He was married on Nov. 24, 1844, to 
Mary Ann James, a native of Baton Rouge, La., 
the daughter of Col. E. R. James. She was the 
mother of five children of whom only two lived 


Hovey 

to maturity. After her death, which occurred in 
1863, he married Rosa Alice, daughter of Caleb 
Smith and widow of Maj. William F. Carey. 

[Sketch by Hovey's son, Charles J* Hovey, in Ind. 
Hist. Bull. (Extra No.), Dec. 1925; Logan Esarey, A 
Hist, of Ind. (1918), vol. II; J. P. Dunn, Indiana and 
Indianans (1919), vol. I; C. M. Walker, Lives of Gen. 
Alvin P. Hovey and Ira J. Chase (1888); Battles and 
Leaders of the Civil War, vol. Ill (1888) ; Personal 
Memoirs of U. S. Grant, vol. I (1885) ; Catherine Mer¬ 
rill, The Soldier of Indiana in the War for the Union 
(2 vols., 1866-69) J Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928); The 
Hovey Book (1913); Indianapolis Sentinel, Nov. 24, 

l8 9iJ w.w.s. 

HOVEY, CHARLES EDWARD (Apr. 26, 
1827-Nov. 17, 1897), educator, Union soldier, 
was born in Thetford, Orange County, Vt., the 
son of Alfred and Abigail (Howard) Hovey, 
and a brother of Alvah Hovey [g.z>.]. At the age 
of twenty-five he graduated from Dartmouth Col¬ 
lege, having taught in the district schools during 
the vacation periods in order to replenish his 
meager funds. From 1852 to 1854 he was princi¬ 
pal of the free high school at Framingham, Mass,, 
and spent some of his time in the study of law. 
In the latter year he moved to Peoria, Ill., where 
he was first, principal of the boys’ high school 
(1854-56), and later (1856-57), superintendent 
of the public schools. An able administrator and 
an energetic, progressive educator, he soon made 
his influence felt throughout the state. He placed 
the Peoria schools upon a firm foundation and 
acquired an enviable reputation as a popular lec¬ 
turer on educational topics. In 1856 he was 
elected president of the Illinois State Teachers' 
Association and in 1857 became a member of the 
first Illinois board of education. From 1856 to 
1858 he was also editor of the IUinois Teacher, 
a monthly magazine established as the organ of 
the Teachers' Association. 

In order to provide properly trained teachers 
for the common schools, the Illinois legislature 
on Feb. 18, 1857, authorized the establishment 
of a state normal university. Hovey was ap¬ 
pointed principal and, after visiting the normal 
schools of the East, in October 1857, with one 
assistant and forty-three students, began to lay 
the foundation at Normal, two miles north of 
Bloomington, of what was to become one of the 
leading institutions of this type in the United 
States. His first report demonstrated his peda¬ 
gogical and administrative ability. By 1861 the 
University had completed the construction of one 
of the finest normal school buildings in the coun¬ 
try. 

The outbreak of the Civil War interrupted 
Hovey's career as an educator. A regiment large¬ 
ly composed of the students and teachers of the 
University was organized and Hovey on Aug. 


27I 



Hovey 

IS, 1861, was commissioned its colonel. This 
regiment, the 33rd Illinois, or Normal Regiment 
as it was called, was noted for its esprit de corps 
and excellent discipline. On Sept. 5, 1862, Hov¬ 
ey was promoted to the rank of brigadier-gen¬ 
eral and for gallantry and meritorious conduct 
in battle, particularly at Arkansas Post, Jan. 11, 
1863, was brevetted major-general of volunteers, 
Mar. 13,1865. He was compelled to resign from 
active service owing to the fact that at Arkansas 
Post he was wounded by a bullet which passed 
through both of his arms. After the war Hovey 
moved to Washington, D. C., where he practised 
law until his death. He married, Oct. 9, 1854, 
Harriette Farnham Spofford of Andover, Mass., 
who after a long and successful career as a teach¬ 
er was later associated with John Eaton [ q.v .] 
in the development of the Bureau of Education, 
in which department she occupied a highly re¬ 
sponsible position. Three sons were born to the 
Hoveys, one of whom was Richard [q.vf]. 

[The Hovey Book (1913); E. Duis, The Good Old 
Times in McLean County, 111 . (1874); F. B. Heitman, 
Hist. Reg. and Diet. U. S. Army (1890) ; Semi-Cen¬ 
tennial Hist, of the III. State Normal Univ., 1857—1907 
(1907) ; A Geneal. Record ... of Families Spelling 
Their Name Spofford (1888) ; J. W. Cook, in Twenty- 
Second Biennial Report of the Supt. of Public Instruc¬ 
tion of the State of III. (1898), pp. lxxiv ff.] 

R. C. McG. 

HOVEY, CHARLES MASON (Oct. 26, 
1810-Sept. 2, 1887), horticulturist, was born and 
spent nearly all his life in Cambridge, Mass. He 
was the son of Phineas Brown and Sarah 
(Stone) Hovey and a descendant of Daniel Ho¬ 
vey who came from England and settled at Ips¬ 
wich, Mass., about 1635. Charles Hovey grad¬ 
uated from the Cambridge Academy in 1824, and 
in 1832, with his brother Phineas, established a 
nursery at Cambridge which remained his prin¬ 
cipal interest until his death. In 1834 he made 
his greatest single contribution to horticulture 
in the origination of the Hovey strawberry, the 
first named variety of any fruit produced in 
North America by a definite plan of plant breed¬ 
ing, and the first important North American va¬ 
riety in the present type of large-fruited straw¬ 
berries. Until its introduction, dependence had 
been placed on European varieties which were 
nearly all failures under American conditions. 
The financial returns to Hovey from the sale of 
his seedling, as well as the excellent quality of 
the fruit, encouraged fruit growers everywhere 
so markedly that strawberry growing became an 
important phase of horticulture before the mid¬ 
dle of the century, and the breeding of new varie¬ 
ties of other fruits was stimulated. 

Through the experience obtained from his 
nursery and from his extensive private collec- 


Hovey 

tion of pears, apples, plums, grapes, and orna¬ 
mentals maintained on his grounds at Cambridge, 
Hovey became an acknowledged authority on 
varieties of fruit and ornamentals. He is best 
known, however, as the editor of The American 
Gardener's Magazine and Register , which, with 
his brother, he founded in 1835. In 1837 the 
name was changed to The Magazine of Horti¬ 
culture, Botany, and all Useful Discoveries and 
Improvements in Rural Affairs, with Charles 
M. Hovey as editor. The first writings of the fa¬ 
mous horticulturist Marshall P. Wilder [q.v.], 
and the first American articles of Peter Hender¬ 
son [q.v.], horticulturist, seedsman, and writer, 
appeared in its pages, and for a long time it was 
the only horticultural journal on the continent. 
Hovey continued it until 1868. He published 
also two complete volumes and part of a third 
entitled Fruits of America, purposing to give 
“richly colored figures and full descriptions of 
all the choicest varieties cultivated in the United 
States.” This work was issued in parts from 
1847 to 1856, though the title-page of the first 
complete volume bears the date 1852. The vol¬ 
umes are handsomely printed and contain more 
than a hundred colored plates of various varie¬ 
ties of fruit which were sketched from nature by 
Hovey himself. His writings are characterized 
by the spirit of accuracy and conservatism on the 
whole. The “strawberry war” waged from 1842 
to 1848 between Hovey and Nicholas Longworth 
[q.v.] of Cincinnati, as principals, was one of the 
particularly exciting periods of his life, although 
in this affair both combatants were somewhat in 
error regarding sex in strawberries. 

Hovey was a member of the American Po- 
mological Society and its vice-president from 
Massachusetts for many years. He joined the 
Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1843, 
four years after its establishment, and at one 
time or another held nearly every office in that 
organization, being president from 1863 to 1866. 
The Society’s tribute to him following his death 
at Cambridge stated that “considering his long 
life devoted exclusively to this pursuit, it may be 
doubted whether any other man in this country 
has done so much to stimulate a love of horti¬ 
culture in all its branches.” Hovey was mar¬ 
ried on Dec. 25, 1835, to Anna Maria Chaponil, 
at Cambridge. 

[S. W. Fletcher, The Strawberry in North America 
(1917) ; U. P. Hedrick and others, The Small Fruits 
of New York (1925), dedicated to Hovey ; Trans. Mass. 
Horticultural Soc1887, pt. 2 (1888) ; Gardener's 
Monthly, Dec. 1886; The Hovey Book (1913); L. H. 
Bailey, in his Standard Cyc. of Horticulture (1915)* 
III, 1580; files of the Mag. of Horticulture; Boston 
Post, Sept. 3, 1887.] R. H. S. 


272 



HOVEY, RICHARD (May 4, 1864-Feb. 24, 
1900), poet, third son of Maj.-Gen. Charles Ed¬ 
ward Hovey [q.v.] and Harriette Farnham 
(Spofford) Hovey, was born in Normal, Ill. 
After the Civil War his parents made their home 
in Washington, D. C., and Richard spent his 
boyhood days in that city, passing some of his 
vacations at North Andover in the old Spofford 
place, then owned by his grandfather. He was 
prepared for college at Hunt’s School, Washing¬ 
ton. At the age of sixteen he issued a small vol¬ 
ume of verse; in the words of his mother, “He 
learned to set the type, read the proof, printed, 
bound the book, and copyrighted it before his 
mother and father knew anything about it” (Re¬ 
print, 1912, from Ninth Report, Dartmouth, 
Class of 1885.) He entered Dartmouth in 1881, 
where he was soon elected class poet. He won 
several prizes for dramatic speaking, and in 1885 
was graduated cum laude in English language 
and literature. At college he was editor of the 
Dartmouth and the ’85 AEgis, and became a mem¬ 
ber of the Psi Upsilon fraternity. Ever since his 
undergraduate days he has been considered Dart¬ 
mouth’s laureate, and Dartmouth students still 
sing “Men of Dartmouth.” Of the poems writ¬ 
ten at college, Prof. Boynton has said, “He wrote 
for Dartmouth a body of tributary verse which 
are as distinguished as are Holmes’s Harvard 
Poems. And he wrote for his college fraternity 
songs and odes which are so distinguished as 
wholly to transcend the occasions for which they 
were prepared” {American Poetry, p. 689). 

The year 1885-86 was spent by the poet in 
Washington, studying drawing and painting in 
the Art Students’ League of that city. In 1886- 
87 he was a student at the General Theological 
Seminary of the Episcopal Church, at Chelsea 
Square, New York; but after being for a short 
while the lay assistant of Father Brown at the 
Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, he gave up 
the idea of taking Orders. The summer of 1887 
he spent at Newton Center, Mass., where he met 
Bliss Carman, the poet, and Tom Buford Mete- 
yard, the artist. With Carman he was later to 
collaborate in the Vagabondia books, and Mete- 
yard was to make the designs. Through them 
Hovey met Thomas William Parsons [q.v.], the 
Dante scholar, on whose death he wrote the mag¬ 
nificent elegy Seaward (1893). In 1887 he did 
newspaper work in Boston, and the next two 
summers he lectured at Thomas Davidson’s 
Summer School of Philosophy at Farmington, 
Conn., where he met Mrs. Sidney Lanier, widow 
of the American poet. She gave him a wreath 
that had been sent her from the South, and on 
this occasion he wrote The Laurel , published in 


Hovey 

1889. He did a little acting in 1890. In his own 
words, “I went on the stage primarily to com¬ 
plete my education as a playwright” ( Dartmouth 
Lyrics, 1924, edited by E. O. Grover, p. 86). 

The last ten years of the poet’s life were to 
mark the flowering of his genius. In 1891 ap¬ 
peared the first part of his poem in dramas, 
Launcelot and Guenevere, containing The Quest 
of Merlin and The Marriage of Guenevere . He 
spent the year 1891-92 abroad in England and 
France, and came under the influence of the 
French Symbolistes—especially Verlaine, Mal- 
larme, and Maeterlinck. He translated at this 
time four of Maeterlinck’s plays (La Princesse 
Maleine, LTntruse, Les Aveugles, Les Sept 
Princesses ), published under the title, The Plays 
of Maurice Maeterlinck (1894), to which he 
wrote a significant introduction entitled, “Mod¬ 
em Symbolism and Maurice Maeterlinck.” 
Songs from Vagabondia, by Richard Hovey and 
Bliss Carman appeared in 1894. The first poem 
“Vagabondia” struck the keynote with its 

“Off with the fetters 

That chafe and restrain! 

Off with the chain I” 

The volume’s vivacity and originality took the 
country by storm, and collegians went about 
chanting Hovey’s poems as more than twenty- 
five years before Oxonians had chanted Swin¬ 
burne’s first series of Poems and Ballads . On 
Jan. 17, 1894, the poet married in Boston, Mrs. 
Henriette Russell, a pupil of Delsarte, and the 
foremost exponent in America of Delsarte’s phi¬ 
losophy. Their son, Julian Richard, was born 
at the end of the year in Paris. In 1896 appeared 
a second series of The Plays of Maurice Maeter¬ 
linck, which contained four more translations 
(Alladine et Palomides, Pelleas et Melisande, 
UInterieur, Le Mort de Tintagiles). During the 
same year he issued More Songs from Vaga¬ 
bondia with Bliss Carman. In 1898 there ap¬ 
peared another volume of his poem in dramas, 
The Birth of Galahad, and Along the Trail, a 
Book of Lyrics . In the latter volume were his 
Spanish-American War verses, which were of a 
decided chauvinistic flavor but were written with 
an almost religious fervor expressed in Biblical 
language. Taliesin: a Masque (1896) was the 
last completed part of the Launcelot and Guene¬ 
vere cycle to be published, having already ap¬ 
peared in serial form in Poet-Lore . From 1898 
to 1900 Hovey was a lecturer in Barnard Col¬ 
lege, Columbia University. For a number of 
years he had been suffering from a form of intes¬ 
tinal trouble, and after a slight operation, he died 
suddenly in New York City on Feb. 24, 1900. 

After his death two more volumes of his 


273 



Howard 

verse were published: Last Songs from Vaga¬ 
bonds (1901) with Carman, and To the End of 
the Trail (1908). In 1907 Mrs. Hovey edited a 
volume of fragments from the Launcelot and 
Guenevere cycle, called The Holy Graal, with an 
important preface by Carman. In this volume 
one sees the scope of the poem in dramas. It was 
planned to consist of three trilogies, each trilogy 
made up of a masque, a tragedy, and a drama. 
Hovey finished only the first trilogy and the 
masque of the second. Taking Mallory’s Morte 
d’Arthur as a background, and with love as the 
central theme, the poet propounded a very defi¬ 
nite thesis, which was, in Mrs. Hovey’s words, 
“to impeach the social system that had not yet— 
and has not yet—gone far enough in evolution to 
become a medium in which all lives can move at 
all times in all respects in freedom” ( The Holy 
Graal , p. 18). Carman, who knew the poet so in¬ 
timately, saw “that to Richard Hovey it afforded 
a modern instance stripped of modern dress” 
(Ibid., p. 9). If Hovey’s promise was greater 
than his achievement, his achievement was not 
small. He was a poet of great versatility, sub¬ 
tlety, and psychological depth; his work showed 
a craftsmanship and philosophic content that 
placed him well in the van of the American poets 
of his day. 

[In addition to the references above, see The Hovey 
Book (1913); Henry Leffert, “Richard Hovey, an 
American Poet: a Biographical Critique” (1928), MS. 
in library of N. Y. Univ.; Jessie B. Rittenhouse, The 
Younger American Poets (1904), ch. I; P. H. Boynton, 
Am. Poetry (1918) ; Wm. Archer, Poets of the Younger 
Generation (1902); James Cappon, Bliss Carman 
(1930).] H.L. 

HOWARD, ADA LYDIA (Dec. 19, 1829- 
Mar. 3,1907), educator, first president of Welles¬ 
ley College, was bom in Temple, N. H., the 
daughter of William Hawkins and Lydia Adaline 
(Cowden) Howard. Her biographers have with 
one accord cited the fact that she possessed three 
ancestors who were officers in the Revolutionary 
army, but it was probably of more importance to 
her future career that she possessed a father who 
was something of a student and interested in his 
daughter’s education. After being instructed by 
him, she went to the New Ipswich Academy, to 
the Lowell High School, and to Mount Holyoke 
Seminary, from which she graduated in 1853. 
Five years later, having in the meantime con¬ 
tinued her study under private instructors, she 
returned to Mount Holyoke as a teacher, where 
she remained until 1861. During the year 1861- 
62 she taught at the Western College for Wo¬ 
men, Oxford, Ohio, and from 1866 to 1869 she 
was principal of the department for women of 
Knox College, Galesburg, III, from which place 
she went to a school of her own, Ivy Hall, Bridge- 


Howard 

ton, N. J. Here Henry F. Durant search- 
ing for a president for Wellesley College who 
should combine scholarship, experience, and 
high Christian character, found her, and trans¬ 
ferred her to his new college, which opened in 
September 1875. 

Her position was not easy, but its difficulties 
were not those incident to the selection of a fac¬ 
ulty, the formulating of sound educational poli¬ 
cies, or the creation of a curriculum which should 
place the college training of women on a level 
with that available for men. These were matters 
of which the founder took charge. No depart¬ 
ment of the college failed to interest his active 
imagination or seemed too trivial for his atten¬ 
tion. To the president fell the duty of carrying 
out his policies, which may often have seemed 
decidedly questionable to her more conventional 
mind. If ever she rebelled at the complete sub¬ 
ordination of her position, or questioned the wis¬ 
dom of Durant’s action, that fact has not become 
a matter of record. A more aggressive person, 
or one with educational policies of her own 
which she wished to put into effect, might have 
hampered the growth of the institution by cre¬ 
ating obstacles or by failing to throw herself 
wholeheartedly into activities which she had not 
originated. As it was, the early years of the in¬ 
stitution were free from such difficulties. Miss 
Howard was able to lend dignity to an office 
which, while Durant lived, was entirely lacking 
in the power which is wont to accompany the 
title. A month after his death, ill health forced 
her to resign, so that she was never called upon 
to meet the demands of the presidency without 
his guidance. Her last years, in which continued 
ill health kept her from active life, were divided 
between Methuen, Mass., and Brooklyn, N. Y., 
where she died. 

[“In Memoriam—Ada L. Howard,” Wellesley Mag., 
XV, 324-26; Florence Converse, The Story of Welles¬ 
ley (1915) ; F. M. Kingsley, The Life of Henry Fowls 
Durant (1924); the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mar. 5, 
1907*] E.D. 

HOWARD, BENJAMIN (1760-Sept. 18, 
1814), soldier, congressman, territorial governor, 
was born in Virginia, the only son of John How¬ 
ard. His family moved across the mountains 
into the Kentucky regions just before the out¬ 
break of the Revolution, settling at Boonesboro, 
where Richard Henderson [ q.v .] was trying to 
establish his Transylvania colony. John Howard 
was successful in getting hold of two one-thou¬ 
sand-acre tracts of land in the scramble for land 
that followed. He lived to be 103 years old. What 
little schooling Benjamin got seems to have come 
to him while he was yet in Virginia. In 1801 
and 1802 he represented Fayette County in the 


274 



Howard 

lower house of the Kentucky legislature. A few 
years later he was elected to the Tenth Congress 
(1807-09). He appeared on the opening day of 
his first term, and a few weeks later was apolo¬ 
gizing in a speech for his forwardness in pre¬ 
suming to take a part so early. He assumed a 
broad, national outlook in his political career, 
loyally standing behind the administration. 
Though not classed as one of the “War Hawks,” 
he nevertheless worked actively for a larger army 
and for the protection of his country’s interests. 
Reelected to the Eleventh Congress, he resigned 
during its second session when, in April 1810, 
President Madison, who had been noting How¬ 
ard’s loyal support, appointed him governor of 
the District of Louisiana, the organized part of 
the Louisiana Purchase remaining after the Ter¬ 
ritory of Orleans (the southern part) had been 
cut off. When in 1812 the latter division was ad¬ 
mitted into the Union as the state of Louisiana 
and the District of Louisiana was renamed the 
Territory of Missouri, Howard was continued 
as the governor. On Mar. 12, 1813, however, 
when he was appointed brigadier-general in the 
United States Army, and assigned to the Eighth 
Military Department, which embraced the re¬ 
gions west of the Mississippi River, he resigned 
from the governorship. He took little part in the 
war beyond a few raids against the Indians, and 
he died in St. Louis before the end of hostilities. 
Howard County, organized in 1816, was named 
for him. 

[Lewis and R. H. Collins, Hist. of Ky. (1874), vol. 
II; Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928) ; F. B. Heitman, Hist. 
Reg. and Diet. U. S. Army (1903), vol. I; Lucien Carr, 
Missouri, A Bone of Contention (1888) ; W. B. Stevens, 
Centennial Hist, of Mo. (1921), vol. I; H. Niles’s 
Weekly Register (Baltimore), Oct. 9, 1813; Daily Nat. 
Intelligencer (Washington, D. C.), Oct. 15, 1814.] 

E.M.C. 

HOWARD, BENJAMIN CHEW (Nov. 5, 
1791-Mar. 6, 1872), lawyer, politician, was born 
at “Belvedere,” near Baltimore, Md. His father, 
Col. John Eager Howard [q.v.], was a distin¬ 
guished Revolutionary officer; his mother, Peggy 
Oswald (Chew) Howard, was the daughter of 
Benjamin Chew Iq.v.'], president of the high 
court of errors and appeals of Pennsylvania. 
Young Howard received his elementary educa¬ 
tion in the Baltimore schools and at the age of 
fourteen entered the College of New Jersey 
(Princeton), where he graduated with the de¬ 
gree of B.A. in 1809. Three years later he re¬ 
ceived the master’s degree from the same insti¬ 
tution. Toward the close of 1812 he studied law 
in a Baltimore law office and about 1816 was ad¬ 
mitted to the Maryland bar and began to prac¬ 
tise his profession. During the second war with 
Great Britain, he was captain of the “Mechanical 


Howard 

Volunteers of Baltimore,” who played a promi¬ 
nent part in the defense of that city at the battle 
of North Point, fought Sept. 12, 1814. He main¬ 
tained his connection with the Maryland militia 
and was eventually commissioned brigadier-gen¬ 
eral. In 1818 he married Jane Grant Gilmor. 
Though he had a lucrative practice, he was not 
dependent upon it and gave much time to civic 
affairs. He was elected a member of the Balti¬ 
more City Council in 1820, and four years later 
a member of the Maryland House of Delegates. 
When a group of citizens met to consider a 
means of regaining for Baltimore “that portion 
of the Western trade which had lately been di¬ 
verted from it by the introduction of steam navi¬ 
gation and other causes” (quoted in Maryland 
Historical Magazine, March 1920, p. 15), How¬ 
ard was a member of the committee which rec¬ 
ommended the construction of a railroad between 
Baltimore and the Ohio River. 

In 1829 he was elected as a Democrat to the 
Twenty-first Congress, and was reelected for the 
succeeding term, serving Mar. 4, 1829-Mar. 3, 
1833. In 183s President Jackson commissioned 
him one of the peace commissioners of the United 
States government in the boundary dispute be¬ 
tween Ohio and Michigan. The same year he 
was again elected to Congress, was reelected, 
and served Mar. 4, 1835-Mar. 3, 1839, being for 
a time chairman of the committee on foreign rela¬ 
tions. In 1840-41 he was a senator from Balti¬ 
more in the Maryland General Assembly, and as 
chairman submitted the Report of the Select 
Committee to Whom were Referred Resolutions 
of the States of Maine , Indiana and Ohio , in Re¬ 
lation to the North-Eastern Boundary (1841). 
He resigned before the expiration of his term, 
and, on Jan. 27, 1843, was appointed reporter of 
the United States Supreme Court. He wrote 
twenty-four volumes of Supreme Court Reports, 
covering the period 1843-62 (42-65 United 
States Reports) . These volumes were models of 
clarity, diction, and thoroughness. He resigned 
in 1861 to accept the Democratic nomination for 
governor of Maryland, but was defeated at the 
polls by Augustus W. Bradford Iq.v an uncon¬ 
ditional Unionist. In February 1861 he was a 
Maryland delegate to the Peace Conference at 
Washington. He died in Baltimore after a lin¬ 
gering illness. 

[Biog. Dir. Am. Cong . (1928) ; 13 Wallace’s Reports, 
vii; Md. Hist. Mag., Sept. 1914, Mar. 1920, Sept. 1922 ; 
J. D. Warfield, The Founders of Anne Arundel and 
Howard Counties f Md. (190$); M. P. Andrews, Ter¬ 
centenary Hist, of Md. (1925), voL I; obituary m the 
Sun (Baltimore), Mar. 7, 18 72.] W.G.E. 

HOWARD, BLANCHE WILLIS (July 21, 
1847-Oct 7, 1898), author, daughter of Daniel 


2 75 



Howard Howard 


Mosely and Eliza Anne (Hudson) Howard, was 
born at Bangor, Me. The Howards were de¬ 
scended from John Howard who came to Dux- 
bury, Mass., from England in 1643, an ^ later be¬ 
came one of the original proprietors of Bridge- 
water, Mass. Blanche attended the public schools 
of Bangor and graduated from the high school. 
She began to write when only a girl; her first 
novel. One Summer, appeared in 1875. This 
same year she went abroad for study and travel, 
with an assignment as correspondent for the 
Boston Transcript, and in 1877 published a rec¬ 
ord of some of her travels under the title, One 
Year Abroad. Settling in Stuttgart, Germany, 
she taught, chaperoned American girls studying 
art and music, wrote novels, and edited a maga¬ 
zine in English. In 1890 she married Dr. Julius 
von Teuffel, court physician to the King of 
Wurttemberg. He was a man of wealth, social 
standing, and culture, and they occupied an en¬ 
viable position in Stuttgart society. Von Teuffel 
was proud of his wife's accomplishments and en¬ 
couraged her in her literary work. Their brief, 
happy married life was ended by his death in 
1896, but his widow remained in Germany, where 
all her interests now were. She made a home 
for a number of nephews and nieces, continued 
her writing, under her maiden name, and super¬ 
vised translations of her books. She was also a 
pianist of considerable ability and a student of 
philosophy, science, sociology, and education. 
Much of her time was given to public and private 
charities. Of vigorous physique, she loved out¬ 
door life and was a bicyclist and a swimmer. 

The list of her books includes: Aunt Serena 
(1881); Guenn: a Wave on the Breton Coast 
(1883) ; Aulnay Tower (1885) ; Tony the Maid 
(1887) ; The Open Door (1889); A Battle and 
a Boy (1892) ; A Fellowe and His Wife (1892), 
with William Sharp; No Heroes (1893); Seven 
on the Highway (1897) ; Dionysius the Weaver's 
Heart's Dearest (1899); The Garden of Eden 
(1900); The Humming Top; or. Debit and 
Credit in the Next World (1903), translated 
from Theobald Gross. Her novels, popular for 
two decades, went through large editions in the 
United States, and were translated into a num¬ 
ber of European languages. They are idealistic 
in atmosphere and characterization. The scenes 
of her earlier tales are American, those of the 
later, European. She portrays with especial 
sympathy and skill the life of the peasants of the 
Baltic and the Tyrol, which she knew from fre¬ 
quent visits. Her best book is probably Dionysius 
the Weaver's Heart's Dearest During her later 
years her home was in Munich, where she died. 

[F. E. Willard and M. A. Livermore, Portraits and 


Biogs . of Prominent Am. Women (1897); Heman 
Howard, The Howard Geneal. (1903); Geneal. and 
Family Hist, of the State of Me. (4 vols., 1909) ; jy y 
Tribune, Oct. 11, 1898, N. Y. Times, Oct. 10, 1898.] * 

S G B 

HOWARD, BRONSON CROCKER (Oct. 
7, 1842-Aug. 4, 1908), playwright, was bom in 
Detroit, Mich., the son of Charles and Margaret 
(Vosburgh) Howard. He came of good stock; 
his great-grandfather fought in the French and 
Indian War and fell in the Revolution at Mon¬ 
mouth ; his father was mayor of Detroit. In this 
city and at Russell's Institute, New Haven, 
Conn., the boy had his schooling, and in Detroit 
he did his first writing—on the Detroit Free 
Press— and produced his first play—in 1864: 
Fantine, a dramatization of an episode from Les 
Miserables . He went to New York the next year 
and supported himself by newspaper work until 
the time of his first dramatic success, December 
1870, when his Saratoga, a social farce comedy, 
was produced at Augustin Daly's Fifth Avenue 
Theatre, starting a run of a hundred and one 
nights. After two relatively unsuccessful ven¬ 
tures, he produced the first form of the drama of 
which he wrote revealingly and at length in his 
essay The Autobiography of a Play. This was 
Lillian's Last Love, produced in Chicago in 1873, 
and then rewritten and revived with notable suc¬ 
cess as The Banker's Daughter at Palmer's Union 
Square Theatre in New York in 1878. On Oct 
28, 1880, in London, he was married to Alice 
Wyndham. 

The next production which contributed sig¬ 
nificantly to his reputation was Young Mrs. 
Winthrop, a play of domestic complications in a 
family of the New York elite. It was produced 
in the Madison Square Theatre in October 1882, 
and, without change, in the Court Theatre, Lon¬ 
don, the following month. One of Our Girls, 
which had a run of two hundred nights, begin¬ 
ning in November 1885 at the Lyceum Theatre, 
was set against the international social back¬ 
ground then established in the novel by Henry 
James and W. D. Howells, and later used in such 
plays as Clyde Fitch's Her Great Match . The 
Henrietta, produced at the Union Square Thea¬ 
tre, September 1887, established Howard’s in¬ 
creasing claim to popular favor. It returned to 
the interweaving motifs of finance and family 
employed in The Banker's Daughter, flourished 
in the hands of Stuart Robson and W. H. Crane, 
and in its initial run of sixty-eight weeks brought 
just short of a half million dollars to the box of¬ 
fice. Howard's final achievement of note was 
his Shenandoah, a war play that rivaled Wil¬ 
liam Gillette's Held by the Enemy and Secret 
Service . It was produced at the Boston Museum 


276 



Howard 

in November 1888. The country was ready for 
this type of production, and Howard had the 
adroitness to develop the material with its nat¬ 
ural conflicts of personal and national loyalties 
and its wealth of melodramatic possibilities. 

Howard's prestige in his day and his place in 
dramatic chronicles are dependent largely on 
these six successes. He was not prolific in 
writing or fertile in invention. His entire play 
list runs to only twenty-one in forty-two years, 
and, with the elimination of the two rewritten 
scripts, the two products of collaboration, the 
two adaptations, and the two negligible bits with 
which he began and ended his authorship, the to¬ 
tal is reduced to thirteen original items. Of these, 
the half-dozen mentioned fared well in New 
York and widely on the theatrical “road.” How¬ 
ard's confession of dramatic faith, The Auto¬ 
biography of a Play (read before the Shake¬ 
speare Club of Harvard University in 1886, 
printed in In Memoriam, 1910, and published 
separately in 1914) reveals, or betrays, an almost 
complete obliviousness to dramatic literature 
and critical theory. What he regarded as laws 
of dramatic composition were laws which he de¬ 
rived from the reactions of the New York audi¬ 
ences of his generation. He accepted as univer¬ 
sal what were only temporary and local habits of 
mind. His sober enunciations on dramatic tech¬ 
nique are therefore much more naive than pro¬ 
found; but the plays based on these conclusions 
provide an interesting index to a passing phase 
of American culture. He was rightly recognized 
as a representative playwright of his period. In 
this role he served as founder and first president 
of the American Dramatist's Club which later 
developed into the Society of American Drama¬ 
tists and Composers. In his later years he la¬ 
bored effectively in the successful campaign for 
the adequate revision of American laws on inter¬ 
national copyright. He died in 1908, leaving his 
dramatic library to the society in which he had 
been the prime mover. 

[Biog. sketch by H. P. Mawson in In Memoriam 
Bronson Howard (1910), issued by the Soc. of Am. 
Dramatists; M. J. Moses, The Am, Dramatist (1925 
ed.) ; A. H. Quinn, A Hist, of the Am. Drama from the 
Civil War to the Present Day (1927), vol. X; critical 
articles by Clayton Hamilton, in Bookman, Sept. 1908, 
and Brander Matthews, in North Am. Rev., Oct. 1908; 
Who's Who in America, 1908-09; N. Y. Times, Aug. 5 , 
1908.] P. H. B—n. 

HOWARD, GEORGE ELLIOTT (Oct. 1, 
1849-June 9, 1928), teacher and scholar, son of 
Isaac and Margaret (Hardin) Howard, was bom 
at Saratoga, N. Y. He went to Nebraska in a 
“covered wagon” in 1868, only a year after the 
admission of the state to the Union, and for a 
time lived the life of a pioneer in what was then 


Howard 

the Great West. Desire for a higher education 
led him to the State Normal School at Peru, 
where he was graduated in 1870. The Univer¬ 
sity of Nebraska, which opened the doors of its 
single building in 1871, next attracted him, and 
he received his degree (A.B.) there in 1876, 
being a member of the second class to complete 
a full four-year course. Following his gradua¬ 
tion he went to Europe to study. He passed two 
years abroad, mainly in Munich and Paris, as a 
student of history and Roman law. Upon his re¬ 
turn to the United States he became the first 
professor of history in the University of Ne¬ 
braska. He was also one of the founders, and 
served for several years as the secretary, of the 
State Historical Society. In spite of a heavy 
teaching schedule and most inadequate facili¬ 
ties, he found it possible to combine research 
with instruction. The result was the publication 
in 1889, as one of the Johns Hopkins Univer¬ 
sity Studies in Historical and Political Science 
(Extra Volume IV), of his monograph, An In¬ 
troduction to the Local Constitutional History 
of the United States . It is a substantial, scholarly 
work, dealing with the development of the town¬ 
ship, hundred, and shire. A companion volume 
on municipal institutions, though projected and 
partly written, never appeared. In 1890 he pub¬ 
lished a valuable study, “On the Development 
of the King's Peace and the English Local 
Peace-Magistracy” ( University Studies of the 
University of Nebraska). 

The reputation which he had now acquired 
brought him notable recognition in 1891, when 
President David Starr Jordan chose him to be 
one of the fifteen professors who formed the orig¬ 
inal faculty of Stanford University. There he 
remained for almost a decade, organizing, as at 
Nebraska, a strong department of history. As 
a lecturer he had great gifts, and students ac¬ 
customed to consider history the dullest of sub¬ 
jects went away from his classroom filled with 
enthusiasm for the past as he revealed it His 
career at Stanford ended abruptly in 1901, 
when he resigned from the faculty in protest 
against the dismissal of Prof. Edward A. Ross. 
Howard felt very deeply that academic freedom 
had been imperiled at Stanford; he publicly criti¬ 
cized the University management before his class¬ 
es ; and, upon being required either to apologize 
for his action or to sever his connection with the 
institution, he resigned forthwith. This meant 
laying down a life position and sacrificing mate¬ 
rial welfare to what he regarded as justice and 
right. Nevertheless, he never showed in later 
years the least sign of regretting his bold action. 

Howard now engaged for several years main- 



Howard Howard 


ly in research and writing, and in 1904 published 
a monumental History of Matrimonial Institu¬ 
tions Chiefly in England and the United States. 
This three-volume work gave to him at once an 
international reputation as a student of institu¬ 
tions, one whose point of view was no longer 
narrowly national but comprehended the wide 
realms of anthropology and sociology. His Pre- 
limimries of the American Revolution , a volume 
in the American Nation series, appeared in 1905. 
After some service as professorial lecturer in 
history at the University of Chicago, he returned 
to the University of Nebraska in 1904 as pro¬ 
fessor of institutional history, and from 1906 as 
head of the newly organized department of po¬ 
litical science and sociology. Once more he had 
an opportunity to build academic foundations and 
direct the course of a young and growing de¬ 
partment. He did not retire altogether from 
teaching until 1924, at which time he presented 
to the University a large library of history and 
social science. The presidency of the American 
Sociological Society (1917) and an honorary 
vice-presidency of the Institut International de 
Sociologie testified to the esteem in which he was 
held by his colleagues both at home and abroad. 
Howard's work as teacher and investigator was 
inspired by a consuming zeal for social better¬ 
ment. Such causes as race equality, woman's 
suffrage, child labor, prohibition, and interna¬ 
tional peace had in him a sturdy public champion. 
An idealist and a democrat, as well as a scientist, 
he always emphasized the contributions which 
sociology, as it developed, might make to human 
welfare. 

Howard married, Jan. 1, 1880, a classmate, 
Alice May Frost, of Lincoln, Nebr. They had no 
children. 

[Who's Who in America, 1928-29; Rev. of Revs. 
(N. Y.), Aug. 1928; Am. Jour, of Sociology, Jan. 1929 ; 
Sociology and Social Research, Sept.-Oct., Nov.-Dee. 
1928, and Jan.—Feb. 1929; Omaha Bee-News, June 
10, 1928; Nebraska State Jour. (Lincoln), June 11, 

x * a8 J H. W—r. 

HOWARD, JACOB MERRITT (July 10, 
1805-Apr. 2, 1871), congressman and senator 
from Michigan, was bom in Shaftsbury, Vt., the 
son of Otis and Polly (Millington) Howard. His 
education was obtained in the district school at 
Shaftsbury, the academies in Bennington and 
Bratdeboro, and Williams College, from which 
he graduated in 1830. He began the study of 
law in Ware, Mass., and was admitted to the bar 
in 1833 in Detroit, Mich., to which place he had 
moved in the preceding year. Although he soon 
became one of the leaders of the bar of Michigan, 
his chief interest lay in politics. He supported 
the Whig party until 1854, when he became a 


Republican. From 1838 to 1871 he held public 
office almost continuously while his party was in 
power. In 1838 he was elected to the state legis¬ 
lature as a representative from Wayne County 
and was active in the enactment of the Revised 
Laws of that year, in railroad legislation, and in 
the legislative examination of the state's wildcat 
banks. He served as a member of Congress from 
1841 to 1843. 

In 1854 he was one of the leaders of the move¬ 
ment that led to the organization of the Repub¬ 
lican party at Jackson on July 6, and was the 
author of the resolutions that were adopted at 
that time. In the same year the party nominated 
and elected him attorney general of Michigan, a 
position which he held until 1861. From 1862 to 
1871 he was a member of the United States Sen¬ 
ate. Here he distinguished himself as a radical 
and outspoken leader. During his first term, he 
held influential positions on the important com¬ 
mittees on the judiciary and on military affairs; 
as a member of the former committee he drafted 
the first clause of the Thirteenth Amendment. 
During the stormy period following the Civil 
War, he was an outspoken opponent of executive 
reconstruction and favored extreme punishment 
for the South. He served during the session of 
1865-66 on the joint committee on reconstruc¬ 
tion and was assigned to investigate conditions 
in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Caro¬ 
lina. He drew up the report of the committee 
on military affairs on the removal of Stanton. 
He also served as chairman of the committee on 
the Pacific Railroad from the creation of the 
committee, Jan. 6, 1864, until the end of his 
term. President Grant offered him the presi¬ 
dency of the Southern claims commission, but 
this he refused. He died in Detroit as a result 
of an apoplectic stroke within a month after the 
expiration of his last term as senator. 

Howard was an eloquent speaker, although his 
style was somewhat ponderous. He appealed to 
reason rather than to the emotions. He had a 
wide reading knowledge not only of law and his¬ 
tory, but also of literature. He is said to have 
been an excellent classical scholar, and he knew 
■both English and French literature. In 1848 he 
published a translation, in two volumes, of M. 
A. Le Normand's Historical and Secret Memoirs 
of the Empress Josephine. He was married, Oct. 
8,1835, t0 Catharine A. Shaw, whom he had met 
in Ware, Mass. She died in 1866. He was sur¬ 
vived by two daughters and three sons. 

[Published sources include: H. G. Howard, In Me - 
moriam: Jacob M. Howard of Mich. (1906) and Civil- 
War Echoes (1907) ; Calvin Durfee, Williams Biog. 
Annals (1871) ; Detroit Free Press, Apr. 3, 5, 1871; 
editorials in the Detroit Advertiser and Tribune, Apr. 


278 



Howard 

3, 1871, and in the Detroit Daily Post o£ the same 
date; R. B. Ross, The Early Bench and Bar of Detroit 
(1907); Am. Biog. Hist. . . . Mich. Vol. (1878), pt. 
I, p. 79 >* H. M. Dilla, The Politics of Mich., 1865-78 
(1912); W. C. Harris, Public Life of Zachariah Chan¬ 
dler (1917) ; Life of Zachariah Chandler (1880), by the 
members of the Post and Tribune staff, Detroit. The 
Burton Hist. Coll, in the Detroit Public Lib. has thirty 
bound volumes of manuscript letters, etc., by Jacob M. 
Howard.] J.O.K. 

HOWARD, JOHN EAGER (June 4, 1752- 
Oct. 12, 1827), Revolutionary soldier, was born 
at “Belvedere,” in Baltimore County, M&, the 
son of Cornelius and Ruth (Eager) Howard. 
His ancestor, Joshua Howard, served in the army 
of James II at the time of Monmouth's Rebel¬ 
lion (1685), and soon after that event emigrated 
to America, receiving a grant of land in Balti¬ 
more County. Cornelius Howard, a planter, gave 
his son a good education. John served through¬ 
out the Revolutionary War, starting as captain 
in the “Flying Camp.” He was commissioned 
major of the 4th Maryland Regiment on Feb. 22, 
1777, lieutenant-colonel of the 5th, Mar. n, 1778, 
and was transferred to the 2nd Maryland, on Oct. 
22, 1779. He fought at the battles of White 
Plains, Germantown, Monmouth, and Camden. 
At the battle of Cowpens, Jan. 17, 1781, he was 
particularly distinguished, leading a charge at 
the critical moment of the conflict. For his con¬ 
duct in this battle he received a medal and the 
Thanks of Congress. He had a prominent part at 
Guilford Court House and Hobkirk's Hill, and 
at Eutaw Springs, Sept. 8, 1781, he again led a 
spirited bayonet charge, and was wounded. 

After the war Howard held various offices. 
He was a delegate to the Continental Congress, 
governor of Maryland, 1788-91, and United 
States senator, 1796-1803. President Washing¬ 
ton tendered him in 1795 the position of secre¬ 
tary of war, which he declined; and in 1798 at 
the time of the prospective war with France, he 
was recommended by the President for appoint¬ 
ment as a brigadier-general. In the War of 1812 
he raised a corps of veterans (which, however, 
was not called into service) and his patriotism 
was outspoken during the threatened attack on 
Baltimore in 1814. He was a leader of the Fed¬ 
eralists, and candidate for vice-president in their 
last unsuccessful campaign in 1816. Howard was 
very wealthy, owning much land now covered by 
the city of Baltimore. He had married, May 18, 
1787, Peggy Oswald Chew, the daughter of Chief 
Justice Benjamin Chew [q.v.’], of Pennsylvania, 
and the Howard mansion was the scene of much 
hospitality. Howard was highly regarded by his 
superior officers Washington and Greene, and by 
the public, and his reputation for chivalry and 
valor has come down in the lines of “Maryland, 


Howard 


my Maryland.” A statue in his honor was erect¬ 
ed in Baltimore in 1904. Benjamin Chew How¬ 
ard [q.v.] was his son. 

[A Memoir of the Late Col. John Eager Howard 
US03), repuntea from the Baltimore Gazette of Oct. 

J 7 j Andrews, Tercentenary History of 

Maryland (1925), vol I; Henry Lee, Memoirs of the 
War tn the Southern Dept, of the U . (1812) I 407- 
op; Elizabeth Read, memoir in Mag. of Am. 'Hist 
Oet 1881; H. E. Buchholz, Govs, of Md. (1908); c! 
P • Keith, The Provincial Councillors of Pa. (1883).] 

E.K.A. 


HOWARD, OLIVER OTIS (Nov. 8, 1830- 
Oct. 26, 1909), soldier, was born at Leeds, Me. 
His father, Rowland Bailey Howard, a well-to- 
do fanner, was descended from John Howard, 
one of the founders of Bridgewater, Mass. He 
died in 1839. His widow, Eliza M. (Otis) How¬ 
ard, remarried two years later. The boy lived 
with his uncle, John Otis, at Hallowell, Me. He 
attended Monmouth Academy, a school at North 
Yarmouth, and Bowdoin College, where, sup¬ 
porting himself by teaching during vacations, he 
graduated in 1850. Entering West Point that 
summer, he graduated fourth in his class in 1854. 
After brief service at the Watervliet and Ken¬ 
nebec arsenals, he was made chief of ordnance of 
the department of Florida, and a year later, pro¬ 
moted to first lieutenant, he returned to West 
Point as instructor in mathematics, remaining 
there until June 1861, when he resigned to be¬ 
come colonel of the 3rd Maine Regiment. He 
was promoted to brigadier-general of volunteers 
in September 1861 and major-general in 1862, 
and in 1864 became a brigadier-general in the 
regular army with brevet rank of major-general. 

In Virginia Howard participated in the first 
battle of Bull Run and the Peninsular campaign, 
losing his right arm at Fair Oaks. Quickly back 
in the field, he commanded the rear guard at 
Second Bull Run, was present at South Moun¬ 
tain, Antietam, Fredericksburg—where he com¬ 
manded a division—Chancellorsville, and Get¬ 
tysburg. Although his personal bravery at 
Chancellorsville has never been disputed, the better 
military critics assign to him much responsibility 
for the Union reverse in the first day's fighting. 
He was in command of the XI Corps, composed 
largely of Germans who, because he had dis¬ 
placed General Sigel, did not like him, and were, 
in addition, not impressed with his reputation as 
a great Biblical soldier, “the Havelock of the 
Army.” Holding the right, he was in spite of 
warning surprised by Jackson and routed. Liver¬ 
more accuses him of “persistent negligence and 
blind credulity” (post, p. 151, passim). Bige¬ 
low (post, p. 297) admits his neglect and dis¬ 
regard of orders; and Hooker charged him with 
disobeying an order, which Howard always de- 


279 



Howard 

nied receiving but which Carl Schurz testified 
that he personally read to Howard (Battles and 
Leaders of the Civil War, III, 1888, pp. 196, 
219-20). At Gettysburg he showed a lack of de¬ 
cision and Livermore blames him largely for the 
loss of the first day’s battle. By Halstead he is 
accused of insubordination (Ibid., 285), but he 
personally rallied the I Corps in the cemetery on 
the first day and, though there is considerable 
doubt as to whether he deserves the credit, he re¬ 
ceived the Thanks of Congress for the selection 
of that important position. 

In September 1863 he was ordered to Tennes¬ 
see, where he participated in the battles around 
Chattanooga, and in 1864 he was placed in com¬ 
mand of the IV Corps. He took an active part 
in the Atlanta campaign and in July was given 
command of the Army and Department of the 
Tennessee. Thenceforward he commanded the 
right wing of Sherman’s army. His kindly soul 
was harrowed by the horrors of the march to the 
sea and northward, and while he justified the 
harsh treatment of the inhabitants, he opposed 
and rigorously punished looting and violence. 

On May 12,1865, President Johnson appoint¬ 
ed him commissioner of the newly established 
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned 
Lands, for which position he had been selected 
by Lincoln. So far as good intentions, humani¬ 
tarian passion, and religious enthusiasm were 
concerned a better choice could not have been 
made, and the Bureau rendered valuable service 
in relieving destitution and suffering in its early 
days; as an executive, however, Howard left 
much to be desired. The rank and file of lower 
Bureau officials were unfit or unworthy, and pres¬ 
ently the whole service was so honeycombed with 
fraud, corruption, and inefficiency, so busy with 
politics looking to negro enfranchisement, and so 
bent on bringing about the political separation 
of the negroes and the native whites that its 
usefulness was hopelessly impaired (House Ex¬ 
ecutive Document 120 , 39 Cong., 1 Sess.). How¬ 
ard, always inclined to believe the best of any one 
associated with him, persistently refused to give 
credence to any charges of misconduct against 
Bureau officials, declaring all of them based upon 
race prejudice or political partisanship, and ac¬ 
cepted all the reports of his subordinates at their 
face value, regardless of their patent falsity 
(Howard, Autobiography, ch. LX; Daily North 
Carolina Standard, Raleigh, May 23, 1866). In 
his enthusiasm for the negro he lost his poise. A 
climax to numerous absurdities into which sen¬ 
timentality betrayed him was his favorable com- 
mejat pn the notorious South Carolina legislature 


Howard 

of 1868 (Daily Morning Chronicle, Washington 
D. C, Oct. 1, 1868). ’ 

From time to time charges were made against 
Howard, and in 1870 some of these were investi¬ 
gated by a committee of Congress which exon¬ 
erated him by a strict party vote (House Report 
121 , 41 Cong., 2 Sess.). Later Secretary Bel¬ 
knap preferred charges and Howard at last asked 
for a court of inquiry. Objecting to that appoint¬ 
ed by Belknap, whom he thought hostile to ne¬ 
groes, he was able to persuade Congress to 
create, by special act, a court which Grant ap¬ 
pointed. The charges were failure to establish 
and enforce a proper system of payments to col¬ 
ored soldiers, responsibility for some minor de¬ 
falcations of officers, misapplication of public 
funds, and the transfer of confused and incom¬ 
plete records. From all of these he was com¬ 
pletely exonerated (Proceedings, Findings, and 
Opinions of the Court of Inquiry ... in the 
Case of Brigadier-General Oliver 0 . Howard 

1874). 

Dishonest Howard undoubtedly was not, but 
he had too many irons in the fire. He was busy 
organizing a Congregational church in Wash¬ 
ington and raising funds for it. Seeking to bring 
.colored members, he precipitated a quarrel 
which disrupted the congregation. Instrumen¬ 
tal in founding Howard University, he became 
its president in 1869 and gave much of his time 
to it until 1874 when he resigned. He was a di¬ 
rector of the Freedmen’s Bank and his name was 
influential in securing the patronage of the ne¬ 
groes for the venture, which resulted in financial 
disaster to many of them. 

In 1872 Grant sent him as a peace commission¬ 
er to the Apache Indians under Cochise, with 
whom he concluded a treaty. In 1874 he was 
placed in command of the Department of the Co¬ 
lumbia. In 1877 be commanded an expedition 
against the Nez Perce Indians and in 1878 one 
against the Bannocks and Piutes. In 1880 he 
became superintendent at West Point and two 
years later took command of the Department of 
the Platte. In 1884 he spent some months in 
Europe, attending the meetings of the Interna¬ 
tional Y. M. C. A. in Berlin and representing the 
United States at the French army maneuvers, 
upon which occasion he was made a chevalier of 
the Legion of Honor. Promoted major-general 
in 1886, he was placed in command of the Di¬ 
vision of the East, in which post he remained 
until his retirement in 1894. 

After his retirement Howard lived at Burling¬ 
ton, Vt., until his death, continuing his writings 
and engaging in religious and educational ac¬ 
tivities. He was prominent in raising funds fpr 



Howard 

the establishment of Lincoln Memorial Univer¬ 
sity. He actively participated as a Republican 
speaker in the presidential campaigns of 1896, 
1900, and 1904, and commanded the veterans in 
the inaugural parades which followed. He was 
the author of Nez Perce Joseph (1881), General 
Taylor (1892), Isabella of Castile (1894), Fight¬ 
ing for Humanity (1898), Donald's School Days 
(1899), Henry in the War (1899), Autobiog¬ 
raphy (1907), My Life and Experiences among 
Our Hostile Indians (1907), Famous Indian 
Chiefs I Have Known (1908). In 1881 he trans¬ 
lated T. Borers Count Agenor de Gasparin. He 
wrote constantly for magazines and newspapers 
and was much in demand as a lecturer and 
preacher. In 1893 he was awarded the Con¬ 
gressional Medal of Honor for bravery at Fair 
Oaks. He was married, Feb. 14, 1855, to Eliza¬ 
beth Ann Waite of Portland, Me., who survived 
him. 

[Autobiog. of Oliver Otis Howard (2 vols., 1907) ; 
War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); Abner 
Doubleday, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg (188 2 ); 
John Bigelow, Jr., The Campaign of Chancellorsville 
(1910); Papers of the MU. Hist. Soc. of Mass., vol. 
VIII (1910); W. R. Livermore, The Story of the Civil 
War (1913); Laura C. Holloway, Howard: the Chris¬ 
tian Hero (1885) ; J. M. Hudnut, Commanders of the 
Army of the Tenn. (1884) ; Southern Mag. (Baltimore), 
Nov. 1873; P. S. Peirce, The Freedmeris Bureau 
(1904) ; Forty-first Ann. Reunion Asso. Grads. U. S. 
Mil. Acad. (1910) ; Mil. Order of the Loyal Legion of 
the U . S., Commandery of the State of Ft., Circular 
No. 9, Ser. of 1909 ; Who's Who in America, 1908-09 ; 
H. Howard, Howard Geneal . (1903) ; Army and Navy 
Jour., Oct 30, 1909; Burlington Daily Free Press, Oct. 
* 7 , W 9 -] J. G. deR. H. 

HOWARD, TIMOTHY EDWARD (Jan. 
27,1837-July 9, 1916), Indiana jurist, the eldest 
of seven children, was born of Irish parentage 
on a farm near Ann Arbor, Mich. His parents, 
Martin and Julia (Beahan) Howard, came to 
America in 1832, settling first in Vermont, but 
soon removing to Michigan Territory where the 
father entered some government land in the midst 
of the forest. He died in 1851, leaving large re¬ 
sponsibilities upon his widow and eldest son. 
Young Howard attended a rural school near his 
home and later an academy at Ypsilanti for two 
terms, then entered the University of Michigan, 
but left in 1856, before completing his sopho¬ 
more year. After teaching a rural school two 
years, he secured the opportunity of teaching and 
attending classes in the University of Notre 
Dame, at South Bend, Ind. In February 1862, 
he enlisted in the 12th Michigan Infantry and a 
few weeks later took part in the battle of Shiloh, 
where he received wounds in the neck and shoul¬ 
der. After two months in a hospital at Evans¬ 
ville, Ind., he returned home on a furlough, but 
finally discharged as unfit for further serv- 


Howard 

ice. He resumed his teaching and received his 
degree in 1862, graduating in a class of five. At 
the age of forty-six he took up the study of law, 
receiving the law degree in due course, though 
he did not begin to practise until 1883. 

Becoming interested in local politics, though 
never a politician in the ordinary sense, he was 
elected county clerk in 1878, and in the same 
year was chosen a member of the city council. 
He later served as city and county attorney. 
Elected to the state senate in 1886 and again in 
1890, he was recognized as a most useful and in¬ 
fluential member of that body. He was the au¬ 
thor of the bill for the drainage of the Kankakee 
Valley, was chairman of the committee in charge 
of the school-textbook law, drafted an important 
new revenue law, championed a new election 
law, and introduced the measure for the estab¬ 
lishment of the appellate court for Indiana. He 
became the Democratic nominee from the 5th 
district for justice of the state supreme court in 
1892; was elected, and served from 1893 to 1899, 
being three times chosen chief justice. His de¬ 
cisions as chief justice (included in 133-52 In¬ 
diana Reports) have been widely quoted and have 
been reprinted in collections of decisions. 

After retiring from the bench in 1899, Howard 
resumed the practice of law in South Bend, and 
in 1906 became professor of law at the Univer¬ 
sity of Notre Dame, which position he was hold¬ 
ing at the time of his death. During these years 
he was active on several state commissions, 
among them the Indiana Fee and Salary Com¬ 
mission (1899) and the commission for codifying 
the laws of Indiana (1903-05). A man of large 
public spirit and a lover of nature, he took an 
active interest in beautifying South Bend and 
was instrumental in securing the city's first park, 
which was named in his honor. He was the au¬ 
thor of several publications, including Laws of 
Indiana (1900), a manual; a book of essays, 
Excelsior (1868); a book for children, Uncle 
Edward Stories (n.d.) ; a historical sketch. The 
Indiana Supreme Court (1900), issued by the 
Northern Indiana Historical Society; a History 
of the University of Notre Dame du Lac from 
1842 to 1892 (1895); and Musings and Memo¬ 
ries (1905), a volume of verse. His name ap¬ 
pears also on the title page of A History of St 
Joseph County, Indiana (2 vols., 1907). He was 
president of the Northern Indiana Historical 
Society at the time of his death. 

Howard was married on July 14,1864, to Julia 
A. Redmond of Detroit, and to them were bom 
ten children of whom four sons and three daugh¬ 
ters grew to maturity. 

iPictorial and Blog* Memoirs of Elkjtarf and $t f 



Howard 


Howard 


Joseph Counties, Ind. (1893) I Hist, of St. Joseph Coun- 
ty, Ind. (1880) ; The Notre Dame Scholastic, XXVI, 
167-69; L, 86-87; LIV, 233-36; Gen. Cat. Umv. of 
Mich. (1912); Who's Who in America, 1916-17; U 
W. Taylor, Biog. Sketches and Review of the Bench 
and Bar of Ind. (1895); Indianapolis Star, July ix, 

1916.] w.w.s. 


HOWARD, VOLNEY ERSKINE (Oct. 22, 
1809-May 14, 1889), lawyer, congressman, was 
born in Oxford County, Me. He attended Bloom¬ 
field Academy and Waterville (now Colby) Col¬ 
lege. In 1832 he moved to Mississippi, studied 
law, and began practice at Brandon. Four years 
later he was elected to the state legislature on the 
Democratic ticket. On Mar. 6, 1837, he married 
Catherine Elizabeth Gooch ( Daily National In¬ 
telligence?•, Washington, D. C., Mar. 8, 1837). 
Appointed reporter of the Mississippi high court 
of errors and appeals, he published Howard's Re¬ 
ports in seven volumes, covering the first nine 
years of the court’s existence (1834-43) • 

1840 he compiled, with Anderson Hutchinson, 
The Statutes of the State of Mississippi. He was 
for a time co-editor (1836) of The Mississippian 
(Jackson), an important Democratic organ. He 
moved to New Orleans in 1843 and in December 
1844 to San Antonio, where he was elected to 
the Texas constitutional convention of 1845. 
February 1846 he was appointed attorney-gen¬ 
eral of Texas, but he preferred his newly acquired 
seat in the state Senate. Three years later he 
was elected to Congress (i 849 ~ 53 )> where he op¬ 
posed the admission of California as a free state 
and “the Dismemberment of Texas” ( Congres¬ 
sional Globe, 31 Cong., 1 Sess., App., pp. 772- 
78). He later supported the compromise mea¬ 
sures of 1850, including a settlement of the north¬ 
ern and western boundaries of Texas whereby 
the state received ten million dollars and re¬ 
nounced her claim to the Santa Fe country. In 
1853-54 Howard was legal agent of the United 
States land commission in California, and then 
began practising in San Francisco. Lawless 
conditions there led to the reestablishment of the 
Vigilance Committee in May 1856, and Howard, 
who was opposed to the maintenance of law and 
order by extra-legal methods, was commissioned 
major-general of militia with instructions from 
Gov. J. N. Johnson to put down the Vigilantes. 
Both Major-General Wool, the federal military 
commander, and President Pierce refused to fur¬ 
nish arms for the militia. Howard was not dis¬ 
couraged: “Ponderosity,” as the pompous and 
portly general was sometimes called, marched 
alone upon “Fort Vigilance,” headquarters of the 
Vigilance^ Committee. He summoned them to 
surrender. They gave him short shrift, more be¬ 
cause of the bluster with which he had assumed 


his high office than because he lacked an army, 
and his demands were peremptorily refused. The 
Vigilantes later disbanded voluntarily after sev¬ 
eral months of activity. In order to escape the 
unpleasantness and enmity that he had aroused 
as commander of the popularly execrated “law 
and murder” forces, Howard moved to Sacra¬ 
mento (1858) and later to Los Angeles (1861), 
where he became district attorney (1861-70) 
and judge of the superior court (1880-84). In 
the constitutional convention of 1878-79 he spoke 
at length in favor of Chinese exclusion by law 
and state regulation of railroads and other cor¬ 
porations. He died at Santa Monica at the age 
of eighty. 

[Z. T. Fulmore, in Tex. State Hist. Asso. Quart., 
Oct. 1910; Jours, of the Convention Assembled . . . 
for the Purpose of Framing a Constitution for the State 
of Tex. (1845) ; Debates and Proc. of the Constitutional 
Convention of the State of Cal. (3 vols., 1880-81); H. 
S. Foote, The Bench and Bar of the South and South¬ 
west (1876) ; J. D. Lynch, The Bench and Bar of Miss. 
(1881); T. H. Hittell, Hist, of Cal., vols. Ill and IV 
(1897) ; H. H. Bancroft, Popular Tribunals (1887), 
vol. II; Daily Evening Bulletin (San Francisco), June 
9, 24, 25, 1856; San Francisco Chronicle, May 15, 
1889.] F.E.R. 

HOWARD, WILLIAM ALANSON (Apr. 
8, 1813-Apr. 10, 1880), Michigan politician, was 
born at Hinesburg, Vt., a son of Dan and Esther 
(Spencer) Howard. He was descended from 
John Howard who settled in Duxbury, Mass., 
before 1643 and later was one of the proprietors 
of Bridgewater. At the age of fourteen, William 
went to Albion, N. Y., to learn cabinet making. 
From 1832 to 1835 he prepared for college in 
Wyoming Academy at Wyoming, N. Y. He 
graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont 
in 1839. After teaching school in Genesee Coun¬ 
ty, N. Y., during the winter of 1839-40, he re¬ 
moved to Detroit. Here, while teaching mathe¬ 
matics in the branch of the University of Michi¬ 
gan, he studied law. He was admitted to the bar 
in 1842. As was the case with many of his con¬ 
temporaries, his political interests took prece¬ 
dence over his legal ones. By 1852 he had risen 
to the rank of chairman of the Whig State Cen¬ 
tral Committee (Harris, post, p. 14). In 1854 he 
joined the Republican party, organized in Jack- 
son on July 6. In the same year he was elected 
to the United States House of Representatives, 
defeating David Stuart, one of the most popular 
Democrats of Detroit. 

His congressional career, which came to a 
close in 1861, was filled with important events. 
He was a member of the Committee on Ways and 
Means for six years. The House appointed him 
on the committee to investigate the state of af¬ 
fairs in Kansas; he was a member of the Le- 
compton Committee of Conference and of the 



Howe 

Committee of Thirty-three which attempted to 
find a solution for the difficulties facing the coun¬ 
try in the winter of 1860-61. On his retirement 
from the House, he was appointed postmaster at 
Detroit, an office which he held for five and a 
half years. In the spring of 1869 he was offered 
and declined the position of minister to China. 
In that year he removed to Grand Rapids to as¬ 
sume the duties of land commissioner of the 
Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad, and from 
1872 to 1878 he served the Northern Pacific in a 
similar capacity. In 1877 President Hayes ap¬ 
pointed him governor of the Territory of Da¬ 
kota; he accepted the office in April 1878 and 
held it until his death. From i860 to 1866 he was 
chairman of the Republican state central com¬ 
mittee; from 1872 to 1876 he was a member of 
the Republican National Committee. He was a 
delegate to the National Conventions of 1868, 
1872, and 1876, serving in each year as chair¬ 
man of the state delegation. It is believed that 
it was his influence in 1876 that caused the 
Michigan delegation to vote for Hayes, thus 
starting a definite trend toward the latter’s nomi¬ 
nation. 

Howard died in Washington, D. C. He was 
survived by his widow, Ellen Jane (Birchard) 
Howard, to whom he was married in Detroit on 
Mar. 1,1841, and by two sons and by two daugh¬ 
ters. 

[Biography reprinted from Detroit Post and Tribune, 
in Pioneer Colls, . . . State of Mich., vol. IV (1883) ; 
sketch apparently edited by Howard himself in Am. 
Biog % Hist. . . . Mich. Vol. (1878); W. C. Harris, 
Public Life of Zachariah Chandler (1917) ; H. M. Dilla, 
The Politics of Mich., 1865-78 (1912) ; Life of Zach¬ 
ariah Chandler (1880), by members of the Post and 
Tribune staff; Heman Howard, The Howard Geneal . 
(1903) ; Detroit Free Press, Apr. 12, 1880.] J.O.K. 

HOWE, ALBION PARRIS (Mar. 25, 1818- 
Jan. 25, 1897), soldier, uncle of Lucien Howe 
foz'.], was born in Standish, Me., the son of Dr. 
Ebenezer Howe, a native of Massachusetts, and 
Catherine Spring, of Conway, N. H. He was de¬ 
scended from John Howe who settled at an early 
date in Sudbury, Mass. He began his education 
with the intention of going to college, and in 
1836—37 taught at the Standish Academy, but he 
later became interested in military affairs and 
through the governor of the state secured an ap¬ 
pointment to West Point, where he entered July 
1,1837. He was graduated in the class of 1841# 
eighth in a class of fifty-two, and was commis¬ 
sioned second lieutenant of the 4th Artillery. 
From 18431846 he was detailed at West Point 
as assistant professor in mathematics, but when 
the Mexican War began he was sent to his regi¬ 
ment, reaching Vera Cruz with Scott’s army. 
He was present at the siege of this city and took 


Howe 

part in the more important battles of the war. 
He was brevetted captain, Aug. 20, 1847, lor 
gallant and meritorious service at Contreras and 
Churubusco. After the war he was stationed in 
various parts of the country, especially in the 
South and West, then from 1856 to i860 he 
was for the most part in garrison at the artil¬ 
lery school at Fortress Monroe. During John 
Brown’s raid, he was sent with his battery to 
Harper’s Ferry, where he remained on duty until 
peace was restored. He was married, in 1859, to 
Elizabeth Law Mehaffey of Gettysburg, Pa. 

Upon the outbreak of the Civil War Howe re¬ 
ported to McClellan and served through the West 
Virginia campaign. Then, after duty in Wash¬ 
ington, D. C., he went with McClellan to York- 
town and took part in the Peninsular campaign. 
He later served in the siege of Yorktown and in 
the battles of Williamsburg, Manassas, South 
Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Marye’s 
Heights, Salem, and Gettysburg. For gallant 
and meritorious service at Malvern Hill, where 
his division held an important position in the 
defense, he was later brevetted major in the 
regular army. For similar services at Salem 
Heights, Va., he was brevetted lieutenant-colonel 
in the regular army, and for his conduct at Rap¬ 
pahannock Station, Va., he received a brevet as 
colonel in the regular army. Subsequently he 
was engaged at Mine Run and afterward put in 
command of the large artillery depot at Wash¬ 
ington, D. C., where he served from Mar. 2,1864, 
to Aug. 2,1866. When Lincoln was assassinated, 
Howe was one of the guard of honor which stood 
watch over the remains at the White House and 
later accompanied the body to Springfield. On 
his return to Washington, he was made a mem¬ 
ber of the commission that tried the conspirators. 
In 1866 he was a member of the Artillery Board 
and, with General Hardie, appointed inspector of 
all arms and military stores in the forts and ar¬ 
senals of this country. Later he was made a 
member of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, 
and Abandoned Lands. On June 30, 1882, while 
stationed at Fort Adams, R. I., commanding his 
old regiment, the 4th Artillery, he was retired 
from active service. He died at Cambridge, 
Mass., and was buried at Mt. Auburn Cemetery. 

[For printed sources, see G. W. Cullum, Biog. Reg . 

. . . U. S. Mil. Acad. (ed. 1891), vol. II; Battles and 
Leaders of the Civil War, vols. I, II, and III (1887- 
88) ; J. G, Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln. A 
Hist. (1890), vols. VII, IX, and X; and D. W. Howe, 
Howe Geneals ... . John Howe of Sudbury and Marl¬ 
borough, Mass . (1929). A manuscript monograph of 
Howe has been prepared by his son, William deLancey 
Howe, Boston, Mass.] J.W.W. 

HOWE, ANDREW JACKSON (Apr. 14, 
1825-Jan. 16, 1892), surgeon, was born in Pax- 


283 



Howe 


Howe 


ton, Mass., the son of Samuel Hubbard and Eliz¬ 
abeth Hubbard (Moore) Howe. He was de¬ 
scended from John Howe of Sudbury who be¬ 
came a freeman of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 
1640 and died in Marlboro in 1680. While An¬ 
drew was still a child his father moved to Leices¬ 
ter where the boy received his early education 
in the district school and under the wise direction 
of his mother. Though he was intensely fond of 
outdoor activities, his love for books early be¬ 
came paramount. He began the study of medi¬ 
cine under Dr. Calvin Newton, attending lec¬ 
tures at Worcester Medical Institute. Feeling 
the lack of preparatory training, he returned to 
Leicester and entered the academy there. After 
three years’ close application, he entered Har¬ 
vard, from which he was graduated in 1853. 
Under the spell of the brilliant Agassiz, young 
Howe was attracted to geology as a possible life 
work, but returned to his original choice, medi¬ 
cine. Dr. Frank H. Kelley of Worcester became 
his preceptor for a time, and in 1853 he entered 
Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. The 
following year he went to New York, where he 
attended lectures and walked the wards of the 
hospitals, steadily advancing in knowledge of 
clinical medicine and surgery. He then returned 
to Worcester Medical Institute. Upon his grad¬ 
uation in 1855, his attainments were such that 
he was appointed demonstrator of anatomy, from 
which position he soon advanced to the profes¬ 
sorship of anatomy. For six months he efficient¬ 
ly cared for the surgical practice of Dr. Walter 
Burnham, and then opened an office for himself 
in Worcester. 

In 1856 he was invited to lecture in the College 
of Eclectic Medicine and Surgery in Cincinnati, 
and again the next year, after which time he re¬ 
mained in Cincinnati. In 1859 he became profes¬ 
sor of anatomy in the Eclectic Medical Institute, 
with which the College of Eclectic Medicine and 
Surgery had merged, and two years later was 
given the chair of surgery, which he held until 
his death. 

As a surgeon he attained distinction and was 
called to all parts of the United States to per¬ 
form operations. Though operating in the days 
prior to surgical asepsis, his success was remark¬ 
able, owing to his skill in diagnosis, accurate 
knowledge of anatomy, fearlessness, steady hand, 
and remarkable surgical judgment For many 
years he wrote voluminously, not only concern¬ 
ing surgery, but on a wide range of subjects. 
Natural history still claimed a share of his in¬ 
terest He was a member of the American Asso¬ 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, and the 
Cincinnati Society of Natural History, before 


which bodies he presented many papers. His 
editorials and leading articles were a feature of 
the Eclectic Medical Journal for more than thirty 
years. A work in manuscript by him, designed 
for children, was published by his wife after his 
death, Conversations on Animal Life (1897). 
Among the textbooks prepared by him are A 
Practical and Systematic Treatise on Fractures 
and Dislocations (1870), Manual of Eye Surgery 
(1874), Art and Science of Surgery (1876), 
Operative Gynaecology (1890). Oihis Art and 
Science of Surgery, Dr. Harvey W. Felter wrote: 
“While science moves on and new discoveries re¬ 
place old theories and methods—and some of Dr. 
Howe’s will go with them—yet will this book re¬ 
main a delightful and valued repository of sur¬ 
gical lore stored in choice and chaste language” 
{post, p. 120). Though extremely conservative 
in the use of medicines Howe developed many 
substances of permanent value. He died Jan. 16, 
1892, of carbuncle upon the neck, having delayed 
calling surgical aid until it was too late to save 
his life, and was buried at Paxton, Mass. He 
was married, Feb. 2, 1858, to Georgiana Lakin 
of Paxton. 

[D. W. Howe, Howe Geneals. . . . John Howe of 
Sudbury (1929); Report of the Harvard Class of 1853 ; 
1849-1913 (1913); J. U. Lloyd, Eclectic Medic. Jour.. 
July 1894; H. W. Felter, Bull, of the Lloyd Library of 
Botany, Pharmacy and Materia Medica, No. 19, 1912; 
Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, Jan. 17, 1892.] 

HOWE, ELIAS (July 9, 1819-Oct. 3, 1867), 
inventor, was bom in Spencer, Worcester Coun¬ 
ty, Mass., the son of Elias and Polly (Bemis) 
Howe, and a descendant of John Howe, of Sud¬ 
bury, who became a freeman of Massachusetts 
Bay Colony in May 1640 and died at Marlboro 
in 1680. Elias Howe, Sr., was a farmer and the 
owner of a small grist-mill and a sawmill. Howe 
went to school occasionally in the winter time 
and worked on the farm and in the mills. The 
machinery of the latter interested him particu¬ 
larly, and he liked nothing better than to tinker 
with it and make repairs. When he was twelve 
years old his father could not afford to keep him 
in clothes any longer and hired him out to a 
neighboring farmer. Poor health and lameness 
prevented him from doing heavy farm work, and 
a year later he returned home to help in the saw- 
and grist-mills. Ambitious to learn more about 
machinery, he went to Lowell, Mass., in 1835 
and became an apprentice in an establishment 
that manufactured cotton machinery. The panic 
of 1837 severed this connection and Howe went 
to Cambridge, Mass. Here he found work in a 
machine-shop where he operated a newly invent¬ 
ed hemp-carding machine. After a few months 
he went to Boston and became an apprentice of 


284 



Howe 

Ari Davis, a watch-maker primarily, but also a 
maker of surveying instruments and scientific 
apparatus for Harvard professors. Davis was an 
ingenious mechanician and, in spite of his eccen¬ 
tricities, was much consulted by both inventors 
and capitalists. In this ideal environment, with 
the finest of mechanical devices upon which to 
practise, Howe became both skilled and deft as 
a machinist One day he overheard Davis sug¬ 
gest to a would-be inventor that he make a sew¬ 
ing machine, and from that moment he brooded 
over the possibility of devising a machine which 
would sew with the same motions as the human 
hand. In the meantime, Mar. 3,1841, he married 
Elizabeth J. Ames of Boston. He at length con¬ 
structed a machine with a double-pointed needle 
and eye in the middle, but it proved an utter 
failure. In 1844, however, he made another at¬ 
tempt, this time having in mind a lock-stitch and 
an eye-pointed needle united with a shuttle, an 
idea derived from the looms he had been familiar 
with all his life and had helped to make in the 
factory at Lowell. While the idea in the end 
proved a good one, he had first to devise a shuttle 
loaded with a lower thread and the means of 
throwing the shuttle at the proper intervals 
through loops of the upper thread. Soon after 
beginning this second machine, he gave up his 
nine-dollar-a-week job with Davis in order to 
devote his whole time to the task he had set him¬ 
self. His father helped him by boarding him and 
his family in Cambridge, where he was then liv¬ 
ing. Howe later prevailed upon a friend, George 
Fisher, to become his partner, Fisher receiving 
the Howe family into his home as guests and ad¬ 
vancing five hundred dollars toward buying ma¬ 
terials and tools. Throughout the winter of 1844- 
45 Howe labored steadily at his machine and by 
April 1845 he had completed it to a point where 
it sewed with evenness and smoothness. In a 
public demonstration it exceeded in speed five of 
the swiftest hand sewers, for it could make 250 
stitches a minute. Notwithstanding its success, 
however, Howe met with financial discourage¬ 
ment. In 1846 he completed a second machine, 
and after inducing Fisher to advance the neces¬ 
sary money, he took it to Washington, where he 
deposited it in the Patent Office with his applica¬ 
tion for a patent. This was granted Sept. 10, 
1846, patent No. 4750 {House Executive Docu¬ 
ment 52 , 29 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 125, 308-09). 
Since he could arouse no interest in his machine 
in the United States, he decided to offer it in 
England. Accordingly, in October 1846, his 
brother Amasa went to London with a third ma¬ 
chine and succeeded in selling it for £250 to Wil¬ 
liam Thomas, a large manufacturer of corsets. 


Howe 

shoes, and umbrellas. This transaction also 
pve to Thomas the entire rights of the machine 
for Great. Britain. Seeing the possibilities of 
adapting it to sewing leather, Thomas induced 
Howe, through his brother, to come to London, 
and advanced the passage money. After working 
eight months for fifteen dollars a week, Howe 
quarreled with Thomas and found himself strand¬ 
ed. By pawning his model and patent papers he 
raised enough money to send his family home, 
and a few months later he returned in a sailing 
vessel, paying his way by cooking for the steer¬ 
age. He arrived in Cambridge in time to reach 
the bedside of his dying wife. Meanwhile 
knowledge of the favor with which his machine 
had been received in England had reached the 
United States, and some manufacturers had al¬ 
ready begun to make and sell sewing machines 
like Howe's in design. With a hopeless feeling, 
at first, he sued these manufacturers for infringe¬ 
ment, using money advanced by George W. Bliss 
who had become his partner through the purchase 
of Fisher's half interest in the patent. One of the 
longest fights in American patent law followed, 
continuing from 1849 to 1854. With the pro¬ 
ceeds of one or two successful suits, Howe made 
and marketed a number of sewing machines in 
New York, and thus kept himself alive. Finally 
his patent was declared basic and a judgment 
for a royalty was granted to him on every ma¬ 
chine that infringed his patent ( Howe vs. Un¬ 
derwood, 12 Federal Cases, 678). Shortly after 
this Bliss died and Howe for a nominal sum ac¬ 
quired full ownership of his patent. It expired in 
i860 but was extended for seven years in March 
1861, and in these years Howe's royalties often 
reached $4,000 a week. During the Civil War 
he organized and equipped an infantry regiment 
in Connecticut, and though he placed his means 
at its disposal he served in it as a private. In 
1865 he organized the Howe Machine Company 
of Bridgeport, Conn., and the perfected Howe 
machine which he there produced won the gold 
medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1867. After the 
death of his first wife, he married again (Howe 
Genealogies). He died in Brooklyn, N. Y. 

[Howe’s own account of his invention and develop¬ 
ment of the sewing machine, including the litigation, is 
printed in Before the Hon. Philip F. Thomas, Com¬ 
missioner of Patents, in the Matter of the Application 
of Elias Howe, Jr., for an Extension of his Sewing 
Machine Patent (i860). See also The Howe Exhi¬ 
bition Cat. of Sewing Machines & Cases (1876), issued 
by the Howe Machine Company; Practical Mag. (Lon¬ 
don), V (1875), 321-24; James Parton, in Atlantic 
Mo., May 1867; Geo. lies, Leading Am. Inventors 
(1912); W. B. Kaempffert, A Popular Hist, of Am. 
Invention (1924), vol. II; E. W, Bym, The Progress 
of Invention in the Nineteenth Century (1900); J. L. 
Bishop, A Hist, of Am. Manufactures from 1608 to 
i860 (1864), vol. II; N. Salamon, Hist. of the Sewing 


285 



Howe Howe 


Machine, from the Year 1750; With a Biog. of Elias 
Howej Jr. (London, 1863). H. M. Towne, Hist. Sketch¬ 
es Relating to Spencer, Mass., vol. I (1901) ; D. W. 
Howe, Howe Geneals. . . . John Howe of Sudbury 
(1929) ; N . Y. Tribune t Oct. 5, 1867.] C. W.M. 

HOWE, FREDERICK WEBSTER (Aug. 
28, 1822-Apr. 25, 1891), machine tool builder, 
inventor, was born at Danvers, Mass., the son of 
Frederick and Betsey (Dale) Howe. He was a 
descendant of James Howe, who was admitted 
freeman at Roxbury, Mass., in 1637, and died at 
Ipswich, May 17, 1702. His father was a black¬ 
smith. Until he was sixteen years of age, the 
boy attended the public schools of his home town 
and then entered the machine-shop of Silver & 
Gay at North Chelmsford, Mass. Here he learned 
thoroughly the machinist trade and mechanical 
drafting. After nine years he went to Windsor, 
Vt., and entered the machine-shop of Robbins, 
Kendall & Lawrence as assistant to Lawrence in 
machine tool designing. A year later, although 
but twenty-six years of age, he was made plant 
superintendent. He remained with this organi¬ 
zation six years during which time he invented 
many useful machine tools of basic design which 
have come down to the present day practically 
unchanged. In 1848 he designed a profiling ma¬ 
chine which was used for years in all gun shops 
in the United States. He also designed a barrel 
drilling and rifling machine, and in 1849 he and 
Lawrence built a plain milling machine which 
was a forerunner of the present well-known Lin¬ 
coln type miller. Finally, in 1850, he designed 
the first commercially exploited universal milling 
machine. At the great exposition held in Lon¬ 
don, in 1851, Robbins and Lawrence exhibited a 
set of rifles built on the interchangeable system. 
As a result, the British Small Arms Commission, 
after a visit to the Robbins & Lawrence plant, 
placed a contract with that firm for gun ma¬ 
chinery to be installed in the armory at Enfield, 
near London. For three years, from 1853 to 
1856, Howe, as superintendent, had charge of the 
design and building of much of this equipment. 
In 1856 he established an armory of his own at 
Newark, N. J., where he engaged in the manu¬ 
facture of pistols and gun-making machinery. 
Two years later he transferred his plant to Mid¬ 
dletown, Conn., and was engaged there in the 
manufacture of small arms until the outbreak of 
the Civil War. He then went to Providence, R. 
I., and became superintendent of the armory of 
the Providence Tool Company. He continued in 
this capacity throughout the Civil War and in the 
course of his service brought the manufacture of 
Springfield rifles to a high point of efficiency. In 
1865 he was induced by Elias Howe [q.v.] to go 
to Bridgeport and assist in manufacturing the 


latter's sewing machine. The Howe sewing-ma¬ 
chine plant was leased to him, and he began the 
construction of another especially designed for 
quantity production. Howe had just begun to 
operate this plant with two thousand employees 
when Elias Howe died and the business became 
the property of his sons-in-law, the Stockwells. 
He left the concern shortly thereafter and in 1868, 
returning to Providence, he joined the Brown & 
Sharpe Manufacturing Company. He was su¬ 
perintendent of this establishment for five years, 
during which time he worked with Joseph R. 
Brown \_q.v.~\ in various mechanical develop¬ 
ments and erected the first building on the com¬ 
pany's present site. He became a partner in the 
firm in 1869, and after its incorporation was for 
two years its president. He was the inventor of 
several of the Brown & Sharpe milling machines 
and developed the company's turret lathes. He 
assisted Charles H. Wilcox in the development of 
the Wilcox & Gibbs sewing-machine thread-ten¬ 
sion device, and planned the tools for the manu¬ 
facture of the Wilcox & Gibbs sewing machine, 
which was then made by the Brown & Sharpe 
Company. Howe remained with this organiza¬ 
tion until 1876, and thereafter, until his sudden 
death, he was in business for himself as a con¬ 
sulting mechanical engineer. In these last years 
he assisted Charles Goodyear, Jr., in the de¬ 
velopment of shoe machinery and engaged in the 
designing of a unique one-finger typewriter 
which, however, was never completed. He mar¬ 
ried Anna Clafton and was survived by a daugh¬ 
ter, with whom he had made his home in Provi¬ 
dence during the latter years of his life. 

[D. W. Howe, Howe Genealogies . . . James of 
Ipswich (1929); C. H. Fitch, “Report on the Manu¬ 
factures of Interchangeable Mechanism/’ in Report on 
the Manufactures of the U. S., at the Tenth Census 
(1883); Am. Machinist, May 24, 1900; J. W. Roe, 
Eng. and Am. Tool Builders (1916); U. S. National 
Museum correspondence; Patent Office records; Provi¬ 
dence Sunday Jour., Apr. 26, 1891.] C. W.M. 

HOWE, GEORGE (Nov. 6, 1802-Apr. 15, 
1883), clergyman, educator, historian, was bom 
at Dedham, Mass., the son of William and Mary 
(Gould) Howe, and a descendant of Abraham 
How who emigrated from Essex, England, and 
settled in Roxbury, Mass., about 1637. When 
George was born, his father was conducting a 
tavern in Dedham, which he had built. Later he 
was a cotton-mill superintendent in East Dedham 
and in Holmesburg, Pa., whither he took his 
family about 1814. Young Howe graduated with 
first honor from Middlebury College in 1822, and 
from Andover Theological Seminary in 1825, 
but continued his studies there as Abbot scholar. 
Ordained in 1827, he became Phillips Professor 


286 



Howe 

of Sacred Theology in Dartmouth College and 
minister of the college church; but in 1830, fear¬ 
ing tuberculosis, he resigned and sailed for 
Charleston, S. C. In January 1831, he became 
identified with Columbia Theological Seminary 
as professor of Biblical literature. This position 
he held for more than half a century. Declining 
a professorship in Union Theological Seminary 
in 1836, he wrote: “It appears still my duty to 
cast in my lot . . . with the people of the South 
. . . though the field of my endeavor must be 
small, and I must live on in obscurity.” 

He took no part in nullification or secession, 
but his sons George and William enlisted with 
the Confederacy. Although a slaveholder, he be¬ 
lieved in the spiritual unity of the human race, 
and advocated evangelical work among the slaves 
through missionaries. He was also active in for¬ 
eign and domestic missions and for many years 
was president of the Columbia Bible Society. In 
1849 the Synod of South Carolina appointed him 
to write the history of the Presbyterian Church 
in that state, and he completed it just before his 
death. It was published in two volumes, History 
of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina 
(1870-83). Though faulty in organization and 
discursive in style, it remains the standard refer¬ 
ence for local Presbyterian records and is a mine 
of information for the student of South Carolina 
history. Traditions are preserved, but citations 
are from authoritative sources and the work is 
scholarly. He also wrote A Discourse on Theo¬ 
logical Education (1844) and numerous eulogies, 
sermons, and addresses, besides articles in the 
Southern Presbyterian Review . He was twice 
married: first on Aug. 25, 1831, to Mary, daugh¬ 
ter of Rev. Jedediah Bushnell of Cornwall, Vt, 
who died in 1832; and second, on Dec. 19,1836, 
to Mrs. Sarah Ann (Walthour) McConnell, 
daughter of Andrew Walthour of Walthourville, 
Ga., who survived him. By purchase and by in¬ 
heritance, he and his second wife owned several 
plantations in Liberty County, Ga.; and the 
modest but comfortable estate he devised his fam¬ 
ily testifies to his business ability. 

[Howe Geneals. . . . Abraham of Roxbury (1929) ; 

• , Girardeau, in Memorial Vol. of the Semi-Centen - 
Theol. Sent, at Columbia (1884) ; H. A. 
White, So. Presbyt . Leaders (1911); George Howe, 
ttf S resbyt Ch. in S. C. f addendum, vol. LI 
(1883) ; W. C. Robinson MS. “Hist, of Columbia Theo- 
log. Sem.”; Cat. of the Officers and Students of Middle - 
bury Coll. ( 1917) ; J. 2 L Lord, A Hist . of Dartmouth 
Co//., vol. II (1913) ; The News and Courier, Charles¬ 
ton, S. C., Apr. 16, 1883.] A.K. G. 

HOWE, GEORGE AUGUSTUS (c. 1724- 
July 6,175^), third Viscount Howe, British brig¬ 
adier-general, was the son of Emanuel Scrope 
Howe, of Langar, Nottingham, governor of Bar- 


Howe 

bados from 1732 to 1735, and Maria Sophia 
Charlotte, a daughter of Baron von Kielmansegge 
and his wife, who was half-sister of George I 
and created by him Countess of Darlington. 
George Augustus succeeded to the title, in the 
Irish peerage, in 1735, and in 1747-58 followed 
m his father's footsteps by representing Notting¬ 
ham borough in Parliament. In March 1745 be 
entered as ensign the 1st Foot Guards (the 
Grenadier Guards), became lieutenant and cap¬ 
tain in May 1746, served as aide-de-camp to the 
Duke of Cumberland in 1746 and 1747, fought at 
Laufeldt, and got his company with the army 
rank of lieutenant-colonel in May 1749. His rapid 
promotion was due to his high connections, to his 
own natural aptitude for the military profession, 
and to a personality unusually winning; there 
were those, before the Seven Years' War, who 
called him the best soldier in the British army. 

Appointed colonel of the 3rd Battalion of the 
Royal Americans (60th) early in 1757, Howe 
joined his men at Fort Edward three days after 
Montcalm had invested Fort William Henry. In 
September he became colonel of the 55th, sta¬ 
tioned in upper New York. Both Abercromby 
and Loudoun [ qq.v .] placed reliance on his abil¬ 
ity. He commanded the reinforcement sent to 
the belated relief of German Flats in Novem¬ 
ber, and led an abortive winter expedition against 
Ticonderoga in February 1758. Refusing to mix 
in army politics, he set himself to learn the pe¬ 
culiarities and demands of war in the American 
wilderness, and studied open-mindedly the meth¬ 
ods of the ranger Robert Rogers [q.v.]. Pro¬ 
moted to a brigadier-generalship in December 
1757 , he was named by Pitt as second in com¬ 
mand in Abercromby's expedition against Ticon¬ 
deroga the following summer. From April to 
July 1758 he practically changed the appearance 
of the British army in the field by cropping their 
hair and cutting down their hats and coats, and 
he sacrificed his personal luxuries in such a man¬ 
ner as to win the love and admiration of pro¬ 
vincials and regulars alike, and to earn for him¬ 
self Wolfe's dictum that he was “formed by 
nature for the war in this country.” 

Early on the morning of July 6, after the army 
had been transported to the foot of Lake George 
and had been formed into columns for the march 
to Ticonderoga, Howe, at the head of his own 
column, ran into a French skirmishing party and 
fell at their first volley. In him, says Mante, the 
soul of the army seemed to expire. His body was 
carried to Albany, and buried there in St. Peter's 
Church. Four years later the Province of Mas¬ 
sachusetts Bay paid him the great and unique 
tribute of erecting to his memory a tablet in 


287 



Howe 


Howe 


Westminster Abbey. He was succeeded in the 
title by his brother, Richard, Earl Howe, and 
later by his brother William, both of Revolu¬ 
tionary fame. 

[A. W. Ward, The Electress Sophia and the _ Han¬ 
overian Succession (1909), pp. 143-44, discredits the 
story, first told by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, that 
Baroness von Kielmansegge was the mistress of George 
I, and Lord Howe his grandson. Scanty information of 
his early life is in F. W. Hamilton, The Origin and 
Hist, of the First or Grenadier Guards (1874), II, 141# 
148, III, 451; and Wm. Cobbett, The Parliamentary 
Hist, of England (1813), XIV, 75, XV, 309. For his 
American career the Jours, of Maj. Robert Rogers 
(1765) ; Mrs. Anne Grant, Memoirs of an American 
Lady (2 vols., 1808); Thos. Mante, The Hist, of the 
Late War in North-America (1772); Correspondence 
of William Pitt ( 2 vols., 1906), ed. by G. S. Kimball; 
E. B. O’Callaghan, Docs. Relating to the Colonial Hist, 
of the State of N. Y. } vol. X (1858) are important. The 
Gentleman's Mag. (London), Aug. 1758, published an 
account of his death. In Proc. N. Y. State Hist. Asso., 
vols. II (1902), X (1911), and XIV (1915) aire con¬ 
troversial articles regarding his place of burial; see 
letter from Napier to Abercromby, Aug. 24, 1758, 
Abercromby Papers in the Henry E. Huntington Li¬ 
brary, San Marino, Cal. The Abercromby Papers and 
the Loudoun Papers, also at San Marino, contain many 
references to Lord Howe.] § p # 

HOWE, HENRY (Oct. 11, 1816-Oct 14, 
1893), historian, was born in New Haven, Conn., 
the son of Hezekiah and Sarah (Townsend) 
Howe and a descendant of James Howe, who was 
admitted freeman of Roxbury, Mass., in 1637 and 
later settled at Ipswich. Henry’s father, a bib¬ 
liophile, published the first edition of Webster’s 
dictionary and conducted a bookstore which was 
a favorite resort of Yale professors and other 
scholarly men. There Henry developed his lit¬ 
erary inclinations, and when John Warner Bar¬ 
ber’s Connecticut Historical Collections (1836) 
came into his hands, he decided that he would 
like above all things to dedicate his life to mak¬ 
ing such records. In 1839 he published Eminent 
Americans, then after several distasteful months 
in Wall Street, he joined forces with Barber in 
1840 in compiling the Historical Collections of 
the State of New York (1841). Sometimes rid¬ 
ing, usually walking, Howe “zigzaged from 
county-seat to county-seat, collecting material 
and taking sketches,” a picturesque figure with 
his piercing dark eyes, high brow, flowing hair, 
scarlet leggings, and knapsack strapped on his 
back. In the same year, 1841, he published Mem¬ 
oirs of the Most Eminent American Mechanics . 
In 1844 Howe and Barber published Historical 
Collections of the State of New Jersey , followed 
in 1845 by Howe’s Historical Collections of Vir¬ 
ginia. Ohio next attracted Howe’s attention. 
There he made contacts with earlier historians 
and pursued his studies as before. Sometimes 
sitting upon a snowbank he would sketch a dis¬ 
tant view of a town; sometimes working in the 


middle of a street he would cause the bystanders 
to inquire what he was doing. Local chroniclers 
and pioneers opened up to him their recollec¬ 
tions ; strangers sent in reports; and with such 
warm cooperation the first edition of his His¬ 
torical Collections of Ohio (3 vols.) was pub¬ 
lished in 1847. 

In September 1847 Howe married Frances A. 
Tuttle of New Haven, Conn., and thereafter he 
was for thirty years a citizen of Cincinnati. Dur¬ 
ing this period he compiled and published His¬ 
torical Collections of the Great West (1851); 
The Travels and Adventures of Celebrated 
Travelers (1853) ; Life and Death on the Ocean 
(1855) ; Adventures and Achievements of Amer¬ 
icans (1859); and, with Barber, Our Whole 
Country (2 vols., 1861), reprinted in part as All 
the Western States and Territories (1867). 
Owing to the outbreak of the Civil War Our 
Whole Country was a financial failure, but Howe, 
assigning his property to his creditors, carried 
on the subscription book business with moderate 
success and in 1867 published The Times of the 
Rebellion in the West. In 1878 he removed to 
New Haven, where he continued his literary 
work, but he had long expressed a desire to bring 
his Historical Collections of Ohio down to date 
and in 1885 he returned to the West. By this 
time the book had become a matter of state in¬ 
terest When the exhaustion of Howe’s private 
resources left him with a large deficit after the 
publication (2 vols., 1890-91) of the Centennial 
edition, his son, Frank Henry Howe, who had 
been his father’s assistant, secured an appropri¬ 
ation of $20,000 from the legislature for the pur¬ 
chase of the copyright and plates of the Collec¬ 
tions. Unfortunately, however, this reward for 
his long labors came only after Howe, suddenly 
stricken by paralysis, had passed away. 

Any estimate of Howe’s work must involve a 
consideration of the fact that Howe preceded the 
modem school of scientific historians. The blend¬ 
ing of geography, biography, economics, ar¬ 
chaeology, and history in his kaleidoscopic picture 
of progress entailed inevitably a superficial treat¬ 
ment of his subjects and laid him, in spite of the 
precautions which he took—especially in his later 
books—somewhat open to error. Nevertheless 
the original drawings and photographs, the quot¬ 
ed narratives and first-hand anecdotes, preserve 
much picturesque and illuminating material. It 
is doubtful, moreover, if any later specialized 
scholar has elicited warmer tributes from all 
classes of people than this pioneer state chroni¬ 
cler. 

[See Henry Howe, “Some Recollections of Historic 
Travel,” in Ohio Archaol. and Hist Quart., Mar. 1889, 
and the reminiscences in his Hist. Colls, of Ohio (ed. 


288 



Howe 

1890-91); D. W. Howe, Howe Geneals. . . . James of 
Ipswich ( 1929 ) ; J. P. Smith, “Henry Howe, the His¬ 
torian/’ in Ohio Archceol. and Hist. Soc. Pubs., vol. IV 
(1895); F. H. Howe, “Ohio’s Historian,” in The Honey 
Jar, Apr. 1906; and the Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. is 
i8 93*3 D.A.D. ’ 

HOWE, HENRY MARION (Mar. 2, 1848- 
May 14,1922), metallurgist, was bom in Boston, 
Mass., the son of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and 
Julia (Ward) Howe [ qq.v .~\. From both parents 
he inherited intelligence, spirituality, keenness, 
refinement, passion for the pursuit of knowledge, 
and the gift of clear and felicitous statement. He 
attended in prompt succession and graduated 
from the Boston Latin School (1865), Harvard 
College (B.A., 1869), and Massachusetts Insti¬ 
tute of Technology (1871). He then became a 
student in a steel works at Troy, N. Y. In 1872 
he went as superintendent of a Bessemer plant 
to the Joliet Iron & Steel Company, Joliet, Ill., 
and the following year was associated with the 
Blair Iron & Steel Works, Pittsburgh, Pa. For 
five years he devoted himself to the metallurgy 
of copper, making a professional trip to Chile in 
1877; and from 1879 to 1882 he was engaged in 
the design and erection of copper works at Ber¬ 
gen Point, N. J., and Capelton and Eustis, Que¬ 
bec. In 1882 he had an experience in frontier life 
as manager of the Pima Copper Mining & Smelt¬ 
ing Company in Arizona. He then established 
himself as consulting metallurgist in Boston, 
Mass. (1883-97), the same time lecturing 
upon metallurgy at Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology. In 1897 he was called to a profes¬ 
sorship in Columbia University, from which he 
retired in 1913 with the title of professor emer¬ 
itus. 

The problem to which Howe devoted a life¬ 
time was suggested by Alexander Lyman Holley 
[ q.v .] when he took “What is Steel ?" as the title 
of a paper which he read in October 1875 before 
the American Institute of Mining Engineers. 
This paper of Holley's had itself been called forth 
by a series of articles by Howe upon the nomen¬ 
clature of iron, which had just appeared in the 
Engineering and Mining Journal (Aug. 28-Sept 
18, 1875), setting forth what was then Howe's 
conception of what it was that should be called 
“steel" at the custom house. From Howe's sub¬ 
sequent years of research resulted two monu¬ 
mental works, The Metallurgy of Steel (1890), 
and The Metallography of Steel and Cast Iron 
(1916), which Le Chatelier pronounced epoch- 
making. He also published Copper Smelting 
(1885), Metallurgical Laboratory Notes (1902), 
Iron , Steel, and Other Alloys (1903), and some 
three hundred other technical papers. In 1917 
he undertook a study of the erosion of big guns 


Howe 

for the Naval Consulting Board, publishing his 
results in Volume LVIII (1918) of the Trans¬ 
actions of the American Institute of Mining En¬ 
gineers. He was consulting metallurgist to the 
United States Bureau of Standards, 1918-22, a 
member of the National Research Council in 
1918, and in 1919* chairman of its Division of 
Engineering. In 1919 also he was scientific at¬ 
tache of the American embassy at Paris. He was 
greatly interested in the promotion of the inter¬ 
national organization of science. Honorary mem¬ 
ber of nine societies; president, at one time or 
another, of five; he held six fellowships, was 
awarded five or six medals of distinction, and 
was knight of the Order of St. Stanislas (Rus¬ 
sia), and chevalier of the Legion of Honor 
(France). On Apr. 9, 1874, he married Fannie 
Gay of Troy, N. Y. She accompanied him upon 
all of his journeyings, and throughout their life 
together was of inestimable help to him. He died 
at Bedford Hills, N. Y., in his seventy-fifth year. 

[Speeches at presentation of John Fritz Medal, Bull. 
Am. Inst . Mining Engineers, July 1917; Trans. Am. 
Inst. Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, vols. LXVIII 
C 1 ^)* LXX (1924) ; Who's Who in America, 19 22- 
23; Iron Age, Nov. i, 1923 ; School of Mines Quart., 
July i9i3 ; G. K. Burgess, “Biographical Memoir Henry 
Marion Howe,” in Memoirs of the Nat. Acad, of Set., 
vol. XXI (1926) ; Eleventh Report of the Class of 1869 
of Harvard Coll. (19x9) ; D. W. Howe, Howe Geneals. 

. . . Abraham of Roxbury (1929); correspondence 
with Henry Marion Hall; personal recollections.] 

RC.C—y. 

HOWE, HERBERT ALONZO (Nov. 22, 
1858-Wov. 2, 1926), astronomer and educator, a 
descendant of Edward Howe who emigrated to 
New England in 1635, settling at Lynn, was born 
in Brockport, Monroe County, N. Y., where his 
father, Alonzo J. Howe, was principal of a school. 
His mother, Julia M. Osgood, was the daughter 
of a Baptist missionary. Alonzo Howe was later 
appointed professor of mathematics in the old 
Chicago University, a post that he held for many 
years. He always looked after his son's educa¬ 
tion personally, usually hearing his lessons be¬ 
fore they were recited to the teacher. With this 
personal care of his father, Howe was able to 
graduate from college at sixteen years of age, 
receiving the degree of A.B. from Chicago in 
1875. In the university he studied and mastered 
a wide range of subjects—Greek, Latin, mathe¬ 
matics, and physical sciences. The great meteor 
shower of 1866 occurred when he was a boy of 
eight and kindled his interest in astronomy, an 
interest that became absorbing in later life. In 
November 1875 he went to Cincinnati Observa¬ 
tory where he was student and assistant until 
1880. His work was confined chiefly to observa¬ 
tion of double stars, computation of orbits, and 
researches on new methods of solving Kepler’s 


289 



Howe 

problem. In 1877 he received the degree of A.M. 
from the University of Cincinnati. Close appli¬ 
cation to his work with long hours of study and 
observation broke his health. Two severe hemor¬ 
rhages of the lungs, early in 1880, warned him 
that a change in climate was necessary. Accord¬ 
ingly, he accepted a position as teacher of mathe¬ 
matics in the University of Denver, although the 
condition of his health did not permit him to 
carry a very arduous schedule at first. His physi¬ 
cal condition improved, however, and in 1881 he 
was assigned to the chair of mathematics and 
astronomy. In 1884 he received from Boston 
University the first degree of doctor of science 
ever granted by that institution. He presented 
two theses: “A Short Method for Kepler’s Prob¬ 
lem,” published in Astronomische Nachrichten , 
May 13, 1884; and “The Great Comet of Sep¬ 
tember 1882,” published in The Sidereal Mes¬ 
senger, May 1884. 

During the early years of his residence in Den¬ 
ver he was greatly hampered by lack of telescopic 
equipment until he secured from Humphrey B. 
Chamberlin the gift of an excellently equipped 
observatory, the principal instrument of which 
was a twenty-inch refractor with Clark lens and 
Saegmuller mounting, erected in 1894. Unfor¬ 
tunately, financial reverses during the panic of 
1893 prevented the donor from fulfilling his de¬ 
sire of endowing the observatory, and the Uni¬ 
versity of Denver could scarcely afford the lux¬ 
ury of a research professor. Consequently, Howe, 
already overburdened with teaching and admin¬ 
istrative work, had to carry out his observational 
programs on his own time. It is surprising how 
much research he was able to accomplish in the 
face of such odds. In 1899 he wrote, “Found out 
that during the twelve months ending Aug. 31 ,1 
had used up 1,765 pages of my observing books. 
For this record I was glad.” He discovered 
double stars and nebulae, carried out an am¬ 
bitious program of remeasuring the positions of 
faint and inadequately catalogued nebulae, and 
made extended observations of the famous as¬ 
teroid, Eros, and Halley’s Comet. He designed 
a traveling-wire micrometer, which facilitated 
certain types of astronomical measurement. His 
researches on Kepler's problem are well known. 
The results of his work appear in Publications of 
the Cincinnati Observatory, Astronomische 
Nachrichten, Astronomical Journal , and other 
contemporary scientific periodicals. In 1891 he 
became dean of the College of Liberal Arts and 
director of Chamberlin Observatory, continuing 
to carry a full teaching schedule. He acted as 
chancellor of the university for a few months in 
the fall of 1899 and again, during 1907-08, while 


Howe 

Chancellor Buchtel was governor of Colorado, he 
carried a heavy share of the administrative duties 
related to the chancellorship. He was the author 
of a popular work entitled A Study of the Sky 
(1896) and a textbook, Elements of Descriptive 
Astronomy (1897, revised 1909). 

On Dec. 23,1884, he married Fannie McClurg 
Shattuck, daughter of Joseph C. Shattuck of 
Denver. They had four children. He was deeply 
and sincerely religious, and exerted a wholesome 
influence upon all his associates—colleagues, 
friends, and students. As dean of the university 
he handled difficult problems most efficiently, 
with rare sympathy and patient understanding. 

[Howe Genealogies . . . Edward of Lynn (1929); 
Pubs . of the Astronomical Soc. of the Pacific, Dec. 
19 26 ^Popular Astronomy, Apr. 1927; Who's Who in 
America, 1926-27; Rocky Mountain News (Denver), 
Nov. 3, 4, 1926; bibliogr. of papers, Royal Society of 
London, Cat. of Sci. Papers, Fourth Series, 1881-1000, 
vol. XV (1916); Howe's personal diaries, and infor¬ 
mation regarding certain facts from Mrs. Howe.] 

D.H.M. 

HOWE, JOHN IRELAND (July 20, 1793- 
Sept. xo, 1876), inventor, manufacturer, de¬ 
scended from Edward Howe, who, emigrating to 
New England in 1635, settled at Lynn, Mass., 
was born in Ridgefield, Conn. He was the son of 
William and Polly (Ireland) Howe. After at¬ 
tending the district schools he began studying 
medicine with a physician of Ridgefield, Dr. Ne- 
hemiah Perry, and later completed a course at the 
College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York 
City, from which he was graduated with honors 
in 1815. For the next fourteen years he prac¬ 
tised medicine in New York City, and in addition 
to his private practice, served by appointment as 
resident physician of the New York Alms House. 
About 1826 he became interested in India rubber, 
and utilizing his knowledge of chemistry, con¬ 
ducted numerous experiments in an endeavor to 
produce a practical rubber compound. He was 
granted a patent on Jan. 31, 1829; gave up his 
practice, and moved with his family to North 
Salem, N. Y. There, using all his savings, he 
erected factory buildings and installed machinery 
made after his own design, intending to manu¬ 
facture rubber goods. Within a short time, how¬ 
ever, he abandoned the whole project. Concern¬ 
ing this venture, he said, years later, “So far as 
I know, I was the first person who attempted to 
utilize rubber by combining other substances 
with it, but I did not happen to stumble upon the 
right substance” (Bishop, post, II, 563). 

While in attendance at the Alms House, Howe 
had become acquainted with the slow and tedious 
process of making pins by hand, the occupation 
of many of the inmates, and he was aware that a 
machine to make pins had been invented in Eng- 


290 



Howe 

land in 1824. During the winter of 1830-31, in 
his abandoned rubber factory, he undertook his 
first serious experiments looking toward the de¬ 
signing of a pin machine and made his first rough 
model. Having little mechanical experience, he 
turned for aid in 1832 to Robert Hoe [q.v.], who 
was then manufacturing printing presses of his 
own design. In the course of this year he built 
in the Hoe establishment a working model of a 
machine that would make pins—though in an 
imperfect way—and patented the device. The 
machine was exhibited that year at the American 
Institute Fair in New York, where Howe re¬ 
ceived a silver medal “for a machine for making 
pins at one operation.” Financed by his broth¬ 
ers-in-law, Jarvis Brush and Edward Cook of 
New York, he built a second and better machine 
in the winter of 1832-33 and then went abroad to 
obtain foreign patents, which he secured in 
France, England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1833. 
After spending another year in England demon¬ 
strating his machine and unsuccessfully trying 
to sell patent rights, he returned to the United 
States early in 1835, considerably in debt By 
the close of the year, however, he had brought 
about in New York the organization of the Howe 
Manufacturing Company. He himself was made 
general agent in charge of manufacture. Within 
eighteen months five pin machines making “spun 
head” pins were made and put into production. 
In 1838 the company moved to Birmingham, in 
the town of Derby, Conn., where cheaper water 
power was available, and a few months later 
Howe perfected the rotary pin machine on which 
he had started work while in New York. This 
machine, patented in 1841, made solid-head pins, 
and with minor improvements continued in use 
for over thirty years. One of this type is now 
in the National Museum, Washington. The de¬ 
signing of a machine to stick pins into paper, next 
in importance to the perfecting of a pin-making 
machine, resulted from the joint work of Samuel 
Slocum, DeGrasse Fowler, and Howe, the latter 
inventing in 1842 a device to crimp the paper into 
ridges through which the pins were stuck. With 
one of his employees, Truman Piper, Howe was 
joint patentee, June 10, 1856, of a process of 
japanning pins. After rounding out thirty years 
of active management of his company, he retired 
and lived the rest of his life in Birmingham, 
Conn., where he died. He was married May 20, 
1820, to his cousin, Cornelia Ann Ireland of New 
York. 

[J. L. Bisliop, A Hist, of Am. Manufactures, 1608 - 
i860 (1864), vol. II; W. G. Lathrop, The Brass In* 
dustry in Conn. (1909) ; Samuel Orcutt and Ambrose 
Beardsley, Hist, of the Old Town of Derby, Conn. 
(1880); D. W. Howe, Howe Genealogies . . . Edward 


Howe 

°f (1929); Boston Daily Globe, Sept. ii. 1876; 
Patent Office records; U. S. National Museum records.] 

C W M 

HOWE, JULIA WARD (May 27, iSi^Oct. 
J 7 , 1910), author, reformer, was born in New 
York City, the daughter of Samuel Ward [q.v.], 
a wealthy banker, and Julia Rush (Cutler) 
Ward, writer of occasional poems. She was a 
descendant of John Ward of Gloucester, Eng¬ 
land, one of Cromwells officers who came to 
America after the Restoration and settled in 
Rhode Island. Two of her ancestors, Richard 
Ward [ q.v .] and Samuel Ward [q.v.], were colo¬ 
nial governors of Rhode Island. Her grandfa¬ 
ther, Samuel Ward [q.v.], was a distinguished 
Revolutionary ofi&cer. Having abundant means, 
her parents gave her an excellent education un¬ 
der governesses and in private schools, and her 
inborn esthetic taste had ample means of cul¬ 
tivation. The Ward house on the corner of Bond 
Street and Broadway, then very far uptown, con¬ 
tained a picture gallery, and its carefully chosen 
art strongly influenced the young girl. An urge 
for self-expression found vent, even in childhood, 
in poems and romances. The ethical spirit con¬ 
trolled the esthetic, however. Though she chafed 
because her father’s religious scruples delayed 
her entrance into New York society, when she 
chose her husband he was not one of the youths 
with whom she had sung and danced, but a man 
of unusual moral earnestness, Samuel Gridley 
Howe [q.v.], almost twenty years her senior. 
After their marriage in 1843, they spent a year in 
England, Germany, France, and Italy. Even in 
her youth, the European prestige of her father’s 
banking firm, together with her own eager in¬ 
terest, had accustomed her to think internation¬ 
ally, and her trip abroad strengthened this habit 
and began friendships with literary people and 
leaders of thought in several countries. Her 
marriage also placed her in the Boston environ¬ 
ment of philosophers, poets, and Unitarians; 
practically all of the prominent Massachusetts 
intellectuals and reformers of that period be¬ 
came her acquaintances. She herself began to 
exercise her literary gifts assiduously, and in 
spite of domestic duties, proficiency in perform¬ 
ing which she acquired with some difficulty, and 
though five children were bom to her within 
twelve years of her marriage, she published 
anonymously in 1854 her first volume of lyrics, 
Passion Flowers. This was followed by Words 
for the Hour (1857), also a volume of poems; 
A Trip to Cuba (i860) and From the Oak to the 
Olive (1868), both prose travel sketches; and 
by a play, The World's Own (1857). None of 
these productions, notwithstanding the facile mu¬ 
sic and buoyant spirit of the lyrics, obtained, or 


29I 



Howe Howe 

indeed merited, general recognition, although port, and in September 1870 she issued an “Ap- 
The World’s Own was produced for a few per- peal to Womanhood throughout the World,” call- 
formances at Wallack’s. ing for a general congress of women to promote 

It was inevitable that the Abolitionist move- the alliance of different nationalities, “the ami- 
ment should enlist both the Howes as enthusiastic cable settlement of international questions,” and 
crusaders. Mrs. Howe helped her husband edit the general promotion of peace. It was trans- 
The Commonwealth, an anti-slavery paper, and lated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and 
“Green Peace,” their Boston residence, was a Swedish. On Dec. 23, 1870, a meeting was held 
center of anti-slavery activity where Theodore in New York to arrange for a “World’s Congress 
Parker, Charles Sumner, and many others gath- of Women in behalf of International Peace,” at 
ered. From her war experience came at length which she made the opening address; the follow- 
a poem which won extraordinary popularity, ing year the American Branch of the Woman’s 
though it brought her in cash—from the Atlantic International Peace Association was formed with 
—only four dollars. One night, while visiting a Mrs. Howe as president. In the spring of 1872 
camp near Washington, D. C., with the party of she went to England, hoping to insure the hold- 
Govemor Andrew of Massachusetts, too stirred ing of a woman’s peace conference in London, 
by emotion to sleep, she composed to the rhythm but in this enterprise was unsuccessful. While 
of “John Brown’s Body,” “The Battle Hymn of in England she sat as a delegate at a prison re- 
the Republic,” scribbling down in the dense dark- form congress. As a Unitarian she consistently 
ness of her tent the lines she could not see. It is worked in the interests of liberal religion and 
probable that much of the popularity of the poem occasionally preached sermons from Unitarian 
was due to the long rolling cadence of the old folk pulpits and from those of other denominations, 
song, and even more to the hysteria of the mo- She made addresses before the Massachusetts 
ment; but the honors, public and private, show- legislature in the interests of reform, the Boston 
ered upon the author, have seldom been equaled Radical Club, the Concord School of Philosophy, 
in the career of any other American woman. and in Faneuil Hall, where she plead the cause 
From 1870, when marriages of daughters and of the oppressed Greeks, 
son began the breaking up of the famil y life com- If lyric poetry was the literary medium of 
pleted by Dr. Howe’s death in 1876, the major Mrs. Howe’s early life, the essay and its vocal 
part of her time was given to public service, counterpart, the lecture, were the more frequently 
which extended through the United States and chosen vehicles of expression in her later years, 
across the sea. No movement or “Cause” in An ineradicable sense of humor alone saved her 
which women were interested, from suffrage, to from being too didactic. She had an unusual 
pure milk for babies, could be launched without command of Italian, Greek, and French. The 
her. Her courage, her incisiveness and quick- philosophy of Comte she read in the original, and 
ness of repartee, her constructive power, the com- she had sufficient familiarity with German to 
pleteness of her conviction accompanied by a grasp the philosophy of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and 
balance of mind, and a sense of humor that dis- Spinoza. Her love of communicating knowledge 
armed irritation made her the greatest of woman led her to embody what she had acquired in ad- 
organizers. In her earliest great campaign, dresses and essays. Among her publications are: 
where she had the honor of pleading for the Memoir of Dr* Samuel Gridley Howe (1876) 
slave when he was a slave” ( Reminiscences , p. ModemSociety (1881), essays on various topics; 
444), she was an enthusiastic follower of others; Margaret Fuller (1883), possibly the best of her 
now she became a leader. In February 1868 the works from the standpoint of literature; Is Polite 
New England Woman’s Club was formed, one of Society Polite? (1895), essays; From Sunset 
the earliest of such institutions, and Mrs. Howe Ridge: Poems Old and New (1898); Remi- 
was one of its first vice-presidents, and from 1871 niscences (1899); At Sunset (1910). She also 
toi 9 io, with the exception of two short intervals, aided in editing numerous publications. Potent 
she was its president. In 1868 she allied herself though her message to her contemporaries un- 
with the woman’s suffrage movement, and when doubtedly was, her influence, so far as it con- 
the New England Woman Suffrage Association tinues, is due largely to the memory of her per- 
was formed, she became its president. In 1869 sonality and to the operation of the organizations 
this organization issued the call for the meeting which she was instrumental in founding and im- 
m Cleveland at which the American Woman’s pregnated with her spirit. 

Suffrage Association was formed, of which she Death came to her from pneumonia in her 
became one of the most active representatives, ninety-second year, shortly after she had re- 
Ths movement for peace enlisted her fervid sup- ceived an honorary degree from Smith College. 

292 



Howe 

Four of her six children survived her—Florence 
Marion Howe Hall [q.v.], Henry Marion Howe 
[q.v.], Maud, the wife of John Elliott [ q.v.], and 
Laura Elizabeth, the wife of Henry Richards. 
The youngest, Samuel, bom in 1859, had died in 
early childhood; the eldest, Julia, wife of Michael 
Anagnos [ q.v .], in 1886. 

[L. E. Richards and M. H. Elliott, Julia Ward Howe 
(2 vols., 1915) ; L. E. Richards, Two Noble Lives 
(copr. 1911) ; M. H. Elliott, The Eleventh Hour in the 
Life of Julia Ward Howe (1911) ; Heroines of Modern 
Progress (1913); Women Who Have Ennobled Life 
(1915) ; Memorial Exercises in Honor of Julia Ward 
Howe, Held in Symphony Hall, Boston, on Sunday 
Evening, Jan. 8,1911 (1911) ; Bliss Perry, commemora¬ 
tive tribute in Proc. Am. Acad, of Arts and Letters, and 
of the Nat . Inst, of Arts and Letters, vol. I (1913).] 

M.S.G. 

HOWE, LUCIEN (Sept. 18, 1848-Dec. 27, 
1928), ophthalmologist, founder of the Buffalo 
Eye and Ear Infirmary, author of the Howe Law 
in the state of New York, and donor-in-chief of 
the Howe laboratory for ophthalmic research at 
Harvard University, was born at Standish, Me., 
the second son of Col. Marshall Spring Howe, 
U. S. A., and of Anne (Cleland) Howe. He 
sprang from a stalwart ancestry. His mother 
was descended from Dr. Andrew Turnbull, one 
of the first English settlers in Florida following 
the termination of Spanish rule and the builder 
of the town of New Smyrna on the east coast of 
Florida. Through his father he was descended 
from John Howe who was an early settler at 
Sudbury, Mass. Albion Parris Howe [q.v.'] was 
his uncle. Lucien spent his boyhood on the fron¬ 
tier in New Mexico, where his father was gar¬ 
risoned. Later he was placed under the tutelage 
of a Unitarian minister at Topsham, Me, After 
graduating from Bowdoin College in 1870, and 
after studying medicine at Harvard and at the 
Bellevue Hospital in New York, he went to the 
medical centers of Europe for further study. His 
first contact was at Edinburgh with Lister, who 
was then establishing the antiseptic era in surg¬ 
ery. Completing his studies with Helmholtz and 
other masters in the clinics at Heidelberg, Ber¬ 
lin, and Vienna, he decided to specialize in the 
practice of ophthalmology, and in 1876 he found¬ 
ed the Buffalo Eye and Ear Infirmary, an insti¬ 
tution in which he was the dominant personality 
for fifty years. In 1879, at the age of thirty-one, 
he was made professor of ophthalmology at the 
University of Buffalo, and in 1885 he was ap¬ 
pointed ophthalmic surgeon at the Buffalo Gen¬ 
eral Hospital. In 1893 he married Elizabeth M. 
Howe of Cambridge, Mass. 

In 1890, after working for ten years toward 
the reduction of widespread blindness in babies, 
Howe was instrumental in securing the enact¬ 
ment pf the Howe bill by the legislature of New 


Howe 

York state. Under this law, for the first time in 
America, every attendant at childbirth was re¬ 
quired under heavy penalty to apply prophylactic 
drops to the eyes of newborn children. Other 
states followed this example, and the blindness 
from ophthalmia neonatorum in the United States 
dwindled to a fraction of its former magnitude. 
In 1896, by invitation, Howe delivered a resume 
of this work to the Societe Franqaise d'Ophthal- 
mologie at Paris. Although the organization be¬ 
stowed upon Howe an honorary presidency, a 
courtesy never before extended to an American, 
it nevertheless objected to legalizing such meas¬ 
ures in France on the ground that they were an 
invasion of personal liberty. Howe's final medi¬ 
cal achievement was the foundation in 1926 of a 
research laboratory at Harvard University for 
investigation of diseases of the eyes. He con¬ 
tributed $250,000 toward its endowment, while 
the General Education Board and the Harvard 
Corporation added sufficient money to make the 
total fund $500,000. In recognition of his interest 
in hereditary blindness, which was the subject of 
the first publication from the laboratory, Howe 
was made president of the Eugenics Research 
Association in 1928. His published studies in¬ 
clude a two-volume work, The Muscles of the 
Eye (1907-08), Universal Military Education 
and Service (1916), and more than one hundred 
and thirty scientific papers. 

[Trans. Am. Ophthalmol. Soc., vol. XXVII (1929) ; 
Archives of Ophthalmol., n.s. I, no. 2 <1929) ; Klinische 
Monatsbl'dtter fur Augenheilkunde, LXXXII (1929) ; 
Elizabeth M. H. Howe, Frontiersmen <rg3i); D. W. 
Howe, Howe Geneals. . . , John Howe of Sudbury and 
Marlborough, Mass. (19 29); the Bowdoin Alumnus, 
Jan. 1929; Boston Transcript, Dec. 28, 1928, N. Y. 
Times, Dec. 29, 1928.] J.H.W. 

HOWE, MARK ANTHONY DeWOLFE 
(Apr. 5,1808-July 31,1895), bishop of the Prot¬ 
estant Episcopal Church, was born in Bristol, 
R. I., the only child of John and Louisa (Smith) 
Howe, the latter a sister of Bishop Benjamin 
Bosworth Smith [q.v.] of Kentucky. He was a 
descendant of James Howe who emigrated from 
England and was admitted freeman of Roxbury, 
Mass., in 1637, later moving to Ipswich. John 
Howe's father, Capt. Perley Howe, had mar¬ 
ried Abigail DeWolf, a sister of James DeWolf 
[q.v.], whose father, Mark Anthony D'Wolf, 
had come to Bristol from Guadeloupe, whither 
his father, Charles, born in Lyme, Conn., had 
emigrated. The D'Wolfs were descendants of 
Balthasar, who settled in Connecticut very early. 
Mark Howe studied at the local academy, at 
Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., and at pri¬ 
vate schools. At the age of sixteen he entered 
Middlebury College, Vermont. After two years 


293 



Howe 

Four of her six children survived her—Florence 
Marion Howe Hall [q.v.], Henry Marion Howe 
[q.v.], Maud, the wife of John Elliott [ q.v .], and 
Laura Elizabeth, the wife of Henry Richards. 
The youngest, Samuel, bom in 1859, had died in 
early childhood; the eldest, Julia, wife of Michael 
Anagnos [q.v. ], in 1886. 

[L. E. Richards and M. H. Elliott, Julia Ward Howe 
(2 vols., 1015) ; L. E. Richards, Two Noble Lives 
(copr. 1911) ; M. H. Elliott, The Eleventh Hour in the 
Life of Julia Ward Howe (1911) ; Heroines of Modern 
Progress (1913); Women Who Have Ennobled Life 
(1915); Memorial Exercises in Honor of Julia Ward 
Howe, Held in Symphony Hall, Boston, on Sunday 
Evening, Jan. 8, ign (1911) ; Bliss Perry, commemora¬ 
tive tribute in Proc. Am. Acad, of Arts mid Letters, and 
of the Nat . Inst, of Arts and Letters, vol. I (1913).] 

M.S.G. 

HOWE, LUCIEN (Sept. 18, 1848-Dec. 27, 
1928), ophthalmologist, founder of the Buffalo 
Eye and Ear Infirmary, author of the Howe Law 
in the state of New York, and donor-in-chief of 
the Howe laboratory for ophthalmic research at 
Harvard University, was born at Standish, Me., 
the second son of Col. Marshall Spring Howe, 
U. S. A., and of Anne (Cleland) Howe. He 
sprang from a stalwart ancestry. His mother 
was descended from Dr. Andrew Turnbull, one 
of the first English settlers in Florida following 
the termination of Spanish rule and the builder 
of the town of New Smyrna on the east coast of 
Florida. Through his father he was descended 
from John Howe who was an early settler at 
Sudbury, Mass. Albion Parris Howe [q.v.] was 
his uncle. Lucien spent his boyhood on the fron¬ 
tier in New Mexico, where his father was gar¬ 
risoned. Later he was placed under the tutelage 
of a Unitarian minister at Topsham, Me. After 
graduating from Bowdoin College in 1870, and 
after studying medicine at Harvard and at the 
Bellevue Hospital in New York, he went to the 
medical centers of Europe for further study. His 
first contact was at Edinburgh with Lister, who 
was then establishing the antiseptic era in surg¬ 
ery. Completing his studies with Helmholtz and 
other masters in the clinics at Heidelberg, Ber¬ 
lin, and Vienna, he decided to specialize in the 
practice of ophthalmology, and in 1876 he found¬ 
ed the Buffalo Eye and Ear Infirmary, an insti¬ 
tution in which he was the dominant personality 
for fifty years. In 1879, at the age of thirty-one, 
he was made professor of ophthalmology at the 
University of Buffalo, and in 1885 he was ap¬ 
pointed ophthalmic surgeon at the Buffalo Gen¬ 
eral Hospital. In 1893 he married Elizabeth M. 
Howe of Cambridge, Mass. 

In 1890, after working for ten years toward 
the reduction of widespread blindness in babies, 
Howe was instrumental in securing the enact¬ 
ment pf the Howe bill by the legislature of New 


Howe 

York state. Under this law, for the first time in 
America, every attendant at childbirth was re¬ 
quired under heavy penalty to apply prophylactic 
drops to the eyes of newborn children. Other 
states followed this example, and the blindness 
from ophthalmia neonatorum in the United States 
dwindled to a fraction of its former magnitude. 
In 1896, by invitation, Howe delivered a resume 
of this work to the Societe Franqaise d’Ophthal- 
mologie at Paris. Although the organization be¬ 
stowed upon Howe an honorary presidency, a 
courtesy never before extended to an American, 
it nevertheless objected to legalizing such meas¬ 
ures in France on the ground that they were an 
invasion of personal liberty. Howe’s final medi¬ 
cal achievement was the foundation in 1926 of a 
research laboratory at Harvard University for 
investigation of diseases of the eyes. He con¬ 
tributed $250,000 toward its endowment, while 
the General Education Board and the Harvard 
Corporation added sufficient money to make the 
total fund $500,000. In recognition of his interest 
in hereditary blindness, which was the subject of 
the first publication from the laboratory, Howe 
was made president of the Eugenics Research 
Association in 1928. His published studies in¬ 
clude a two-volume work, The Muscles of the 
Eye (1907-08), Universal Military Education 
and Service (1916), and more than one hundred 
and thirty scientific papers. 

[Trans. Am. Ophthalmol. Soc., vol. XXVII (1929); 
Archives of Ophthalmol., n.s. I, no. 2 (1929) ,* Klinische 
Monatsbldtter fur Augenheilkunde, LXXXII (1929) ; 
Elizabeth M. H. Howe, Frontiersmen (1931); D. W. 
Howe, Howe Geneals. . . . John Howe of Sudbury and 
Marlborough, Mass. (1929); the Bowdoin Alumnus, 
Jan. 1929; Boston Transcript, Dec. 28, 1928, N. Y . 
Times, Dec. 29, 1928.] J.H.W. 

HOWE, MARK ANTHONY DeWOLFE 

(Apr. 5, 1808-July 31,1895), bishop of the Prot¬ 
estant Episcopal Church, was born in Bristol, 
R. I., the only child of John and Louisa (Smith) 
Howe, the latter a sister of Bishop Benjamin 
Bosworth Smith [q.v. ] of Kentucky. He was a 
descendant of James Howe who emigrated from 
England and was admitted freeman of Roxbury, 
Mass., in 1637, later moving to Ipswich. John 
Howe’s father, Capt Perley Howe, had mar¬ 
ried Abigail DeWolf, a sister of James DeWolf 
[q.v.], whose father, Mark Anthony D'Wolf, 
had come to Bristol from Guadeloupe, whither 
his father, Charles, born in Lyme, Conn., had 
emigrated. The D’Wolfs were descendants of 
Balthasar, who settled in Connecticut very early. 
Mark Howe studied at the local academy, at 
Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., and at pri¬ 
vate schools. At the age of sixteen he entered 
Middlebury College, Vermont After two years 


293 



Howe 

he transferred to Brown University, from which 
he graduated in 1828. At Brown he came under 
the dominating influence of President Francis 
Wayland [g.z/.], the first of three men who 
shaped his careen The other two were Bishop 
Alexander V. Griswold [q.v.~\, who baptized him, 
and Rev. Stephen H. Tyng [q.v.\ his first acad¬ 
emy teacher. Howe studied law in his father’s 
office, taught in the Adams Grammar School 
(1929-30), and in the Hawes Grammar School 
(1830) in Boston, and was tutor for a year 
(1831-32) at Brown. Having prepared for the 
ministry, guided by the Rev. John Bristed of St. 
Michael’s, Bristol, R. I., he received deacon’s 
orders from Bishop Griswold in January 1832, 
and was ordained the next year. After a few 
months of service at St. Matthew’s Church, 
South Boston, he became the first rector of St 
James, Roxbury. Beginning in the autumn of 
1835, he was for nine months at Christ Church, 
Cambridge, but soon returned to Roxbury for an 
eventful pastorate of ten years. During this pe¬ 
riod he edited the Christian Witness . Always 
interested in civic affairs, he vigorously defended 
religion in the public schools against Horace 
Mann [q.v.'], secretary of the state board of edu¬ 
cation. In 1846 he became rector of St. Luke’s, 
Philadelphia. While here he raised the church 
to a position of power through his preaching, his 
organizing ability, and - his spiritual leadership. 
Henry C. Potter [ q.v .], later bishop of New 
York, sitting as a youth in St. Luke’s, listened to 
a searching personal plea which decided him to 
enter the ministry. The rector was alive to the 
problems of the Civil War period, and printed in 
1864 a reply to the “mischievous dissemination” 
on the Bible view of slavery published by Bishop 
John H. Hopkins [q.v.] of Vermont. Near the 
close of Howe’s ministry at St. Luke’s, he pub¬ 
lished the Memoirs of the Life and Services of 
the Rt. Rev . Alonzo Potter, D.D. , LL.D. (1871). 
He also wrote an introductory essay for Reginald 
Heber’s Poetical Works (1858). In 1871 he was 
chosen first bishop of the new Diocese of Central 
Pennsylvania and was consecrated Dec. 28. He 
moved to Reading, where he lived until the last 
summer of his life. He organized the new dio¬ 
cese without friction, worked with great zeal, 
and traveled long distances in the course of his 
duty. Although having pronounced convictions, 
and a deep reverence for tradition, he exercised 
patience and open-mindedness and guided his 
people happily and wisely through twenty-three 
years of activity. In the spring of 1895 Bishop 
Howe relinquished the burden of his oflice, and 
retired to Weetamoe Farm, in Bristol, on the 
shore of Narragansett Bay. 


Howe 

His first wife was Julia Bowen Amory, whom 
he married Oct. 16, 1833. She died Feb. 5,1841, 
and in 1843 he married Elizabeth Smith Mar¬ 
shall. His third wife, whom he married in June 
1857, was Eliza Whitney. 

[See Howe Geneals. . . . James of Ipswich (1929) • 
H. C. Potter, “A Preacher and an Apostle” A Dis¬ 
course Commemorative of the Life and Services of the 
Rt. Rev . M. A. DeWolfe Howe . . , Nov. 13, i8qc 
(1895); G B. Perry, Charles DWolf of Guadeloupe 
. . . (1902) ; E. W. Howe, Mark Antony DeWolfe 
Howe; 1808-189$ (1897) ; Churchman , Aug. 10,1895; 
Public Ledger (Phila.), Aug. 1, 1895. The spelling of 
the names De Wolfe and Anthony has varied in indi¬ 
vidual use.] C K B 

HOWE, ROBERT (1732-Dec. 14,1786), Rev¬ 
olutionary soldier, was bom in Bladen (later 
Brunswick) County, N. C. His father, Job 
Howe (or Howes), moved to North Carolina 
from Charleston, S. C., and settled on the Cape 
Fear River, where he became a prosperous rice 
planter. His mother, whose first name was Sa¬ 
rah, was a descendant of Sir John Yeamans. 
Robert Howe was educated in England. He 
married Sarah, the daughter of Thomas Grange, 
but after some years they became estranged and 
separated. As a rice planter at Howe’s Point on 
Cape Fear he amassed a considerable fortune. In 
1756 he was made a justice of the peace for 
Bladen, and when Brunswick was erected in 
1764 he was again appointed. In the same year, 
1764, he was chosen a member of the Assembly 
and served by six reelections until the outbreak 
of the Revolution. In 1766 he was made a cap¬ 
tain and placed in command of Fort Johnston, 
holding the post until 1767 and again from 1769 
to 1773, and in Tryon's expedition against the 
Regulators he served as a colonel of artillery. In 
the early Revolutionary movement he was a 
member of the safety committees of Brunswick 
and Wilmington and of the first three provincial 
congresses. He was also a member of the pro¬ 
vincial Committee of Correspondence. Josiah 
Quincy met him on his southern trip and wrote 
of him: “Fine natural parts, great feeling, pure 
and elegant diction, with much persuasive elo¬ 
quence ... a happy compound of the man of sense 
and sentiment with the man of the world, the 
sword and the senate” ( Memoir, post , pp. 90, 
92). But Janet Schaw in 1775 spoke of his hav¬ 
ing “the worst character you ever heard through 
the whole province,” adding, however, “he is 
very like a Gentleman” ( Journal of a Lady of 
Quality, p. 167). 

In 1775 Howe was made colonel of the 2nd 
North Carolina Regiment. He assisted in driv¬ 
ing Lord Dunmore out of Virginia and com¬ 
manded the troops which captured Norfolk. Pro¬ 
moted brigadier-general of the Continental Line 


294 



Howe 

in March 1776, he was sent to South Carolina. 
While he was absent his plantation was ravaged 
ind his house destroyed by the British. Placed 
in command of North Carolina troops in South 
Carolina, he was soon given command of the 
Southern Department. In 1777 he was made 
najor-general and the following year led an un¬ 
successful expedition against St. Augustine. His 
position of command in Charleston was bitterly 
unpopular in South Carolina and was one of the 
:auses of his duel with Christopher Gadsden 
vhich Major Andre satirized in a poem of eigh- 
;een stanzas. Late in 1778 Howe was ordered 
;o the command of Savannah. Faced there with 
ocal opposition, led by the governor, he was pre¬ 
sented from making any adequate preparations 
ior defense, and when the British landed he was 
corced to evacuate the city. Charges brought 
igainst him resulted in a court-martial in which 
le was acquitted “with highest honor,” but it 
vas obvious that his usefulness in the South was 
mded and he was ordered to the North, where, 
ifter service at Verplanck’s Point and Stony 
Point, he was placed in command at West Point. 
Later he returned to the field. He was a member 
Df the court which tried Major Andre. Singu- 
arly unfortunate as a soldier, he evidently re- 
:ained the confidence of Washington, who sent 
lim to suppress mutinies among Pennsylvania 
md New Jersey troops in 1781, and in 1783 he 
dispersed the mob in Philadelphia which had 
driven Congress from the city. Mustered out in 
[783, he returned to North Carolina and resumed 
planting. In 1786 he was elected to the House 
Df Commons, but, taken ill in Bladen County on 
lis way to the session, he died without taking his 
seat. 

[W. L. Saunders, ed., The Colonial Records of N. C., 
/ols. V (1887) and X (1890); Walter Clark, ed., The 
State Records of N. C„ vols. XI (1895), XIII (1896), 
KV 1 II (1900); XXII (1907); J. D. Bellamy, Sketch 
}f Maj, Gen . Roht. Howe (1882), and “Gen. Robt. 
clowe,” N. C. Booklet, Jan. 1908; Janet Schaw, Jour . 
)f a Lady of Quality (1925), ed. by E. W. and C. M. 
Andrews; Josiah Quincy, ed., Memoir of the Life of 
r osiah Quincy, Junior, of Mass., 1744-1775 (ed. 1874) ; 
V. C. Univ. Mag., June, Sept., Oct., Dec. 1853, Apr., 
May 1854; Proc. of a Gen. Court Martial, Held at 
°hila„ . . . For the Trial of Maj . Gen. Howe, Dec. 7, 
1781 (1782).] J.G.deR.H. 

HOWE, SAMUEL (June 20, i785~Jan. 20, 
[828), lawyer, jurist, was bom at Belchertown, 
Mass., the youngest of the six children of Dr. 
Estes and Susanna (Dwight) Howe. Educated 
in the Belchertown public schools and in the New 
Salem and Deerfield academies, he entered Wil¬ 
iams College as a sophomore and was graduated 
in 1804. He immediately entered the law office 
3 f Jabez Upham of Brookfield and in 1805 at- 
:ended the Litchfield law school in Connecticut. 


Howe 

After a period spent in the law office of Judge 
Theodore Sedgwick of Stockbridge, Mass., he 
was admitted to the Berkshire bar in 1807 and 
began his practice in Stockbridge. Shortly after 
his marriage in September 1807 to Susan, daugh¬ 
ter of Gen. Uriah Tracy of Litchfield, Howe 
removed to Worthington, Hampshire County, 
Mass., where in the following years he built up 
an excellent practice and acquired a high reputa¬ 
tion in his profession. In 1812—13 he served in 
the Massachusetts legislature as a representative 
from Worthington. He removed to Northamp¬ 
ton in 1820 to become the law partner of Elijah 
Hunt Mills [q.v.]. In July 1821 he was appoint¬ 
ed associate justice of the newly established court 
of common pleas for the commonwealth and this 
office he occupied with distinction until his early 
death at the age of forty-two. He was elected in 
1823 a member of the American Academy of Arts 
and Sciences and in 1826 was chosen by the leg¬ 
islature to fill a vacancy as trustee of Amherst. 

In association with his law partners. Mills and 
John Hooker Ashmun (later professor at the 
Harvard Law School), Howe opened in 1823 a 
law school which was organized on the plan of 
that at Litchfield and acquired a reputation not 
inferior to that of the older institution. The 
method of instruction combined formal lectures 
and recitations with familiar conversation and 
discussion between instructors and students. 
Filled with an admiration and love for the sci¬ 
ence of jurisprudence, Howe possessed a zeal and 
enthusiasm for his subject which made him an 
excellent teacher and attracted many students to 
the school. His formal instruction in law was 
preserved, in part, in a series of lectures which 
were published after his death through the efforts 
of his former partner, Ashmun, and others, under 
the title, The Practice in Civil Actions and Pro¬ 
ceedings at Law , in Massachusetts (Boston, 
1834, Richard S. Fay and Jonathan Chapman, 
editors). He also annotated Volumes III and 
IV of the Reports of Cases . . . in the Courts of 
King's Bench and Common Pleas ... 48 Geo. 
Ill . 1807 , ... 56 Geo . Ill . 1816 (4 vols., 1810- 
21), published by John Campbell. Outside the 
field of the law Howe distinguished himself in 
public affairs principally in connection with the 
Unitarian controversy which came to a head in 
the Northampton Congregational Society in 
1824-25 over the question of ministerial ex¬ 
changes. This led the liberal minority, of which 
Howe was a leader, to form a separate society, 
with Unitarian tenets, as the Second Congrega¬ 
tional Church. Reared in the orthodox Calvin- 
istic faith, Howe was brought to an acceptance 
of Unitarian beliefs through the influence of his 


295 



Howe Howe 


second wife and other liberals and, it is reported, 
by the careful study of James Yates’s Vindi¬ 
cation of Unitarianism (1816). Howe’s first 
wife died in 1811, leaving two children. In Octo- 
tober 1813 he married Sarah Lydia Robbins, 
the daughter of Lieutenant-Governor Edward 
Hutchinson Robbins of Milton, Mass., by whom 
he had five children. 

[Rufus Ellis, Memoir of the Hon. Samuel Howe 
(1850); Susan I. Lesley, Memoir of the Life of Mrs. 
Anne Jean Lyman (1876) ; Isaac Parker, Address to 
the Bar of the County of Suffolk at a Meeting . . . for 
the Memory of the Late Hon. Samuel Howe (1828); 
J. M. Williams, Sketch of the Character of the Late 
Hon. Samuel Howe , Delivered at the Opening of the 
Court of Common Pleas (1828); D. W. Howe, Howe 
Geneals. . . . John Howe of Sudbury and Marlborough, 
Mass. (1929); the Christian Examiner, May-June 
1828.] L. C. H, 

HOWE, SAMUEL GRIDLEY (Nov. 10, 
i8oi~Jan. 9,1876), champion of peoples and per¬ 
sons laboring under disability, was born in Bos¬ 
ton, Mass., to sturdy, middle-class parents. He 
was a descendant of Abraham How or Howe 
who settled in Roxbury, Mass., about 1637. His 
mother, handsome Patty Gridley, came from a 
martial family. Through her he probably inherited 
his love of adventure and his soldierly bearing, 
as well as his beauty of person. His father, Jo¬ 
seph Neals Howe, was notably businesslike and 
frugal. Deciding to send but one son to college, 
he chose Sam, because he read aloud the best 
from the big family Bible; and Brown Univer¬ 
sity, because it was less under Federalist influ¬ 
ence than Harvard. The boy graduated in 1821, 
being more noted for pranks and penalties than 
for scholarship. He had, however, according to 
a college contemporary, a mind that was quick, 
versatile, and inventive, and he saw intuitively 
and at a glance what should be done (Julia Ward 
Howe, Memoir, post, p. 83). In 1824 he re¬ 
ceived the degree of M.D. from Harvard. Be¬ 
ing allured by the romantic appeal of Greece, 
then battling against the Turk, like a crusader 
he set sail for that land, where, as fighter in its 
guerrilla warfare, surgeon in its fleet, and helper 
in reconstructing its devastated country and in 
ministering to its suffering people, he spent six 
adventurous years, during one of which he 
rushed home to plead for help and went back 
with a shipload of food and clothing. These sup¬ 
plies he distributed wisely, giving them outright 
to the feeble, but requiring the able-bodied to 
earn them through labor on public works. This 
procedure was the index of his future career; his 
chivalric zeal had become practical. His idea of 
real charity then and always was far in advance 
of his time and, together with much else that was 
momentous and permanently useful in his later 


life, seemed to spring full-fledged from his active 
and original brain. 

Meanwhile, in 1829, Massachusetts had incor¬ 
porated a school for the blind and in 1831 Howe 
was engaged to open it and carry it on. He went 
again to Europe and inspected such schools there. 
Incidentally, for bringing American aid and 
comfort to Polish refugees in Prussia, he was 
held six weeks in prison, secretly, and under har¬ 
rowing conditions which profoundly affected 
him and explain some things in his after career. 
Returning home, he started the school (August 
1832) in his father’s house, with six pupils. He 
is said to have gone about at first blindfolded, the 
better to comprehend their situation. Having 
trained them by instrumentalities created by 
himself and according to his maxim, “Obstacles 
are things to be overcome,” he exhibited their 
accomplishments, thereby obtaining funds and 
the gift of the Perkins mansion, whence the name 
Perkins Institution was derived. Never there¬ 
after did he fail to win friends to his cause or 
money for his work and for the embossing of his 
books, which were in the “Boston line” (Roman 
letter) or “Howe” type. He showed the world 
that the young blind both could and should be 
brought up to be economically and socially com¬ 
petent. His annual reports—philosophic com¬ 
mon-sense put into clear, pure, and forcible lan¬ 
guage—were widely read. Succeeding educators 
must needs recur to them for re-inspiration. 
Horace Mann, one of his board of trustees, al¬ 
lowed himself to say in 1841: “I would rather 
have built up the Blind Asylum than have writ¬ 
ten Hamlet” ( Letters and Journals of Samuel 
Gridley Howe, post, II, 107). In the forty-four 
years of Dr. Howe’s directorship of his school 
he visited seventeen states in behalf of the edu¬ 
cation of the blind, and in the 1870’s he gener¬ 
ously released several of his best teachers to 
further the American principles of training, then 
being introduced under Francis Joseph Camp¬ 
bell [q.v.~] in London. He awakened the deaf- 
blind child, Laura Bridgman, to communication 
with others, educating her to usefulness and hap¬ 
piness—at that time an astounding achievement 
which, done in the face of general disbelief, be¬ 
came of vast importance to human psychology, 
education, and hopefulness. 

His knight-errantry was extended into many 
fields. He supported Horace Mann in his fight 
for better public schools and for normal schools ; 
promoted the use of articulation and of the oral, 
as against the sign method, for instructing the 
deaf; so pioneered in behalf of the care and 
training of children then called idiots that Dr. 
Walter E. Femald, one of his successors at the 


296 



Howe 

Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble- 
Minded Youth, declared these labors to be the 
chief jewel in his crown. He agitated for prison 
reform and the aiding of discharged convicts; 
helped Dorothea Dix by private and public sup¬ 
port in her campaign for the humanitarian care 
of the insane; and from 1865 to 1874 he was 
chairman of the Massachusetts Board of State 
Charities, the first in America, and wrote its an¬ 
nual reports, therein stating his principles which 
have since become the orthodoxy of charity (F. 
G. Peabody, Hibbert Journal, post). Though 
tardy in joining the anti-slavery movement he 
finally plunged headlong into it, opening his 
town office as a rallying point. He served for the 
needed years as chairman and whip of a Boston 
vigilance committee, self-constituted, to prevent 
the forcible return South of fugitive slaves. 
With Julia (Ward) Howe [q.v.], whom he mar¬ 
ried Apr. 27, 1843, he was co-editor for a while 
of the anti-slavery paper. The Commonwealth . 
He even ran for Congress in 1846 as the candi¬ 
date of the “Conscience” Whigs; but here he suf¬ 
fered defeat, as he did also for reelection to the 
Boston school committee. Politics, indeed, was 
no forte of his, while action as a free lance was. 
Therefore, though much of the time ill from 
overwork, he threw himself with better success 
into helping save Kansas to the Free-Soilers. In 
this enterprise, as in his aiding and abetting the 
purposes of John Brown, he obeyed conscience 
rather than law. There are those who cannot 
excuse him for this “obfuscation,” especially for 
his public letter disclaiming advance knowledge 
of Brown’s raid, and his own subsequent disap¬ 
pearing into Canada. Later, when public excite¬ 
ment had quieted, he went to Washington and 
testified before a Senate committee of inquiry 
regarding his knowledge of the affair. During 
the Civil War he was an active and useful mem¬ 
ber of the Sanitary Commission. Secretary 
Stanton appointed him one of the President’s In¬ 
quiry Commission. He supported his friend. 
Senator Sumner, in behalf of negro suffrage as a 
political measure, and the education of freed- 
men as essential to their citizenship. 

In 1866-67 be was protagonist in raising funds 
and clothing for the suffering Cretans, then wag¬ 
ing a losing fight for freedom, and, accompanied 
by wife and children, again went to Greece to 
manage the distribution of supplies. He even 
stole into Crete itself, a hazardous undertaking, 
and while at Athens opened an industrial school 
for the Cretan refugees. In 1871, President 
Grant appointed Howe, Senator Wade of Ohio, 
and President White of Cornell, commissioners 
to report on the advisability of the United States’ 


Howe 

annexing the island of Santo Domingo. After 
spending about two months there they recom¬ 
mended such action, advice which most people 
considered quixotic. “He was never the hero 
of his own tale,” says Dr. F. H. Hedge (Julia 
Ward Howe, Memoir, p. 95). He disliked being 
in the limelight, and his greater services were 
temporarily overshadowed by his gifted wife who 
long outlived him. His aggressive personality 
inspired both love and fear: he could be harsh 
and exacting or tender and generous. He had a 
host of friends; his enemies were few. 

[F. B. Sanborn, Dr. S . G. Howe, the Philanthropist 
(1891); Julia Ward Howe, Memoir of Dr. Samuel 
Gridley Howe (1876) ; "The Hero,” poem by John 
Greenleaf Whittier; J. L. Jones, “Samuel Gridley 
Howe, * in Charities Review, Dec. 1897; Proc. at the 
Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the 
Birth of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, Nov. n, igoi 
(1902); F. P. Stearns, “Chevalier Howe,” in Cam¬ 
bridge Sketches (1905) ; Letters and Journals of Sam¬ 
uel Gridley Howe (2 vols., 1906—09), ed. by his daugh¬ 
ter Laura E. Richards; F. G. Peabody, “A Paladin 
of Philanthropy,” in Hibbert Jour., Oct. 1909; D. W. 
Howe, Howe Genealogies . . . Abraham of Roxbury 
(1929); J. J. Chapman, Learning and Other Essays 
(1910) ; L. E. Richards, Laura Bridgman, The Story 
of an Opened Door (1928) ; Boston Transcript, Boston 
Herald, Springfield Republican, Jan. 10, 1876; see also 
Dickens* Am. Notes (1842) for a short appreciation 
of Dr. Howe.] E E A 

HOWE, TIMOTHY OTIS (Feb. 24, 1816- 
Mar. 25, 1883), senator and postmaster genera], 
was bom in Livermore, Me., the son of Betsy 
(Howard) and Dr. Timothy Howe, and the de¬ 
scendant of John Howe, who emigrated from 
England before 1639 and settled in Sudbury, 
Mass. He was educated in the common schools 
and in the Maine Wesleyan Seminary. In 1839 
he was admitted to the bar and opened his office 
at Readfield, Vt, where he practised until he 
moved to Greenbay, Wis., in 1845. la *848 he 
was defeated in the election for Congress, but 
two years later he was elected judge of the 4th 
circuit and, by virtue of that office, justice of the 
state supreme bench, on which he served until 
1853, when he resigned to resume his law prac¬ 
tice. Being a Whig his sympathies naturally 
turned to the new Republican party, in which he 
became candidate for United States senator to 
succeed Henry Dodge, whose term expired in 
1857. He lost the nomination, however, because 
he had become very unpopular with the large 
group in Wisconsin that adopted the state sover¬ 
eignty doctrine, embodied in the Kentucky reso¬ 
lution of 1798, in order to defeat the operation of 
the Fugitive-Slave Act of 1850, When a fugitive 
slave, arrested by his master in Milwaukee, was 
rescued by a mob, composed partly of prominent 
citizens, the supreme court of Wisconsin, after 
the prosecution in the United States court (case 
of Ableman vs. Booth, 21 Howard, 506-66), re- 


297 



Howe 

fused to obey the mandate of the United States 
Supreme Court. The Wisconsin courts (n Wis. 
Reports, 498 - 554 ) and the legislature ( General 
Laws Passed by the Legislature of Wisconsin 
185 Pj 1859, pp. 247-48) practically nullified the 
law. Almost alone Howe opposed this defiance 
of federal authority. In 1861, when public opin¬ 
ion had reversed itself to favor his position in 
support of the rights of the United States gov¬ 
ernment, he was elected to the Senate, to which 
he was reelected in 1866 and again in 1872, each 
time without the formality of a caucus. Upon 
the death of Chief Justice Chase, President Grant 
offered him the empty post, but Howe declined 
because he believed it to be a breach of trust to 
give the Democratic governor of Wisconsin the 
opportunity to appoint a Democrat to the va¬ 
cancy. For the same reason, he refused the ap¬ 
pointment as minister to Great Britain. He was 
one of the earliest advocates of universal eman¬ 
cipation, strongly favored the suffrage bill of the 
District of Columbia, urged the federal govern¬ 
ment’s right to establish territorial government 
over the seceded states, spoke vigorously against 
Andrew Johnson’s policy and voted in favor of 
his impeachment, supported the silver bill in 
1878, advocated the repeal of the law restricting 
the number of national banks, and was one of the 
first to urge the redemption of the green-back 
currency. Perhaps the best expression of his po¬ 
litical opinions is in the pamphlet, Political His¬ 
tory . . . The Session” by Henry Brooks Ad¬ 
ams^ Reviewed by Hon, . T. 0 . Howe (1870), 
reprinted from the Wisconsin State Journal 
(Madison) for Oct. 7, 1870. His wife, Linda 
Ann Haynes, whom he had married Dec. 21, 
1841, died in 1881, leaving two children. In that 
same year President Garfield appointed him as 
commissioner to the Paris monetary conference, 
and at the end of the year President Arthur made 
him postmaster general, in which capacity he 
served until his death in Kenosha some months 
later. During the time he was postmaster gen¬ 
eral, a reduction of postage was accomplished, 
postal notes were issued, and reform measures 
vigorously urged. 

f 1 sI'r Wn? r p^ an n‘/^‘ Bench md Bar of Wis. 

Kllfv -ThJrff and Bar of Wis. 

VI002; , i he Columbian Btog. Viet Wis vnl • 

Maun ce McK»na, FonddJ iTcoZt WU. 

t * v* I* Winslow, The Story of a Great Cr %>!/*•# 
BarAss^Mld ° f * °f the ^is. State 

jg&> aasFBn? 

1883, Milwaukee Sentinel f Mar. 26, 1883 ] 

HOWE, WILLIAM (May 12,1803-Sept. 19, 
1852), inventor, unde of Elias Howe [g.J, was 
born m Spencer, Mass., the son of Elijah and 


298 


Howe 

Fanny (Bemis) Howe. He was descended from 
John Howe, of Sudbury, who became a freeman 
of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1640. Very little 
is known of his early life except that he spent 
practically all of it in the vicinity of his birth¬ 
place and on or near the old family homestead" 
His occupation was primarily farming, but he 
possessed an inventive trait which near the dose 
of his life led him to design new forms of bridge 
structure. In the United States wood was used 
entirdy in the construction of bridges, and the 
lattice or truss form of bridge was in common 
use, while in Europe the arch form was more in 
vogue. In 1838 Howe was commissioned to con¬ 
struct a bridge at Warren, Mass., for the Boston 
& Albany Railroad. He incorporated in this 
certain new features and after working upon the 
design for two years applied for and received 
two United States patents, on July 10 and Aug. 
3 ,_ *840, respectively. His design was a truss 
with wooden diagonals and vertical iron ties in 
single or double systems. It is said to have been 
an improvement on the Long type of truss, in¬ 
vented by Col. Stephen H. Long in 1830, which 
was the first to incorporate the rectangular 
trussed frame. Shortly after obtaining his patent 
Howe was given the opportunity to construct a 
bridge using his patented truss over the Con¬ 
necticut River at Springfield, Mass., for the 
Western Railroad, later a part of the New York 
Central system. This was so successful that for 
the remainder of his life he was busily engaged 
in constructing both bridges and roofs of his de¬ 
sign, and this work, together with royalties 
obtained through selling rights to his patent, 
brought him a considerable fortune. Many Howe 
truss bridges were built between the time of his 
invention and the development of the iron bridge. 
On Aug. 28, 1846, Howe obtained a third patent 
for an improvement on his original rectangular 
truss. This consisted of a curved timber run¬ 
ning from each buttress to the center of the span. 
The innovation added greatly to the strength of 
the Howe truss bridge. In 1842 he designed and 
built a roof for the Boston & Worcester Rail¬ 
road depot in Boston which made use of his 
patented, truss and was completed with entire 
satisfaction. Howe married Azubah Towne 
Stone of Charlton, Mass., on Mar. 12, 1828, who 
survived him at the time of his death in Spring- 
field, Mass. 

. J®- 5- Knight, Knight’s Am. Mech. Diet. (3 vols., 
J°74-76); H. G. Tyrrell, Hist, of Bridge Engineering 
t 1 ® 1 i j > “• M. Tower, Hist. Sketches Relating to Spen¬ 
cer, Mass., vols. I and II (1901-02) ; D. W. Howe, 
Howe Geneals. . . . John Howe of Sudbury and Marl¬ 
borough Mass. ( 1929 ); T. W. M. Draper, The Bemis 
Mist, and Geneal. (1900) ; Springfield Republican, Sept 

30,1852:1 C.W.M. 



Howe 


Howe 


HOWE, WILLIAM F. (July 7 ,1828-Sept. 1, 
1002) lawyer, was born in Boston, Mass. Ac¬ 
cording to his own statement his father was the 
Rev Samuel Howe, an Episcopal minister. When 
yet an infant, William was taken to England by 
his parents and received his education at King’s 
College, London. On leaving college he studied 
medicine for a time, acquiring a knowledge of 
its theory and practice which in later years was 
of inestimable value, but subsequently he entered 
a London solicitor’s office. In 1858 he returned 
to the United States, settled in New York City, 
and was admitted to the bar there in 1859. Com¬ 
mencing practice in the police courts, he quickly 
attracted public attention by his vivid personality 
and in a short time he acquired an extensive 
clientele, drawn principally from the criminal 
element. On the outbreak of the Civil War he 
appeared in a number of habeas corpus applica¬ 
tions having for their objects the discharge from 
the army of men who alleged immunity or had 
enlisted while under the influence of liquor, there¬ 
by earning for himself the sobriquet of “Habeas 
Corpus Howe.” In 1869 he took into partner¬ 
ship Abraham Henry Hummel [q.v.] and for the 
next thirty years the firm of Howe & Hummel 
was notorious not only in New York City but 
throughout the country. Their office, at Center 
and Leonard Streets near the Tombs, displaying 
on its exterior a gigantic sign bearing the name 
of the firm in imposing letters which were il¬ 
luminated at night, became a haven of refuge 
for every category of offender against the law. 
Howe, himself, specialized in the defense of per¬ 
sons accused of homicide and rarely undertook 
any other class of case. His success was phe¬ 
nomenal. Though his office was “a veritable 
cesspool of perjury” (Wellman, post , p. 1x6), 
there is no proof that he ever had personally any 
part in the fabrication of testimony, and some of 
his most astonishing verdicts were gained in the 
face of uncontradicted evidence of guilt. Per¬ 
haps the most extraordinary of all his triumphs 
was in the trial of Unger, where he procured a 
verdict of manslaughter though the facts dis¬ 
closed cold-blooded murder attended by circum¬ 
stances of particular atrocity. 

Howe’s methods were unique. At the outset of 
a trial he attracted attention by his striking ap¬ 
pearance, invariably wearing gaudy clothing, and 
brightly colored ties, accompanied by a dazzling 
display of personal trinkets and a watch of ab¬ 
normal proportions. Having thus aroused the 
curiosity and interest of the jury he thenceforth 
dominated the scene by his consummate acting, 
calling into play every device known to dramatic 
art Complete familiarity with technicalities of 


the law, wide knowledge of human nature, unu¬ 
sual powers of cross-examination, and an expert 
knowledge of medical jurisprudence, compen¬ 
sated for his lack of oratorical ability, and his 
homely unadorned addresses invariably brought 
the jury into closer sympathy with his cause than 
polished eloquence could have done. His au¬ 
dacity knew no bounds, as was demonstrated by 
his successful invocation of epilepsy as a defense 
in the cases of Blakely and Chambers, both of 
whom had been proved beyond question guilty of 
murder. During some twenty-five years he was 
retained in practically every murder trial in New 
York City, but his irregular mode of life gradu¬ 
ally undermined his strong constitution, and his 
last years were spent in semi-retirement at his 
home in the Bronx, N. Y. “He certainly left an 
imprint upon the records of the criminal courts 
of this city, which no one has ever equalled. He 
was sui generis . There will never be another 
‘Bill’ Howe” (Wellman, post , p. 108). In 1882 
he was associated with Daniel G. Rollins in a 
codification of the criminal law which was sub¬ 
sequently embodied by the legislature in the 
Penal Code, and in 1888, in collaboration with 
Hummel, he published In Danger; or. Life in 
New York, incorporating references to many of 
his more outstanding cases. Arthur Train’s novel. 
The Confessions of Artemas Quibble (19x1), is 
based largely on Howe’s career. Apart from the 
law his only interest was in the stage, and for 
many years he was standing counsel to the mem¬ 
bers of the theatrical profession, both legitimate 
and variety. 

[Tberon G. Strong, Landmarks of a Lawyer's Life - 
time (1914), gives, from personal acquaintance, a vivid 
sketch of Howe's strong and weak points,, doing justice 
to the consummate advocate while painting in strong 
colors his less appealing characteristics. Francis L. 
Wellman, Gentlemen of the Jury (1924), also narrates 
intimate details of his career, some of which must be 
treated with caution. See obituary notices in the iV. Y. 
Times , N. Y. Tribune , Sun (N. Y.), and N. Y. Herald , 
Sept. 3, 1902.] H.W.H.K. 

HOWE, WILLIAM HENRY (Nov. 22,1846- 
Mar. 16,1929), landscape and cattle painter, was 
bom at Ravenna, Ohio, the son of Elisha B. and 
Celestia (Russell) Howe, and a descendant of 
one of the embattled farmers who took part in 
the fight at Lexington in 1 775 - He was edu¬ 
cated in the public schools of Ravenna. At the 
age of eighteen he enlisted in the Union army 
and was detailed for special duty at the Johnson 
I sl a nd military prison. At the dose of the Civil 
War he went to Grand Rapids, Mich., engaging 
there in mercantile activities, thence to St. Louis, 
where he worked in a drygoods^ store. On June 
26, 1876, he was married to Julia May Clark of 
St. Louis. It was not until he was nearly forty 


299 



Howe 

years old that he decided to study painting. Af- 
ter some elementary work in drawing, he went to 
Diisseldorf in 1880 and entered the Royal Acad¬ 
emy, where he remained for two years. Then he 
went to Paris to continue his studies under Otto 
de Thoren, the Austrian cattle painter. He worked 
with his master until 1889 and was then taken 
as a pupil by Felix de Vuillefroy, another able 
animal painter, under whom he studied until 
1893, when he returned to America. During this 
long period of almost thirteen years in Diissel- 
dorf and Paris he worked hard, and from early in 
the eighties he exhibited his pictures in the Salon 
and in the United States. Much of his field work 
was done in Normandy and Holland. 

After his return to America Howe set up a 
studio in New York, but very soon he moved to 
Bronxville, N. Y., being one of the founders of 
the artist colony there. He spent many of his 
summers at Old Lyme, Conn., where he enjoyed 
the companionship of Bruce Crane, Henry 
R. Poore, Willard Metcalf, Childe Hassam, 
Carleton Wiggins, and the other painters who fre¬ 
quented the village. His work, which was inter¬ 
esting for its sympathetic interpretation of ani¬ 
mal character, received gratifying recognition at 
home and abroad. He was a worthy disciple of 
the modem animalier , Constant Troyon, of whose 
work he wrote an interesting appreciation for a 
volume entitled Modern French Masters (1896), 
edited by John C. Van Dyke. His qualities as a 
painter are studious fidelity to nature rather than 
brilliancy or charm of style; good drawing and 
composition; and landscape backgrounds well in 
accord with the animals in the foreground. The 
list of his honors is too long to cite in full; it is 
enough to mention a first-class medal awarded 
at the Paris Exposition of 18891 the Temple gold 
medal of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine 
Arts, 1890; the grand gold medal of the Crystal 
Palace Exposition of 1890; election as a Na¬ 
tional Academician, 1897; and the bestowal of 
the cross of the Legion of Honor, 1898. His 
pictures hang in the National Gallery, Wash¬ 
ington, and the art museums of St Louis, Cleve¬ 
land, Grand Rapids, and other cities. Probably 
no more characteristic examples can be cited than 
the "Monarch of the Farm” in the National Gal¬ 
lery and the "Norman Bull” in the St. Louis 
Museum of Fine Arts. Howe's death occurred 
at his home in Bronxville in his eighty-third 
year. He left a wife, but no children. A me¬ 
morial exhibition of his work, containing about 
one hundred finished pictures and many sketches, 
was held at his studio in May 1929. The paint¬ 
ings shown on this occasion were chosen by his 
artist friends and neighbors, Will Low, Bruce 


Howe 

Crane, Hobart Nichols, and Peter Schlader- 
mundt. 

[The Art World, Oct. 1917 ; Am. Art Ann., 1923 • D 
W. Howe, Howe Geneals. . . . Abraham of Marlbor¬ 
ough (1929); Who's Who in America, 1926-27* the 
Bronxville Rev., Jan. 2, 1926, and issues of the Bronx¬ 
ville News ; the N. Y. Herald Tribune and N. Y Times 
Mar. 17, 1929.] W.H.D * 

HOWE, WILLIAM WIRT (Nov. 24, 1833- 
Mar. 17, 1909), soldier, jurist, the son of Henry 
and Laura (Merrill) Howe, was born at Can¬ 
andaigua, N. Y., where for many years his fa¬ 
ther was principal of Canandaigua Academy. 
He was descended from John Howe, an 
early settler in Sudbury, Mass. At Hamilton 
College, where he graduated in 1853, he won 
election to the society of Phi Beta Kappa 
and was valedictorian of his class. After 
studying law in a St. Louis law office, he settled 
in New York City and became a member of the 
bar there. During the early part of the Civil 
War he was a lieutenant in the 7th Kansas Cav¬ 
alry and later was adjutant-general on the staff 
of Gen. A. L. Lee. At the close of the war he 
settled in New Orleans, where he became judge 
of the criminal court by military appointment 
In 1868 he was appointed a justice of the su¬ 
preme court of Louisiana by Gov. H. C. War- 
moth and served until 1872. He was appointed 
United States district attorney for the eastern 
district of Louisiana by President McKinley in 
1900, was reappointed by President Roosevelt, 
and held the position until 1907, when ill health 
compelled him to resign. At the time of his death 
he was one of the senior members of the law firm 
of Howe, Fenner, Spencer & Cocke, of New Or¬ 
leans, and was counsel for the Texas & Pacific 
Railroad and several other large interests. He 
was one of the most brilliant lawyers in New Or¬ 
leans and was accepted throughout the country 
as an authority on the civil code. Upon this and 
related subjects he delivered lectures at the law 
schools at St. Louis, the University of Pennsyl¬ 
vania, Yale University, and others, and his 
“Storr's Lectures” at Yale were published in a 
volume entitled Studies in the Civil Law (1896). 
He published many short articles of a legal, po¬ 
litical, or historical nature, among which may be 
mentioned his pamphlet, Municipal Government 
of New Orleans (1889), written to promote bet¬ 
ter city government 

Howe was active in the civic and religious life 
of New Orleans. He was the fourth president of 
the Louisiana Historical Society, succeeding 
Charles E. A. Gayarre \_q.v .] in 1888 and hold¬ 
ing the position until 1894; a member and treas¬ 
urer of the University of Louisiana (later Tulane 
University) board of administrators from 1872 


300 



Howell 

to 1877; an incorporator of the New Orleans Art 
Association, and its first president; and a mem¬ 
ber of the Chamber of Commerce and the Board 
of Trade. He was appointed an administrator of 
Charity Hospital by Gov. F. T. Nicholls, and 
while holding the position, introduced the system 
of competitive examinations for resident stu¬ 
dents. He was also appointed president of the 
first New Orleans civil-service board, by Mayor 
Walter C. Flower, in 1897; was one of the in¬ 
corporators of the Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat 
Hospital, and a trustee until his death; an orig¬ 
inal member of the Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals, and its legal advisor; and a 
member of the American Bar Association, and 
its president in 1898. He was an Episcopalian 
and for many years served as vestryman of 
Christ Church Cathedral. He died in New Or¬ 
leans, and after temporary interment there, his 
body was taken to Canandaigua, N. Y. He was 
survived by his wife, formerly Frances A. Grid- 
ley, of New York, and by three children. 

[Sources include: Report of the Thirty-Second Ann . 
Meeting of the Am. Bar Asso. . . . 1909 (1909) ; Re- 
port of the La. Bar Asso. for 1909 (1909); the Am . 
Law Rev., Jan.-Feb. 1909; Report of the Adj. Gen. of 
the State of Kan. for the Year 1864 (1865 ); D. W. 
Howe, Howe Geneals. . . . John Howe of Sudbury and 
Marlborough, Mass. (1929) ; Times-Democrat (New 
Orleans) and the Daily Picayune (New Orleans), Mar. 
18, 1909; alumni records of Hamilton College and the 
records of the University of Louisiana (Tulane Uni¬ 
versity).] M.J.W. 

HOWELL, DAVID (Jan. 1, 1747-July 30, 
1824), Rhode Island jurist, member of the Con¬ 
tinental Congress, was born in Morristown, N. 
J., the son of Aaron and Sarah Howell. He re¬ 
ceived his early education at Hopewell Academy, 
Hopewell, N. J., under the supervision of the 
Rev. Isaac Eaton, a Baptist clergyman who was 
the first of that denomination to establish in 
America a school for the higher education of 
young men. From Hopewell Howell went to the 
College of New Jersey, from which he was grad¬ 
uated in 1766. At the Academy he had been a 
fellow student of the brilliant James Manning 
[ q.v .], and the latter, who had recently assumed 
the presidency of a new Baptist college in Rhode 
Island, now invited Howell to share the task of 
teaching with him. Howell accepted and thus 
began with Brown University, which was then 
known as Rhode Island College, a connection 
which, under varying relationships, was to last 
throughout his life. Ifi 1769, after three years 
as tutor, he was given the degree of A.M. and 
appointed professor of natural philosophy and 
mathematics. In addition to these subjects, 
which he was engaged to teach at a salary of £72, 
he also taught French, German, and Hebrew. 
He had need to be a scholar of varied abilities, 


Howell 

since for some years Manning and he were the 
only members of the college faculty. He con¬ 
tinued as professor until 1779, when, owing to 
the Revolutionary War, all college exercises were 
temporarily suspended. 

In 1768 he had been admitted to the bar, and 
in the field of law, which he now entered, he was 
destined to become exceptionally successful. 
Rhode Island College gave him the degree of 
LL.D. in 1793, and from 1790 to 1824 he bore 
the title of professor of jurisprudence, but in 
point of fact he did no more teaching nor lec¬ 
turing. He continued to be intimately interested 
in the welfare of the institution, however; from 
1773 to 1824 he was a member of the board of 
fellows, and he was secretary of the corporation 
from 1780 to 1806. After Manning's death, 
Howell acted for a brief time (1791-92) as presi¬ 
dent ad interim, and on several occasions he 
presided at college commencements. He was a 
tall, handsome man of imposing bearing, an ac¬ 
complished scholar, an excellent public speaker, 
and possessed of a brilliant wit, all of which 
attributes contributed to his preeminence as a 
lawyer. He was associate justice of the supreme 
court of the state from 1786 to 1787, attorney- 
general in 1789, and United States judge of 
Rhode Island from 1812 to 1824. From 1782 to 
1785 he was a member of Congress under the 
Confederation, and he was appointed by Presi¬ 
dent Washington a boundary commissioner in 
connection with the Jay Treaty of 1794. His 
particular concern in this matter was to assist in 
determining the true course of the St Croix 
River. On Sept. 30, 1770, he was married to 
Mary Brown, a daughter of Jeremiah Brown, 
one of the early pastors of the First Baptist 
Church of Providence. They had five children, 
one of whom, Jeremiah, became a United States 
senator. 

[The Biog. Cyc . of Representative Men of R . J. 
(1881) ; R. A. Guild, Life, Times, and Correspondence 
of James Manning, and the Early Hist, of Brown Univ. 
(1864) and Hist, of Brown Univ. with Illustrative 
Documents (1867); Biog. Directory Am. Cong. (1928) ; 
G. S. Kimball, Providence in Colonial Times (1912); 
W. C. Bronson, The Hist, of Brown University, 1764- 
1914 (1914).] E.R.B. 

HOWELL, EVAN PARK (Dec. 10, 1839- 
Aug. 6, 1905), editor, son of Clark and Effiah 
Jane (Park) Howell, was bom in Warsaw, Ga., 
and died in Atlanta. He traced his ancestry back 
to John Howell, who received a land grant In 
Virginia in 1639 and whose descendants moved 
to North Carolina not later than 1743. Clark 
Howell’s father, Evan, settled in Georgia when 
Clark was about nine years old. Until 1851 
young Evan lived on a farm, and then moved 
with the family to Atlanta. He went to school, 


3OI 



Howell 

learned telegraphy, and at sixteen entered the 
Georgia Military Institute in Marietta. After 
two years he went to Sandersville, Ga., and read 
law. Then for a year he attended the Lumpkin 
Law School, which in 1867 became the law de¬ 
partment of the University of Georgia. Graduat¬ 
ing in 1859, he returned to Sandersville and be¬ 
gan to practise. Upon the outbreak of the Civil 
War, he enlisted for a year in the 1st Georgia 
Regiment. At the expiration of his term he 
helped organize a battery, of which, Sept. 7,1863, 
he became captain; and until the war’s end he 
served in that capacity, participating in engage¬ 
ments from Virginia to Tennessee and Mis¬ 
sissippi. He was married, June 5,1861, to Julia 
A. Erwin, of Erwinton, S. C. It was a con¬ 
siderable time after the war before the courts 
were reestablished, and during that interval 
Howell engaged in cutting timber on his father’s 
lands. In 1867, he became reporter on the At¬ 
lanta Intelligencer , but in 1869 he again took up 
his law practice. He was soon made solicitor- 
general, and from 1875 to 1879 he served in the 
state Senate. In 1876 he bought an interest in 
the Atlanta Constitution , which he was to retain 
till 1897, and, forsaking law, he became editor of 
his paper. Since its establishment in 1868 the 
Constitution had shown remarkable vitality, but 
under the new management it soon became the 
most important paper in the South, and among 
the most important in America. Its editor was 
honest and bold; he had shrewdness and imagi¬ 
nation ; and he wrote trenchantly. He knew how 
to surround himself with able assistants, em¬ 
ploying, among others, Henry W. Grady and 
Joel Chandler Harris lqq.v .2 ; and he knew how 
to fuse his assistants into harmonious unity. 
Perhaps the most notable specific activity of the 
paper was its successful advocacy of a new state 
constitution (1877), and of the inauguration of 
a railroad commission; but its influence against 
defeatism and in behalf of integrity and courage, 
though less tangible, was in the long run more 
valuable. For many years, Howell was among 
the leaders of every large public movement un¬ 
dertaken in Atlanta. From 1878 to 1892 he was 
a delegate to most of the national conventions of 
the Democratic party, and during the Spanish- 
American War he was appointed by President 
McKinley on an important war commission. 
From 1903 to 1905 he was mayor of Atlanta, 

[Clark Howell, Geneal. of the Southern Line of the 
Family of Howell (1930); W. J. Northen, Men of 
Marh in Ga. (1911), vol. Ill; A. IX Candler and C. A. 
Evans, Georgia (1906), vol. II; W. P. Reed, Hist, of 
Atlanta, Ga. (1889) ; Who*s Who in America, 1903-05; 
Julia C. Harris, Joel Chandler Harris (1918) ; Memoirs 
of Ga. (1895) I Atlanta Constitution, Aug. 6, 7, 1905.] 

J.D.W. 


Howell 

HOWELL, JAMES BRUEN (July 4, 1816- 
June 17, 1880), pioneer editor, political jour¬ 
nalist, was born near Morristown, N. J., but in 
1819 he was taken by his parents, Elias and Eliza 
Howell, to Licking County, Ohio. His father 
served in the state Senate and in Congress. 
James was educated in the Newark, Ohio, schools 
and at Miami University, where he graduated in 
1837. As a student he had a reputation for ag¬ 
gressive leadership. He studied law at Lancas¬ 
ter, Ohio, and was admitted to the bar in 1839. 
The following year he was an enthusiastic 
Harrison supporter and served the cause as an 
unsuccessful candidate for prosecuting attorney. 
Owing to failing health, in 1841 he took a west¬ 
ern horseback journey in the course of which he 
came to Keosauqua, in Iowa Territory, a town 
which seemed a promising location for a young 
lawyer, and in time he settled there. He soon 
came to rank as one of the leading lawyers of the 
territory, but abandoned the law to purchase, in 
1845, with James H. Cowles, the Des Moines 
Valley Whig . Three years later the paper was 
removed to Keokuk, which seemed to offer an 
opportunity for a larger constituency. In 1854 
he and Cowles established a daily called the 
Whig, rechristened the next year the Gate City . 
Howell remained the active editor until 1870. 

Howell has been termed, not inaptly, the 
Horace Greeley of Iowa. He had the same in¬ 
tense zeal for a cause, the agitator’s conviction 
that permitted no qualification or concession. He 
was a hard fighter who gave no quarter and ex¬ 
pected none. His editorial style had no adorn¬ 
ments but was simple, direct, specific, immediate¬ 
ly understandable to all readers, and, in harmony 
with the standards of the time, not lacking in 
personalities. “From 1845 to 1865 J. B. Howell 
was the most potent maker of newspaper opinion 
in the Des Moines Valley and in Iowa” (S. M. 
Clark, post, p. 350). A loyal Whig, he early took 
leadership in that party in Iowa; but with the 
joining of the issue over the extension of slav¬ 
ery, he was among the first to urge the merging 
of all free-soil elements in a new organization 
and signed the call for the convention to organize 
the Republican party in the state. He was a 
delegate to the first national convention of the 
Republicans in 1856 and in the campaign sought 
in every way to promote party harmony and 
solidarity. At the Chicago convention, where he 
was one of the party counselors, he hailed the 
ticket with enthusiasm and lent every effort for 
its success. He was an ardent admirer of Lin¬ 
coln and opposed the administration only when 
it seemed to falter in its policy regarding slavery. 
Inevitably he was a pronounced radical in bitter 


3 02 



Howell 

opposition to Johnson’s Reconstruction policy. 
He was a consistent supporter of Grant. 

Although Howell sought public offices from 
time to time, he held but few. In the first state 
election he was an unsuccessful candidate for 
district judge. On several occasions his name 
was before the legislature for the United States 
senatorship, but he served only to fill out an unex¬ 
pired term (January 1870-March 1871). His 
tenure was too brief to provide opportunity for 
constructive service, but he was active through¬ 
out and attracted attention by his vigorous oppo¬ 
sition to additional railroad grants. At the end of 
his term he was appointed by Grant a member of 
the court of Southern claims upon which he 
served to the completion of its work in 1880. 
During the last twenty years of his life he la¬ 
bored under serious physical disability as a result 
of an accident which contributed ultimately to his 
death. He was married, on Nov. 1,1842, to Isa¬ 
bella Richards, of Granville, Ohio. Following 
her death he married, on Oct. 23, 1850, Mary 
Ann Bowen of Iowa City. 

[S. M. Clark, “Senator James B. Howell,” Annals 
of Iowa , Apr. 1894; D. C. Mott, “Early Iowa News¬ 
papers,” Ibid., Jan. 1928; D. E. Clark, Hist, of Sena¬ 
torial Elections in Iowa (1912); Gen. Cat . of Grads . 
and Former Students of Miami Univ. . . . 1809-1909 ; 
Biog. Dir. Am. Cong . (1928) ; files of the Des Moines 
Valley Whig and the Gate City, especially the latter for 
June 18, 19, 20, 1880.] E.D.R. 

HOWELL, JOHN ADAMS (Mar. 16, 1840- 
Jan. 10, 1918), naval officer, inventor, was bom 
at Bath, Steuben County, N. Y., the son of Wil¬ 
liam and Frances Adelphia (Adams) Howell. 
After receiving his early education in the public 
schools of Bath, he was appointed at the age of 
fourteen to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, 
Md., his appointment coming from the 28th New 
York congressional district. Four years later he 
graduated as a midshipman, at the head of his 
class, and was assigned to the U. S. S. Mace¬ 
donian, then attached to the Mediterranean 
Squadron. After serving three years on this and 
on several other ships he was promoted, Jan. 19, 
1861, to the rank of passed midshipman; ad¬ 
vanced to master the following month; and was 
commissioned a lieutenant on Apr. 18, 1861. In 
this capacity he served throughout the Civil War 
on the ships Supply, Montgomery, and Ossipee, 
the latter a ship of the West Gulf Blockading 
Squadron. On Mar. 3, 1865, he was commis¬ 
sioned lieutenant commander, and after doing 
special service on the De Soto for two years he 
was detailed to the Naval Academy, Aug. 3, 
1867, where for the next four years he served as 
head of the department of astronomy and navi¬ 
gation. He was then detailed to command a 
hydrographic survey party in cooperation with 


Howell 

the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, 
during which time he was promoted to the rank 
of commander. Upon completing this work he 
returned to the Naval Academy in December 
1874, and for four years again headed the depart¬ 
ment of astronomy and navigation. Subsequent¬ 
ly, after completing two years’ service in com¬ 
mand of the Adams, he was detailed in 1881 to 
the Navy Bureau of Ordnance in Washington, 
serving first as an inspector of ordnance at the 
Navy Yard, and later as a member of the Naval 
Advisory Board. This service continued until 
1888 when as captain, having been promoted to 
that rank in 1884, he was assigned to the com¬ 
mand of the Atlanta . From 1890 to 1893 he was 
again on steel inspection duty, being a member 
of the Steel Board, and its president from July 
1891. On Feb. 1,1893, he was placed in command 
of the Navy Yard at Washington and continued 
in this capacity for three years, serving at the 
same time as president of the Naval Examining 
and Retiring Board as well as president of the 
Steel Board. He was promoted to the rank of 
commodore on May 21, 1895, and that year was 
made commandant of the Navy Yard at League 
Island, Philadelphia, remaining there until April 
1898. Through the Spanish-American War he 
served in various capacities at sea: first on his 
flagship San Francisco as commander of the 
Mediterranean Squadron; then in command of 
the Northern Patrol Squadron of the North At¬ 
lantic Fleet; and finally as commander-in-chief 
of the North Atlantic Fleet during the absence 
of Rear Admiral Sampson. On Aug. 10,1898, he 
was promoted to the rank of rear admiral. After 
the war, he was again made president of the 
Naval Examining and Retiring Board at Wash¬ 
ington and served until his retirement on Mar. 
16,1902. 

Howell was always interested m the develop¬ 
ment of the submarine and torpedo, and from 
the time of his connection with the Navy Yard 
at Washington he conducted many experiments 
in an effort to improve the torpedo. He worked 
particularly on the gyroscope as a means of di¬ 
recting the path of a torpedo, and it is said that 
the Howell torpedo, which he patented about 
1885, was the first to use a gyroscopic device. 
He also developed and patented several forms 
of torpedo-launching apparatus and of high ex¬ 
plosive shells, the patents on these being granted 
to him between the years 1885 and 1892; in¬ 
vented a form of fly-wheel torpedo; and perfected 
an amphibian type of lifeboat In addition to his 
work in these fields, he took up the task of im¬ 
proving coast-defense ordnance and patented, 
Mar. 24, 1896, a disappearing gun carriage of 



Howell 

the counterpoise type. He was the author of 
several publications: The Mathematical Theory 
of the Deviations of the Compass Arranged for 
the Use of the Cadets at the U. S. Naval Acad¬ 
emy (1879); Observations for Dip Taken on the 
U. S. Steamer “Adams” ... off the Coasts of 
California, Mexico and Peru (1882); “Report 
of the Armor Factory Board,” House Document 
No. 95 , 55 Cong., 2 Sess. (1897). In May 1867 
Howell married Arabella E. Krause of St. Croix, 
W. I., and at his death in Warrenton, Va., where 
he lived following his retirement, he was sur¬ 
vived by a son and two daughters. 

[Army and Navy Reg., Jan. 12, 1918; Army and 
Navy Jour., Jan. 19, 1918; U. S. Navy records; Pat. 
Off. records; Who's Who in America, 1916-17 ; Wash¬ 
ington Post and Evening Star, Jan. 11, 1918.] 

C.W.M. 

HOWELL, RICHARD (Oct 25, i754-Apr. 
28, 1802), Revolutionary patriot, governor of 
New Jersey, was a son of Ebenezer Howell, 
whose parents came from Wales to Delaware 
about 1724; his mother was Sarah (Bond) 
Howell. With his twin brother, Lewis, he went 
to school in Newcastle, then followed the family 
to Cumberland County, N. J., near Bridgeton, 
where he studied law. On Nov. 22, 1774, he 
helped burn tea landed from the brig Greyhound 
at Greenwich, N. J,, and in November of the fol¬ 
lowing year became captain in the New Jersey 
militia, then brigade major. From Greenwich in 
December 1775 his company, “soldiers, captain 
and all, went in the dead of night off, on foot, to 
get clear of their creditors” (Ebenezer Elmer’s 
Journal, quoted in L. Q. C. Elmer, post, p. 103). 
They took part in the attack on Quebec where, as 
Howell wrote his brother, he “had the honor to 
fire the first gun on the plains of Abram, before 
the retreat” {Ibid., p. 104). He fought through 
the campaigns of Maxwell’s brigade, notably at 
Brandywine and Monmouth, and repelled Tory 
raids along the Delaware. Years later he wrote 
an inscription for Maxwell’s tombstone. 

Resigning his commission Apr. 7,1779, to en¬ 
gage in intelligence work for Washington, he 
was licensed attorney in that month. In No¬ 
vember he married Keziah Burr, daughter of 
Joseph Burr of Burlington County. They had 
nine children and left numerous descendants; a 
grand-daughter, Varina Howell, became Mrs. 
Jefferson Davis. Arrested for treason and brought 
before Judge David Brearly, Howell showed his 
secret orders which secured his discharge and 
the erasure of the minutes. On Sept. 18,1782, he 
was chosen United States judge advocate but de¬ 
clined the position. In September 1788 he suc¬ 
ceeded William Churchill Houston [q.v.] as 
clerk of the New Jersey supreme court. He took 


Howell 

an active part in Federalist affairs, writing for 
Washington’s reception, Apr. 29, 1789, at the 
Assanpink bridge, the ten-line ode, “Welcome, 
mighty chief! once more Welcome to this grate¬ 
ful shore” (Lee, post, II, 428-29). The nine four- 
line stanzas to Washington, “Let venal poets 
praise a King,” published in the New Jersey 
Gazette, Aug. 18, 1779, are probably his {Ar¬ 
chives of the State of New Jersey, 2 ser., Ill, 
1906, p. 558). He was a vestryman of St. 
Michael’s Church, Trenton, and on May n, 1791, 
was one of the lawyers who petitioned with suc¬ 
cess against the rule requiring “Bands and Bar- 
gowns.” Upon the resignation of William Pater¬ 
son [q.v.'] from the governorship, Howell was 
elected to that office by the legislature, on June 
3, 1793. Despite party fluctuations he was re¬ 
elected annually—unopposed, save in 1799—un¬ 
til he retired in favor of his friend Joseph 
Bloomfield in 1801. 

He was a member of the Society of the Cin¬ 
cinnati, and his military and patriotic interest 
was unflagging. He took a leading part in send¬ 
ing four companies of New Jersey troops (325 
men) to join St. Clair’s ill-fated forces in Ohio. 
As governor he headed the New Jersey troops 
sent against the Whiskey Insurrection, and 
Washington had him command the right wing of 
the army. At this time he wrote a song, “Dash 
to the mountains, Jersey Blue,” immensely popu¬ 
lar and long sung on the Princeton campus. Re¬ 
turning to the practice of law after his governor¬ 
ship, he died suddenly at the age of forty-eight. 
Of easy and popular manner, though stem in 
discipline and command, fond of athletics and 
good horses, Howell was much loved in his day. 
Someone wrote beneath his portrait four lines 
(quoted by Elmer, p. 112), ending: “The soul of 
honor, friend of human kind.” 

[Besides the “Centennial Sketch 1876 by a Grandson” 
(scarce), the best accounts of Howell are in L. Q. C. 
Elmer, The Constitution and Govt, of the Province and 
State of N. J. (1872), being vol. VII of the N. J. Hist . 
Soc. Colls.; and in Hamilton Schuyler, A Hist, of St. 
Michael's Church, Trenton (1926). See also Archives 
of the State of N. J., 2 ser., vols. I-III (1901-06); 
Proc. N. J. Hist. Soc., vol. Ill (1849) j W. S. Stiyker, 
Official Reg. of the Officers and Men of N . J. in the 
Revolutionary War (1872) ; Jours, of the Continental 
Cong., vol. XXIII (1914), pp. 586, 629; F. B. Lee, N. 
J. as a Colony and State (1902), vols. II and III; A. 
D. Mellick, Jr., The Story of an Old Farm (1889), p. 
219; Thomas Cushing and C. E. Sheppard, Hist, of the 
Counties of Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland, N. J. 
(1883), p. 548; J. G. Leach, Genedl. and Biog. Me¬ 
morials of the Reading, Howell, Yerkes, Watts, Latham 
and Elkins Families (1898), p. 139; Phila. Gazette and 
Daily Advertiser, May 5, 1802.] W.L.W—y. 

HOWELL. ROBERT BOYT 2 CRAW¬ 
FORD (Mar. 10, 1801-Apr. 5, 1868), Baptist 
clergyman, was bom in Wayne County, N. C., the 
son of Ralph and Jane (Crawford) HowelL He 



Howells Howells 


task of learning the typesetter’s art He was so 
illiterate that printers taught him how to divide 
words into syllables. The hand-set pages of type 
were carried, a few at a time, from his little vil¬ 
lage of Clackamas into Portland and put upon 
a power press; and thus was slowly and painfully 
finished, from 1897 to 1903, his Flora of North¬ 
west America . Woodsman and mountaineer that 
he was and lacking scholarly facility with a pen, 
he wrote few of the descriptions, so that the work 
unfortunately contains too little of his own field 
knowledge. He was indeed almost unlearned in 
English spelling though he erred less frequently 
in Latin words. Although thus handicapped, he 
had a sound and just comprehension of what was 
needed, and he organized diagnoses of genera 
and species scattered in the works of many 
writers into a pioneer flora, which, considering 
the circumstances of its production* is balanced, 
judicious, and highly useful. Even after more 
than a quarter of a century it remains the only 
flora for the three states which it covers. 

In the woods and fields Howell was entirely 
at home, but his nature did not protect him from 
city sharpers, who robbed him of his inheritance. 
It was not until he was fifty that he married Effie 
(Hudson) Mcllwane, a widow. Simple in man¬ 
ner, unaffected in speech, of few wants, but of 
great capacity for fortitude, he asked little of the 
world. His death occurred at Portland, Ore. 

[Few men leaving a durable contribution to American 
botany Have led so obscure an existence as did Howell. 
Am. Men of Set. (1006) gives him three scant lines. 
Certain essential facts have been recorded by C. S. Sar¬ 
gent, The Silva of North America, vol. XII (1898). 
This sketch is based in great part on manuscript sources, 
especially the Jepson Field Book (vol. VII, pp. 108-10 
and vol. XVI, pp. 86-88); see also Botanical Gazette, 
June 1913.] W. L. J—n. 

HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN (Mar. 1, 
1837-May 11, 1920), novelist, leader of Ameri¬ 
can letters for the quarter-century ending in 
1920, was born at Martin’s Ferry, Belmont Coun¬ 
ty, Ohio. His ancestry was mixed, a Welsh in¬ 
gredient predominating strongly on his father’s 
side and Pennsylvania German on his mother’s. 
An English great-grandmother sobered the 
Welsh ferment; an Irish grandfather (mother’s 
father) aerated the Teutonic phlegm. The Welsh 
ancestors made clocks and watches; afterwards 
they turned to flannels, which, becoming profit¬ 
able and famous, found a market in shivering 
America. To that land, as visitors and emigrants, 
the flannel-makers gradually followed their prod¬ 
uct, and in a new world, not always generous to 
merit, they wandered, ventured, and lost money 
for two unquiet generations. The novelist’s fa¬ 
ther, William Cooper Howells, was a migratory, 
ill-paid, anti-slavery journalist in Ohio, and had 


little to share with his cherished second son but 
a scant dole of bread, high principle, a buoyant 
and indomitable humor, and a liking and capacity 
for letters. He was a Quaker who turned Swe- 
denborgian. In 1831 he married Mary Dean, a 
woman in whom an Irish warmth of temper 
mingled with a more than German warmth of 
heart, and who needed all her German birthright 
of thrift and patience to rear eight children on 
the thousand dollars, more or less, which was 
Ohio’s rating of the yearly value of an editor’s 
services to the commonwealth. 

At the age of nine the boy William was setting 
type in his father’s printing-office; for years the 
family profited by his skill. Meanwhile he gave 
his leisure to a strenuous and passionate self- 
discipline in letters in a windowed nook behind 
the stairs in a home where literature was repre¬ 
sented by the contents of a single bookcase. 
From the start he wished to write; he read de¬ 
voutly, and imitated his divinities with an ardor 
which is touchingly reflected in My Literary 
Passions (1895). This double diligence, me¬ 
chanical in the printing-office, enthusiastic in the 
study, had much to do with the steadiness and 
abundance of the outflow from his maturer pen. 
In the scant leisure that remained he found time 
for not a little healthy, boyish sport (see A Boy’s 
Town , 1890), and for fraternization—genuine, if 
partial—with the ingenuous, but manly and 
wholesomely democratic, life of primitive Ohio. 
Something proud, delicate, and shy in the lad 
made terms with a fortunate capacity for mixing 
freely and humanly with all sorts and conditions 
of men, a capacity that was the seed of a realism 
to which everything in everybody was finally to 
become interesting. 

Office, study, and playground cut down the 
time for school, and the slightness of his formal 
schooling would have made eminence in litera¬ 
ture impossible to any less self-reliant and self- 
sustaining temper. The man who was to receive 
honorary degrees from six universities, includ¬ 
ing Oxford, and to reject offers of professorships 
in literature from Yale, Harvard, and Johns 
Hopkins attended neither university nor high 
school; he went to common school when he could, 
and coaxed a little help in foreign tongues from 
inexpert or desultory tutors. In boyhood he 
studied Latin, German, Spanish; in manhood he 
knew some French, and acquired efficiency, if not 
proficiency, in Italian. Technically, he mastered 
no language, and he mastered no literature, not 
even English, in the scholar’s narrowly exacting 
sense; but his assimilations in these fields were 
extensive and genuine, and, curiously enough, 
the flexibility in which the self-taught man is 


306 



Howells Howells 


normally deficient became almost the character¬ 
istic property of his mind 
Howells passed his boyhood in various Ohio 
towns, Martin’s Ferry, Hamilton, Dayton, Ash¬ 
tabula, Jefferson, and Columbus. In the last- 
named town, between 1856 and 1861, he was re¬ 
porter, exchange editor, and editorial writer on 
the Ohio State Journal , and two happy winters 
in this period when opportunity, both social and 
literary, was freshest, became in his grateful ret¬ 
rospect the “heyday of life.” At twenty-two he 
published in association with John J. Piatt Poems 
of Two Friends (i860), a volume which the pub¬ 
lic with great unanimity declined to buy; but the 
majestic Atlantic Monthly published five of his 
poems in one year, and a trip to New England in 
i860 brought him into personal contact with 
Lowell, Fields, Emerson, Holmes, and Haw¬ 
thorne, the high society in which his maturity 
was destined to rejoice. 

A life of Lincoln which he compiled in the 
summer of i860 from supplied materials found 
a market in the West, and the grateful President 
named the author for the consulate in Venice. 
The Confederate privateers whose maneuvers 
in that seaport Howells was expected to outwit 
forbore to show themselves, and he devoted four 
years (1861-65) to observations of the people— 
embodied in the agreeable and valuable Venetian 
Life (1866)—and to a study of the language and 
literature which later found in Modern Italian 
Poets (1887) a slender but discriminating out¬ 
let. He preferred the modern and human Venice 
to the ancient and spectacular city, and the novels 
he was soon to write suggest that the least Vene¬ 
tian thing about the place—the foreign visitor— 
was the thing that struck his imagination most 
distinctly. There is nothing really anomalous 
in the fact that in Venice, where fact itself is 
supposedly a convert to romance, the hitherto 
vaguely poetic young American found his mind 
taking, almost imperceptibly, “the course of crit¬ 
ical observance of books and men in their actual¬ 
ity.” Marriage and the birth of his first child 
enriched the spot with indestructible associations. 
On Dec. 24,1862, he was married to Elinor Ger¬ 
trude Mead of Brattleboro, Vt., a woman whom 
he had loved in Columbus, and in whom, through¬ 
out a union of forty-seven years, he found a high 
literary conscience that seconded and fortified 
his own. 

Returning to America in 1865, Howells faced 
briefly and for the only time in his life the strin¬ 
gencies of the baffled seeker for the imperatively 
needed job. The ordeal ended with his appoint¬ 
ment to the staff of the New York Nation under 
E. L. Godkin, and his delight in this work im¬ 


parted a tinge of sacrifice to his acceptance a 
few months later of the sub-editorship of the 
Atlantic Monthly under James T. Fields, the 
Boston publisher, at a salary of fifty dollars a 
week. His connection with this periodical, then 
still in the first vigor of its youth and the first 
warmth of its ideals, lasted fifteen years (1866- 
81) ; in July 1871 he became editor-in-chief. In 
Cambridge, where he dwelt for years, he found 
himself part of a social life “so refined, so intel¬ 
ligent, so gracefully simple” that he doubted if 
the world could show its equal, and Lowell, his 
earliest and warmest friend, felicitated him on 
the completeness of his assimilation of all the 
good to be derived from that society. There was, 
indeed, between that society and Howells, an or¬ 
ganic kinship: both stood for the exquisite on a 
basis of the primitively wholesome; only in Cam¬ 
bridge the wholesome had put on the unobtru¬ 
siveness of age, and in Howells the exquisite 
had not lost the sheen of novelty. He had the 
zeal of the convert, the convert to his own nat¬ 
ural affinities, and perhaps neither history nor 
geography can show a Boston so Bostonian as 
the city which bears that name in his otherwise 
unswervingly veracious novels. The other man 
in him, the hardworking, firm-fibered Westerner, 
survived, and proved the energy of its survival 
by the formation of a lifelong friendship with 
Mark Twain. This double nature is manifest in 
the group of novels written between 1871 and 
1881, the beginnings of his memorable work in 
fiction. 

The group type is clearest in five short works, 
Their Wedding Journey (1872), virtually a 
travel-sketch, A Chance Acquaintance (1873), A 
Foregone Conclusion (1875), The Lady of the 
Aroostook (1879), A Fearful Responsibility 
(1881). Looser pendants to the group are “Pri¬ 
vate Theatricals” ( Atlantic, November 1875- 
May 1876; issued in book form as Mrs . Farrell, 
1921), The Undiscovered Country (1880), and 
Dr . Breen's Practice (1881). Howells had 
known America and Europe, the West and the 
East; the contacts of sophistication and ingenu¬ 
ousness in both regions had amused his fancy, 
and this amusement—with the very real sympa¬ 
thy which it embosomed—took form in tales that 
were comedies of manners: more specifically, of 
the incongruities of manners. Howells’ wit had 
shafts, as his sympathy had balm, for both sides 
in these encounters of disparities. The style of 
these tales is urbane, the art is mature, the psy¬ 
chology subtle, and the humor as inescapable as 
it is unassuming. They are among the best speci¬ 
mens in English fiction of the playfulness that 
carries refinement into pungency, of the laugh 



Howells Howells 


that remembers and respects the gravity which 
it momentarily displaces. They are still classed 
as the author's best work by persons for whom 
the union of the comic and the fine is the prime 
desideratum in a work of fiction. Even here 
there are hints of other qualities. Two of the 
tales, infringing an imperious convention, end 
in disappointments; the airiest has a bitter 
episode; and the excellent Foregone Conclu¬ 
sion , without faithlessness to its blither purpose, 
achieves passion and borders tragedy. Howells 
is already the realistic observer of highly select 
material, too select to find ready verification in 
average experience. 

Between 1880 and 1890 he forsook the Atlan¬ 
tic Monthly, and wrote several novels for the 
younger and more popular Century Magazine, 
by way of prologue to the intimate and enduring 
bond which made the press of Harper & Brothers 
from 1885 to 1916 his chosen outlet His decisive 
removal to New York took place in 1891. The 
novels put off their Bostonian quiet, and apply 
themselves with modest vigor to a wider range of 
more aggressive themes and problems. In Dr. 
Breen's Practice, the last of the Atlantic serials, 
a novelette packed with masterly delineations, a 
woman fails in medicine less because she is a 
woman than because she is a lady. A Woman's 
Reason (1883) returns to the charge with its 
picture of the futility of attempted self-support 
on the part of an untrained woman whose voca¬ 
tion is reducible to charm. In The Undiscovered 
Country spiritualism is disapproved as a thesis, 
and disallowed as a gospel (the latter on the just, 
though rare, ground of anti-spirituality), and 
there is a friendly picture of the Shakers, a sect 
which, by its renunciation alike of sexuality and 
competition, cast a curious and twofold spell upon 
the mind of Howells. A Modern Instance (1882) 
is a vigorous departure; the grasp of life is 
widened, and the capable supple narrative moves 
forward with unaccustomed and vivifying speed. 
It recounts the shipwreck of an inharmonious 
marriage brought about by simple, normal, un¬ 
reverberating causes, and it is highly charac¬ 
teristic that Howells never returned to this class 
of topic, finding perhaps an objectionable vio¬ 
lence in a theme which half the novelists of our 
febrile age would have rejected as objectionably 
tame. Bartley Hubbard in this book is a proof 
of the author's unsuspected power to vitalize a 
brilliant and consummate blackguard, a figure 
which he draws with a mixture of abhorrence 
and mercy which emulates, if it does not quite 
achieve, impartiality. 

From this foray, Howells returned in The 
Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) to the cherished 


theme of the jostle and recoil of unadjusted so¬ 
cial castes; this time the culture of Boston con¬ 
sorts with its untutored wealth. Here, however, 
a graver purpose guides the comedy. Howells, 
moralist and anti-romanticist, is severe beyond 
his gentle wont toward romantic morality, and 
insists that two people who love should marry 
even if the marriage disconcerts a sister's expec¬ 
tations. The current now sets decisively toward 
realism. Few men after fifty in an age of doubt 
are capable of surrender to a transforming en¬ 
thusiasm. Contact with the luminous and in¬ 
genuous realism of Tolstoy made Howells a 
partaker in that rare experience. His old faiths 
blended with his new fervors in a gospel which 
may be summarized in the dictum that every¬ 
thing real in human nature is valuable, and that 
nothing unreal is valuable except by way of 
sportive interlude. Stated in this coldly abstract 
form, the doctrine is rather sedative than pro¬ 
voking, but it became redoubtable through the 
vigor and the rigor of the censorship it applied 
to several of the greatest and the dearest names 
in the history of fiction. It found a clear and 
powerful voice in the widely read and keenly 
controverted “Editor's Study” (criticisms in 
Harper's Monthly, 1886-91), of which the tiny 
but weighty manifesto, Criticism and Fiction 
(1891), was the unsparingly distilled quintes¬ 
sence. 

The new gospel widened the scope and deep¬ 
ened the significance of the critic's own fiction, 
but was not wholly favorable to that delicately 
specific, though bounded and sheltered, art 
which had formed a public in its own likeness. 
To this art he could still return; Indian Summer 
(1886), Florentine in setting, is a charming re¬ 
version to the sunny, though never quite un¬ 
shadowed, mood of his earlier successes. In The 
Minister's Charge (1887), however, a parti¬ 
colored, yet on the whole leaden, work, he paints 
many sides and levels of Boston with a hand too 
conscientious to be kind; in this book he pro¬ 
poses “complicity” as a label for the interlace¬ 
ment of responsibilities in human society. Some 
coercion of the taste by the heart and the con¬ 
science is again perceptible in A Hazard of New 
Fortunes (1890), his first delineation of New 
York, in which a thing so very much in Howells' 
way as the birth of a periodical is obliged to find 
houseroom for something so very little in his 
way as a street-railway strike. Painfulness is as¬ 
sociated with real, though fluctuating, power in 
The Quality of Mercy (1892), a study of the 
diversely ramifying effects of crime in a society 
which is itself the primary felon. The attempt to 
rationalize morality by the elimination of fan- 


3°8 



Howells 

tastic scruple is again to the fore in three novels 
less interesting for the teaching than for the 
momentum of the passions which constitute its 
vehicle. April Hopes (1888) paints love with a 
delectable reality, which does not spare us a sar¬ 
donic after-taste. The Shadow of a Dream 
(1890), also passionate, shows a gift for the pic¬ 
turesque and the romantic which is almost scan¬ 
dalous in a realist. An Imperative Duty (1893) 
treats with equal vigor and delicacy the difficult 
problem of an Ethiopian tincture in the blood 
of a girl whom a white man seeks in marriage. 

The range of the novelist's subjects, during 
his fifties and sixties, expanded in two directions. 
In an artist's later life, as the field of the unat¬ 
tempted shrinks, and experience in art itself in¬ 
creases, the temptation to turn to art itself for 
themes gains force. In Howells this comes out 
distinctly in A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890); 
it reappears in the young novelist of The World 
of Chance (1893), a trim and gliding pleasure- 
craft, with dynamite in the form of sacrificial 
murder in its hold; in the young dramatist of the 
admirable Story of a Play (1898) ; in the woman 
art-student of the rather unexciting Coast of Bo¬ 
hemia (1893) ; and—more faintly—in the young 
journalist of Letters Home (1903), with its in¬ 
stant mastery of the troublesome epistolary form. 
The second form of novel subject is the economic 
problem or class struggle, a theme to which 
Howells, here again seconded, if not inspired, by 
Tolstoy, was led by the simplest and highest of 
incentives, the misery induced in a vivid imagina¬ 
tion and a feeling heart by the presence (actual 
or mental) of cold, hunger, and rags in their im¬ 
mediate vicinity. The railway strike has been 
already noted; in the variously interesting Annie 
Kilburn (1889) Howells exposed the weakness 
of charitable endeavor; and, by distant reference 
in A Traveler from Altruria (1894) and, much 
later, by direct portrayal in Through the Eye of 
the Needle (1907), he sketched a model com¬ 
monwealth the nucleus of which is a central store 
replenished by everybody's labor and available 
to everybody's wants. This is socialism of a sort, 
unprofessional, unpartisan, undogmatic social¬ 
ism, and his repudiation of war might be traced 
to the same source if it were not so much more 
probably and pleasantly traceable to his human¬ 
ity 

His capacities did not age with the man. Dur¬ 
ing his sixties censure might point to abating 
force in Ragged Lady (1899), in Their Silver 
Wedding Journey (1899), which reanimates 
rather than revitalizes the invaluable Marches, 
in the slender Miss Bellard’s Inspiration (i 9 ° 5 )> 
where his tardy pen first overtakes the new wo- 


Howells 

man, in the penitential Fennel and Rue (1908) ; 
but admiration could retort by pointing to The 
Kentons (1902) and to two of his weightiest and 
most robustly vital novels, The Landlord at 
Lion's Head (1897), with its equally profound 
and vigorous characterization of the genially 
carnivorous Jeff Durgin, and The Son of Royal 
Langbrith (1904), in which passion and pathos 
vivify a moral problem as abstruse as it is prac¬ 
tical. There are few novels after 1908, but New 
Leaf Mills (1913) and The Leatherwood God 
(1916) are curious reversions to the homely 
scenes and characters of his mid-Western youth. 
He had gone around the circuit The rare had 
taught him to esteem the commonplace, and the 
exquisite had been his tutor in die virtues of 
rusticity. 

The minor works may be compactly treated. 
He early mastered and speedily gave up the 
short tale, returning to it after long absence with 
a touch that did not quite return to mastery. 
There are five volumes of tales, mostly of small 
bulk, one for children, two that touch charily the 
fringe of the occult, a fourth normal and sedate, 
and, finally, the remarkable Daughter of the Stor¬ 
age (1916), in parts as somberly vivacious as a 
dancing skeleton. His dramas, which the stage 
uncomplainingly relinquished to the drawing¬ 
room, comprise thirty-one publications, and a 
range of types which includes regular comedy 
(with a strong charge of narrative), farce, comic 
opera, a so-called mystery-play, and blank-verse 
dialogues of tragic poignancy. Out of the Ques¬ 
tion (1877) and A Counterfeit Presentment 
(1877) are perhaps the best examples, not of 
comedy, but of literature in comedy, that Amer¬ 
ica can offer. In A Letter of Introduction (1892) 
and The Unexpected Guests (1893), Howells at 
one stroke originated and perfected a new type 
of farce, that in which the characters are au¬ 
thentic, not merely titular, ladies and gentlemen. 
Yorick’s Love , adapted from the Spanish by 
Howells, was played successfully by Lawrence 
Barrett in 1878. There are eleven books of 
travel, graceful, leisurely, bland, sometimes a lit¬ 
tle tenuous; among the heartiest and lustiest are 
the first in date, Venetian Life (1866), and the 
last but one, Familiar Spanish Travels (1913). 
Three more treat of Italy and three of England, 
the last of which, The Seen and Unseen at Strat¬ 
ford-on-Avon (1914), introduces the ghosts of 
Shakespeare and Bacon to the twentieth cen¬ 
tury. 

Howells is one of the rare instances of a man 
aspiring to poetry and writing in his teens and 
twenties acceptable but unarresting verse,. who, 
in late maturity, by the continuous quickening of 



Howells Howells 


his response to the tragic urgencies of family and 
social life, becomes an original and moving poet 
The best of the scant but precious harvest is 
found in Stops of Various Quills (1895) and 
The Mother and the Father (1909). The liter¬ 
ary critic is best studied in My Literary Passions 
(1895) and in Criticism and Fiction (1891); in 
the latter he rises to great criticism through the 
finality, totality, and unexampled sincerity of his 
realistic gospel. As a judge of particular books 
he is less decidedly and uniformly satisfactory. 
Modern Italian Poets (1887) is a useful mono¬ 
graph; Heroines of Fiction (1901) is popular 
in a self-respecting way; and Literature and Life 
(1902) is incidentally and mildly critical. He 
had always valued life as well as letters, and 
from 1900 to 1920 in the “Easy Chair” of Har¬ 
per's Monthly he played his versatile and skilful 
part as reviewer of contemporaneities to the very 
end. The autobiographies are highly valuable. 
In the remarkable Boy’s Town (Hamilton, Ohio) 
a boy’s life is poeticized without being varnished; 
My Literary Passions shows a lyric warmth and 
tremor; Years of My Youth (1916) retouches 
the first decades; and the great Americans in 
whom his fidelity exulted furnish matter and en¬ 
during value to Literary Friends and Acquaint¬ 
ance (1900) BxidMy Mark Twain (1910). Most 
interesting among the miscellanies are Suburban 
Sketches (1871), A Day’s Pleasure (1876), Im¬ 
pressions and Experiences (1896), Imaginary 
Interviews (1910), from the “Easy Chair,” and 
A Little Girl among the Old Masters (1884), 
with sketches by Mildred Howells. His Life of 
Hayes was published in 1876. Howells edited and 
introduced a series, Choice Autobiographies (8 
vols., 1877), for Houghton, and performed a 
like service for Great Modern American Stories 
(1920), an anthology, issued by Boni & Live- 
right 

Howells’ later life was uneventful. For about 
six months (1891-92) he edited the Cosmopoli¬ 
tan Magazine . Gifts of academic degrees and 
offers of academic posts were frequent. He 
was first president of the American Academy of 
Arts and Letters, serving in that office until 
his death. As no man in youth had been more 
reverent toward his elders, no man in age was 
more generous to youthful aspiration. A distin¬ 
guished assembly, of which President Taft was 
one, gathered at Sherry’s in New York in 1912 
to honor his seventy-fifth anniversary. His fame, 
never clamorous even in America, filtered grad¬ 
ually into Britain, and in time penetrated the 
literary consciousness in Europe everywhere. 
Trips to England and the Continent, still later, to 
St. Augustine, Fla., alleviated the burden of the 


years. He owned estates at Kittery Point and 
at York Harbor, Me. He had two daughters 
and a son. The Venetian daughter, Winifred, 
died in 1889; the younger sister Mildred, artist 
and writer, cheered the loneliness that followed 
her mother’s death in 1910. The son, John Mead 
Howells, became an architect of distinction; two 
grandsons were the peculiar and unrivaled joy 
of Howells’ old age. 

True poet in late and scant moments, and 
everywhere and always a copious and winning 
talker, Howells will be mainly remembered as a 
realist, the purveyor and upholder of truth in 
fiction. Like two other Americans born, Henry 
James and Edith Wharton, and unlike many, if 
not most, Europeans, he stands for a realism that 
takes its key from character and taste and culti¬ 
vation in the realist, using these helps, not, final¬ 
ly, to pervert the result, but, initially, to further 
and enrich the process. On two not unlikely as¬ 
sumptions, that realism, and that this form of 
realism, should prevail, his high distinction in 
the world of letters is secure; a place of honor 
will be his without debate. He was an ingrained 
and, in essentials, an orthodox moralist, but he 
eluded the obloquies of the part by assuming, not 
enforcing, the fundamentals and reserving both 
his force and his space for the expansion or the 
retrenchment of applications. Perhaps his high¬ 
est quality was an undaunted and untemporizing 
good faith, which, having once adopted a princi¬ 
ple, such as reality in fiction or equality in eco¬ 
nomics, was prepared, first, to let it go all the 
way, and, second, to go all the way with it. This 
made him in certain points a radical extremist, 
but otherwise he remained a conservative, the 
type of conservative which is produced by the 
superposition of an intricate Cambridge gentle¬ 
man upon a strong and simple-souled Ohio boy. 
The man in later life had to call the boy to his 
aid to circumvent the gentleman who, admirable 
in most respects, had what Howells chose to 
consider as the artist’s and humorist’s undesir¬ 
able trick of setting literature above humanity. 
A plentiful and varied humor, rising to wit or 
broadening to farce, humanized and American¬ 
ized a character that might otherwise have lost 
virility in daintiness. He had convictions which 
he could set forth at times with biting vigor, yet 
he had likewise an intelligence that loved to 
hover or to swim between alternatives and to 
finger possibilities with a tentatively gracious 
hand. He carried to his grave one unerring 
sign of sterling character, the affection of a gen¬ 
eration that had put aside his manners and ideals. 

[The chief sources for Howells* life are the Life in 
Letters of William Dean Howells (a vols., 1928), ed- 


3 10 



Howison 

ited by his daughter Mildred Howells, and the auto¬ 
biographies mentioned above, to which My Year in a 
Log Cabin (1893) and the novel New Leaf Mills (1913) 
may be added. William Dean Howells is the common 
title of three critical studies by Alexander Harvey 
(1917), Delmar G. Cooke (1922), and Oscar W. Fir¬ 
kins (1924) ; the last two contain bibliographies. See 
also Cambridge Hist, of Am. Lit. (1917-21), III, 77- 
85, and bibliography, IV, 663-66.] 0 . W. F. 

HOWISON, GEORGE HOLMES (Nov. 29, 
1834-Dec. 31, 1916)* philosopher, the son of 
Robert and Eliza (Holmes) Howison, was bom 
in Montgomery County, Md. He obtained his 
undergraduate education at Marietta College, 
Ohio, where he received the degree of B.A. in 
1852. He then spent three years in Lane Theo¬ 
logical Seminary, Cincinnati, graduating in 1855. 
He did not enter the ministry, however, but in¬ 
stead spent the next nine years in rather desul¬ 
tory secondary school teaching at various places 
in Ohio and Massachusetts. On Nov. 25, 1863, 
he married Lois Thompson Caswell of Norton, 
Mass. From 1864 to 1866 he was assistant pro¬ 
fessor of mathematics in Washington Univer¬ 
sity, St. Louis. But mathematics no more than 
the ministry was able to satisfy him (although 
he brought out a Treatise on Analytic Geometry 
in 1869) and he threw himself temporarily into 
political economy, acting as Tileston Professor 
in Washington University, 1866-69. During 
these years in St. Louis he was a member of the 
remarkable group headed by Henry C. Brok- 
meyer, William Torrey Harris, and Denton J. 
Snider [ qq.v.~\ , and under their inspiring influ¬ 
ence he plunged into philosophy. Somewhat late 
in discovering his central interest, Howison 
brought to his new study a maturity of thought 
and experience which carried him rapidly for¬ 
ward. He became professor of logic and phi¬ 
losophy of science at the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology, 1871-79, and was lecturer on 
ethics at Harvard, 1879-80. From 1880 to 1882 
he studied in Europe, chiefly at the University 
of Berlin. On his return he was lecturer in phi¬ 
losophy at the University of Michigan, 1883- 
84, and in the latter year became head of the 
newly established department of philosophy in 
the University of California, where he was to 
remain for twenty-five years, retiring as pro¬ 
fessor emeritus in 1909. Absent-minded as phi¬ 
losophers are proverbially supposed to be, but 
ardent and warm-hearted, Howison taught phi¬ 
losophy with a religious zeal. He built up a 
strong department at California; among his 
students were Mezes, Rieber, McGilvary, Bake- 
well, and Love joy, through whom he exercised 
a wide influence on American philosophy. His 
pet creation was the Philosophical Union in 
Berkeley, devoted to public discussion, and 


Howland 

drawing almost annually noted philosophers 
from the Eastern states; its most important 
meeting was that at which occurred the debate 
of Royce, Howison, Mezes, and Le Conte (see 
Josiah Royce, The Conception of God , 1897, with 
comments by Le Conte, Howison, and Mezes). 
Howison’s chief published work was The Lim¬ 
its of Evolution and Other Essays Ilustrating 
the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Idealism 
(1901; 2nd ed., 1904). He upheld a form of 
personal idealism similar to that of Borden P. 
Bowne [q.vJ] but reached quite independently. 
A warm opponent of absolutism, which he 
deemed a denial of the moral will, he was in 
many ways a forerunner of William James 
[q.v.] but was both less original and less daring. 

[Geo. M. Stratton in Cal. Alumni Fortnightly, Jan. 
27, 1917 ; J. W. Leonard, ed., Men of America (1908); 
Who's Who in America, 1916-17; San Francisco Chron¬ 
icle, Jan. 1,1917.] E. S. B—s. 

HOWLAND, ALFRED CORNELIUS 

(Feb. 12, 1838-Mar. 17, 1909), artist, was the 
son of Aaron Prentiss and Huldah (Burke) 
Howland, and the direct descendant of John 
Howland, one of the first settlers in New Eng¬ 
land. His father was an architect and builder. 
He was born at Walpole, N. H., and received his 
education at the Walpole Academy. After work¬ 
ing for a time in the shop of an engraver in Bos¬ 
ton, he left to go to New York to study art. His 
real goal was Dusseldorf, Germany. There he 
spent a year in the academy under Andreas Mul¬ 
ler, then for two years he worked in the studio 
of Albert Flamm. Finally he went to Paris, 
where he worked in private studios, especially 
that of Emile Lambinet. On his return to Amer¬ 
ica he settled in New York City, where he main¬ 
tained his winter studio. At one time he taught 
art at Cooper Union. He was made an associate 
of the National Academy of Design in the sev¬ 
enties and in 1882 he became a member. 

Howland was not an artist of outstanding abil¬ 
ity, and his artistic problems were simple. His 
work, none the less, had sensitiveness and dig¬ 
nity. He painted occasional pictures of historical 
interest, such as “The Fight Between the Kear- 
sarge and the Alabama” which is owned by the 
Naval Academy at Annapolis, and “The Yale 
Fence” which was given to Yale College by 
Chauncey M. Depew. He also painted a number 
of character studies. The major part of his work 
was concerned with the presentation of quiet 
ponds, and roads, and streams. The influence of 
the Barbizon school and of the Impressionists is 
distinctly noticeable in his paintings. He was a 
man of gentle moods—gay, kindly, and sensitive 
—and his pictures reflected his spirit. It is char- 

I 



Howland 

acteristic of him that he was one of the few Aca¬ 
demicians who were not hostile to the early exhi¬ 
bitions of the Impressionists. Late in life How¬ 
land established a winter home in Pasadena, Cal., 
where he died. Summers he had spent in Ver¬ 
mont and New Hampshire, and in Williamstown, 
N. Y. He had married, on Jan. 26, 1871, Clara 
Ward, by whom he had two children. 

[Chas. De Kay, Illustrated Cat. of Oil Paintings by 
the Late Alfred Cornelius Howland, N. A. (1910), 
with biographical sketch; Franklyn Howland, A Brief 
Geneal. and Biog . Hist . of Arthur, Henry, and John 
Howland and Their Descendants (1885) ; C. E. Clement 
and Laurence Hutton, Artists of the Nineteenth Cen¬ 
tury and Their Works (ed. 1885) J Am. Art News, Mar, 
27 ,1909; Geo. Aldrich, Walpole as It Was and as It Is 
< l88 °)d K.H.A. 

HOWLAND, EMILY (Nov. 20, 1827-June 
29,1929), educator, reformer, was born at Sher¬ 
wood, N. Y., the only daughter of Slocum and 
Hannah (Tallcot) Howland. Her grandparents 
had been prominent among the Quaker pioneers 
who settled the eastern shore of Lake Cayuga 
some thirty years earlier. Her father was a man 
of many interests, owning several farms and en¬ 
gaging in the wool and grain trade on the lake. 
The community observed strict Quaker disci¬ 
pline and discussed in meeting the evils of war, 
intemperance, and slavery. Women took free 
part in the discussions and some would buy no 
goods produced by slave labor. Emily Howland 
was sent to good local schools and then to Miss 
Grew’s school for girls in Philadelphia. At six¬ 
teen she was at home again, still studying and 
reading whatever came her way. Her father 
took the National Anti-Slavery Standard and she 
agonized over slavery. Finally, in 1857, she went 
to Washington to teach in Miss Miner’s normal 
school for colored girls. During the Civil War 
she helped organize the Freedman’s Village at 
Camp Todd for refugee slaves, nursing through 
a smallpox epidemic and teaching school day 
and night. After the war, her father bought for 
her a tract of land in Northumberland County, 
Va. Thither she transported destitute families 
and there she boldly opened a colored school, 
visiting later neighboring districts and starting 
other schools. Her own school she supported for 
fifty years until the state of Virginia took it over. 

Her interest spread rapidly to colored schools 
throughout the South and to other educational 
institutions. Many of these she visited and to 
all she became a generous and understanding 
friend. In 1871 she helped found the Sherwood 
Select School (later the Emily Howland School) 
in her native village and in 1882 she assumed 
financial responsibility for it, erecting a new 
building and taking its teachers into her own 
household, an arrangement which she maintained 


Howland 

until 1927, when she relinquished the school to 
the state. In that year, the University of the 
State of New York conferred on her the degree 
of LittD. for service to education. She had then 
been patron, teacher, or director in thirty schools. 
She had ardor to spare for other causes and a 
gift for terse and forcible speech. For years she 
was president of the county Woman’s Suffrage 
Association and coworker with Susan B. An¬ 
thony and Anna H. Shaw in the general suffrage 
movement. She took part in temperance agita¬ 
tion and other enterprises for social betterment 
and in her last years she was a tireless champion 
of international peace. From 1891 until her 
death she was a director of the Aurora National 
Bank. Genial and humorous, she loved travel, 
flowers, and gaieties, and deplored the asceticism 
of her Quaker youth, choosing to attend a Uni¬ 
tarian church whenever it was possible. Yet the 
causes to which she gave her life were those of 
which she had first heard as a child at home and 
in the Friends’ meeting-house near Sherwood. 

[Emily Howland's letters and diaries are preserved 
by her niece, Miss Isabel Howland of Sherwood, N. Y., 
to whom the writer is indebted for most of the material 
in this article. For printed sources see Who's Who in 
America, 1928-29; Genevieve Parkhurst, article in the 
Pictorial Review, Sept. 1928, inaccurate in some details; 
Emily Howland, “Early Hist, of Friends in Cayuga 
County, N. Y.,” in Cayuga County Hist. Soc. Colls., II 
(1882), 49-90; Franklyn Howland, A Brief Geneal. 
and Biog. Hist . of Arthur, Henry, and John Howland, 
and Their Descendants (1885); F. E. Willard and M. 
A. Livermore, A Woman of the Century (1893) J N. Y. 
Times, June 30, 1929; and Auburn Advertiser-Journal, 
July 1, 3, 1929-] L.R.L. 

HOWLAND, GARDINER GREENE (Sept. 
4, 1787-Nov. 9, 1851), merchant, and his broth¬ 
er, Samuel Shaw (Aug. 15, 1790-Feb. 9, 1853), 
were prominent among the descendants of John 
Howland of the Mayflower . They were bom in 
Norwich, Conn., the sons of Joseph and Lydia 
Bill Howland. The father, a prominent ship¬ 
owner and merchant, moved to New York with 
his family shortly after 1800. Gardiner received 
his early commercial training in his father’s busi¬ 
ness and with LeRoy, Bayard & McEvers (later 
LeRoy, Bayard & Company). His marriage to 
Louisa, daughter of William Edgar, on Dec. 16, 
1812, brought him capital and credit for an inde¬ 
pendent start. In 1816 he and his younger broth¬ 
er formed the house of G. G. & S. Howland. 
Beginning with a schooner in the Matanzas 
trade, the firm made rapid progress. In 1825 the 
Howlands agreed to build the frigate Liberator 
for the revolutionary Greeks for about $250,000, 
while LeRoy, Bayard & Company were to build 
the Hope, for a similar sum. The frigates cost 
nearly double the original amount estimated; 
only one reached the Greeks, and the whole af- 


3 1 * 



Howland 

fair aroused popular indignation as “a bare¬ 
faced grab game” on the part of the two houses. 
The following year saw the failure of the sons 
of William Bayard [q.v.], and the Howlands re¬ 
placed LeRoy, Bayard & Company in the pri¬ 
macy of New York commercial circles. While 
trading with all parts of the world, they special¬ 
ized in the commerce with Latin America. In 
almost every port from Vera Cruz and Havana 
around to Valparaiso and Mazatlan there were 
agents in their service and ships bearing their 
flag. They ran two lines of packets to Venezuela, 
where they had a special hold on the trade 
through an understanding with President Paez, 
and their mixed cargoes to the Pacific ports were 
sometimes worth a quarter of a million. In 1834 
the elder Howlands retired from active direction 
of the firm, retaining only a special interest. The 
control descended to Gardiners son, William 
Edgar Howland, and to their nephew, William 
H. Aspinwall [q.v.]. The senior Howland be¬ 
came interested in railroads, at first in the New 
York & Harlem, and more particularly in the 
Hudson River Railroad. He was one of the prin¬ 
cipal promoters of the latter road and was one of 
the thirteen original directors in 1847 ( Hunfs 
Merchant’s Magazine , March 1850, p. 281). His 
fortune, estimated at a half million in 1845 
(Moses Y. Beach, Wealth and Biography of the 
Wealthy Citizens of New York City, 1845), was 
reckoned at twice that amount at the time of his 
death, while Samuel was also rated as a mil¬ 
lionaire. In politics he was a Whig. After the 
death of his first wife in 1826, he married three 
years later Louisa Meredith, the reigning belle 
of Baltimore. Much of his time was spent at his 
“noble farm” at Flushing. He died suddenly of 
heart disease at his home on Washington Square 
upon hearing of the death of a friend. Scoville 
says that he realized his sole ambition, to be a 
“Prince upon ’Change,” but Scoville and the 
obituary writers dwelt more upon his business 
success than upon any charitable qualities he 
may have possessed. 

[The most complete account of Howland is in Jos. 
A. Scoville, The Old Merchants of N. Y. City (4 
vols., 1863-66), I, 302—13, and passim, a work which 
contains frequent inaccuracies. A short sketch, with 
genealogical details, is in Franklyn Howland, A Brief 
Geneal . and Biog. Hist . of Arthur, Henry, and John 
Howland, and their Descendants (1885), pp. 356, 380. 
Both sides of the Greek frigate episode will be found m 
Scoville, op. cit II, 174—82, and in William Bayard, 
Jr,, Exposition of the Conduct of the Two Houses of 
G. G. & S. Howland and LeRoy, Bayard & Company 
(1826). There are frequent references, chiefly gastro- 
nomical, to Howland in The Diary of Philip Hone (2 
vols., 1889), ed. by Bayard Tuckerman. The New York 
Evening Post and Jour, of Commerce for Nov. 10, 1851, 
contain short obituaries.] R. G. A. 


Howland 

HOWLAND, JOHN (Feb. 3, 1873-June 20, 

1926), pediatrician, was born in New York City, 
the son of Judge Henry E. Howland, a descend¬ 
ant of John Howland of the Mayflower com¬ 
pany, and Sarah Louise Miller, of a well-known 
New York family. He spent his boyhood in New 
York City; studied at the Cutler School and at 
King’s School, Stamford, Conn., and was finally 
prepared for Yale at Phillips Exeter Academy, 
graduating in 1890 and entering Yale in the class 
of 1894. At college he did not distinguish him¬ 
self as a student but did distinguish himself in 
athletics and in the social life of the institution. 
Choosing a medical career, he entered the New 
York University Medical School, which still 
adhered to the three-year curriculum, and was 
awarded on his graduation in 1897 an internship 
at the Presbyterian Hospital, New York City, 
which he won in competitive examination. On 
the expiration of his appointment in 1899 he be¬ 
came intern for a year at the New York Found¬ 
ling Hospital and there came into contact with 
the most progressive and stimulating personality 
of the time in pediatrics in America, Luther Em¬ 
mett Holt [q.v.~\. Completing his service at the 
Foundling Hospital, Howland left for a year’s 
study in Berlin, but soon abandoned Berlin for 
Vienna, where he took the regular courses in 
pathology and clinical medicine offered to Amer¬ 
icans. On his return to the United States in 1901, 
he became Holt’s assistant and thus definitely 
embarked on a pediatric career. He rose rapidly 
to a position of prominence as a practitioner and 
consultant and became a member of the visiting 
staff of the Babies Hospital, St. Vincent’s Hos¬ 
pital, Willard Parker Hospital, as well as path¬ 
ologist and assistant attending physician to the 
New York Foundling Hospital and instructor 
and associate in pediatrics at the College of Phy¬ 
sicians and Surgeons. In 1903 he married Susan 
Morris Sanford of New Haven, Conn. 

In 1908 Howland was appointed head of the 
children’s clinic at Bellevue Hospital, the most 
important post of the kind at the time in New 
York City. A lucrative practice and a great repu¬ 
tation as a consultant seemed assured. Such a 
career, however, was not his ambition. In 1910 
he accepted a call to the professorship of pedi¬ 
atrics in the reorganized medical school of Wash¬ 
ington University, St. Louis, and in preparation 
left for Europe for a year’s study under one of 
the most distinguished pediatricians of the time, 
Czerny, in Strassburg. This year furnished him 
with the foundation of his ideas in infant feeding 
and in the nutritional disorders of infancy and 
the conception of what a modern pediatric clinic 
should be. Returning to America in 1911 he as- 



Howland 

sumed his duties in St. Louis, but remained only 
one year. In 1912 he accepted a call to succeed 
Von Pirquet as professor of pediatrics at the 
Johns Hopkins Medical School and held that 
post until the time of his death. 

Howland's scientific career began with the 
publication in 1904 of a study of the lesions of 
dysentery. At first his interests seem to have 
been mainly clinical and pathological but soon 
turned with the current of the time to the chemi¬ 
cal aspects of disease. Among his most note¬ 
worthy contributions were those on the effects of 
chloroform poisoning on the liver, the measure¬ 
ment of the chemical and energy metabolism of 
sleeping children, the acidosis accompanying ''in¬ 
testinal intoxication" and numerous studies on 
infantile tetany and rickets. His investigations 
in regard to diarrheal acidosis, tetany, and rick¬ 
ets represent his most important scientific work. 
Czerny had advanced the hypothesis that there 
was an acidosis associated with "intestinal in¬ 
toxication." Howland and Marriott, putting 
practical use to the conceptions of Lawrence 
Henderson, proved the existence of an acidosis 
in intestinal intoxication and showed that it was 
not an acetone body acidosis. In infantile tetany 
Howland and Marriott showed that the calcium 
of the blood was diminished, obtaining results 
identical with those which William G. Mac- 
Callum and Carl Voegtlin had previously shown 
were characteristic of tetany in the parathyro- 
idectomized animal, and made the treatment with 
calcium chloride an accepted procedure. How¬ 
land's great contribution to rickets, in which 
Kramer also participated, was the discovery that 
the disease was characterized by a diminution of 
the inorganic phosphorus of the blood. The dis¬ 
covery by others that rickets could be produced 
in rats through varying the calcium and phos¬ 
phorus in the diet led Howland and Kramer to 
advance the principle that the deposition of lime 
salts in the body is dependent upon a solubility 
product relationship between the calcium and 
phosphorus in the circulating fluids. With Ed¬ 
wards A. Park, Howland gave dramatic proof of 
the effectiveness of cod-liver oil in rickets. The 
last papers of Howland represent a study of 
the principles governing lime salt deposition in 
bones. 

To Howland's own mind the development of 
his clinic at Johns Hopkins was his greatest ac¬ 
complishment The children's hospital at the 
university, the Harriet Lane Home, had just 
been completed when he took the professorship 
of pediatrics and for some time the number of 
patients in the wards did not exceed twenty. In 
the fourteen years of his leadership he saw his 


Howley 

clinic grow to be the foremost in the country and 
the first pediatric clinic, in the full sense of the 
term, which the country possessed. 

[This biography is based largely upon the sketch -of 
Howland in Science, July 23, 1926, by the same author. 
See also Medicine, Aug. 1926; Jour . Am. Medic . Asso., 
June 26, 1926; Quarter-Century Record, Class of 1894, 
Yale Coll. (1922) ; Franklyn Howland, A Brief Gened, 
and Biog : Hist, of Arthur, Henry, and John Howland, 
and Their Descendants (1885); Who's Who in Amer¬ 
ica, 1026-27; the Sun (Baltimore), June 21, 1926.] 

E.A. P. 

HOWLEY, RICHARD (1740-1784), Revo¬ 
lutionary patriot, is said to have been bom in 
Liberty County, Ga., and to have studied law and 
practised in St. John's Parish. In 1779 he be¬ 
came a member of the Georgia legislature, es¬ 
tablished under the provisions of the constitution 
of 1777, and in January 1780 he was elected gov¬ 
ernor by the same body, which also selected four 
men to serve as an executive council. On Feb. 
5, 1780, the executive council met at Heard’s 
Fort, requested Howley to take his seat in the 
Continental Congress, to which he had been late¬ 
ly elected, and vested George Wells, president of 
the council, and certain associate members, with 
the executive functions. He set out for Phila¬ 
delphia, accompanied by most of the civil and 
military officers of the republican government. 
Georgia was thereby left with only the semblance 
of a government and with "scarcely a regiment 
of soldiers to defend its territory.” Howley took 
the archives of the state to New Bern, N. C. 
They were subsequently removed to Baltimore 
and remained there until the close of the Revo¬ 
lution. 

As a member of the Continental Congress 
Howley performed a service of some importance 
by issuing, along with George Walton and Wil¬ 
liam Few (these three being Georgia's repre¬ 
sentatives in that body), a pamphlet under the, 
title Observations upon the Effects of Certain 
Late Political Suggestions by the Delegates of 
Georgia (Philadelphia, 1781). The occasion of 
this brochure was the current discussion of pos¬ 
sible bases of peace with Great Britain. It was 
being bruited about that since Great Britain had 
conquered Georgia and South Carolina, she 
might fairly insist upon retaining them, while 
recognizing the freedom of the other revolting 
colonies. The Observations protested against 
this suggestion. In a letter of Jan. 2, 1781, to 
Henry Laurens, American minister to France, 
Howley said that the sacrifice of Georgia and 
South Carolina, in addition to Florida, would 
result in Great Britain's retaining in her north¬ 
ern and southern possessions in America "the 
greatest part of the wealth and commerce in that 
continent from which wisdom and policy direct 



Howry 

[she] should be entirely expelled’’ (Northen, 
post, I, 178). Upon the conclusion of peace, 
Howley returned to the South, became chief jus¬ 
tice of Georgia (1782-83), and died in Savannah 
in December 1784. 

[See W. B. Stevens, A Hist, of Ga., vol. II (1859) ; 
C. C. Jones, Biog. Sketches of the Delegates from Ga. 
to the Continental Cong. (1891) ; W. J. Northen, Men 
of Mark in Ga., vol. I (1907) ; Hugh McCall, The Hist, 
of Ga. (a vols., 1811-16) ; Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928). 
In the Observations Howley's name is spelled without 
an e. Elsewhere it appears as it is given here.] 

R. P B 

HOWRY, CHARLES BOWEN (May 14, 
1844-July 20, 1928), jurist, bom in Oxford, 
Miss., was the son of Judge James M. and 
Narcissa (Bowen) Howry and was descended, 
through both parents, from Revolutionary fami¬ 
lies of Virginia and South Carolina. His father 
was a prosperous lawyer and a founder of the 
University of Mississippi. Howry at the out¬ 
break of the Civil War was a student at the Uni¬ 
versity of Mississippi, but in March 1862 he put 
aside his studies to enlist as a private in the Con¬ 
federate army. He participated in nine battles 
(Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Missionary 
Ridge, Resaca, New Hope Church, Peachtree 
Creek, Atlanta, Jonesboro, and Franldin) and 
many skirmishes; by 1864 he had risen to the 
rank of first lieutenant of Company A of the 
29th Mississippi Infantry and had fought with¬ 
out injury until the battle of Franklin, when he 
was severely wounded. Upon his return to Mis¬ 
sissippi, he completed his academic and legal 
education at the University (LL.B., 1867) and 
settled in Oxford, where he practised law and 
assisted in the reconstruction of his state. Elect¬ 
ed to the lower house of the state legislature in 
the autumn of 1880, he served four years, then in 
April 1886 he was appointed United States dis¬ 
trict attorney for the northern district of Mis¬ 
sissippi, a post which he held through the first 
administration of President Cleveland. As a re¬ 
ward for his services as Democratic national 
committeeman during the presidential campaign 
of 1892, Cleveland offered to appoint him to a 
mission to South America but he declined the 
offer. He was then offered, in August 1893, an 
appointment as assistant attorney-general of the 
United States in charge of the defense of the In¬ 
dian depredation claims. Howry accepted this 
post and removed to Washington where he was 
to remain for the rest of his life. Four years 
later, on Jan. 28, 1897, Cleveland appointed him 
an associate justice of the Court of Claims. 

Howry's work as an associate justice of the 
Court of Claims, which extended over a period 
of eighteen years, was marked throughout his 
tenure of office by his detailed learning in the 


Howze 

general field of Anglo-American law and in the 
special jurisprudence of the Court, which his 
earliest opinions displayed. By temperament he 
was naturally industrious and his decisions are 
frequently monographs on points of special 
knowledge sometimes remote from the law. He 
delivered many notable decisions, of which per¬ 
haps the most important are those rendered in 
the French spoliation claims, the Chickasaw land 
case ( Ayres vs. United States and Chickasaw 
Nation, 42 Ct. Cls., 385), and the concurring 
opinion in Lincoln vs. United States (50 Ct. Cls., 
70) in which the wide extent of his knowledge 
of the Civil War is evident. President Wilson 
twice offered Howry the chief justiceship of the 
Court of Claims, but Howry each time refused to 
accept it because of an attached condition requir¬ 
ing him to retire on attaining an eligible age. He 
voluntarily retired, however, on Mar. 15, 1915. 
The remainder of his life was devoted to a gen¬ 
eral practice of a consulting and advisory na¬ 
ture. He was married three times: to Edmonia 
Beverley Carter, on Jan. 14, 1869; to Harriet 
Holt Harris, on July 21, 1880; and to Sallie 
Behethaland (Bird) Smith, on July 25,1900. He 
had seven children by his first two marriages. 
All of his life he remained a stanch Presbyterian 
and Democrat, a conservative and an advocate of 
sound money. He was of small stature and had a 
delicate constitution. He died of heart failure in 
Washington, in the early morning of July 20, 
1928, and was buried at Oxford, Miss. 

[See Who’s Who in America, 1928-29; the Confed. 
Veteran, Oct. 1928; 50 Ct. Cls., xv; 66 Ct. Cls., xxxiii; 
E. T. Sykes, '‘Walthall’s Brigade,” Miss. Hist. Soc. 
Pubs., Centenary ser., vol. I (1916); and the Evening 
Star (Washington, D. C), July 20, 1928. Howry’s de¬ 
cisions are reported in 32-50 Ct. Cls.] jj. C. 

HOWZE, ROBERT LEE (Aug. 22, 1864- 
Sept 19, 1926), soldier, was bom at Overton, 
Rusk County, Tex., at a period of the Civil War 
when the name of the Confederate leader filled 
the hearts and minds of the Southern people. His 
parents, James Augustus and Amanda Hamilton 
(Brown) Howze, sent their son through Hub¬ 
bard College, from which he graduated in 1883. 
He entered West Point the same year and was 
commissioned a second lieutenant of cavalry five 
years later—one year of ill-health extending the 
usual academic period. A natural love and un¬ 
derstanding of horses carried him soon after his 
graduation to the 6th Cavalry at Fort Wingate, 
N. Mex., and thereafter, until appointment as a 
general officer many years later, he passed 
through all grades of the mounted arm, reaching 
a colonelcy, May 15, 1917- While still a lieu¬ 
tenant, he participated in the Brule Sioux Indian 
campaign of 1890-91 and was awarded a medal 



Howry 

[she] should be entirely expelled” (Northen, 
post, I, 178). Upon the conclusion of peace, 
Howley returned to the South, became chief jus¬ 
tice of Georgia (1782-83), and died in Savannah 
in December 1784, 

[See W. B. Stevens, A Hist, of Ga., vol. II (1859) I 
C. C. Jones, Biog. Sketches of the Delegates from Ga. 
to the Continental Cong. (1891) ; W. J. Northen, Men 
of Mark in Ga., vol. I (1907) ; Hugh McCall, The Hist, 
of Ga. (2 vols., 1811-16); Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928). 
In the Observations Howley’s name is spelled without 
an e. Elsewhere it appears as it is given here.] 

R, P B 

HOWRY, CHARLES BOWEN (May 14, 
1844-July 20, 1928), jurist, born in Oxford, 
Miss., was the son of Judge James M. and 
Narcissa (Bowen) Howry and was descended, 
through both parents, from Revolutionary fami¬ 
lies of Virginia and South Carolina. His father 
was a prosperous lawyer and a founder of the 
University of Mississippi. Howry at the out¬ 
break of the Civil War was a student at the Uni¬ 
versity of Mississippi, but in March 1862 he put 
aside his studies to enlist as a private in the Con¬ 
federate army. He participated in nine battles 
(Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Missionary 
Ridge, Resaca, New Hope Church, Peachtree 
Creek, Atlanta, Jonesboro, and Franklin) and 
many skirmishes; by 1864 he had risen to the 
rank of first lieutenant of Company A of the 
29th Mississippi Infantry and had fought with¬ 
out injury until the battle of Franklin, when he 
was severely wounded. Upon his return to Mis¬ 
sissippi, he completed his academic and legal 
education at the University (LL.B., 1867) and 
settled in Oxford, where he practised law and 
assisted in the reconstruction of his state. Elect¬ 
ed to the lower house of the state legislature in 
the autumn of 1880, he served four years, then in 
April 1886 he was appointed United States dis¬ 
trict attorney for the northern district of Mis¬ 
sissippi, a post which he held through the first 
administration of President Cleveland. As a re¬ 
ward for his services as Democratic national 
committeeman during the presidential campaign 
of 1892, Cleveland offered to appoint him to a 
mission to South America but he declined the 
offer. He was then offered, in August 1893* sn 
appointment as assistant attorney-general of the 
United States in charge of the defense of the In¬ 
dian depredation claims. Howry accepted this 
post and removed to Washington where he was 
to remain for the rest of his life. Four years 
later, on Jan. 28, 1897, Cleveland appointed him 
an associate justice of the Court of Claims. 

Howry’s work as an associate justice of the 
Court of Claims, which extended over a period 
of eighteen years, was marked throughout his 
tenure of office by his detailed learning in the 


Howze 

general field of Anglo-American law and in the 
special jurisprudence of the Court, which his 
earliest opinions displayed. By temperament he 
was naturally industrious and his decisions are 
frequently monographs on points of special 
knowledge sometimes remote from the law. He 
delivered many notable decisions, of which per¬ 
haps the most important are those rendered in 
the French spoliation claims, the Chickasaw land 
case (Ayres vs. United States and Chickasaw 
Nation, 42 Ct. Cls., 385), and the concurring 
opinion in Lincoln vs. United States (50 Ct. Cls., 
70) in which the wide extent of his knowledge 
of the Civil War is evident. President Wilson 
twice offered Howry the chief justiceship of the 
Court of Claims, but Howry each time refused to 
accept it because of an attached condition requir¬ 
ing him to retire on attaining an eligible age. He 
voluntarily retired, however, on Mar. 15, 1915. 
The remainder of his life was devoted to a gen¬ 
eral practice of a consulting and advisory na¬ 
ture. He was married three times: to Edmonia 
Beverley Carter, on Jan. 14, 1869; to Harriet 
Holt Harris, on July 21, 1880; and to Sallie 
Behethaland (Bird) Smith, on July 25,1900. He 
had seven children by his first two marriages. 
All of his life he remained a stanch Presbyterian 
and Democrat, a conservative and an advocate of 
sound money. He was of small stature and had a 
delicate constitution. He died of heart failure in 
Washington, in the early morning of July 20, 
1928, and was buried at Oxford, Miss. 

[See Who*s Who in America, 1928-29; the Confed. 
Veteran, Oct. 1928; 50 Ct. Cls., xv ; 66 Ct. Cls., xxxiii; 
E. T. Sykes, “Walthall’s Brigade,” Miss. Hist. Soc. 
Pubs., Centenary ser., vol. I (1916) ; and the Evening 
Star (Washington, D. C.), July 20, 1928. Howry’s de¬ 
cisions are reported in 32-50 Ct. Cls .] H. C. 

HOWZE, ROBERT LEE (Aug. 22, 1864- 
Sept. 19, 1926), soldier, was bom at Overton, 
Rusk County, Tex., at a period of the Civil War 
when the name of the Confederate leader filled 
the hearts and minds of the Southern people. His 
parents, James Augustus and Amanda Hamilton 
(Brown) Howze, sent their son through Hub¬ 
bard College, from which he graduated in 1883. 
He entered West Point the same year and was 
commissioned a second lieutenant of cavalry five 
years later—one year of ill-health extending the 
usual academic period. A natural love and un¬ 
derstanding of horses carried him soon after his 
graduation to the 6th Cavalry at Fort Wingate, 
N. Mex., and thereafter, until appointment as a 
general officer many years later, he passed 
through all grades of the mounted arm, reaching 
a colonelcy, May 15, 19 * 7 - While still a lieu¬ 
tenant, he participated in the Brule Sioux Indian 
campaign of 1890-91 and was awarded a medal 



Howze Hoxie 


of honor for gallantry in repulsing a hostile In¬ 
dian attack on White River, S. Dak., Jan. i, 1891. 
In the year 1894 he was in Chicago with his regi¬ 
ment in connection with railroad labor strikes, 
and at the outbreak of the Spanish War in 1898, 
he accompanied the 6th Cavalry to Cuba and 
took part in the battle of Santiago, where gallant 
conduct won for him a silver star citation in 
orders. In the following year he was appointed 
lieutenant-colonel, 34th Volunteer Infantry, and 
again was awarded a silver star citation for gal¬ 
lantry in action against the Philippine insurgent 
General Tinio, in Northern Luzon. His ener¬ 
getic pursuit of the enemy through dangerous 
and difficult country led to the liberation of a 
large number of Spanish and American prisoners, 
among the latter being Lieutenant-Commander 
Gilmore of the United States navy. In recog¬ 
nition of this exploit, Howze was appointed a 
brigadier-general of volunteers. 

During the years from 1901 to 1904 Howze 
served as major in the Porto Rican regiment; 
was commandant of cadets at the United States 
Military Academy, 1905-09; commanded the 
Porto Rican regiment until 1912; and partici¬ 
pated with marked credit in the Pershing expe¬ 
dition into Mexico in the year 1916. With the 
entry of the United States into the World War, 
he was appointed a brigadier-general, national 
army, and assigned to command the cavalry bri¬ 
gade and division at Fort Bliss, Tex., charged 
with protection of the Mexican border. Some 
months later, as a major-general, he led the 38th 
Division overseas, participating in the Meuse- 
Argonne offensive, Oct. 21--29, 1918. After the 
Armistice, he commanded the 3rd Division on 
its march to the Rhine and as part of the Army 
of Occupation in Germany, until he brought the 
division home in August 1919. He was then as¬ 
signed to command the military district of El 
Paso. On July 3, 1920, he was appointed a per¬ 
manent brigadier-general, and organized and 
trained the 1st Cavalry Division to a state of 
high efficiency. Promoted major-general, Dec. 
30,1922, he remained on duty in the El Paso dis¬ 
trict until 1925, during a period of considerable 
unrest which required unusual tact and discrimi¬ 
nating judgment. He was then transferred to 
command the V Corps Area at Columbus, Ohio, 
where he passed away as the result of a surgical 
operation in his sixty-second year. Howze was 
married, Feb. 24, 1897, to Anne Chiffelle Haw¬ 
kins, the daughter of Gen. Hamilton S. Haw¬ 
kins, a distinguished officer of both the Civil and 
Spanish-American wars. Besides the war dec¬ 
orations already noted, he was awarded by the 
United States the distinguished service medal for 


meritorious and distinguished services in com¬ 
mand of the 3rd Division, and by the Republic of 
France he was awarded the croix de guerre and 
was made a member of the Legion of Honor. 

I Army Register, 1926, 1927; G. W. Cullum, Bio a. 
Reg. . . . U. S. Mil. Acad., vol. IV (1901); F. B. 
Heitman, Hist. Reg. and Diet. of the U . S. Army, vol. I 
(1902); J. T. Dickman, memorial sketch in Ann. Re¬ 
port Asso. Grads. U. S. Mil. Acad., 1927; Who's Who 
in America, 1926-27; Ohio State Jour. (Columbus), 
Sept. 20, 1926; information as to certain facts from 
Mrs. R. L. Howze, Belmont, Mass.] q £ ^ 

HOXIE, ROBERT FRANKLIN (Apr. 29, 
1868-June 22, 1916), economist, was born at 
Edmeston, N. Y., the son of Lucy Peet (Stick- 
ney) and Solomon Hoxie, stock-breeder and im¬ 
porter of Holstein cattle. He studied at Cornell 
University and at the University of Chicago 
(Ph.B., 1893; Ph.D., 1905) ; married Lucy Ben¬ 
nett (1898); learned “how not to teach eco¬ 
nomics” at Cornell College, Iowa (1896-98), 
Washington University, St. Louis (1898-1901), 
Washington and Lee (1901-02), and Cornell 
University (1903-06). He spent a decade as a 
graduate teacher at Chicago (1906-16). In 1914- 
15 he was a special investigator for the United 
States Commission on Industrial Relations. His 
health was never good; he suffered from fits of 
depression, and died by his own hand. 

Hoxie was an inquirer. He could not satisfy 
a demand for honest truth by accepting author¬ 
ity ; he had to test what the books say by reference 
to the facts. Yet he was no devotee of mere de¬ 
scription; he dealt with facts in their relation to 
problems, and demanded both facts and consistent 
theory. He was painstaking in analyzing his 
problem, diligent in gathering data, and pain¬ 
fully conscientious in determining what it all 
meant. In his mind there was endless conflict 
between the cautious student and the bold ad¬ 
venturer. As a student he wanted to inquire into 
all that related to his subject “from the esoteric 
cogitations of the social philosopher down to the 
mud sills of human experience” (“Sociology and 
the Other Social Sciences,” American Journal 
of Sociology, May 1907, p. 746). As an adven¬ 
turer, a cogitation or a sill would tempt him to 
go exploring. 

His development is marked by conscientious 
tarrying and restless wandering. He began by 
teaching and even accepting a mechanistic sys¬ 
tem of economic laws; but he failed to discover 
such a system in industrial America. Instead he 
chanced upon change and sought help in history, 
but found the books a hopeless tangle of rel¬ 
evancy and irrelevancy and the historians dis¬ 
posed to indiscriminate indulgence in mere his¬ 
torical narrative. He was among the first to 
suggest making history a method of analysis, or 


316 



Hoxie 

using a genetic account to explain a contempo¬ 
rary situation (“Historical Method versus His¬ 
torical Narrative,” Journal of Political Econ¬ 
omy, November 1906, p. 568). His suspicion of 
large and comfortable truths, the fascination of 
the world of affairs about him, and a concern 
with the human incidence of industry led him, 
almost without conscious choice, to a study of 
labor. He discovered that there is no unionism, 
there are only varying types of unions; of these 
he elaborated a theory in terms of structure and 
function, his most important contribution; and 
he planned, but did not complete, a comprehen¬ 
sive work on the labor movement. 

In a quarter century (1891-1916) of creative 
effort, Hoxie produced little finished work. A 
few articles, a book on Scientific Management 
and Labor (1915), which he did not want to 
print, and a collection of essays on Trade Union¬ 
ism in the United States (1917), published after 
his death, attest the quality of his workmanship. 
An inveterate scribbler, he wrote primarily to 
clarify his own thought; he found it almost im¬ 
possible to meet his own standards. He cared 
little for public reputation or academic recog¬ 
nition. His students were his public; to him in¬ 
quiry and teaching were inseparable; he was 
forever following the quest wherever it led, in 
utter disregard of academic frontiers, with a 
pack of cubs at his heels. His distinctive work 
was in raising questions, in blazing trails, in 
sending youngsters adventuring. 

[Jour, of Political Econ Nov. 1916, contains several 
articles about Hoxie and his work and a bibliography 
of his published writings. See also Who’s Who in 
America, 1916-17; A. S. Johnson, “Robert Franklin 
Hoxie/* New Republic, July 8, 1916; E. H. Downey’s 
introduction to Hoxie’s Trade Unionism in the U. S . 
(1917); Univ. of Chicago Mag., July 1916; Cornell 
Alumni News, July 1916; Chicago Daily Tribune, June 
* 3 > 1916.] W.H.H. 

HOXIE, VINNIE REAM (Sept. 25, 1847- 
Nov. 20,1914), sculptor, daughter of Robert Lee 
and Lavinia (McDonald) Ream, was born in 
Madison, Wis., then a frontier town. Part of 
her childhood was spent in Washington, D. C., 
where her father had found employment, but the 
family later returned to the West, and she at¬ 
tended Christian College, Columbia, Mo. Here 
she wrote songs which were set to music and 
published. Moving again to Washington with 
her parents during the Civil War, she obtained 
a minor clerkship in the Post Office department 
at the age of fifteen. A friend having taken her 
to the studio of Clark Mills, she laughingly at¬ 
tempted to model a likeness of Mills; the result 
delighted her and others. Keeping her gov¬ 
ernment position, she thenceforth gave all her 
free time to the study of sculpture, chiefly under 


Hoxie 

Mills. She was small, slender, bright-eyed, with 
a wealth of long curls. Her personality was so 
winning, and the art of sculpture was at that time 
so little understood in the United States, that 
within a year, at senatorial solicitation, Presi¬ 
dent Lincoln allowed her to come to the White 
House, giving her daily half-hour sittings, dur¬ 
ing five months. She was reverent, impression¬ 
able, industrious, gifted, but of course without 
sufficient training for the commission which, 
nevertheless, was awarded to her by Congress 
after a competition, to make a full-length marble 
statue of Lincoln for the Rotunda of the Capitol 
A contract was signed Aug. 30, 1866: $5,000 to 
be paid on acceptance of the full-size plaster 
model, and $5,000 on completion of the marble. 
Vinnie Ream was the first of her sex to execute 
sculpture for the United States government; she 
had impressive indorsement, both political and 
military. Armed with Secretary Seward’s letter 
of recommendation to the American diplomatic 
and consular representatives in Europe, the 
young sculptor, accompanied by her parents, 
went to Rome to put the statue into marble. 

In her own country, she had already made 
from life portrait-busts of Thaddeus Stevens and 
others. Abroad, in more sophisticated circles, her 
frontier spirit of independence, coupled with her 
artlessly ingratiating demeanor, proved attrac¬ 
tive. In Paris, she made portraits of Gustave 
Dore and Pere Hyacinthe. According to the 
Reminiscences of Georg Brandes, the Danish 
critic (who pays tribute to her forceful, upright 
character, even while he smiles at her girlish 
vanity), she told him that in order to obtain a 
much-desired commission for a bust of the for¬ 
midable Cardinal Antonelli, she had merely put 
on her most beautiful white gown, and obtaining 
an audience, had proffered her request, which 
was at once granted (1870). The cardinal gave 
her a medallion of Christ, inscribing it to his 
“little friend, Miss Vinnie Ream.” Other in¬ 
cidents attest her popularity. Her marble Lin¬ 
coln,” duly admired abroad, was unveiled with 
imposing ceremonies in the Rotunda in 1871. 
Although neither vigorous nor inspiring, the 
statue is imbued with sincere feeling and holds 
its own among its Capitoline companions as a 
remarkable production from a hand so inexperi¬ 
enced. Later she was awarded another govern¬ 
ment commission after competition: on Jan. 28, 
1875, she signed a twenty-thousand-dollar con¬ 
tract for the heroic bronze statue of Admiral Far- 
ragut now standing in Farragut Square, Wash¬ 
ington, D. G, a work fairly representative of the 
average of its day. 

In 1878, before the completion of the “Far- 


3*7 



Hoxie Hoxie 


ragut,” Vinnie Ream was married to Lieut. 
Richard Leveridge Hoxie, United States army. 
The occasion was brilliant, even for Washington. 
Mrs. Hoxie became one of the popular hostesses 
of the city; for many years she gave up her art, 
only to return to it in later life. To her final 
period belong two works in Statuary Hall: the 
“Gov. Samuel Kirkwood,” presented by the State 
of Iowa, and the “Sequoyah” (a statue of the 
Cherokee halfbreed who invented the Cherokee 
alphabet), the gift of Oklahoma. The model of 
the “Sequoyah,” finished shortly before Mrs. 
Hoxie’s death in Washington, was put into the 
hands of the sculptor George Zolnay. The com¬ 
pleted bronze, placed in 1917, shows a technique 
somewhat more able than that seen in her earlier 
works. In addition to those already mentioned, 
the list of her sitters for portrait-busts or me¬ 
dallions include famous names: General Grant, 
General McClellan, General Fremont; Senator 
Sherman, Peter Cooper, Ezra Cornell, Horace 
Greeley, Liszt, Kaulbach, Spurgeon. Among her 
ideal figures are “The West,” “The Indian Girl/' 
“The Spirit of the Camivil,” “Miriam,” “Sap¬ 
pho.” A bronze copy of the “Sappho” was placed 
over her grave in the National Cemetery at Ar¬ 
lington, Va. 

[R. L. Hoxie, Vinnie Ream (1908), a well-illustrated 
and fairly complete memoir, printed for private dis¬ 
tribution; National Republican , Jan. 8, 1921; C. E. 
Fairman, Arts and Artists of the Capitol (1927) ; Lo- 
rado Taft, The Hist . of Am. Sculpture (enl. ed., 1924) ’> 
Who's Who in America, 1914-15 ; Evening Star (Wash¬ 
ington), Nov. 20, 1914; Washington Post, Nov. 21, 
1914.] A. A. 

HOXIE, WILLIAM DIXIE (July 1, 1866- 
Jan. 12, 1925), marine engineer, inventor, was 
the son of John and Isabelle (Dickinson) Hoxie ; 
his father, a sea-captain, had commanded several 
of the crack clipper ships. William was born in 
Brooklyn, N. Y., and educated in the public 
schools of that city and at Stevens Institute of 
Technology, Hoboken, N. J., from which he 
graduated in 1889 with the degree of mechanical 
engineer. He entered the employ of the Babcock 
& Wilcox Company at once and spent the rest of 
his life in its service, being vice-president 1897- 
1919, president, 1919-24, and vice-chairman 
thereafter until his death. He became interested 
in adapting the Babcock & Wilcox boiler for 
marine use and in furthering its adoption for that 
purpose and organized the marine department of 
the company. The first installations were in 
steamers on the Great Lakes, and in 1896 the 
first in the United States Navy were made in 
the gunboats Annapolis and Marietta; the latter 
accompanied the Oregon in her famous trip from 
San Francisco to Florida via the Straits of 
Magellan at the beginning of the war with Spain. 


The exigencies of that war showed the superi¬ 
ority of water-tube boilers, and since then they 
have been used almost exclusively for war ves¬ 
sels. For many years it could be said that every 
United States battleship and a great many for¬ 
eign ones were fitted with boilers of Hoxie’s de¬ 
sign. He had great engineering aptitude and 
ability and made improvements in the boiler from 
time to time. Since the Babcock & Wilcox boiler 
was not adapted to the extremely light weights 
necessary in torpedo craft and other very highly 
powered vessels, Hoxie selected a well-known 
foreign boiler of the express type, made some 
radical changes and improvements, and produced 
the Babcock & Wilcox express type boiler. Dur¬ 
ing the World War, he presented to the Shipping 
Board the plan which was approved for manu¬ 
facturing Babcock & Wilcox boilers with great 
rapidity. It involved some enlargement of the 
works and the manufacture of new tools and 
equipment The output was increased to three 
boilers per day for the Shipping Board and one 
express boiler per day for the navy; besides other 
work for that service. This rate of production 
involved having under construction at one time, 
in various stages of completion, fifty-four Bab¬ 
cock & Wilcox boilers for the Shipping Board 
and nineteen express boilers for the navy. There 
were ordered more than 1,200 boilers for the 
Shipping Board and more than 300 express boil¬ 
ers for naval destroyers. The output was so rapid 
as to exceed the rate at which the ships were 
building in the great assembly yards at Hog 
Island, Bristol, and Newark, so that orders for 
some were cancelled after the Armistice. This is 
probably the only case on record of the “manu¬ 
facture” of marine boilers. Each of the 1,200 
was like every other, a fact which contributed to 
the rapidity of output. 

Hoxie was thoroughly progressive; an earnest 
advocate of high-pressure superheating, and 
other elements of increased economy and effi¬ 
ciency. He was an enthusiastic yachtsman and 
held certificates as master and engineer. He uti¬ 
lized his yacht, the Idalia, for experiments with 
superheat, oil-burning, and other problems. A 
man of attractive personality, with a wide circle 
of friends, he was very generous in charitable 
benefactions, but always with the stipulation that 
his name should not be mentioned. He was a 
trustee of Stevens Institute of Technology, of 
Webb Institute of Naval Architecture, and of 
the Wilcox Memorial Library of Westerly, R. I. 
In 1892 he married Lavinia Brown of Westerly, 
who with one daughter survived him. His death 
occurred aboard the Southern Cross , on the way 
to Rio de Janeiro. 


318 



Hoy me 

[Jour. Am. Soc. Naval Engineers , May 192s ; Trans. 
Soc. Naval Arch, and Marine Engineers, 1925 ; Marine 
Engineering and Shipping Age, Feb. 1925; Mech. En¬ 
gineering, Mar. 1925; N. Y. Times, Jan. 14, 1925.] 

W.M.M. 

HOYME, GJERMUND (Oct. 8,1847-June 9, 
1902), Lutheran clergyman, was bom in Vestre 
Slidre, Valdres, Hamar, Norway, the son of 
Gjermund Guldbrandsen and Sigrid Christopher- 
sen (Ridste) Hoyme. In 1851 his parents set¬ 
tled in Port Washington, Wis., and in 1855 
moved to Springfield township, near Decorah, 
Iowa. The following year his father died. Early 
inured to hardship, Hoyme matured very rapidly. 
After a bitter spiritual struggle in which he 
eventually found peace for his soul, in 1869 at 
the opening session he enrolled in the Theologi¬ 
cal School established in Marshall, Wis. That 
winter the school was in danger of collapse due 
to the abject despondency of its principal, but 
Hoyme rallied to his principal's support, and is 
credited with saving the institution (see J. M. 
Rohne, Norwegian American Lutheranism up to 
1872 , 1926, p. 193)* Urged by Prof. A. Weenaas 
and others, Hoyme attended the University of 
Wisconsin in 1871-72 as a sub-freshman, and 
then continued his theological studies at Augs¬ 
burg Seminary, Minneapolis, the continuation 
of the Marshall school. Called to Duluth, Minn., 
he was ordained on June 15, 1873, but the con¬ 
gregation broke up within the year and in 1874 
he accepted a call to Menomonie, Wis. This 
same year he married Mrs. Ida Othelia Larsen, 
nee Olsen, whose two children received his fa¬ 
therly affection. In 1876 he became pastor at 
Eau Claire, Wis., where he served until his 
death. 

Having been tested and approved, Hoyme now 
rose rapidly. He served the Norwegian-Danish 
Conference in various capacities until that body 
became a party to the church union by which the 
United Norwegian Lutheran Church of America 
was established in 1890. Hoyme was elected the 
first president of the new body, and for twelve 
years he guided its destinies with a firmness, 
clear-sightedness, and sincerity that put to shame 
all opposition and moulded the loosely knit ele¬ 
ments into a strong and compact body. At his 
death he was mourned as the greatest president 
who up to that time had served the Norwegian 
Lutherans in America. In spite of his many 
duties, he found time to cultivate his interest in 
music and literature. In 1878 he and the Rev. 
L. Lund issued a book of sacred songs, Harpen 
(“The Harp"), of which 20,000 copies were 
sold in a short time. In 1893 he published a 
brochure, Sdoonen (“The Saloon"), of which 
15,000 copies were sold in a few weeks. His 


Hoyt 

greatest spiritual and literary strength lay, how¬ 
ever, in his sermons, which were characterized 
by beauty of diction and homely, earnest elo¬ 
quence. After Hoyme's death selections from his 
sermons and official papers were issued in 1904, 
by Dr. E. Kr. Johnson under the titles, G. Hoyme, 
Prest og Formand (“G. Hoyme, Preacher and 
President”) and I Hvilestunder (“In Moments 
of Rest”). As a pastor, Hoyme had few equals 
among the Norwegians; he could minister to 
people in all walks of life; and in attestation of 
his great powers as a pastor and of his striking 
personality is the fact that at Eau Claire, Wis., 
he built up the largest Norwegian Lutheran con¬ 
gregation in the United States. As a churchman 
he labored unceasingly to unite all the Norwegian 
Lutheran synods. To that end he made many ad¬ 
dresses, chief among which was his “Address on 
Peace” delivered at a conference in Willmar, 
Minn., in 1888. Echoes of these addresses rang 
through the Church until on June 9, 1917, the 
fifteenth anniversary of Hoyme’s death, the 
synods united and formed the Norwegian Lu¬ 
theran Church of America. 

[N. C. Braun, Fra Ungdomsaar (Minneapolis, 1915) ; 
Rasmus Malmin, O. M. Norlie, and O. A. Tingelstad, 
Who's Who Among Pastors in All the Norwegian 
Lutheran Synods of America, 1843-19*7 (1928), being 
a translation and revision of O. M. Norlie, Norsk 
Lutherske Prester % Amerika (1914) ; J. C. Jensson, in 
Am. Lutheran Biogs. (1890) ; O. N. Nelson, in Hist, of 
the Scandinavians and Successful Scandinavians in the 
U. S. (2 vols., 1897); Milwaukee Sentinel, June 10, 
1902.] J.M.R. 

HOYT, ALBERT HARRISON (Dec. 6, 
1826-June 10, 1915), antiquarian, was bom in 
Sandwich, N. H. He was the fifth child and 
fourth son of the Rev. Benjamin Ray and Lu¬ 
cinda (Freeman) Hoyt His father, a man of 
unusual vitality, was a Methodist preacher and 
one of the founders of Wesleyan University, 
Middletown, Conn. Albert studied at the New¬ 
bury Seminary, Vermont, and graduated from 
Wesleyan in 1850. Between that year and 
the outbreak of the Civil War he studied law 
at Portsmouth, N. H., was admitted to the 
New Hampshire bar, and held various local 
offices: school commissioner for Rockingham 
County, 1852-53 ,* clerk of the courts for the same 
county, 1853-56; pension agent at Portsmouth; 
and from 1857 to 1859, city solicitor of Ports¬ 
mouth. In 1862 he was appointed paymaster in 
the United States Army and served in that ca¬ 
pacity until discharged in the summer of 1866. 
He ranked as major until November 1865, at 
which time he was brevetted lieutenant-colonel 
and placed in charge of the final disbursements 
to discharged New England regiments. His sym¬ 
pathy for the soldiers and his untiring efforts in 

3*9 



Hoyt 

providing for their prompt payment made him a 
popular paymaster. 

After the war Hoyt made his home in Boston 
except for five years, 1877-82, when he was pro¬ 
fessor of history and English literature in the 
Bartholomew English and Classical School, Cin¬ 
cinnati, Ohio. In 1887 he joined the clerical 
force of the United States subtreasury at Boston 
and remained connected with it for the rest of his 
life. The work which has made his name memo¬ 
rable, however, was done as a member of the 
New-England Historic Genealogical Society. He 
was elected to resident membership in August 
1866, and from 1868 to 1875 he was editor of the 
society’s quarterly Register . The following prod¬ 
ucts of his pen were printed in that periodical: 
“A Sketch of the Life of Hon. Joshua Hen- 
shaw” (April 1868) ; “William Plumer, Senior” 
(January 1871); “The Rev. Thomas Bradbury 
Chandler, D.D., 1726-1790” (July 1873) ; “Daniel 
Peirce of Newbury, Mass., 1638-1677, and his 
Descendants” (July 1875) l “Donations to the 
People of Boston Suffering under the Port Bill” 
(July 1876) ; and “The Name ‘Columbia’ ” (July 
1886). Hoyt was also a member of the Amer¬ 
ican Antiquarian Society; to its Proceedings 
(April 1876) he contributed “Historical and 
Bibliographical Notes on the Laws of New 
Hampshire.” He edited Captain Francis Cham - 
pernowne and Other Historical Papers (1889) 
by Charles Wesley Tuttle. On June 28, i860, he 
married Sarah Frances Green of Elizabeth, N. 
J. Their only child died in infancy. 

[Memoir by C. S. Ensign, in New Eng . Hist, and 
Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1916; Proc . Am. Antiquarian Soc., 
n.s., vol. XXV (1915); Boston Transcript, June n, 

L. S. M—o. 

HOYT, CHARLES HALE (July 26, 1860- 
Nov. 20, 1900), playwright, was born in Con¬ 
cord, N. H., the son of George W. Hoyt. At the 
age of eighteen he began newspaper work at St. 
Albans, Vt., and shortly afterward joined the 
staff of the Boston Post . Here he acted as dra¬ 
matic and music critic, as well as sports editor, 
and became one of the first “columnists” in the 
country. Through his association with the thea¬ 
tre he was led to write plays, and he carefully 
studied the productions in Boston, especially the 
Negro minstrels of Rich and Harris at the How¬ 
ard Athenaeum. His first plays were conven¬ 
tional romantic comedies, like Cesalia, put on at 
the Globe Theatre in Boston in 1882, but without 
success. He then turned to the writing of farces, 
with strongly marked caricatures, and, begin¬ 
ning with A Bunch of Keys (1882), he scored a 
series of successes which netted him a substantial 
fortune. The best of the earlier plays were A 


Hoyt 

Parlor Match (1884), a satire on Spiritualism; 
A Tin Soldier (1886), dealing with the plumb¬ 
ing industry; and A Hole in the Ground (1887), 
a picture of a railroad station where various 
types are waiting for a delayed train. With A 
Midnight Bell (1889), Hoyt made more attempt 
at plot, and reached his highest point of popular 
approval in A Texas Steer (1890), a satire on 
politics, and A Trip to Chinatown, laid in San 
Francisco, which, beginning at Hoyt’s Madison 
Square Theatre Nov. 9, 1891, ran 650 times un¬ 
til Aug. 17, 1893, the longest consecutive run at 
that time of any American play. It held this 
record until 1918. Then followed A Temperance 
Town (1893), an attack on prohibition; and A 
Milk White Flag (1893), one of his most amus¬ 
ing satires, this time on military organizations. 
In 1893 Hoyt was elected to the New Hampshire 
legislature and seems to have been a useful mem¬ 
ber, being reelected in 1895. Of his later plays, 
the most important were A Contented Woman 
(1897), in which husband and wife run against 
each other for the mayoralty of Denver; A 
Stranger in New York (1897), picturing life in 
hotels and at a French ball; and A Day and a 
Night in New York (1898), in which an actress 
pretends she is not one, in order to protect her 
mother, who has concealed her daughter’s pro¬ 
fession. During the progress of this play at the 
Garrick Theatre, his second wife, Caroline 
Miskel, who had played the leading female part 
in several of his plays, died. Hoyt’s mind seems 
to have been affected by his grief. He was com¬ 
mitted to a sanitarium in July 1900 but was re¬ 
leased on petition of his friends and placed under 
medical care until his death, which occurred in 
Charlestown, N. H. His first wife, Flora Walsh, 
whom he had married in 1887, died in 1892. Ac¬ 
cording to Julian Mitchell, long associated with 
him, Hoyt did not usually direct his plays but 
was constantly watching his audiences and ad¬ 
vising his directors. He also constantly revised 
his plays, The Texas Steer, for example, being 
the rewriting of an earlier failure, A Case of 
Wine . 

[The Texas Steer has been published in Representa¬ 
tive Am. Dramas (1925), ed. by M. J. Moses. The re¬ 
mainder of Hoyt’s plays are in manuscript, a complete 
set being deposited in the N. Y. Pub. Lib., with a brief 
biographical sketch. No life of Hoyt has as yet been 
printed. Some biographical details are to be found in 
T. A. Brown, Hist, of the N . Y. Stage (3 vols., 1903) ; 
Arthur Homblow, A Hist, of the Theatre in America 
from Its Beginnings to the Present Time (a vols., 
1919); Hist . of Concord (2 vols., 1903), ed. by J. 0 . 
Lyford; Who f s Who in America, 1899-1900; and the 
N. Y. Times, Nov. 21, 1900. The present writer is in¬ 
debted to Mr. Julian Mitchell for confirmation and cor¬ 
rection of certain items. For analysis of tie plays and 
a list with dates of production, see A. H. Quinn, A Hist , 
of the Am. Drama from the Civil War to the Present 
Day (2 vols., 1927).] A.H.Q. 


320 



Hoyt 

HOYT, HENRY MARTYN (June 8, 1830- 

Dec. 1, 1892), lawyer, politician, author, was 
born at Kingston in Luzerne County, Pa. He 
was the fifth child of Ziba and Nancy (Hurlbut) 
Hoyt and a descendant of Simon Hoyt who had 
settled in Massachusetts as early as 1629. His 
early years were spent on his father’s farm. He 
attended the Wilkes-Barre Academy, the Wyo¬ 
ming Seminary at Kingston, Lafayette College, 
and Williams College, receiving from the last- 
named institution the degree of A.B. in 1849. 
After an interlude as teacher at Towanda, Pa., 
and at Wyoming Seminary, he entered a law of¬ 
fice and was admitted to the bar in 1853. Two 
years later, on Sept 25, 1855, he was married 
to Mary Loveland. During the Civil War he 
helped in the organization of the 52nd Regiment 
of Pennsylvania Volunteers, of which he ulti¬ 
mately became colonel. Toward the end of the 
war he was captured and after an escape he was 
recaptured, but he was later exchanged. At the 
end of the war he received the rank of brigadier- 
general. After the war his public career began 
with his temporary appointment in 1867 by Gov¬ 
ernor Geary as a judge in Luzerne County. 
Shortly afterward he was defeated for the office 
at the polls but two years later he was made col¬ 
lector of internal revenue for Luzerne and Sus¬ 
quehanna counties. In 1875 he secured the im¬ 
portant post of chairman of the Republican state 
committee. His political career found culmina¬ 
tion in his election in 1878 as governor of the 
state. During his administration the public rev¬ 
enues exceeded the expenditures, and the state 
debt was reduced more than a million and a half 
dollars. Prosecution of railways for discrimina¬ 
tions in freight rates, particularly in the trans¬ 
portation of oil, was undertaken, but litigation 
was ended by private adjustment of the disputes. 
Steps were also taken to promote the public 
health by the annulment of the charters of 
certain medical schools which had been selling 
diplomas and by the establishment of a state 
medical board. Hoyt himself was keenly inter¬ 
ested in penal reform and was a promoter of state 
institutions for the reformation of youthful of¬ 
fenders. He later became vice-president of the 
National Prison Association and a member of 
the Pennsylvania Board of Public Charities. 
Owing to a factional split in the Republican 
party, Hoyt’s successor was a Democrat His 
final message to the legislature was a denun¬ 
ciation of “professional” politicians. After his 
retirement (in 1883 he returned to his law practice 
in Philadelphia and Wilkes-Barre but was forced 
by declining health to retire in three years. He 
was the author of Protection Versus Free Trade, 


Hoyt 

published in 1886, and served as general secre¬ 
tary and manager of the American Protective 
Tariff League during the presidential campaign 
of 1888. 

[Hoyt’s official papers are in Pa. Archives, 4 ser., 
vol. IX (1902). Other sources include: D. W. Hoyt, 
A Gened, Hist . of the Hoyt, Haight, and Hight Families 
(1871); H. E. Hayden and others, Geneal. and Family 
Hist, of the Wyoming and Lackawanna Valleys, Pa. 
(1906), vol. I; H. M. Jenkins, Pennsylvania: Colonial 
and Federal (1903), vol. II; A. K. McClure, Old Time 
Notes of Pa, (1905), vol. II; G. R. Bedford, “Some 
Early Recollections,” Proc. and Colls . Wyoming Hist, 
and Geol. Soc., vol. XVI (1919); and the Press (Phila.), 
Dec. 1, 1892. A few of Hoyt’s letters are in the Pa. 
Hist, Soc. ] W.B. 

HOYT, JOHN WESLEY (Oct. 13, 1831- 
May 23, 1912), educator, governor of Wyoming 
Territory, was born near Worthington, Ohio, 
the son of Joab and Judith (Hawley) Hoyt. He 
graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 
1849; attended for a time the Cincinnati Law 
School; then followed a course at the Eclectic 
Medical Institute, graduating in 1853. He was 
married, on Nov. 28, 1854, to Elizabeth Orpha 
Sampson, of Athens, Ohio. From 1853 to 1855 
he taught chemistry and medical jurisprudence 
at the Eclectic Medical Institute, then for the 
next two years he taught at the Cincinnati Col¬ 
lege of Medicine and at Antioch College. In 
1857 he moved to Wisconsin. There he pub¬ 
lished at Madison the Wisconsin Farmer and 
Northwestern Cultivator, 1856-67; served as 
secretary and manager of the Wisconsin State 
Agricultural Society, 1860-72; helped to reor¬ 
ganize the state university to include the agri¬ 
cultural college; served as a state railway com¬ 
missioner, 1874-76; and was a founder and 
president, 1870-74, of the Wisconsin Academy 
of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. He had opposed 
slavery in the days before the Civil War and had 
been active in the formation and establishment 
of the Republican party, campaigning for Fre¬ 
mont and Lincoln. 

In 1878 President Hayes appointed Hoyt gov¬ 
ernor of Wyoming Territory, a position which 
he held until 1882. Owing to the condition of his 
health, in 1885 he moved to California, but in 
1887 he returned to Wyoming as the first presi¬ 
dent of the state university and served until 1890. 
He outlined a plan for the complete development 
of the university which was in part adhered to 
as the institution expanded, and in the state con¬ 
stitutional convention of 1889, where he served 
as chairman of the committee on education, he 
influenced the educational system of the state. 
As early as 1870 he had made a report to the 
National Teachers’ Association (later the Na¬ 
tional Education Association) in favor of a 


3 21 



Hubbard 

national university, and as organizer and chair¬ 
man of a national committee of four hundred to 
promote the establishment of such an institution, 
he devoted himself to the project, especially after 
he moved to Washington in 1891. 

Hoyt’s other activities were numerous. He 
served as Wisconsin state commissioner at the 
London International Exhibition of 1862, and as 
national commissioner to the Paris Universal 
Exposition of 1867 and to the Vienna Interna¬ 
tional Exhibition of 1873. His published works 
include a “Report on Education” (Reports of the 
United States Commissioners to the Paris Uni¬ 
versal Exposition, 1870, vol. VI), written after 
he had made a survey of European educational 
institutions; Studies in Civil Service (1884); 
An Agricultural Survey of Wyoming (1893); 
and further reports on educational institutions 
abroad published in the Reports of the Commis¬ 
sioner of Education . He also edited Volumes V 
to X, inclusive, of the Transactions of the Wis¬ 
consin State Agricultural Society (1860-72). 
He was a member of the British Association for 
the Promotion of Social Science and of the 
American Association for the Advancement of 
Science. 

[D. W. Hoyt, A Geneal. Hist . of the Hoyt, Haight, 
and Hight Families (1871); Who*s Who in America, 
1912-13; I. S. Bartlett, Hist, of Wyo. (1918), vol. I; 
Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), May 24, 1912; 
manuscript autobiography of Hoyt.] H.J.P_n. 

HUBBARD, DAVID (c . 1792-Jan. 20, 1874), 
Alabama politician, congressman, was born at 
Old Liberty (now Bedford City), Va., the son 
of Thomas and Margaret Hubbard. His father 
was a Revolutionary soldier. While his son was 
still a child he moved his family to Tennessee. 
There David received his elementary education 
and entered an academy. When Andrew Jackson 
called for volunteers to fight the British at New 
Orleans he promptly enlisted. Reckless fighting 
brought him a serious wound in the hip and the 
rank of major. After the war he studied law 
briefly in a lawyer’s office. In 1819 he appeared 
in Huntsville, Ala., as a carpenter but four years 
later he opened a law office in Florence and was 
elected solicitor. Though deficient in schooling, 
he possessed qualities that made him formidable 
before a pioneer jury. In 1827 he moved to Law¬ 
rence County, where he spent the major part of 
his life in law practice, merchandising, planting, 
manufacturing, and politics. Twice married— 
first, to Eliza Campbell, daughter of George W. 
Campbell, secretary of the treasury under Madi¬ 
son; second, to Rebecca Stoddert, daughter of 
Benjamin Stoddert, secretary of war under John 
Adams—-he was the father of six children. He 


Hubbard 

was a successful lawyer and a shrewd business 
man. With slave labor he successfully operated 
several kinds of small manufactories. He was 
the leading promoter of Alabama’s first railroad 
and a trustee of the state university. 

From 1823 to i860 Hubbard was almost con¬ 
stantly in politics. He was a born politician and 
a master at stirring up the people, possessing the 
art and fire of a popular tribune. No debater 
took him lightly. He was an ultra-state-rights 
Democrat and classed as a “fire-eater” for his 
impassioned defense of the South against the 
protective tariff and abolition. Nevertheless, 
though a slave-owner and a man of large means, 
he championed the cause of the poor whites, 
helping to force upon the planters the “white” 
basis of representation which enlarged the vot¬ 
ing power of the farmer counties in the legis¬ 
lature and advocating a land policy that would 
enable the poor to possess fertile soil. His witty 
sayings and humorous stories, his bulky form 
with stooping shoulders and disproportionately 
long arms, his broad and wen-marked brow, his 
harsh voice and awkward but vigorous manners 
made him a long-remembered figure in north 
Alabama. He served nine terms in the legisla¬ 
ture, two terms in Congress, was three times 
presidential elector, and represented Alabama in 
the Southern commercial congress of 1859. He 
was thrice defeated for Congress and once for 
governor, his defeats coming when the state- 
rights feeling was low, though his defense of the 
poor also contributed to his political reverses. 
He opposed the compromise measures of 1850 
and ten years later warmly espoused secession. 
He was elected to the Confederate Congress in 
1861 and served until 1863, when he was ap¬ 
pointed commissioner of Indiaij affairs. He had 
been a successful dealer in Chickasaw lands, and 
under his tactful promptings the Indians were 
generally detached from the Union cause. After 
the war, which ruined him financially, he moved 
to Springhill, Tenn., where with the assistance 
of his former slaves he regained part of his for¬ 
tune before death overtook him. He died at the 
home of his son in Pointe Coupee Parish, La., 
and was buried from Trinity Church (Epis¬ 
copal), Rosedale, Iberville Parish, on Jan. 23, 
1874. 

[Information from F. R. King, of Tuscumbia, Ala., 
and former sheriff Masterson of Moulton, Ala.; Willis 
Brewer, Alabama (1872) ; Wm. Garrett, Reminiscences 
of Public Men in Ala. (1872); A. B. Moore, Hist, of 
Ala. and Her People (3 vols., 1927) ; T. M. Owen, Hist, 
of Ala. and Diet, of Ala. Biog . (1921), vol. Ill; J. E. 
Saunders, Early Settlers in Ala. (1899); Biog. Dir. 
Am. Cong. (1928) and information from the files of 
the Joint Committee on Printing, U. S. Capitol, Wash¬ 
ington.] A.B.M—e. 


322 



Hubbard Hubbard 


HUBBARD, ELBERT (June 19, 1856-May 
7, 1915), author, editor, master-craftsman, de¬ 
scended from George Hubbard who was living in 
Hartford, Conn., in 1639, was born in Blooming¬ 
ton, Ill., the son of Silas Hubbard, a physician, 
and his wife, Juliana Frances Read. Named by 
his parents Elbert Green, he dropped the middle 
name when he became an author. At the age of 
sixteen, he went to Chicago and for four years 
was in free-lance connection with the newspapers 
of the city. In 1880 he took a position with a 
manufacturing company at Buffalo, N. Y., and 
for the next fifteen years was connected with its 
sales and advertising activities. He introduced 
here methods which have been widely used in 
stimulating sales by extension of credit and 
awarding of premiums, methods which he suc¬ 
cessfully employed later in the circulation of his 
own magazines. On June 30, 1881, he was mar¬ 
ried to Bertha C. Crawford. In 1883 he moved 
to East Aurora, a Buffalo suburb. In 1892 he re¬ 
tired from business with modest resources, and 
decided at the age of thirty-nine to go through 
a regular undergraduate course at Harvard. He 
was too mature to submit to a routine devised 
for boys, however, and soon abandoned the proj¬ 
ect. A more vital educational experience was his 
trip abroad in this year when he visited and fell 
under the influence of William Morris. On his 
return he entered the office of the Arena Publish¬ 
ing Company in Boston, through which his first 
two novels, One Day .* A Tale of the Pfairies 
(1893) and Forbes of Harvard (1894), were 
published, together with two essays in the mag¬ 
azine, The Arena, in 1894. In the latter year, a 
New York house published for him his third 
and last novel, No Enemy (But Himself ), and in 
January of 189$ the first of his Little Journeys, 
the pamphlet on George Eliot. 

In 1895, stimulated by the example of William 
Morris, he founded at East Aurora the Roycroft 
Shop, named after the seventeenth-century Eng¬ 
lish printers, Thomas and Samuel Roycroft In 
June of this year he published, in a form which 
was later to become very familiar, the first num¬ 
ber of The Philistine, issued in a spirit of experi¬ 
ment and challenge without thought of any per¬ 
manent future policy. The 2,500 copies which he 
distributed among authors and publishing houses 
brought responses which stimulated the issue of 
a second number in July. For a while he worked 
with the assistance of contributors, but with the 
forty-fifth issue, January 1899, he announced 
that thereafter he himself would write every¬ 
thing in the periodical including advertisements 
and testimonials of Roycroft books. Circulation 
increased steadily, and according to the an¬ 


nouncement on the last issue before his death in 
1915, the number that went to press was 225,000. 
The Philistine had become so completely his own 
utterance that it was discontinued with the issue 
of July 1915. It had been only the beginning of 
his editorial activities; in April 1908 he started 
the publication of The Fra, a less personal pe¬ 
riodical which, however, was also discontinued 
after his death (August 1917). FLis Little Jour¬ 
neys, issued monthly, aggregated 170, and are 
published in fourteen volumes. 

He was the controlling spirit in the Roycroft 
Shops, with ultimately a working force of over 
500. To the Roycroft Inn picturesque visitors 
came singly, and in numbers to the annual con¬ 
ventions which were gay interchanges of miscel¬ 
laneous opinion. For the last fifteen years of his 
life Hubbard was on the road lecturing much of 
the time from May to September annually; and 
in one of these years he even invaded the vaude¬ 
ville stage, more to his monetary than to his ar¬ 
tistic satisfaction. His gifts as an administrator 
and as a writer were in no small degree indebted 
to his engaging and magnetic personality, an 
asset which he did not hesitate to exploit. He ab¬ 
jured the conventional stiffness of men's dress 
and with his wide-brimmed soft hat, luxuriant 
hair, and flowing tie, he challenged attention 
wherever he went. From his lectures his auditors 
carried away rather more a sense of contact with 
an individual than the memory of his formal dis¬ 
course ; and similarly the readers of The Philis¬ 
tine gathered from the substance of what he 
wrote, the breezy and sometimes recklessly in¬ 
formal style, and the format of the magazine with 
its rough paper cover and its characteristic type- 
font, a feeling of having received a personal mes¬ 
sage in the continuance of a periodic corre¬ 
spondence. 

Although regarded with suspicion as a near¬ 
radical, he was in fact a distinct conservative in 
his economic views. His Message to Garcia of 
1899 was written in the mood of an impatient 
employer wearied at the inefficiency of his hire¬ 
lings. It was eagerly snapped up by industrial 
magnates and was printed under various auspices 
and in various languages, giving currency for 
the probably unverifiable statement that its ag¬ 
gregate circulation reached 40,000,000. A char¬ 
acteristic collection of his efficiency utterances 
is the posthumous booklet called Loyalty in Busi¬ 
ness (copyrighted 1921) of which an edition of 
5,000 was circulated by the officials of one of 
the well-known schools of commerce. Hubbard 
was early in the modern succession of American 
authors who broke away from the conventions 
of traditional polite literature and wrote infor- 



Hubbard 

mally for his own contemporary public. His Phi¬ 
listine was the longest-lived and most substantial 
of the large number of little periodicals of lit¬ 
erary revolt which sprang into existence in the 
nineties. 

Divorced by his wife in 1903, he was married 
the following year to Alice Moore, a writer. In 
May 1915 he went down with the torpedoed liner 
Lusitania. 

[Except for one article in Current Opinion, Apr. 
1923, there is almost nothing of moment on Hubbard 
in die periodicals. Albert Lane, Elbert Hubbard and 
His Work (1901) is particularly useful for its complete 
bibliographies through 1900 of Hubbard’s published 
writings in books and magazines, including the Philis¬ 
tine articles, and of the publications of the Royer oft 
Press; Felix Shay, Elbert Hubbard of East Aurora 
(1926) is impressionistic and anecdotal; Mary Hubbard 
Heath, The Elbert Hubbard I Knew (1929) is an inti¬ 
mate biography by his sister. The family genealogy, 
inaccurate in some details, is included in E. W. Day, 
One Thousand Years of Hubbard History (1895). Cer¬ 
tain bits of information appear in successive issues of 
Who's Who in America, 1901--15, and in the obituary 
in the N. Y. Times, May 8, 1915. Information as to 
certain facts has been supplied by Mary Hubbard Heath 
and by Hubbard’s successors in East Aurora.] 

P. H. B—n. 

HUBBARD, FRANK McKINNEY (Sept. 1, 
i868-Dec. 26, 1930), “Kin” Hubbard, humorist 
and caricaturist, creator of the character of Abe 
Martin, was born in Bellefontaine, Ohio. He was 
the son of Thomas and Sarah Jane (Miller) 
Hubbard, and the grandson of Capt. John B. 
Miller, who for years toured the Middle West 
with a wagon theatrical stock company. Thomas 
Hubbard published the Bellefontaine Examiner, 
a newspaper which had been in the Hubbard 
family since before the Civil War. Frank Mc¬ 
Kinney Hubbard was known as “Kin” through¬ 
out his life. He was educated in the public 
schools of Bellefontaine and learned the printing 
trade in his father’s office. As a youth he 
achieved more than local renown as a producer 
of blackface minstrel shows. His interest in the 
theatre and circus never waned. As a sketch art¬ 
ist he was entirely self-taught. In 1891 he left 
Bellefontaine to work on the Indianapolis News 
as a police reporter and artist. He said in later 
years that when he received his first order to 
make a line cut from a photograph, he knew 
nothing about the process but invented his own 
methods of transferring a picture to chalk plate. 
As a writer and sketch artist he won praise for 
his reporting of fires and police cases. 

After several years with the News, he returned 
to Bellefontaine to work in the post-office under 
his father, who was appointed postmaster. Later 
he was employed successively by the Cincin¬ 
nati Commercial Tribune and by the Mansfield 
(Ohio) News. In 1901 he returned to the In¬ 
dianapolis News to remain until his death. While 


Hubbard 

touring Indiana on a campaign train in 1904, he 
made several sketches of rustic characters, and 
on Nov. 16, 1904, one of these was printed in 
the News, with a quip of two sentences written 
by the artist. The feature appealed to the editor, 
who urged Hubbard to prepare a series. The 
first of these appeared Dec. 31, 1904. Hubbard 
named the character Abe Martin. Because he 
signed his drawings “Hub.,” the drawings and 
sayings, which were soon syndicated, became 
identified with the name Abe Martin. His col¬ 
lections in book form appeared at frequent in¬ 
tervals beginning with the publication, in 1906, 
of Abe Martin, Brown County, Indiana, and end¬ 
ing with Abe Martin's Town Pump (1929). He 
also produced a weekly essay, “Short Furrows,” 
which was syndicated. His powers of observa¬ 
tion were such that he made his drawings in his 
office, from memory, without the aid of sketches 
or notes. He had a natural sense of contrast. 
His humor was marked by indirect allusions 
thinly screened by dialect and crude drawing. 
“Th J blamdest sensation,” said Abe on one occa¬ 
sion, “is havin’ a doorknob come off in your 
hand.” Will Rogers, perhaps the most active of 
his contemporaries, said of him: “No man in our 
generation was within a mile of him.... I have 
said it from the stage and in print for twenty 
years” {Indianapolis News, Dec. 27, 1930). 
Hubbard was married on Oct. 12, 1905, to Jo¬ 
sephine Jackson of Indianapolis who with two 
children, Thomas and Virginia, survived him. 
In 1924 he toured around the world. His favor¬ 
ite recreation was gardening. He steadfastly de¬ 
clined lecture, radio, and theatre offers, explain¬ 
ing that he preferred to remain at home with 
his family and garden. 

[Who's Who in America, 1928-2^; George Ade, ar¬ 
ticle in the Am. Mag., May 1910 ; Fred C. Kelly, article 
in Ibid., Apr. 1924; autobiographical sketch and obit¬ 
uaries in the Indianapolis News, Dec. 26, 1930; edi¬ 
torial tributes in leading American newspapers, Dec. 
26, 27, 28, 1930; the World (N. Y.), Dec. 12, 1926; 
“Abe Martin on the Crime Wave,” Liberty, Nov. 14, 
1925; Abe Martin's Wisecracks (London, 1930), se¬ 
lected by E. V. Lucas.] S. N. 

HUBBARD, GARDINER GREENE (Aug. 
25, 1822-Dec. 11, 1897), first organizer of the 
telephone industry, promoter of education of the 
deaf, founder of the National Geographic Soci¬ 
ety, was born in Boston, Mass. The son of Sam¬ 
uel Hubbard, a justice of the Massachusetts su¬ 
preme court, and of Mary Anne, daughter of 
Gardiner Greene of Boston, he was descended 
from William Hubbard of Ipswich, Suffolk, who 
emigrated to New England in 1635 and settled 
at Ipswich, Mass. Gardiner Greene Hubbard 
was educated in the schools of Boston and at 
Dartmouth College, where he giaduated in 1841. 


3 2 4 



Hubbard Hubbard 


After studying law for a year at Harvard under 
Joseph Story and Simon Greenleaf, he entered 
the law office of Charles P. and Benjamin R. 
Curtis in 1843. He married Gertrude Mercer 
McCurdy, the daughter of Robert Henry Mc¬ 
Curdy of New York City, on Oct. 21, 1846, and 
made his home in Cambridge, Mass. For more 
than thirty years he practised law in Boston and 
Washington, but his eminence was due rather 
to his keen and active interest in movements for 
the public welfare. Before 1857 he had intro¬ 
duced gas into Cambridge for lighting purposes, 
secured a fresh water supply for the city, and 
built between Cambridge and Boston one of the 
earliest street-car lines in the United States. In¬ 
terested in the education of the deaf through his 
little daughter’s loss of hearing from scarlet fever 
in 1862, he led the movement which culminated 
in 1867 in the incorporation of the Clarke Insti¬ 
tution for Deaf Mutes (later Clarke School for 
the Deaf) at Northampton, of which he was 
president, 1867-77. He was for twelve years a 
member of the Massachusetts State Board of 
Education, and as a member of a special com¬ 
mittee of the Board did much to make a remark¬ 
able success of the Massachusetts educational ex¬ 
hibit at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadel¬ 
phia in 1876. 

When the Boston school board started the 
Horace Mann School for the Deaf, the principal, 
Sarah Fuller, brought young Alexander Gra¬ 
ham Bell [q.v.~\ to introduce visible speech there 
in 1871. Hubbard, meeting Bell, became inter¬ 
ested in his electrical work and so in Bell’s in¬ 
vention of the telephone in 1875, in which he took 
an active interest. He directed its early business 
development with extraordinary practical sense 
and wisdom and served as the executive of the 
first telephone organizations. As such he per¬ 
sonally decided upon the policy of renting tele¬ 
phones instead of selling them, a policy which 
led directly to the present federated structure of 
the Bell System. Through him also the Tele¬ 
phone Company secured Theodore N. Yail in 
1878 to build up the early telephone agencies into 
a well unified commercial institution and public 
utility. In 1877, Hubbard’s daughter and Bell 
were married. 

Between 1867 and 1876 Hubbard made a se¬ 
ries of studies of the postal service and the tele¬ 
graph at home and abroad which brought him 
recognition as a citizen of exceptional ability 
who was disinterested in his attitude toward 
public questions (“The Proposed Changes in 
the Telegraphic System,” North American Re¬ 
view, July 1873; “Our Post-Office,” Atlantic 
Monthly, January 1875). Largely in conse¬ 


quence of these studies, President Grant appoint¬ 
ed him in 1876 member of a commission to in¬ 
vestigate the transportation of the mails and to 
make recommendations to Congress for their im¬ 
provement. He was elected its chairman, but 
disagreed with the conclusions of the other mem¬ 
bers and presented a minority report alone (Sen¬ 
ate Miscellaneous Document 14 , 45 Cong., 2 
Sess.). In 1879 Hubbard moved to Washing¬ 
ton, where he lived for the rest of his life. The 
headquarters of the Telephone Company re¬ 
mained in Boston but Hubbard yielded to Wil¬ 
liam H. Forbes and Theodore N. Vail the direc¬ 
tion of that company, giving more attention him¬ 
self for some years to the introduction of the tel¬ 
ephone into foreign countries. 

In Washington as in Cambridge he took an 
active interest in local affairs. He was interested 
in the Memorial Association of the District of 
Columbia and in the Columbia Historical Soci¬ 
ety. He was a trustee of the Columbian (now 
the George Washington) University for twelve 
years. In 1883 he joined his son-in-law, Alex¬ 
ander Graham Bell, in founding Science, now 
the organ of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, and in 1890 he was 
associated with Bell in the founding of the Amer¬ 
ican Association to Promote the Teaching of 
Speech to the Deaf, of which he was a vice-pres¬ 
ident until his death. He became a regent of the 
Smithsonian Institution in 1895. He was three 
times (1895-97) elected president of the joint 
commission of the scientific societies of Wash¬ 
ington which later organized the Washington 
Academy of Sciences. He was the founder and 
first president of the National Geographic Soci¬ 
ety (1888-97); his interest in its Alaskan ex¬ 
plorations is commemorated by the naming of 
the Hubbard Glacier in his honor in 1890, and 
his memory as the founder is perpetuated in the 
Hubbard Memorial Hall, the home of the Soci¬ 
ety in Washington, erected in 1902. Throughout 
his life he maintained his interest in the educa¬ 
tion of the deaf, taking occasion, when he visited 
Europe, to observe schools for the deaf and re¬ 
port his observations to the school at Northamp¬ 
ton. He died at his home. Twin Oaks, Wash¬ 
ington, in his seventy-sixth year. 

[G. F. Hoar, in Proc. Am. Antiq . Soc., n.s. XII 
{1899), 217-26] Nat . Geog. Mag., Fob. 1898; Science, 
Dec. 31, 1897; W. C. Langdon, “The Early Corporate 
Development of the Telephone” and “Two Founders of 
the Bell System,” Bell Tel. Quart., July, Oct. 1923; 
Caroline A. Yale, Years of Building (1931); Am. An¬ 
nals of the Deaf, Jan. 1898; Annual Report of the 
Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Inst., 1898; E. W. 
Day, One Thousand Years of Hubbard Hist. (1895) ; 
Evening Star (Washington, D. C), Dec. 11, 1897; Pa¬ 
pers and correspondence in the possession of the family 
and the National Geographic Society in Washington 


325 



Hubbard 

and of the American Telephone Historical Collection 
in New York.] W. C.L. 

HUBBARD, GURDON SALTONSTALL 

(Aug. 22, i8o2~Sept. 14, 1886), fur trader, pio¬ 
neer merchant and meat packer, was born in 
Windsor, Vt., the son of Elizur and Abigail 
(Sage) Hubbard and a descendant of Gurdon 
Saltonstall [q.v.] and of George Hubbard who 
settled first at Wethersfield and died at Guil¬ 
ford, Conn., in 1683. From his early youth his 
life was one of adventure. After schooling in 
private and common schools in Vermont, he was 
taken to Montreal. There he showed a preco¬ 
cious aptitude for trade and at the age of sixteen 
apprenticed himself for five years to the Amer¬ 
ican Fur Company, leaving Montreal to accom¬ 
pany the voyageurs of that organization through 
the waters traveled a century and a half before 
by La Salle. Possessed of a forceful and engag¬ 
ing personality, he won the confidence of the 
Indians, who called him “Pa~pa-ma-ta-be,” “The 
Swift Walker.” After completing his appren¬ 
ticeship, he was formally appointed to conduct a 
trading station on the Iroquois River in Illinois. 
Later he became superintendent of all the Amer¬ 
ican Fur Company’s posts in that region. Dur¬ 
ing the next few years he made frequent trips to 
Mackinac Island, the headquarters of John Jacob 
Astor, and covered the country from the straits 
of Mackinac south to Kankakee and Danville. In 
1827 he was admitted to a share in the profits 
of the company, and in 1828 bought out its entire 
interests in Illinois. 

Hubbard was one of the last representatives 
in Illinois of the trader who carried on commerce 
through barter. Although Danville was his offi¬ 
cial headquarters, Chicago was the point to 
which his supplies were brought by water and 
from which his furs were shipped to the East. 
On one occasion he scuttled his boats in the 
south branch of the Chicago River and, proceed¬ 
ing on foot to Big Foot’s Lake, procured pack 
ponies and wended his way to the Wabash, dot¬ 
ting the plain with trading posts. The trail he 
blazed, known as Hubbard’s Trail, was for years 
the only well-defined road between Chicago and 
the Wabash country. This most picturesque pe¬ 
riod of his life came to an end with the cessation 
of the fur trade in Illinois. It was during the 
transition from the fur trade to more general 
commerce that he had the foresight to develop a 
new avenue of trade by using the growing sur¬ 
plus of hogs in the Wabash country to supply the 
growing frontier towns. He was the first to see 
the possibility of establishing a meat-packing in¬ 
dustry in Chicago by utilizing the livestock of 
the Middle West. He understood the funda- 


Hubbard 

mental economic factors underlying the packing 
industry, although his actual processing was 
primitive compared to the complicated and sci¬ 
entific methods of the twentieth century. 

In 1834 he moved his permanent residence to 
Chicago and eventually became one of the largest 
meat packers in the western country. Not only 
did he furnish the western settlements with pork, 
but he developed a system of transportation on 
the Great Lakes whereby he shipped barreled 
pork and tierced lard in sailing vessels to Buf¬ 
falo and points east. His transportation com¬ 
pany, known as the Eagle Line, connecting Chi¬ 
cago, Buffalo, and the upper Lakes, was the first 
general systematic carrying service touching 
Chicago and did much to develop the general 
trade of the region. 

Another of Hubbard’s contributions to the de¬ 
velopment of Chicago was due to his foresight 
in seeing that the future of the city depended 
upon a network of transportation facilities 
stretching out in every direction. His fur-trad¬ 
ing experience had taught him the need of a 
canal penetrating the western country. There¬ 
fore, while representing Vermilion County in 
the state legislature in 1832-33, he introduced a 
bill providing for the construction of the Illinois 
and Michigan Canal, and upon its defeat, substi¬ 
tuted a bill for a railroad, which was defeated 
by the vote of the presiding officer. After he left 
the legislature he continued to urge upon suc¬ 
ceeding sessions the passage of a canal bill until 
such a bill actually became law in 1836. To him 
in large part Chicago is indebted for the loca¬ 
tion of the terminus of the canal well within Illi¬ 
nois, instead of at Calumet, Ind. The canal was 
begun in 1836 and was finished in 1848 and its 
importance to Chicago cannot easily be exag¬ 
gerated. That city became at once the pivotal 
point for the commerce of the lower Mississippi 
Valley which had theretofore gone to New Or¬ 
leans and a gateway for the emigration which 
was to people the untraveled areas of the Far 
West 

Foreseeing the amazing growth of Chicago, 
Hubbard, with others, built an immense ware¬ 
house and packing plant at La Salle and South 
Water Streets, where he stored pork greatly in 
excess of the needs of the town itself and utilized 
the supplies built up during the winter to carry 
on his trade throughout the year. This struc¬ 
ture was known as Hubbard’s Folly, but in it 
was established the first bank in Chicago, in 
December 1835, and from it Hubbard issued the 
first insurance policy ever written in that city. 
He was one of the incorporators of the first 
water-works, and one of the leading philanthro- 



Hubbard 

pists of the city. In 1868 his packing plant was 
burned, and he lost most of his property and 
business in the great Chicago fire of 1871. Crip¬ 
pled financially, he retired to private life. 

In 1831 he married Elenora Berry of Urbana, 
Ohio, who died seven years later. By this mar¬ 
riage he had one son. In 1843 he married Mary 
Ann Hubbard of Middleboro, Mass. 

{The Autobiog. of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard 
(1911), with an introduction by Caroline M. Mcllvaine; 
H. E. Hamilton, Incidents and Events in the Life of 
Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard (1888), containing the au¬ 
tobiography ; H. E. Hamilton, Biog. Sketch of Gurdon 
Saltonstall Hubbard (1908 ); Mary Ann Hubbard, 
Family Memories (1912) ; E. W. Day, One Thousand 
Years of Hubbard Hist . (1895) ; H. L. Conard, in Mag . 
of Western Hist., Sept. 1899; H. W. Beckwith, Hist, 
of Vermilion County (1879), p. 334; A. T. Andreas, 
Hist, of Chicago, vols. I (1884), II (1885); Chicago 
Hist. Soc . Colls., vol. IV (1890); Daily Inter Ocean 
(Chicago), Sept. 15, 1886.] R.A.C. 

HUBBARD, HENRY GRISWOLD (Oct. 8, 
1814-July 29, 1891), inventor, manufacturer, 
was born in Middletown, Conn. A descendant of 
George Hubbard who settled at Hartford in 1639 
and died in Middletown in 1684, he was the son 
of Elijah and Lydia (Mather) Hubbard. After 
attending the public schools in his native town 
until he was fourteen, he prepared for college in 
Captain Partridge’s Military Academy, Nor¬ 
wich, Conn., and in Ellington High School, and 
entered Wesleyan University at Middletown. 
Poor health compelled him to leave college be¬ 
fore graduating and in 1831 he began working as 
a clerk in the store of J. & S. Baldwin in Middle- 
town. A few months later he became a clerk in 
the woolen-goods wholesale house of Jabez Hub¬ 
bard in New York, but after two years returned 
to Middletown and opened a drygoods store in 
partnership with Jesse G. Baldwin. This enter¬ 
prise must have been successful, for Hubbard 
saved some money with which he bought stock 
in the Russell Manufacturing Company of Mid¬ 
dletown, and at the age of twenty-one became the 
manager. This concern was engaged in the 
manufacture of cotton webbing and for the first 
few years after Hubbard joined it achieved little 
success, partly because of the financial strin¬ 
gency of 1837. About 1841, however, Hubbard 
applied his inventive powers to the conversion of 
the existing machinery in his plant to the pur¬ 
pose of reducing India rubber to thread and 
weaving it into elastic webbing. Up to this time 
elastic webbing had been made in the United 
States only on hand looms. Hubbard secured 
from Scotland a weaver somewhat experienced 
in this form of textile and the two soon perfected 
the necessary machines and produced the first 
successful elastic web woven on power looms. 
Hubbard is, therefore, looked upon as the pioneer 


Hubbard 

of elastic web manufacture in the United States. 
In 1850 he purchased the entire control of the 
Russell Manufacturing Company and bought the 
patents of Lewis Hope for improvements in elas¬ 
tic web manufacture. With Hope’s assistance he 
made the business a profitable enterprise. The 
products of the plant soon included both elastic 
and non-elastic webbing of almost every variety 
and pattern. The plant was enlarged continu¬ 
ously; at the time of Hubbard’s death it em¬ 
ployed over a thousand workmen and included 
three spinning mills containing 15,000 spindles 
which produced over a million pounds of double 
and twisted yarn in a year, and weaving mills 
containing over 400 looms and 5,000 shuttles. 
Not only an extremely efficient merchant but a 
mechanic as well, Hubbard constantly kept in 
close touch with the mechanical developments in 
his plant and patented a number of inventions of 
his own. He served one term in the Connecticut 
Senate in 1866. He was also a director of the 
Middletown Bank, president and trustee of the 
Middletown Savings Bank, and director in a 
number of other corporations. He was married 
on June 19, 1844, to Charlotte Rosella Mac- 
donough, daughter of Commodore Thomas Mac- 
donough, the hero of the battle of Lake Cham¬ 
plain. 

[E. W. Day, One Thousand Years of Hubbard Hist. 
(1895); Hist . of Middlesex County, Conn. (1884); 
Morning Jour, and Courier (New Haven), July 30, 
1891; Patent Office records.] C.W.M. 

HUBBARD, HENRY GUERNSEY (May 6, 
1850-Jan. 18, 1899), entomologist, a descendant 
of George Hubbard who settled at Wethersfield, 
Conn., before 1639 and later moved to Guilford, 
Conn., was bom at Detroit, Mich. His parents 
were Bela and Sarah (Baughman) Hubbard. 
His father, a native of Hamilton, N. Y., moved 
to Michigan in 1835 and became a prominent 
and wealthy citizen of Detroit. A man of strong 
scientific tendencies, deeply interested in botany, 
forestry, arboriculture, and archeology, he served 
for a time as assistant to the state geologist and 
was the author of Memorials of a Half-Century 
in Michigan and the Lake Region (1888). 
Henry, as a boy, was well acquainted with the 
life habits of the birds, mammals, and other wild 
creatures about Detroit. He was educated at a 
private school in Cambridge, Mass., and for sev¬ 
eral years under private tutors in Europe. He 
graduated from Harvard in 1873. Through as¬ 
sociation there with H. A. Hagen, C R. Osten 
Sacken, and E. A. Schwarz [qq.v.] his attention 
became fixed on the subject of entomology. In 
1874 he started a private museum in Detroit 
and, with Schwarz, began the formation of a 


3 2 7 



Hubbard 


Hubbard 


great collection of Colcoptcra. In company with 
Schwarz, he made several expeditions, notably 
one to the Lake Superior region, the results of 
which were published in a distinguished paper 
(Proceedings of the American Philosophical So¬ 
ciety, 1877-78). In 1879 he accepted for a short 
time the position of naturalist to the Geological 
Survey of Kentucky. During this year two of 
his brothers were drowned in Lake St. Clair, one 
of whom had owned an estate at Crescent City, 
Fla. Hubbard went to Florida to look after this 
property and lived there for many years, build¬ 
ing up a semi-tropical garden which became fa¬ 
mous. During 1880 he was made an agent of the 
United States Entomological Commission and 
later of the United States Department of Agri¬ 
culture, and under these organizations conducted 
valuable investigations of the insects injurious 
to cotton. In 1881, he began an investigation of 
the insects affecting the orange, in the course of 
which he developed a practical kerosene-soap 
emulsion later known as the “Riley-Hubbard 
emulsion.” His work on orange insects was car¬ 
ried to a successful conclusion, and his report 
on this subject, Insects Affecting the Orange 
(1885), published as a special volume of the De¬ 
partment of Agriculture, is founded wholly upon 
original observation. This work remained stand¬ 
ard for many years and is one of the most careful 
studies ever published of the insects of a given 
crop. After its publication he devoted almost all 
of his time for several years to advanced horti¬ 
culture. In 1894, he again became connected 
with the Department of Agriculture as a special 
agent and commenced a revised edition of his 
work upon orange insects. His health soon be¬ 
gan to fail, however, and he died of tuberculosis 
in 1899. He was married in 1887 to Kate Lasier 
of Detroit, by whom he had four children. 

Hubbard's fame as an economic entomologist 
depends largely upon his work on orange in¬ 
sects and upon his kerosene-soap emulsion for¬ 
mula. As a keen observer of insect life and as 
an ingenious and philosophical worker he earned 
a unique rank among the biologists of the 
United States. His investigations of the fauna 
of the Mammoth Cave, his study of the Am¬ 
brosia beetles, his work on the insect guests of 
the Florida land tortoise, and that upon the in¬ 
sect fauna of the giant cactus are striking ex¬ 
amples of the studies—of great biological value 
—a kngthy series of which he made in the course 
of his comparatively short life. His bibliography 
comprises sixty-eight titles. 

[R. A. Schwarz, L. O. Howard, and O. F, Cook, in 
Proc. Bntomolog. Sac . of Washington, IV (1901), 350 - 
do (portr. aad bibliography) ; Entomoiog . News, Mar. 
1899; Canadian Entomologist, Mar, 1899; E. W. Day, 


One Thousand Years of Hubbard Hist. (1895), inac¬ 
curate in some details; Harvard College Class of 1873: 
Fiftieth Anniversary Report (1923); Detroit Free 
Press, Jan. 20, 1899.] L.O.H. 

HUBBARD, JOHN (Mar. 22, 1794-Feb. 6, 
1869), physician, governor of Maine who signed 
the “Maine Law,” was the fifth of twelve chil¬ 
dren and the eldest son of Dr. John and Olive 
(Wilson) Hubbard. His parents had moved in 
1784 from Kingston, N. H., to the pioneer settle¬ 
ment of Readfield in the district of Maine. His 
father was selectman, first town clerk, and had 
a profitable country doctor's practice until health 
failed him in middle life. At an early age John 
took charge of the three-hundred-acre farm, at¬ 
tended the district school in winter, and spent 
ten months at the Hallowell and the Monmouth 
academies. Leaving home in 1813, he tutored in 
a private family at Albany, N. Y., for a year, en¬ 
tered Dartmouth College in 1814, and graduated 
in the class of 1816. He taught at Hallowell 
Academy, 1817-18; in Dinwiddie County, Va., 
1818-20; and received in 1822 the degree of M.D. 
from the University of Pennsylvania. For the 
next seven years he practised in Dinwiddie Coun¬ 
ty, Va., where he acquired warm friends, an in¬ 
sight into Southern character, and an abhorrence 
of slavery. Meanwhile, on July 12,1823, he was 
married to Sarah Hodge Barrett of Dresden, Me. 
After further medical study and hospital work 
at Philadelphia, 1829-30, he settled at Hallowell, 
Me., where he resided until his death. There his 
practice covered an extensive territory. 

Although Hubbard was a Democrat in politics, 
he was elected in a strongly Whig district to the 
Maine Senate and served for the term 1842-43. 
As a legislator he opposed measures violating 
the rights of slave states. In 1849 he was elected 
governor, in 1850 reelected, and by a constitu¬ 
tional amendment changing the time of legis¬ 
lative sessions was continued in office until Janu¬ 
ary 1853. On June 2,1851, he signed an act “for 
the Suppression of Drinking Houses and Tip¬ 
pling Shops,” providing for search and seizure 
and the maintenance of municipal liquor-dispens¬ 
ing agencies. This famous “Maine Law,” vetoed 
by his predecessor, Governor Dana, caused in¬ 
tense opposition, and a split in the Democratic 
party. Hubbard received a plurality of the votes 
cast in the election of 1852, but he was defeated 
in the legislature by a combination of Whigs 
and Anti-Maine Law Democrats. As govemoi 
he was independent and decisive. He urged 
state aid for an agricultural school and for highei 
education for women, the repeal of oppressive 
bank laws, the opening up of free lands in north¬ 
eastern Maine to counteract migration to the 
West, and successfully secured the segregatior 


328 



Hubbard 

of young from old offenders by the establishment 
of a state reform school. He also urged obedi¬ 
ence to the compromise measures of 1850 and to 
the federal Fugitive Slave Law in particular. 
Slavery was abhorrent to him, but emancipation, 
he contended, should be gradual, fair to the 
South, and consistent with law and the Consti¬ 
tution. He denounced radical Abolitionists as 
mischievous and dangerous disunionists. His 
medical practice was interrupted from 1857 to 
1859 by his service as special Treasury agent to 
examine custom-houses in the Eastern states, 
and from 1859 to 1861 when he was a commis¬ 
sioner under the Reciprocity Treaty with Great 
Britain, concluded in 1854. In i860 he aligned 
himself with the Douglas Democrats, but in 1864 
voted for Lincoln. After a long and useful life, 
he died in his country doctor’s office at Hallo- 
well, having just returned from a professional 
call. He was the father of six children, one of 
whom was Thomas Hamlin Hubbard [q.v.]. 

[E. W. Day, One Thousand Years of Hubbard Hist . 
(1895); Neal Dow, The Reminiscences of Neat Dow 
(1898); L. C. Hatch, ed., Maine: A Hist. (1919), vol. 
IV; Emma H. Nason, Old Hallowell on the Kennebec 
(1909) ; H. C. Williams, ed., Biog . Encyc. of Me. of the 
Nineteenth Century (1885) ; Bangor Daily Whig and 
Courier, Feb. 8, 1869.] B.M— o. 

HUBBARD, JOSEPH STILLMAN (Sept. 
7, 1823-Aug. 16,1863), astronomer, was bom in 
New Haven, Conn., the second son of Ezra Stiles 
Hubbard and Eliza Church, and descended from 
a long line of sturdy New England stock. His 
first American ancestor, William Hubbard of 
Ipswich, Suffolk, came out from London in the 
Defence in 1635 and settled in Ipswich, Mass., 
representing this town in eight successive years 
in the legislature. Of the second generation was 
Rev. William Hubbard [ q.v .], one of the first 
historians of New England. Succeeding genera¬ 
tions were men of moral worth and influence. 
His mother’s story of Joseph’s boyhood (Gould, 
post) reveals the earnestness and enthusiasm 
and the gift for friendship which characterized 
him as a man. "It was about his ninth year that 
he began especially to develop his peculiar taste 
for mathematical studies and mechanics,” but a 
boyish love of fun apparently kept his precocity 
within wholesome limits. "One of his great ef¬ 
forts was to make a clock , . . which went for 
a time. . . . Most of his leisure time before en¬ 
tering college was devoted to making a telescope, 
which proved to be quite a good instrument” 
(Ibid., p. 8). About this time he became ac¬ 
quainted with Ebenezer Mason, one of Yale’s 
astronomers. In his sixteenth year he walked to 
Ware, Mass., to talk with a mechanic, who, ac- 


Hubbard 

cording to Mason, had some special knowledge 
of casting mirrors. 

He graduated from Yale in 1843, taught the 
following winter in a classical school, and in 1844 
went to Philadelphia as assistant to Sears C. 
Walker [q.r.] in the High School observatory. 
Here, away from the watchful eye of his mother, 
he almost literally observed all night and com¬ 
puted all day, with the result that his health gave 
way and was never properly regained. Late in 

1844 he went to Washington to work over Lieu¬ 
tenant Fremont’s observations made on the ex¬ 
pedition across the Rocky Mountains, and in 

1845 he was commissioned professor of mathe¬ 
matics in the United States Navy, and stationed 
at the Naval Observatory, where he remained 
for the rest of his life. The discouragements and 
mortifications endured by those who tried to 
carry on true scientific work under the manage¬ 
ment of the Naval Observatory in those days 
now seem incredible. Hubbard found making 
his own observations less arduous than the train¬ 
ing of lieutenants and midshipmen who were not 
fitted for astronomical pursuits and often dis¬ 
liked them. With J. H. C. Coffin he planned and 
organized a system of zone-observations to be 
carried out simultaneously with three instru¬ 
ments. Observation on this program was begun 
in 1846 and carried through 1850. Hubbard’s 
most valuable observations were made with the 
prime-vertical, an instrument which he thor¬ 
oughly studied and mastered. He was especially 
interested in the question of the parallax of Alpha 
Lyrae. His first published observations were 
those of Feb. 4, 1847, when he confirmed the 
identity of Neptune with one of the stars ob¬ 
served by Lalande in 1795 ( Astronomiscke 
Nachrichten, Aug. 2, 1847). The use of this 
ancient observation enabled Walker to determine 
the orbit of Neptune with great precision. Hub¬ 
bard was an enthusiastic supporter of Benjamin 
Apthorp Gould [q.v.] in the latter’s plan for 
founding the Astronomical Journal (first issue, 
November 1849), and he acted as editor during 
Gould’s absence from the country. His contri¬ 
butions to this journal amount to over 210 col¬ 
umns and cover his most important work. His 
first extended computations were on the zodiacs 
of all the known asteroids (Astronomical Jour¬ 
nal, vols. I—III). Then followed his masterly and 
elegant calculations on the orbit of the comet of 
1843, an investigation to which he had looked 
forward since his senior year in college (Ibid., 
vols. I—II). His discussions of Biela’s comet 
(Ibid., vols. III-VI) and the fourth comet of 
1825 (Ibid., voL VI) are equally thorough and 
complete. 


3 2 9 



Hubbard 

On Apr. 27, 1848, he married Sarah E. L. 
Handy, of Washington. Ill health and pecuniary 
difficulties overshadowed the home. Their only 
child died in 1856, and Mrs. Hubbard four years 
later. Hubbard was intensely religious, an elder 
in the Presbyterian church, and city superin¬ 
tendent of the Presbyterian Sunday schools in 
Washington. There are indications that during 
his later years he considered renouncing his sci¬ 
entific labors for the ministry. After the begin¬ 
ning of the Civil War his charity sent him to 
hospitals, where he devoted whole afternoons to 
the writing of letters for wounded soldiers. He 
died in New Haven, whither he had gone to at¬ 
tend a class reunion. 

[Very few biographies are as sensitively and com- 
prehendingly written as that of Hubbard by B. A. 
Gould, in Nat. Acad. Sci. Biog. Memoirs, vol. I (1877), 
from which this account is largely taken. The family 
genealogy is given in E. W. Day, One Thousand Years 
of Hubbard History (1895). Obituaries appeared in 
Obit. Record Grads . Yale Coll. (1864) ; Am. Jour. Sci., 
Sept. 1863; Morning Jour . and Courier (New Haven), 
Aug. 17, 1863.] R.S.D. 

HUBBARD, KIN [See Hubbard, Frank Mc¬ 
Kinney, 1868-1930]. 

HUBBARD, LUCIUS FREDERICK (Jan. 
26, 1836-Feb. s, 1913), soldier, governor of 
Minnesota, was born in Troy, N. Y., the son of 
Charles Frederick and Margaret Ann Van Val- 
kenburg Hubbard, combining in his ancestry 
New England and Dutch stock. In 1840, at the 
death of his father, he was sent to live with an 
aunt at Chester, Vt, and he attended the acad¬ 
emy there and one at Granville, N. Y., until he 
was fifteen. Thereafter he was a tinner's appren¬ 
tice at Poultney, Vt., and Salem, N. Y., until, in 
1854, he went to Chicago to practise his trade. 
In 1857, as he expressed it, he “drifted into the 
current of immigration that was strongly Sow¬ 
ing westward”—a current that carried him to 
Red Wing, Minn. He had brought with him 
political enthusiasm, journalistic ambitions, and 
an old hand printing-press with type; and he 
proceeded to use all of these in launching the 
Red Wing Republican on Sept. 4, 1857. Minne¬ 
sota was in the process of becoming a state at 
this time, and the newly organized but rapidly 
growing Republican party was struggling to 
wrest control from the entrenched Democracy. 
Hubbard espoused the Republican cause in his 
paper and was perhaps influential in bringing 
about the victory of the party in the second state 
election in 1859. From 1858 to i860 he was 
register of deeds of Goodhue County and was 
becoming politically known. 

On Dec 19, 1861, the young newspaper editor 
enlisted as a private in Company A, 5th Minne- 


Hubbard 

sota Infantry. His rise during the next year was 
rapid; he was commissioned captain of his com¬ 
pany on Feb. 4, lieutenant-colonel on Mar. 24, 
and colonel on Aug. 30. In 1863 he was given 
command of a brigade, and on Dec. 16, 1864, he 
was made brigadier-general by brevet for con¬ 
spicuous gallantry in the battle of Nashville. 
Among other important engagements in which 
he and his command participated were the bat¬ 
tle of Corinth, the assault and siege of Vicks¬ 
burg, the Red River campaign, and the taking of 
Mobile. At the end of the war, he returned to 
Red Wing and entered the grain business, later 
adding flour milling to his interests. From 1872 
to 1876 he was a member of the state Senate after 
which he engaged in the building and manage¬ 
ment of local railroads. He continued to take an 
active part in political campaigns, however, and 
in 1881 was rewarded for his services to the 
party with the Republican nomination for gov¬ 
ernor. The party was so strong that his election 
was a foregone conclusion, and he was re¬ 
elected in 1883. Because of a constitutional 
amendment changing the state elections to coin¬ 
cide with national elections, his second term was 
extended to three years. 

As governor Hubbard exhibited ordinary tal¬ 
ents and extraordinary common sense. Genuine¬ 
ly interested in agriculture, and perhaps not un¬ 
impressed by the current agrarian revolt, he 
recommended and obtained legislation to enlarge 
the powers and duties of the state railroad and 
warehouse commission, to the end that discrimi¬ 
natory freight rates and unfair grading of wheat 
might be prevented. He was also instrumental 
in reorganizing the State Agricultural Society 
and in obtaining for it a substantial appropriation 
from the legislature. At the close of his term he 
retired to private life in Red Wing. His period 
of public service was not, however, completed; in 
1898 he was appointed brigadier-general of 
United States Volunteers and given command 
of the 3rd Division of the VII Army Corps at 
Jacksonville, Fla., where he remained until the 
muster-out of the volunteer army the following 
year. From 1901 to 1911 he lived in St. Paul 
and thereafter in Minneapolis, where he died. 
He had married, on May 17,1868, Amelia Thom¬ 
as, the daughter of Charles Thomas of Red Wing. 
Throughout his life Hubbard gave much time to 
miscellaneous public service. He was a member 
of the Minnesota Historical Society and a con¬ 
tributor to its publications, and author of parts 
of Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars (2 
vols., 1890-93) and Minnesota in Three Cen¬ 
turies (4 vols., 1908). Hubbard County, Minn., 
established in 1883, bears his name. 


33° 



Hubbard 

[Autobiographical data may be found in the manu¬ 
script collections of Minn. Hist. Soc. and in Hubbard’s 
"Early Days in Goodhue County," Minn. Hist. Soc . 
Colls., vol. XII (1908). See also J. H. Baker, Lives of 
the Governors of Minn. (1908), which is vol. XIII of 
the Minn. Hist. Soc. Colls .; W. W. Folweli, A Hist, of 
Minn., vols. II-IV (1924-30); W. H. C. Folsom, Fifty 
Years in the Northwest (1888) ; E. W. Day, One Thou - 
sand Years of Hubbard Hist. (1895) ; and the Minn. 
Morning Tribune t Feb. 6 , 1913*] S.J.B. 

HUBBARD, RICHARD BENNETT (Nov. 
1,1832-July 12,1901), lawyer, soldier, governor 
of Texas, was born in Walton County, Ga., the 
son of Richard Bennett and Serena (Carter) 
Hubbard. On his father’s side he was descended 
from a Virginia and Carolina family of Welsh 
origin, while on his mother’s side he was de¬ 
scended from the Carters and Battles, well-known 
in the early history of Ga. In 1851 he grad¬ 
uated from Mercer College with distinguished 
honors, and two years later, after “passing 
through the law department of the University 
of Virginia,” he was awarded the degree of 
LL.B. by Harvard University. Settling in Ty¬ 
ler, Tex., he speedily acquired a lucrative law 
practice but almost immediately plunged into the 
bitter political controversies of the time. In 1855 
he canvassed the state in opposition to the Know- 
Nothing party, and during the campaign of the 
next year he “stumped the state” for James 
Buchanan, whom, as a delegate to the National 
Democratic Convention at Cincinnati, he had 
helped to nominate. His success as an orator in 
these two campaigns won for him distinction as 
the “Demosthenes of Texas,” and President 
Buchanan appointed him United States district 
attorney for the western district of Texas. After 
two years of service as district attorney, he re¬ 
signed and was elected to the state legislature. 
In i860 he was a delegate to the Charleston 
Convention and supported John C. Breckinridge 
against Stephen A. Douglas. 

When the Civil War broke out, Hubbard raised 
a regiment, the 22nd Texas Infantry, and served 
effectively throughout the war, rising to the rank 
of colonel in the Confederate army. When peace 
returned, he retired to his farm near Tyler. Af¬ 
ter his disabilities had been removed, he resumed 
the practice of the law, and the campaign of 1872 
found him actively engaged in the struggle to 
drive the “radicals” from power in Texas. In 
that year he was one of the two delegates from 
Texas sent to the National Democratic Conven¬ 
tion and on his return made a vigorous and suc¬ 
cessful campaign in Texas for Horace Greeley. 
In 1873 he presided over the state convention of 
his party and was unanimously nominated by it 
for the office of lieutenant-governor, on a ticket 
headed by Richard Coke. This ticket was swept 
into power by a vote of two to one, a victory 


Hubbard 

which marked the return of the people of Texas 
to the control of their political affairs. In 1876 
Coke and Hubbard were reelected, and later in 
the same year Hubbard became governor when 
Coke resigned to accept election to the United 
States Senate. In 1884 he was temporary chair¬ 
man of the National Democratic Convention in 
Chicago, and in the campaign that followed he 
canvassed the state of Indiana for Cleveland and 
Hendricks. His services to his party were 
rewarded by his appointment as envoy extraor¬ 
dinary and minister plenipotentiary to Japan. 
Upon his return to America four years later, he 
retired from active participation in political af¬ 
fairs, though until his death he was much in de¬ 
mand as a platform orator. He published, in 
1899, The Untied States in the Far East He 
was twice married: to Eliza Hudson, the daugh¬ 
ter of Dr. G. C. Hudson of Lafayette, Ala.; and 
to Janie Roberts, the daughter of Willis Roberts 
of Smith County, Tex, 

[See The Encyc. of the New West ( 1881), ed. by W. 
S. Speer and J. H. Brown; J. D. Lynch, The Bench and 
Bar of Tex. (1885) ; Biog. Encyc . of Tex. (1880) ; L. 
E. Daniell, Personnel of the Tex. State Government 
(1892), and Texas, the Country and Its Men (n.d.); 
E. W. Day, One Thousand Years of Hubbard Hist . 
(1895). p. 312; C. W. Raines, Year Book for Tex . for 
1901 (190 z ); Houston Post , July 13, 1901.] 

C.S.P. 

HUBBARD, RICHARD WILLIAM (Oct 
15, 1816-Dec. 21, 1888), painter, was born in 
Middletown, Conn. He was the fourth son of 
Thomas and Frances Tabor Hubbard and was 
descended from George Hubbard who was in 
Hartford, Conn., in 1639. Thomas Hubbard was 
for a time engaged in the shipping business in 
New York City but returned to Middletown to 
become cashier in the bank founded by his father. 
After preliminary schooling in Middletown 
Academy, Richard entered Yale College with the 
class of 1837 but did not graduate. In 1838 he 
went to New York City where he studied under 
Samuel F. B. Morse, who was at that time presi¬ 
dent of the National Academy of Design, and 
young Daniel Huntington. This training he sup¬ 
plemented by two years’ study in England and 
France in 1840-41. 

Hubbard’s contemplative disposition properly 
found expression in pictures of quiet, gentle 
landscapes such as those to be seen along the 
Hudson Valley, in the Connecticut River Valley, 
in upper New England, and in the vicinity of 
Lake George. The constancy with which he 
chose the same type of subject for more than for¬ 
ty years is apparent from die titles of his can¬ 
vases. In his early life he painted “Showery 
Day, Lake George,” “Mansfield Mountain at 
Sundown,” “Meadows near Utica,” and “Twi- 


331 



Hubbard 

light”; while late in his life he was producing 
“Afternoon in Summer,” “Down on the Mead¬ 
ows,” and “The Watering Place ” In contrast 
to his one-time teacher, Huntington, he preferred 
simple direct themes which lacked the anecdotal 
or historical reference so common among the 
works of his day. He recognized that beauty 
appears in surprisingly humble surroundings at 
times. The pensive quality of his art, and his 
fidelity of statement give him the graceful sin¬ 
cerity found in greater perfection in George In- 
ness. What he lacked in vigor he in part com¬ 
pensated for by charm. His work was popular 
and he became a frequent exhibitor at the shows 
of the National Academy. To that society he 
was admitted as an associate in 1851 and seven 
years later he became an Academician. His work 
also found a place in the Centennial Exhibition 
in 1876. Here he showed “The Coming Storm,” 
“Early Autumn,” and “Glimpses of the Adiron- 
dacks.” His “Sunrise on the Mountains” is in 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was much 
more of a dreamer than a man of action, yet he 
served for many years, during his residence in 
Brooklyn, as president of the Brooklyn Art As¬ 
sociation. He was also a member of the Council 
of the Academy and president of the Artists' 
Fund Society. He was never married. 

[E. W. Day, One Thousand Years of Hubbard Hist 
1895) ; H. W. French, Art and Artists in Conn. 
1879); Samuel Isham and Royal Cortissoz, The Hist 
of Am. Painting (1927) ; H. T. Tuckerman, Book of 
the Artists (1867) ; C. E. Clement and Laurence Hut¬ 
ton, Artists of the Nineteenth Century and Their Works 
(ed.1885)*] O.S.T. 

HUBBARD, THOMAS HAMLIN (Dec. 20, 
1838-May 19, 1915), soldier, lawyer, and rail¬ 
road executive, was bom at Hallowell, Me., the 
son of John Hubbard [g.zc], later governor of 
Maine, and Sarah Hodge (Barrett) Hubbard. 
He prepared for college at Hallowell Academy, 
and then attended Bowdoin, graduating in 1857. 
After a trip with his father to survey the fishing 
boundaries of the northeast coast, he studied law 
in an office in Hallowell and taught in the Hallo¬ 
well Academy. In i860 he was admitted to the 
Maine bar and after graduation from the Albany 
Law School, to the New York bar in 1861, where¬ 
upon he entered the employ of the firm of Barney, 
Butler & Parsons. On the outbreak of the Civil 
War he desired to enlist, but family pressure 
held him back until September 1862, when he 
joined the 25th Maine Infantry and became first 
lieutenant In 1863 he became lieutenant-colonel 
of the 30th Maine Infantry. In the Red River 
campaign he was among those cited for distin¬ 
guished service under Joseph Bailey [g.u] in 
building the dams at Alexandria (War of 


Hubbard 

the Rebellion: Official Records , Army, 1 ser., 
XXXIV, pt. 1, p. 221). In May 1864 he was 
made colonel, and in the fall of that year was 
transferred to the Army of the Shenandoah, un¬ 
der Sheridan. At the end of the war he was 
given the brevet rank of brigadier-general of 
volunteers. 

Resuming the practice of law in New York 
City, he again (1867) entered the firm of Barney, 
Butler & Parsons, which changed its name in 
1874 to Butler, Stillman & Hubbard. In 1888 
he began gradually to withdraw from practice to 
manage, with his partner Thomas E. Stillman, 
the property Mrs. E. F. Searles had inherited 
from her first husband, Mark Hopkins, one of 
the associates of C. P. Huntington [g.£\]. Since 
this property included a considerable interest in 
the Southern Pacific railroad system and other 
related concerns, Hubbard became identified 
with a variety of enterprises, although his chief 
interest was in railroads. He had already par¬ 
ticipated in the reorganization of the Wabash 
Railroad, of which he was a director from 1889 
until his death. He was president of the Hous¬ 
ton & Texas Central Railroad in 1894, a vice- 
president of the Southern Pacific in 1896, and 
president of the Mexican International in 1897. 
In 1899 and 1900 he disposed of his interest in 
these properties and increased it in others, 
including the Pacific Improvement Company, 
which owned the Guatemala Central Railroad. 
Hubbard extended this road and in 1912 sold it 
to the International Railways of Central Amer¬ 
ica. From 1902 to 1904 he was chairman, and 
after 1904, president, of the International Bank¬ 
ing Corporation, operating chiefly in the Far 
East, which was fiscal agent for the United 
States in the collection of the Boxer indemnity 
and was a part of a syndicate which through the 
Philippine Railway Company built railroads, un¬ 
der a concession, on the islands of Panay and 
Cebu. 

Aside from professional and business activi¬ 
ties, he was chiefly interested in Bowdoin Col¬ 
lege, to which in 1900 he gave a library building. 
He was one of its overseers, 1874-89, and a trus¬ 
tee from 1889 until his death. He was a trustee 
of the Albany Law School, where in 1902 he 
endowed a lecture course in legal ethics. This 
was a subject in which he took great interest, 
being particularly active through the New York 
State Bar Association and the American Bar 
Association in bringing about the adoption of a 
code of ethics. At the time of his death he was 
commander in chief of the Military Order of the 
Loyal Legion. From 1907 till he died he was 
president of the Peary Arctic Qub, which helped 


332 



Hubbard 


Hubbard 


finance and advertise Peary’s expeditions. In 
this connection, with H. C. Mitchell and C. P. 
Duvall he published a pamphlet, To Students of 
Arctic Exploration (n.d.). 

He was married, Jan. 28, 1S68, to Sibyl A. 
Fahnestock of Harrisburg, Pa., who, with three 
of their five children, survived him. 

[H. S. Burrage, Thomas Hamlin Hubbard (1923) ; 
G. C. Holt, “Memorial of Thomas H. Hubbard,” in 
The Asso. of the Bar of the City of N. Y.: Year Book, 
1917; H. \V\ Jessup, “Memorial of Thomas Hamlin 
Hubbard,” in N. Y . County Lawyers ' Asso. Year Book, 
1916; files of railroad journals during the period of 
Hubbard’s activity; E. W. Day, One Thousand Years 
of Hubbard Hist. (1895); Mil. Order of the Loyal 
Legion Commandery of N. Y. Circular No. 10, 
ser. of 1913; R* E. Peary, The North Pole (1910); 
Fitzhugh Green, Peary: The Man Who Refused to 
Fail (1926) ; N . Y. Times, May 20, 1915*] R. E.R. 

HUBBARD, WILLIAM (c. 1621-Sept. 14, 
1704), Congregational clergyman, historian, was 
born in England, the fourth child of William 
Hubbard of Ipswich, Suffolk, and came with his 
father to New England in 1635. The family set¬ 
tled the same year at Ipswich, Mass. Young Wil¬ 
liam entered Harvard College, graduating with 
the first class in 1642. While at Harvard he 
studied medicine among other things. About 
1646 he married Margaret Rogers, the daughter 
of Nathaniel Rogers, and in 1653 was made a 
freeman. He seems to have reached the mature 
age of thirty-five before determining to become 
a minister. He entered the ministry by joining 
Thomas Cobbet as colleague at Ipswich in 1656 
and two years later was ordained. He was 
among the fifteen elders who protested in 1671 
against the censure passed by the General Court 
on “the generality of the ministry” for innova¬ 
tion and apostasy in connection with the found¬ 
ing of the third church at Boston. He attended 
the session of ministers called by the General 
Court in the summer of 1685 to give advice con¬ 
cerning surrender of the charter. Hubbard ap¬ 
pears to have acted as spokesman to deliver their 
advice, though some of the ministers denied that 
the meeting had taken the stand he reported, or 
had asked him to report 

He was among the ringleaders in the Ipswich 
opposition to the collection of taxes by the An¬ 
dros government in 1687. He was present at a 
special caucus of selectmen and leading citizens, 
among them two ministers, held at the home of 
John Appleton the night before the famous town 
meeting, but he escaped punishment. He served 
as substitute for the president of Harvard Col¬ 
lege in July 1684, on the illness of President John 
Rogers, his wife’s grandfather; and in 1688 
when the rector, Increase Mather, departed for 
England to seek redress for New England at 


the court of King James, Hubbard temporarily 
filled his place. When Sir William Phips, who 
had been knighted in 1687 for discovering a 
sunken treasure vessel, arrived at Boston, Hub¬ 
bard referred to him in the Commencement ora¬ 
tion as “Jason fetching the Golden Fleece.” He 
was apparently not in sympathy with the witch¬ 
craft program of the 1690’$, for he helped one 
poor woman to escape by certifying to her good 
character, and he, with several other ministers 
of Essex, petitioned the General Court in July 
1703 in behalf of sufferers still under legal dis¬ 
abilities. 

In 1677 he published his Narrative of the 
Troubles with the Indians in New-England, 
which appeared in England the same year under 
the title The Present State of New-England , 
With John Higginson he wrote A Testimony, to 
the Order of the Gospel , in the Churches of New- 
England (1701). His most pretentious piece of 
work, however, was A General History of New 
England from the Discovery to MDCLXXX, 
the purpose of which was “to render a just ac¬ 
count of the proceedings of that people, together 
with the merciful providence of the Almighty 
towards them.” The General Court gave him 
support in this undertaking by voting him £50 
in 1682 in order that a record of God’s care over 
the people of New England might be preserved 
for posterity. Much of his material was bor¬ 
rowed from Morton’s Memorial and Winthrop’s 
Journal. The work was not published until 1815, 
when it appeared in the Collections of the Massa¬ 
chusetts Historical Society (2 ser., vols. V, VI), 
but for more than a century before it had been 
the source of most of the information concern¬ 
ing early New England, and it had furnished 
Cotton Mather and Thomas Prince with much 
of the material for their histories. 

Hubbard left three children by his first wife. 
In his old age, after her death, he shocked his 
parishioners by marrying his housekeeper, Mary, 
the widow of Samuel Pearce, of whom they dis¬ 
approved because they thought her unfit for the 
exalted position of minister’s wife. In August 
1702 he resigned from his pastorate, on May 6, 
1703, he formally relinquished his pulpit and his 
people gave him £60. He died in the following 
year. 

[J. L. Sibley, Biog. Sketches Grads . of Hartford 
Unto., vol. I (1873) I Colonial See. of Mass. Pubs., vol, 
XIII (1912) ; Abraham Hammatt, The Hammatt Pa- 
pers, no. 4 (1880), pp. 168-170; E, W. Day, One Thou- 
sand Years of Hubbard Hist. (1895), pp. 181-84; Rec¬ 
ords of the Gov. and Company of the Mass. Bay, vol. 
IV (1854), Pt- II, PP* 489 - 94 , vol. V (1854), PP. ^ 79 , 
378, 395 ; Mass . Hist. Soc . Colls., 1 ser., X (1809) ; 5 
ser,, V (1878), p. 219; T. F. Waters, Ipswch in the 
Mass. Bay Colony, I, II (1905-17) * Thomas Hutchin¬ 
son, The Hist, of Mass.-Bay, vol. I (1764) ; J* F. Felt, 


333 



Hubbs Hubert 


HUt. of Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton (1834)* pp. 228- 
32; W. B, Sprague, Annals Am . Pulpit, vol. I (1857); 
Boston News-Letter, Sept. 18, 1704* 3 V.F.B. 

HUBBS, REBECCA (Dec. 3, 1772-Sept 29, 
1852), Quaker preacher, was born in Burlington 
County, N. J., the daughter of Paul and Rebecca 
(Hewlings) Crispin, and the fourth in descent 
from William Crispin, a captain in the British 
Navy, whose son Silas came to Philadelphia with 
William Penn in 1682. Though her father, who 
kept a ferry and tavern near Moorestown, was 
indulgent to her, Rebecca’s early life was 
wretched and unpromising. The chief thing that 
she remembered from her childhood was that 
someone had taught her to pick out a few tunes 
on a dulcimer and that she had liked to sing and 
play for her father’s guests. In later life her 
conscience reproached her also for her early 
acquaintance with cards and dancing. Adoles¬ 
cence brought with it a deep concern for her 
spiritual welfare, but her mean attire and lack 
of a bonnet made her ashamed to attend the near¬ 
by Baptist church. She ventured finally into 
a Quaker meeting, was received with kindness 
and sympathy, and so returned to the beliefs and 
practices of her ancestors. Soon after her con¬ 
version she married Paul Hubbs and went to 
Salem County to live. In 1803 or l %°4 she be¬ 
gan to speak in meeting. At Haddonfield, Cam¬ 
den County, she was accredited in April 1807 as 
a minister, and the next year she returned with 
her husband and children to Woodstown, Salem 
County, which was her home for the rest of her 
long life. In the spring of 1813, with the consent 
of the Woodstown Meeting, she set out on the 
first of a series of journeys that made her one of 
the most widely known ministers of her sect. 
Traveling by boat or carriage, on horseback, or 
afoot, she visited meetings in Virginia (1813), 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana (1814), be¬ 
sides making other shorter visits to Delaware, 
eastern Pennsylvania, and various parts of New 
Jersey. At the prompting of the Inner Light, she 
overcame her diffidence sufficiently, on her first 
journey, to seek out the President and admonish 
him about the war. At Montpelier, Mr. and Mrs. 
Madison received her and her companion with 
unaffected kindness and parted with them as 
friends, Mr. Madison accompanying her to her 
carriage and depositing in it a large basket of 
provisions. The source of Mrs. Hubbs’s influence 
seems to have lain in simple goodness and sin¬ 
cerity, for she was so humble and unlettered that 
to the end of her days she had difficulty in man¬ 
aging even ordinary conversation. Such frag¬ 
ments of her journals as survive testify to her 
compassion for the Negro slaves and to her ap¬ 


preciation of natural beauty, especially of the 
lofty heights of the Alleghanies and the broad 
expanse of the Potomac below Mount Vernon. 
Of her mystic experiences, however, she writes 
in the unimaginative, conventionalized language 
common to Quaker biographies. For two years 
before her death she suffered from slight but 
recurring strokes of paralysis. 

[A Memoir of Rebecca Hubbs (Phila., n.d, copr. 
1880) ; W. F. Crispin, Biog. and Hist. Sketch of Capt . 
Wm. Crispin of the British Navy (Akron, Ohio, 1901) ; 
The Friend (Tenth Month 23, 1852).] G.H.G. 

HUBERT, CONRAD (1855-Mar. 14, 1928), 
inventor, was born in Minsk, Russia, the son of 
Russian Jewish parents. His name was Akiba 
Horowitz, but on coming to the United States he 
changed it to Conrad Hubert. His father was a 
wine merchant and distiller, an occupation in 
which the family had been engaged for several 
generations. Hubert attended Hebrew school 
until the confirmation age of thirteen and im¬ 
mediately thereafter—he is said to have had an 
unusually mature mind for his age—went of his 
own accord to Berlin, Germany, to study the 
liquor distillation processes as practised there. 
He devoted six years to this study, working at 
odd jobs to support himself, and in 1874 returned 
to Minsk to become his father’s partner. Soon 
he began applying the methods he had so thor¬ 
oughly learned. He extended the business to 
various cities in Russia, and in the course of the 
succeeding fifteen years was highly successful 
and gained for himself a wide reputation as a 
business man. Meanwhile, the position of the 
Jew in Russia had become especially difficult and 
he decided to go elsewhere. After liquidating 
all of his commercial holdings he possessed hard¬ 
ly more than enough money for his passage to 
die United States. He arrived in New York 
about 1890, merely another immigrant there 
though a man of repute in Russia, without friend 
or relative, yet hopeful of engaging in the busi¬ 
ness he knew. The opportunity did not exist, 
however, and in order to support himself Hubert 
was compelled to start anew in other fields. For 
six or eight years, therefore, he tried successive¬ 
ly operating a cigar store, a restaurant, a board¬ 
ing house, a farm, a milk wagon route, and fi¬ 
nally a jewelry store. About 1898 his attention 
was called to an electrical device for lighting gas. 
While it was very crude, the idea it embodied 
appealed to him. Purchasing the device, he pro¬ 
ceeded to perfect it and then applied for a patent, 
which was granted on Mar. 6, 1900, patent No. 
644,860. He began immediately to manufacture 
his gas lighter, selling it himself. He also turned 
his attention to the invention of other electrical 


334 



Hubner 

contrivances which might have market value, 
and on May 20, 1902, he obtained patents No. 
700,496, No. 700,497, and No. 700,650 for an 
electric time alarm, electric battery, and small 
electric lamp, respectively. The last two are the 
basic patents of the electric flashlight of today. 
While Hubert had great difficulty at first in es¬ 
tablishing a market for his new products, suc¬ 
cess eventually crowned his efforts and yielded 
him a fortune. As the business grew, he or¬ 
ganized the American Ever Ready Company in 
New York and conducted its affairs in the ca¬ 
pacity of president He continued to make and 
patent improvements on his “portable electric 
light” until 1914, when he sold the entire busi¬ 
ness to the National Carbon Company of Cleve¬ 
land, Ohio. Subsequently, he formed the Yale 
Electric Corporation, and at the time of his death 
was the chairman of its board of directors. He 
was a retiring man and had but few friends. By 
his will, however, three-quarters of his entire es¬ 
tate of about $8,000,000 was bequeathed to un¬ 
named organizations that serve the public wel¬ 
fare. By the unanimous decision of Calvin 
Coolidge, Alfred E. Smith, and Julius Rosen- 
wald, composing the committee of three selected 
by Hubert’s executors to decide on the distri¬ 
bution of the bequest, thirty-three American in¬ 
stitutions devoted to charitable, religious, medi¬ 
cal, and educational needs shared in the estate. 
Hubert married late in life (1914), and was 
divorced in 1927. He died in Cannes, France, 
and was buried in New York. 

{Am. Hebrew, Jan. 3, 1930; Jewish Tribune , Jan. 10, 
1930; Literary Digest , Jan. 25, 1930; N. Y. Times, 
Jan. 12, 1930, Mar. 18, 1928; N. Y. Herald Tribune, 
Mar. 18, 1928; Patent Office records.] C. W.M. 

HUBNER, CHARLES WILLIAM (Jan. 16, 
1835-Jan. 3, 1929), poet, son of John Adam and 
Margaret Semmilroch Hubner, was born in Bal¬ 
timore, Md., and died in Atlanta, Ga. His par¬ 
ents, both of whom were Bavarians, came to 
America shortly after their marriage and settled 
in Baltimore. They prospered, and when Charles 
was eighteen, his mother took him with her to 
Germany. From his childhood he had mani¬ 
fested a bent for anything having to do with the 
arts. He had long been writing poetry, and a 
Boston periodical had published a composition 
of his called “A Threnody on the Death of 
Thomas Moore.” Germany proved to be some¬ 
what of a paradise to him, and for six years he 
studied music and painting before he was ready 
to return to America. Home again, he found a 
position teaching music at the Tennessee Female 
Academy in Fayetteville, Tenn, The Civil War 
disintegrated the Hubner family. The mother 


Hudde 

went to her home in Bavaria, never to return; 
the father entered the Union army and was killed 
at Shiloh. Charles entered the Confederate army 
and at length became a major in the telegraph 
corps. Soon after the war he settled in Atlanta 
and maintained himself by doing free-lance work 
at one time or another for all the Atlanta papers 
and for the Christian Index. Also he derived 
some additional income—extremely little, it is to 
be feared—from his post as associate librarian 
for the Young Men’s Library Association, and 
from the books which he began publishing in 
1873. In 1877 be married Mary Frances Whit¬ 
ney of Atlanta, and in 1896 he was made assist¬ 
ant librarian at the most important public li¬ 
brary in Atlanta, a position which he held for 
twenty years. His published works include sev¬ 
eral volumes of poetry; an adulatory biography, 
Historical Souvenirs of Martin Luther (1873) l 
one political essay, Modem Communism (1880) ; 
one anthology, War Poets of the South (1896); 
and one critical volume, perhaps his most 
valuable work, Representative Southern Poets 
(1906). Of his poetry, the earliest volume, Wild 
Flowers (1877), contains a blank-verse play, 
“The Maid of San Domingo,” adapted from the 
German; Cinderella or the Silver Slipper (1879) 
is a lyrical drama. What remains is for the most 
part conventional—apostrophes to spring and 
moonlight and water-falls, to Sidney Lanier and 
even to Walt Whitman. His last book, betoken¬ 
ing a serene and worthy life, is entitled: Poems 
of Faith and Consolation (1927). In the year 
before his death Hubner was honored by having 
the Poetry Society of his section formally pro¬ 
claim him poet-laureate of the South. 

[Sources include: A. D. Candler and C. A. Evans, 
Georgia (Atlanta, 1906); M. L. Rutherford, The South 
in Hist . and Lit. (1907) ; Thornwell Jaeobs, The Ogle - 
thorpe Book of Ga. Verse (1930); Who's Who in 
America, 1926-27; Atlanta Jour., Jan. 3, 1929; At* 
lania Constitution, Jan. 4, 1929.} J.D.W. 

HUDDE, ANDRIES (160&-N0V. 4, 1663), 
surveyor, Dutch commander on the Delaware, 
was born at Kampen, in the province of Overys- 
sel, Netherlands, but he was doubtless connected 
with the Hudde family of Amsterdam. His fa¬ 
ther, Hendrick Hudde, died in the Dutch East 
Indies while Andries was still under age; his 
mother, Aeltje Schinckels, resided in 1639 at 
Amsterdam. In 1629 Andries Hudde emigrated 
to New Netherland and in 1632 he held the office 
of commissary of stores. He was afterward a 
member of Wouter van Twiner’s council and 
also acted as colonial secretary. In 1636 he and 
Wolphert Gerritsen van Couwenhoven obtained 
an Indian deed for a tract of land of about 3,600 
acres on Long Island, and two years later Hudde 


335 



Hudde Hudson 


secured a patent for a farm at Harlem, which had 
originally belonged to Hendrick de Forest. Im¬ 
mediately after the date of this grant, Hudde 
sailed for Amsterdam, where, in January 1639, 
he married Geertruy Bornstra, the widow of 
Hendrick de Forest Having engaged farm 
laborers to establish a tobacco plantation, Hudde 
and his bride soon after returned to New Nether- 
land, but upon their arrival at Manhattan, in 
July 1639, found that their farm had been pub¬ 
licly sold to satisfy a claim of Johannes de la 
Montagne. Hudde and his wife then took up 
their residence in New Amsterdam. 

On June 26, 1642, Hudde was commissioned 
surveyor. Two years later he was sent to the 
Delaware River, where he succeeded Jan Jansen 
van Ilpendam as commissary of Fort Nassau. 
He proved himself an active and efficient officer 
and for that reason was reappointed by Stuy- 
vesant in 1647. He retained his commission un¬ 
til 1652, when, his wife having died, he returned 
with his one surviving son to New Amsterdam. 
In May 1654 he was again on the Delaware, 
where he made several maps for the Swedish 
commander Rising, whom he promised to serve 
as faithfully as he had served his former master. 
Having been accused of intentions to desert, he 
was examined on Oct. 24 and found guilty, but 
he was released at Jan Becker’s intercession. On 
Dec, 17, 1654, for lack of other employment, he 
was provisionally permitted to exercise his for¬ 
mer profession of surveyor at New Amsterdam. 
In 1655 he was employed as secretary and sur¬ 
veyor on the Delaware and made a member of 
the council of the vice-director. Two years later 
he asked to be discharged from the company’s 
service and was provisionally, in the same ca¬ 
pacity and at the same salary, engaged by Jacob 
Alrichs, the newly appointed director of the 
colony of New Amstel. In a letter to Stuyvesant, 
dated Aug. 10,1657, the latter alludes to Hudde’s 
having married again, while three days later he 
wrote slightingly of his attainments as a sur¬ 
veyor. In May 1660, Hudde made plans to go 
to Maryland, to become a brewer. Before he 
could do so, however, he had the misfortune of 
being robbed by the Indians, so that he found 
himself with his wife and child in great poverty. 
Having on June 5, 1660, petitioned Stuyvesant 
to be employed in some capacity on the South 
River, he was the same day appointed clerk and 
reader at Fort Altona, for the assistance of Vice- 
Director Willem Beeckman. He was discharged 
in October and went with his family to Apo- 
quenamingh, where he died of a violent fever, 
after having served the company and the city of 


Amsterdam for a period of thirty-four years, 
“with little profit to himself.” 

[The chief source of information about Andries 
Hudde is the collection of colonial manuscripts in die 
N. Y. State Lib., particularly the Delaware papers, 
many of which appear in translation in Docs. Relating 
to the Hist, of the Dutch and Swedish Settlements on 
the Delaware River (1877), ed. by Berthold Fernow. 
A sketch of Hudde's life is given in I. N. P. Stokes, The 
Iconography of Manhattan Island, vol. II (1916) ; and 
another, briefer account is included in Mrs. Robert W. 
de Forest's A Walloon Family in America (2 vols., 
1914). See also Amandus Johnson, The Swedish Set¬ 
tlements on the Delaware (2 vols., 1911); E. B. O'Cal¬ 
laghan, Hist, of New Netherland (2 vols., 1846-48); 
J. R. Brodhead, Hist, of the State of N. Y., vol. I 
(1853).] AJ.F.v-L. 

HUDSON, CHARLES (Nov. 14, 1795-May 
4, 1881), clergyman, journalist, and author, a 
descendant of Daniel Hudson, founder of the 
family in America, who emigrated from England 
to New England about 1639, was the son of Ste¬ 
phen and Louisa (Williams) Hudson, and the 
grandson of Larkin and Anna (Warren) Wil¬ 
liams. His father entered the service of the Colo¬ 
nies at the age of sixteen, and was imprisoned 
in Philadelphia as the result of the capture of a 
privateer that had done considerable damage to 
British shipping on the high seas and along 
foreign shores. Charles Hudson was born in 
Marlboro, Mass., and was educated for the min¬ 
istry. He was ordained in 1821, and from 1824 
to 1842 had pastoral charge of the First Uni- 
versalist Parish, Westminster, Mass. He was 
involved in the “Restorationist” controversy 
and was one of those who seceded from the Uni- 
versalist fellowship and set up a new denomina¬ 
tional organization known as the Massachusetts 
Society of Universal Restorationists. While still 
in the active ministry he began a diversified 
career in public affairs, politics, and journalism, 
holding an astonishing number of offices, both 
elective and appointive. He served as a mem¬ 
ber of the Massachusetts House of Representa¬ 
tives from 1828 to 1833, of the state Senate from 
1833*839, of the Executive Council from 1839 
to 1841, and as a Whig member of Congress from 
1841 to 1849. While in the Massachusetts legis¬ 
lature he contributed much to the organization 
of the state’s railroad system. Upon his retire¬ 
ment from legislative work he was appointed 
naval officer of the port of Boston, which po¬ 
sition he held from 1849 to 1853; he was a mem¬ 
ber of the state board of education; and he was 
also United States assessor of internal revenue 
at Boston from 1864 to 1868. Some of these of¬ 
fices were filled by him while he was taking active 
part in the political discussions of the day as 
editor of the Boston Daily Atlas, a leading Whig 
newspaper. 

In 1849 he removed to Lexington, residing 


33 6 



Hudson Hudson 


there until his death, becoming one of its fore¬ 
most citizens, and doing diligent service in the 
preservation of the records and in all the cele¬ 
brations of that historic town. He presided over 
and delivered the address at the centennial ob¬ 
servances of the battle of Lexington. For twen¬ 
ty-one years he was a member of the Massa¬ 
chusetts Historical Society, and he was a frequent 
contributor of memoirs and other documents to 
its annual reports. He was a voluminous writer 
of sermons, speeches, historical papers and ad¬ 
dresses, and his published works include A Series 
of Letters Addressed to Rev. Hosea Ballou 
of Boston: Being a Vindication of the Doctrine 
of Future Retribution Against the Principal 
Argmnents Used by Him, Mr. Balfour and 
Others (1827) ; A Reply to Mr. Balfour's Es¬ 
says (1829); A History of the Town of West¬ 
minster (1832); Doubts Concerning the Battle 
of Bunker Hill (1857) J Celebration of the One 
Hundredth Anniversary of the Incorporation of 
Westminster, Mass., Containing an Address by 
Hon . Charles Hudson (1859); History of the 
Town of Marlborough (1862); and History of 
the Town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Mas¬ 
sachusetts (1868). Robert C Winthrop in the 
course of a memorial tribute to him before the 
members of the Massachusetts Historical So¬ 
ciety said that he was “one of the ablest and 
honestest men whom Massachusetts ever had in 
her service, a man of the strongest practical com¬ 
mon sense, of untiring industry, of great ability, 
and of the sternest integrity in public as well as 
in private life” ( Proceedings, post, p. 418). He 
was twice married: first, July 21, 1825, to Ann 
Rider of Shrewsbury, Mass., who died Sept. 19, 
1829; and second, to her sister Martha, May 14, 
1830. 

[Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. XVIII <1881); Memo¬ 
rial Biogs . of the New England Historic Ceneal. Soc., 
vol. VIII (1907) ; New-England Hist . and Ceneal. Reg., 
Oct. 1881; Boston Transcript, May 6 , 1881; Charles 
Hudson, Hist, of the Town of Lexington, Revised and 
Continued to 19x2 (2 vols., 1913)*] E.F.E. 

HUDSON, EDWARD (October 1772-Jan. 
3, 1833), Irish patriot and pioneer American 
dentist, was born in County Wexford, Ireland, 
of English-Quaker parentage, the son of Capt 
Henry Edward and Jane (de Tracey) Hudson. 
Apparently his parents died during his child¬ 
hood, for a contemporary record states that the 
boy was adopted by a cousin, Dr. Hudson, a 
dentist in Dublin “who educated him at Trinity 
College and later instructed him in dentistry.” 
At Trinity, among Hudson's classmates were 
Thomas Moore, the poet, who became an inti¬ 
mate friend and associate, Robert Emmet, pa¬ 
triot, and a number of young men destined to 


fame in Irish history. This group of youthful 
agitators became prominent through their ac¬ 
tivities in debating societies, and later several of 
them, including Hudson, were drawn into the so- 
called “Emmet conspiracy”—with the resulting 
arrest of Hudson and thirteen of his associates 
in March 1798, and their imprisonment in Kil- 
mainham jail. After twelve months' captivity, 
during which time several of his friends were 
put to death, Hudson was taken to Ft. George, 
Scotland, where he was confined until 1802. 
During this period he was allowed to practise his 
profession, in which he acquired a considerable 
reputation among “the nobility and gentry of the 
surrounding country.” On the conclusion of the 
Peace Treaty of Amiens, Mar. 25, 1802, he was 
exiled to Holland, where he took the first oppor¬ 
tunity to embark for America. He arrived at 
Philadelphia in 1803; in April 1804 he married 
Maria Bridget Bryne and engaged with his fa- 
ther-in-law in the business of stationer and book¬ 
seller. This venture, and another in the brewing 
business, were failures. About 1810 he became 
reestablished in the practice of dentistry, in which 
he continued in Philadelphia until his death, 
which followed a brief illness in 1833. He was 
married three times; his second wife was Maria 
Elizabeth Bicker, and his third was Marie Mac- 
kie, the daughter of a prominent merchant in 
Philadelphia. She became the mother of eight 
children. 

At a time when American dentistry was in its 
infancy, Hudson's native talent and skill gave 
him acknowledged leadership as a practitioner. 
He made no outstanding discovery, nor left im¬ 
portant writings. He was one of the first (1809) 
to perform the operation of removing the dental 
pulp and filling the root of the tooth to its end 
with gold foil. He was broadly educated, tal¬ 
ented in musical and artistic attainments, and 
possessed of a magnetic personality which 
brought him great popularity. The solid part of 
his reputation was laid during his thirty years of 
professional service, and his influence on dental 
art in its primitive stage was great, but the im¬ 
agination is stirred by a tribute of Thomas Moore, 
in the preface to the fourth volume of his poetical 
works, to “a young friend of our family, Ed¬ 
ward Hudson . . . [who] was the first who 
made known to me this rich mine of our coun¬ 
try's melodies;—a mine, from the working of 
which my humble labours as a poet have since 
derived their sole lustre and value.” 

[B. L. Thorpe, in C. R. E. Koch, Hist, of Dental 
Surgery, vol. Ill (19m); Chas. McManus, Edward 
Hudson, A Biog. Sketch {1902); W. H. Trueman, “Dr. 
Edward Hudson, Dentist,’* Dental Brief, Sept. 1902; 
Dental Cosmos, Sept, 1861; Am. Jour, of Dental Sei ., 


337 



Hudson Hudson 


Apr. 1851, p. 236; Poulson’s Am. Daily Advertiser, 
Jan. 4, 1833-] W.B.D. 

HUDSON, HENRY (d. after June 23,1611), 
was an English navigator. His name was Henry 
or Harry, never Hendrick. His Dutch contem¬ 
poraries wrote it Herry, which is as the Dutch 
would pronounce Harry. He married a certain 
Katherine who died in 1624. They had three 
sons: Oliver, who married and had a daughter 
Alice (baptized Sept. 18, 1608); John, who ac¬ 
companied his father in voyages and perished 
with him, and Richard (died 1648), who became 
the chief representative of the English East 
India Company in the Bay of Bengal, leaving 
several children, some of whom emigrated to 
America (Powys, post, p. 187). One biographer 
(Read) has sought to connect him with a certain 
Henry Hudson or Herdson, founder of the Eng¬ 
lish Muscovy Company, an alderman of London, 
and with Thomas Hudson, captain in the service 
of and later a governor of the same company, but 
the theory is untenable. 

All that is positively known of Henry Hudson 
embraces a period of four years, two months, and 
five days (Apr. 19,1607, to June 23, 1611). He 
first appears in history as a master heading an 
expedition for the English Muscovy Company 
in search of a shorter route by a northeast pas¬ 
sage to China, Japan, and the East Indies, a 
problem others had sought to solve before him. 
He must have had ample previous experience on 
the seas to undertake so hazardous a voyage or 
to be entrusted with so stupendous a task. It is 
customary to speak of his four voyages in nu¬ 
merical order, a method merely conventional in 
the absence of information about his earlier ca¬ 
reer, On Apr. 19, 1607 (O.S.), Hudson, his 
son John, and ten seamen, took holy communion 
at the church of St. Ethelburga, in Bishopsgate, 
London, "proposing to goe to sea foure dayes 
after, for to discover a Passage by the North 
Pole to Japan and China." On May 1 they 
weighed anchor at Gravesend in the Hopewell, 
a ship of eighty tons burden, and on the morn¬ 
ing of the 26th of that month attained the Shet¬ 
land Islands, They reached the coast of Green¬ 
land, spent some time there and sailed east to 
Spitzbergen, which had been previously dis¬ 
covered by the Dutchman, Willem Barentz 
(1596-97), and which Hudson encountered on 
June 27. He claimed that he went as far as "81 
degrees and a halfe"; but Sir Martin Conway, 
distinguished explorer and scholar, analyzing 
the evidence of this voyage, found there was 
"jockeying of the figures” and that Hudson did 
not go farther north than Hakluyt’s headland, 
which is 79 0 49'. On Sept 15 the Hopewell re¬ 


turned to the Thames River after her months 
spent in the frigid north. "No new land was 
discovered and no very high latitude attained. 
Its one important result was the discovery of the 
number of whales frequenting Whales Bay” 
(Conway, post, p. 128). 

Data for Hudson’s second voyage rest upon 
his own journal or log. In this voyage Robert 
Juet, Hudson’s evil genius, first appears as con¬ 
nected with him as his mate, and John Cooke, a 
seaman on the first voyage, now accompanied 
him as boatswain. His son John was with him. 
Altogether fifteen were aboard. This expedition, 
undertaken again in the Hopewell under the 
Muscovy Company, had as objective the finding 
of a passage between Spitzbergen and Novaya 
Zemlya, or, if this was impossible, to discover 
a strait that would afford an entrance to the 
Kara Sea. The Hopewell left St. Katherine’s 
dock on the Thames on Friday, Apr. 22, 1608 
( 0 . S.). Lofoten Islands on the west coast of 
Norway were approached a month later. Here 
they encountered fog and cold, and some of the 
crew became ill. Early in June they rounded the 
North Cape. On the 15th Hudson made a quaint 
entry in his journal about a mermaid, alleged to 
have been seen by two of his seamen. Sailing 
north, they encountered the ice-pack on the 18th, 
followed its margin a while, but were forced 
to sail southeasterly toward Novaya Zemlya, 
through a sea filled with gulls. On June 26 Hud¬ 
son sighted Novaya Zemlya several leagues off, 
and the next day, being becalmed, he sent some 
of his men on shore to explore. He found it im¬ 
possible to get through the ice-pack between 
Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya, so changed his 
course, remarking: "It is no marvel that there 
is so much Ice in the Sea toward the Pole, so 
many Sounds and Rivers being in the Lands of 
Nova Zembla and Newland [Spitzbergen] to in¬ 
gender it." For ten weeks they had continuous 
daylight in the land of the midnight sun. His 
crew hunted walruses, but with little success. 
Exploring was done by a small boat which found 
the water shallower and shallower. The Hope- 
well sailed out of Costin Shar Bay disappointed. 
Impressed with the impossibility of finding his 
objective by a northeast route, Hudson would 
have liked to try for a northwest passage; but, 
having spent fruitlessly more than half the time 
at his disposal, and believing it his "dutie to save 
Victuall, Wages, and Tackle, by speedy retume, 
and not by foolish rashnesse, the time being 
wasted, to lay more charge upon the action," he 
returned for home and England, arriving at 
Gravesend on Aug. 26. The results of the voyage 
were negative. 


338 



Hudson Hudson 


Hudson then entered into an agreement with 
the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East In¬ 
dia Company. The contract was drawn on Jan. 
8, 1609 (N. S.), signed “Henry Hudson,” and 
witnessed by his friend and interpreter, Jodocus 
Hondius, a famous map maker of Amsterdam. 
The Chamber agreed to equip a small ship of 
thirty lasts (about sixty tons), well-provided 
with men, provisions, and other necessaries. 
Hudson covenanted to search for a northeastern 
passage by way of the north of Novaya Zemlya, 
following that longitude until he was able to turn 
southward to sixty degrees latitude. He was to 
take observations of the lands he might find, but 
without causing unnecessary delay, and if feasi¬ 
ble, to return to Amsterdam to deliver his jour¬ 
nals, charts, and other papers “without holding 
back anything.” The pay offered him was 800 
guilders ($320) for himself and the support of 
his wife and children, and, in case he should not 
return within a year, the Directors agreed to pay 
an additional sum of 200 guilders ($80) to his 
wife in liquidation of all further claims. More¬ 
over, should he return within the year with in¬ 
formation of a good convenient passage, the 
Company promised “to recompense” him “for his 
perils, labors and knowledge in their discretion.” 
From this contract and supplementary evidence 
it is clear that Hudson was committed to north¬ 
eastern discovery, and nothing more. In turn¬ 
ing to America he violated his instructions, but 
had he strictly adhered to them his third voyage 
would have been a dismal failure. So, on Satur¬ 
day, Mar. 25-Apr. 4,1609, Hudson and his mot¬ 
ley crew of eighteen English and Dutch seamen 
sailed from Amsterdam in the ship Halve Maen 
(Half Moon), and reached the Texel two days 
later. In another month (May 5) he had doubled 
the North Cape of Norway on his way to Novaya 
Zemlya. Finding his course obstructed by dan¬ 
gerous icebergs, as in the previous year, he was 
compelled to abandon all hope of succeeding. 
The severity of suffering from fogs and snow¬ 
storms precipitated dissensions between the 
Dutch and English sailors, which bordered on 
mutiny. Hudson concluded it would be wise to 
get out of that climate as quickly as possible, 
whereupon he gave his crew the choice between 
going to America in forty degrees latitude, or 
searching for a passage through Davis Strait 
His information of the American Atlantic coast 
was obtained from letters and maps which Capt 
John Smith, of Virginia, had sent to him. Hud¬ 
son headed for America. This departure from 
his covenant saved his reputation as a discoverer 
and put his name on the map of the world For 
a month the Half Moon was beset by a succession 


of fierce gales. Early in July, when off the fish¬ 
ing banks of Newfoundland, she presented a 
sorry sight. Her foremast was gone and her 
sails were rent asunder. About the middle of 
that month she anchored on the coast of Maine 
for repairs. Two weeks more of sailing brought 
her south of Chesapeake Bay. Hudson did not 
linger but steered northward, and on Aug. 28 
entered the great bay now called Delaware Bay. 
He caught a glimpse of Cape May, took some 
soundings, and at early dawn of the next day be¬ 
gan to sail up the Delaware River. He became 
convinced that this river could not lead him to 
China, for he was now in search of a northwest 
passage to Asia; hence he turned back, coasted 
the shores of New Jersey, passed near Sandy 
Hook and the Navesink Highlands (Sept. 2) 
and anchored in the Lower Bay. For ten days 
more his crew took soundings and explored the 
adjacent waters in a small boat On the 12th the 
Hdf Moon went through the Narrows as far as 
the southern point of Manhattan Island and an¬ 
chored. From the 13th till the 17th she sailed 
up the river that now bears Hudson’s name, ap¬ 
parently anchoring a little below the present site 
of Albany, which he reached on Sept 19. With 
his small boat the crew began to explore farther 
north, perhaps above Troy. He had been in the 
Hudson Valley a month, and Juet, his mate, has 
given an account of the experiences and pleasant 
impressions of the country. Had his crew gone 
so far north as to see the mouth of the Mohawk 
River, a description of the great falls would have 
been inevitable in Juet’s log. On Oct. 4 the Half 
Moon passed out of sight of Sandy Hook, and 
arrived at Dartmouth, England, on Nov. 7. Hud¬ 
son was prohibited from entering the Dutch serv¬ 
ice again and was commanded by the English 
government not to leave England, save in the 
service of his own country. But his reports and 
other papers were despatched to the Dutch Di¬ 
rectors at Amsterdam during the winter, and an 
account of this voyage was in print before he set 
out on his fourth and fatal voyage. 

The fourth and last expedition was undertaken 
for English adventurers, among them Sir Dud¬ 
ley Digges, Sir Thomas Smith, and Master John 
Wolstenholme. On Apr. 17,1610 (O. S.), Hud¬ 
son sailed in the bark Discovery from London, 
with a crew of twenty-three men. On the way to 
the mouth of the Thames trouble began aboard, 
and Hudson dismissed summarily one of his mem 
It was a foretaste of disaster ahead. On June 4 
they sighted the coast of Greenland and soon 
thereafter were off Frobisher Bay. By Aug. 2 
Hudson had passed through the strait that now 
bears his name, and the next day observed “a 


339 



Hudson 

Sea to the Westward” (Hudson Bay), which is 
forever linked with his name. Exploration of 
this bay continued for weeks with much uncer¬ 
tain sailing, and on Nov. i, 1610, the Discovery 
was hauled in to the shore of Rupert’s Bay, and 
by the ioth was frozen in for the winter. Mean¬ 
while, on Sept io, Hudson had accused his mate, 
Robert Juet, of disloyalty, and deposed him; but 
Juet, at the moment powerless to retaliate, 
“nursed his hatred like a red-eyed ferret in the 
hutch of his dark soul” (Powys, post, p. 143). 
When the food supplies began to run low that 
winter and scurvy broke out, disaster was in the 
offing. Even frogs and moss were eaten to stave 
off starvation. When James Bay was again free 
of ice, Hudson sent out parties to catch food. He 
also set out in the small shallop on an excursion 
to the southwest, leaving his major crew behind 
in the Discovery . His detour was a failure. 
Upon his return mutiny was imminent On June 
12, 1611, Hudson weighed anchor. He still, in 
this dangerous situation, harbored hope of find¬ 
ing a northwest passage to the Orient. On Satur¬ 
day night, June 22, the conspirators hatched their 
plot, while Hudson slept in his cabin. They 
waited for the dawn in silence. The sun rose 
over Charlton Island and James Bay. Soon 
Hudson came out of his cabin and was seized by 
two ringleaders, who bound him with a rope. 
They set him, his son John, and seven others 
adrift in the small shallop “without food, drink, 
fire, clothing, or other necessaries,” and the Dis¬ 
covery got under way and away from the deserted 
party, whose certain tragic end is unrecorded. 
The mutineers chose Robert Bylot as master of 
the Discovery and sailed northward. Hudson’s 
chest, journal, and charts were in charge of 
Abacuk Prickett As they sailed on they fell in 
with some Eskimos, who attacked and killed or 
wounded a number of them. Only eight men and 
a boy survived, and they were sick and starving. 
Then Juet died. On Sept 6 they came into Bere- 
haven in Bantry Bay, Ireland, and later to the 
Thames. On July 24, 1618, seven years after 
Hudson had been set adrift, four of the mutineers 
were arraigned at Southwark for their mis¬ 
deeds, pleaded not guilty, and were acquitted by 
a jury. 

We know nothing of Hudson’s personal ap¬ 
pearance. Portraits and statues representing him 
as a bearded gentleman with a ruff collar are 
derived from a painting in the City Hall of New 
York, now known to have been painted by Paul 
Vansomer in 1620, which Sir Lionel Cust 
thought represented “a Spaniard of high posi¬ 
tion” (New York Times , Nov. 24, 1929). 

CTIie major source for Hudson's four voyages is 


Hudson 

Samuel Purchas, Purchas, His Pilgrimes, III (1625), 
567-609. G. M. Asher, using this material and other 
matter, presented the then-known sources, with a valu¬ 
able introduction and bibliography, in Henry Hudson 
the Navigator (i860), Hakluyt Soc., vol. XXVII. The 
Hessel Gerritsz tracts (1612-13) are contemporary 
sources for the fourth voyage and give an important 
map made by Hudson. They have been reprinted (1878) 
with an English translation by F. J. Millard, super¬ 
seding Purchas' incomplete and unsatisfactory trans¬ 
lation. Scientific appraisal of Hudson's voyage of 1607 
to Spitzbergen is made by Sir Martin Conway [Wm. 
Martin] in the Geog. Jour., Feb. 1900, and reprinted in 
the same author’s No Man's Land (1906), pp. 22-30. 
Of the third voyage H. C Murphy gave new materiai 
m his Henry Hudson in Holland (1859), greatly im¬ 
proved by Wouter Nijhoff in a new edition (1909). The 
sources for the third voyage are critically evalued in 
Paltsits' bibliography to I. N. P. Stokes, The Ico¬ 
nography of Manhattan Island , VI (1928), 255-56, es¬ 
pecially under Emanuel Van Meteren, where the only 
known copy of the genuine second volume of 1610, first 
giving the Hudson matter, is described. For a trans¬ 
lation of Van Meteren, see Ibid., IV (1922), *2-*? 
S. P. L'H. Naber, in Henry Hudson's Reise . . . 2609 
(1921), presents the Juet account with a parallel Dutch 
translation, useful annotations, and introduction. J. M. 
Read's Hist. Inquiry Concerning Henry Hudson (1866) 
is naive but not convincing. T. A. Janvier's Henry 
Hudson (1909), though inaccurate at times, makes 
available documents on the trial of the mutineers which 
are supplemented by new discoveries in Llewelyn 
Powy s, Henry Hudson (1927, 1928), the best biography, 
which has also an unappraised bibliography.] 

V.H.P. 

HUDSON, HENRY NORMAN (Jan. 28, 
1814-Jan. 16, 1886), Shakespearian scholar, 
was bora in Cornwall, Addison County, Vt. At 
the age of eighteen he was apprenticed to a 
coach-maker. During his three years of appren¬ 
ticeship he prepared himself, with the occasional 
aid of the village minister, for college, and in 
1836 he entered Middlebury College, from which 
he graduated in 1840. After four years of school¬ 
teaching in Kentucky and Alabama, during 
which time he began his public lecturing on 
Shakespeare, he settled in Boston and devoted 
himself largely to his studies of the dramatist 
which were published in two volumes in 1848 
under the title: Lectures on Shakespeare . It is 
easy to understand the great popularity of these 
lectures. They are intensely moralistic, rhapsodic 
in their worship of Shakespeare, and full of hu¬ 
man appeal. Judged by the standards of the early 
nineteenth century, they are essentially sound. 
Hudson had read widely and quotes generously 
from the best English and German criticism of 
the day. Following the publication of the lec¬ 
tures he edited Shakespeare’s plays in eleven 
volumes, published between 1851 and 1856. 

In 1849 Hudson was ordained in Trinity 
Church, New York, priest in the Protestant Epis¬ 
copal Church. He was married, on Dec. 18, 
1852, to Emily Sarah Bright. In the same year 
he had become editor of the Churchman, retain¬ 
ing the position until 1855; in 1857-58 he edited 
the American Church Monthly ; and from 1858 


34° 



Hudson 

to i860 he was rector of the Episcopal Church at 
Litchfield, Conn. During the Civil War he served 
from 1862 to 1865 as chaplain of the 1st New 
York Volunteer Engineers. With his duties as 
chaplain he combined those of war-correspondent 
for the New York Evening Post . A letter writ¬ 
ten by him to the editor of the Post, which was 
published on May 24, 1864, contained hostile 
criticism of the military policy of Gen. B, F. But¬ 
ler, his departmental commander. This resulted 
in his detention under close arrest in the prison 
camp of the departmental headquarters from 
Sept. 19 till Nov. 8. He had certainly been guilty 
of a breach of military discipline by his criticism 
of a superior officer; and he had further aggra¬ 
vated his offense by disregarding for more than 
two months, on the plea of bad health, an order 
to return to his regiment, after having been per¬ 
mitted early in the summer to visit his family in 
Massachusetts on the occasion of the illness and 
subsequent death of one of his children. On the 
other hand, General Butler acted illegally in 
keeping an officer under arrest for so long a 
period without trial or even the preferring of 
charges. Hudson’s version of the affair is set 
forth with bitter scorn in a pamphlet entitled 
A Chaplain’s Campaign with General Butler 
(1865), reprinted under the title, General But¬ 
ler’s Campaign on the Hudson (1883). General 
Butler replied with equal acrimony in Official 
Documents Relating to a“Chaplain’s Campaign 
(not) with General Butler,” but in New York 
(1865 ). The case was reviewed in February 1865 
by General Grant, who, “without excusing Chap¬ 
lain Hudson for his disobedience of orders,” con¬ 
demned General Butler, and granted Hudson 
honorable discharge from the army. 

In 1865 Hudson settled in Cambridge, Mass., 
and devoted his time to the work of lecturing 
and writing on English literature, particularly 
on Shakespeare. In 1872 he published in two vol¬ 
umes Shakespeare, Ms Life, Art, and Characters . 
This work marked a great advance over the 
Lectures of 1848, in scholarly mastery of the 
field and in critical discrimination, at the same 
time retaining the human interest and popular 
appeal of the earlier work. Here and in the 
“Harvard Edition” of Shakespeare, in twenty 
volumes, published in 1880-81, Hudson appears 
not as an original scholar adding to the sum of 
our knowledge about Shakespeare, but as the 
scholarly popularizer, and the esthetic critic. 
So considered, his work was at the time of its 
publication of a high order of excellence. Despite 
the new knowledge which has accumulated dur¬ 
ing half a century, and the consequent change in 
methods of approach* his analyses of Shake- 


Hudson 

speare’s characters still retain a significant value. 
His editions of the plays, edited and revised by 
later scholars, are still widely current under the 
title of “The New Hudson Shakespeare.” Be¬ 
sides his work on Shakespeare, Hudson pub¬ 
lished the following: Sermons (1874); English 
in Schools: a Series of Essays (1S81); and 
Studies in Wordsworth (1884). In 1927 a 
bronze tablet was erected to his memory in the 
Old Chapel of Middlebury College. 

[Apart from the books cited above, the chief sources 
of information about Hudson’s life are: obituary notices 
in Education , Afar. 1886, and in the Boston Transcript, 
Jan. 18, 1886; a biographical introduction by A. J. 
George, in Essays on English Studies by Henry S. 
Hudson, LL.D. (1906); the general catalogue of Mid¬ 
dlebury Coll.; and a pamphlet by Chas. B. Wright en¬ 
titled The Place in Letters of Henry Norman Hudson 
(p.p. 1915). A brief contemporary account of Hud¬ 
son’s early public lectures is given in the U . S> Mag. 
and Democratic Rev., Apr. 1845.] R.K.R. 

HUDSON, MARY CLEMMER AMES [See 
Clemmer, Mary, 1839-1884]. 

HUDSON, THOMSON JAY (Feb. 22,1834- 
May 26, 1903), author, was bom at Windham, 
Ohio, the son of John and Ruth (Pulsifer) Hud¬ 
son. The early years of his life were spent on 
his father’s farm and in the schools of his native 
town. He was destined by his father for the min¬ 
istry and was given private tutoring in college 
subjects with that end in view, but instead he 
turned to law. He was admitted to the Cleveland 
bar in 1857 and for the following three years 
practised law at Mansfield, Ohio. He then moved 
to Port Huron, Mich., where he began to practise 
law, but soon turned to journalism. He was in 
turn an editor of the Port Huron Commercial 
Daily, of the Detroit Daily Union, and of the De¬ 
troit Evening News. In 1866 he was a candidate 
for the United States Senate but was defeated. In 
1877 he became the Washington, D. C., corre¬ 
spondent for the Scripps syndicate. Three years 
later his career took another decided turn when 
he entered the United States Patent Office and 
from 1886 until 1893 he held the post of chief 
examiner. 

In the meantime he had become increasingly 
interested in psychology and psychical phenom¬ 
ena, and in 1893 he published his best-known 
work. The Law of Psychic Phenomena . Over a 
hundred thousand copies of this volume were 
sold and it served to popularize both him and his 
subject to such a degree that he resigned from 
the Patent Office and devoted himself entirely to 
lecturing and writing. He is largely responsible 
for making the terms “subjective mind” and 
“suggestion” household words in America. His 
“hypothesis” was that all mental and psychic 
phenomena could be explained as the effects of 


34 1 



Hudson 

the objective mind (the ordinary mortal mind) 
operating by the power of suggestion upon the 
subjective mind, which is incapable of inductive 
reasoning, but which is immortal and which im¬ 
mediately controls the non-cerebral organs of the 
body. This theory was intended to supplant the 
doctrines of animal magnetism, Christian Sci¬ 
ence, and other more primitive explanations of 
hypnotism, faith-healing, and other phenomena; 
and it served to recommend “auto-suggestion” 
as on the whole not a dangerous, but a thera¬ 
peutic agency, whereby man exposes himself to 
his “higher and heavenly” faculties. But the 
popular religious uses to which Hudson put the 
ideas of the “subjective mind” incurred the en¬ 
mity of the scientists and robbed the term of its 
experimental value. 

Encouraged by his popular success, Hudson 
developed his ideas in a theological direction. In 
1895 he published A Scientific Demonstration of 
the Future Life and in 1899, The Divine Pedi¬ 
gree of Man . In the last-named volume he at¬ 
tempted to expand his ideas into a doctrine of 
evolution. He explained the evolutionary, racial, 
reproductive, or altruistic, instinct as the work 
of the subjective mind; the instinct of conserva¬ 
tism or self-preservation, on the other hand, as 
largely the work of the human brain which is 
the chief organ of the objective mind. Darwin’s 
principle of “natural selection” thus becomes 
merely a particular instance of the conflict be¬ 
tween these two fundamental instincts. Theism 
is simply the assertion that the evolutionary in¬ 
stinct is the “divine pedigree” in man, or that 
man is made in the image of God These evolu¬ 
tionary speculations, however, failed to attract 
much popular attention, and Hudson confined his 
later activities largely to the Medico-Legal So¬ 
ciety, of which he was a member, and to its 
Journal . In 1903 he published The Law of Men¬ 
tal Medicine and in 1904 his son, Charles B. 
Hudson, published a volume of his papers under 
the title, The Evolution of the Said and Other 
Essays . He was married, on May 28, 1861, to 
Emma Little, the daughter of Charles and Maria 
(Armstrong) Little. He died in Detroit 

[In addition to the works mentioned above see Who's 
Who in America, 1903-05; the Medico-Legal Jour., 
especially for 1900-01 and the Detroit Free Press, May 

H.W. S—d— t. 

HUDSON, WILLIAM SMITH (Mar. 13, 
1810-July 20, 1881), mechanical engineer, in¬ 
ventor, was born at Kidsley^ Park, in the village 
of Smalley near Derby, England, the son of 
Daniel Smith and Anne (Roper) Hudson. After 
attending the Friends’ School at Ackworth, Hud¬ 
son began* when about sixteen years old, to learn 


Hudson 

the trade of machinist. He became, too, greatly 
interested in the steam locomotive and to gratify 
this interest he went to New Castle and worked 
for a number of years in the locomotive shop of 
Robert Stephenson & Company, the foremost es¬ 
tablishment of the kind then in England. Be¬ 
lieving that greater opportunity in locomotive 
building was to be found in the United States, he 
emigrated to New York in 1835 an d shortly 
thereafter went to Troy, N. Y., where he found 
employment as a locomotive engineer on the 
Troy & Saratoga Railroad. He remained but a 
short time, then moved to Buffalo, N. Y., and be¬ 
came an engineer of the Rochester & Auburn 
Railroad. After several years on this road he 
was made engineer of the state prison at Auburn, 
N. Y. He remained here eleven years, success¬ 
fully managing the engineering and construction 
work of the institution as well as building two 
locomotives. In 1849 he resigned this position 
to accept that of master mechanic of the Attica & 
Buffalo Railroad and three years later he was 
offered and accepted the superintendency of the 
locomotive works of Rogers, Ketchum, Grosve- 
nor & Company and moved to Paterson, N. J. In 
1856 these works were incorporated as the Rog¬ 
ers Locomotive & Machine Works and Hudson 
was made mechanical engineer and superintend¬ 
ent, a position which he held until his death. 
In the course of his career he devised many im¬ 
provements in locomotives which he assigned to 
his company, all tending toward simplification of 
details, better methods of assembly, and greater 
service of finished product. Before i860 he de¬ 
signed and patented a unique feed water-heater; 
an improved rocking grate; and a new method 
of riveting boiler plates, and in 1861 he patented 
the application of cast-iron thimbles to the ends 
of boiler tubes to prevent leaking. His inven¬ 
tions in the decade from i860 to 1870 included 
an improved valve gear; a link-motion; a spark 
arrester; safety valves and levers; a double-end 
or tank locomotive, and an equalizing lever or 
radius bar. Between 1870 and the date of his 
death he obtained seven additional patents for 
different plans of tank locomotives and also one 
for a compound locomotive. In his published 
work, Locomotives and Locomotive Building 
(1876,1886), he gave a brief history of the im¬ 
provement in locomotive construction. His most 
important inventions, probably, were the radius 
bar which permitted an uninterrupted movement 
of the locomotive truck in passing around curves, 
and his double-end locomotives which could be 
conveniently and safely run both ways and had 
sufficient flexibility to round sharp curves easily. 
This type of locomotive found extensive service 


342 



Huger 

in the suburban traffic of many railroads and 
upon the elevated railroads of New York. Hud¬ 
son became a citizen of the United States on Oct. 
22, 1841. He married Ann Elizabeth Cairns of 
Lanton Hill, Jedburgh, Scotland, at Kingston, 
N. Y., on Oct. 6, 1836, who with one daughter 
survived him. 

[L. R. Trumbull, A Hist, of Industrial Paterson 
(1882) ; M. N. Forney, memoir m Report of Proc. . .. 
of the Am. Railway Master Mechanics ' As so., 1882; 
Am. Railroad Jour., July 30, 1881; Railroad Gazette, 
July 29,1881; Newark Daily Advertiser, July 22,1881; 
Patent Office records; National Museum correspond¬ 
ence.] C.W.M. 

HUGER, BENJAMIN (Nov. 22, 1805-Dec. 
7, 1877), soldier, son of Francis Kinloch 
and Harriott Lucas (Pinckney) Huger, was 
born at Charleston, S. C. He entered the United 
States Military Academy in 1821, graduated 
four years later, and was commissioned second 
lieutenant of artillery on July 1,1825. After three 
years in the topographical service, he visited 
Europe on leave of absence. He was made a 
captain of ordnance on May 30, 1832, and at¬ 
tained the rank of major on Feb. 15, 1855. At 
different times he commanded the arsenal at 
Fortress Monroe, the armory at Harpers Ferry, 
and the arsenals at Pikesville, Md., and at Charles¬ 
ton. He was a member of the ordnance board of 
the department of war, from 1839 to 1846, and 
a member of a military commission sent abroad 
to study European methods of war in 1840. In 
the Mexican War he was chief of ordnance un¬ 
der General Scott. For gallant conduct at Vera 
Cruz, Molino del Rey, and Chapultepec, he was 
successively brevetted major, lieutenant-colonel, 
and colonel. After the fall of Fort Sumter he 
resigned his commission and entered the Con¬ 
federate service. He was made brigadier-gen¬ 
eral and later, major-general. On May 23,1861, 
he was placed in command of the Department of 
Norfolk, which was subsequently enlarged to in¬ 
clude some counties in North Carolina. When 
McClellan was preparing to pass up the Pen¬ 
insula to attempt to capture Richmond, and 
Wool, who commanded at Fortress Monroe, was 
planning to take Norfolk, Huger believed him¬ 
self too weak to withstand any serious attack. 
Therefore he dismantled the fortifications, re¬ 
moved the stores, set fire to the navy yard, blew 
up the Merrimac, and withdrew from the city 
on May 9,1862. In the Peninsular campaign he 
commanded a division of Johnston's army and 
participated in the battles of Seven Pines, Gaines's 
Mill, Glendale, and Malvern Hill. He was not 
successful as a field commander. An investiga¬ 
tion in the Confederate Congress held him re¬ 
sponsible for the disaster at Roanoke Island on 


Huger 

Feb. 8,1862 (IFor of the Rebellion: Official Rec¬ 
ords, Army , 1 ser., vol. IX, pp. 190-91)* General 
Longstreet criticized him severely for his dila¬ 
tory movements at Seven Pines (Ibid., vol. XI, 
pt. 3, p. 580; for defense see G. W. Smith, The 
Battle of Srsen Pines, 1891). Although his po¬ 
sition enabled him to watch McClellan's move¬ 
ments after the battle of Gaines's Mill, he did not 
notice the Federal retreat until a whole day had 
passed, and then he lost himself in White Oak 
Swamp. After the battle of Malvern Hill he 
failed to cut off McClellan's retreat On July 12 
he was relieved of his command and was assigned 
as inspector of artillery and ordnance. He was 
transferred to the Trans-Mississippi Army, 
where he continued until after the surrender of 
Lee. On Feb. 17, 1831, he married his cousin 
Elizabeth Celestine Pinckney. Five children 
were bom to them. After the war he lived on a 
farm in Fauquier County, Va., but late in life 
he returned to Charleston, where he died. 

[War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army) ; G. 
W. Cullum, Biog. Reg. of Officers and Grads, of the 
U. S. Mil. Acad., 3rd ed. (1891), vol. I; Battles and 
Leaders of the Civil War, vols. I, II (1887-88) ; A. S. 
Webb, The Peninsula (1881); E. P. Alexander, The 
Am. Civil War (1908); T. F. Dwight, Campaigns in 
Va. (1895) ; S. C. Hist, and Cental. Mag., July 1901, 
Jan. 1902; News and Courier (Charleston), Dec. 8, 
1871. Much of the material for this and the following 
sketches was gathered by Mrs. Harriett® K. Leiding, 
Charleston, S. C.] J.G.V-D. 

HUGER, DANIEL ELLIOTT (June 28, 
1779-Aug. 21,1854), judge and South Carolina 
Unionist, was the son of Daniel and Sabina (El¬ 
liot t) Huger and the nephew of Isaac and John 
Huger His father, who was active in 

the early Revolution and, later, went to the Con¬ 
tinental Congress and to the Federal Congress, 
was one of those prominent citizens who “took 
protection" under the Crown when British au¬ 
thority was reestablished in South Carolina after 
the fall of Charleston (Edward McCrady, The 
History of South Carolina in the Revolution, 
1901, p. 728). Young Daniel Elliott was edu¬ 
cated by private tutors and at the College of New 
Jersey (later Princeton), where he graduated 
(A.B.) in 1798. He studied law under Chan¬ 
cellor DeSaussure, was admitted to the bar in 
1799, and was elected to the legislature in 1804- 
Although a Federalist, he refused to follow his 
party in opposition to the War of 1812. In 1814 
he was commissioned brigadier-general of state 
troops, but the close of the war prevented his 
taking the field. He returned to the legislature 
in 1815 and served until 1819. On December n, 
1819, he was elected circuit judge to succeed 
Langdcn Cheves, who became president of the 
United States Bank. In 1830, when the nolli- 


343 



Huger 

fication issue was predominant in South Caro¬ 
lina, he resigned his place on the bench and re¬ 
entered the legislature in order to combat the 
radical state-rights doctrine. In spite of his ef¬ 
forts, a state convention was called in the violence 
of disunion sentiment that followed the tariff 
act of 1832. Along with his cousin, Alfred 
Huger, and a few other Unionists he won a seat 
in this convention but realizing the futility of 
opposition, he advised his associates to sit in 
silent protest (O’Neall, post, p. 182) and, when 
the convention was over, retired to private life. 
In 1838 he returned to the state Senate for four 
years. Unlike so many of the defeated Unionist 
leaders, he was reconciled to Calhoun and drift¬ 
ed with the majority in South Carolina. How¬ 
ever, in December 1842, he became a candidate 
for the United States Senate against Robert 
Barnwell Rhett and was elected by the vote of 
the old Unionists and those Calhoun supporters 
who resented the Rhett clique. He found his serv¬ 
ice in the Senate uncongenial and, in 1845, will¬ 
ingly relinquished his seat to make a place for 
Calhoun. After the compromise measures of 
1850, radical elements in South Carolina once 
more broke loose. Huger represented St. Philip’s 
and St Michael’s parishes at the state-rights 
convention of 1852 and used his influence in the 
direction of moderation. 

On November 26, 1800, he married Isabella 
Middleton, daughter of Arthur Middleton, signer 
of the Declaration of Independence. They had 
ten children, eight of whom survived him. 

[J. B. 0 *NeaH, Biog. Sketches of Bench and Bar of 
S. C. (1859), vol. I; 5 *. C. Hist and Geneal. Mag., Tan. 
1906; T. T. Wells, The Hugers of S . C. (1931); Trans. 
Huguenot Soc. of S . C., no. 4 (1897); A. S. Salley, 
Jr., Mamage Notices in the S. C. Gazette (1902) ; J. 
G. Van Deusen, Econ. Bases of Disunion in S. C. 
(Z928); C. S. Boucher, The Nullification Controversy 
in $. C . (1916) ; L. A. White, R. B. Rhett (1931); The 
Charleston Daily Courier, Aug. 22, 1854.] 

J.G.V-D. 

HUGER, FRANCIS KINLOCH (Sept. 17, 
I 773“^b. 14, 1855), physician and soldier, was 
bom at Charleston, S. C. He was the son of 
Benjamin and Mary (Kinloch) Huger and the 
nephew of Isaac and John Huger [qq.v.'}. His 
father was a friend of Lafayette, who, when he 
landed in America, had been piloted by some of 
Huger’s negroes to their master’s rice plantation 
on North Island, near Georgetown. He was also 
a member of the Provincial Congress in 1775, 
major of a regiment of riflemen, and was killed 
at Charleston on May ix, 1779. Mary Huger 
sent her son to England when he was but eight 
years old. There he received a public school edu¬ 
cation. He studied medicine in London under 
the distinguished surgeon, John Hunter, and, in 
1794, served for a short time on the medical staff 


Huger 


of the British army in Flanders. He then began 
a continental tour. While in Vienna, he heard 
that Lafayette was imprisoned at Olmiitz and, in 
conjunction with Dr. Justus Eric Bollman, 'at¬ 
tempted his liberation. The plot was temporarily 
successful, although Lafayette was retaken on 
the Austrian frontier. Huger and Bollman were 
also captured and confined in prison for eight 
months. Soon after his liberation Huger re¬ 
turned to America. He completed his medical 
education at the University of Pennsylvania, 
where he presented his thesis on gangrene and 
mortification. On May 15, 1797, he received the 
degree of M.D. He was about to settle down as 
a rice planter on the Waccamaw River, when the 
threat of hostilities with France led him to ac¬ 
cept, in 1798, the tender of a captaincy in the 
United States army. He resigned his commis¬ 
sion in September 1801. On Jan. 14, 1802, he 
married Harriott Lucas Pinckney, daughter of 
Gen. Thomas Pinckney [q.v 7 \. During the next 
few years his energies were divided between his 
summer home near Statesburg, his plantation on 
the Santee, and the state legislature, in which he 
served two terms. In the War of 1812 he was 
commissioned lieutenant-colonel of artillery. He 
was soon promoted to be colonel and was then 
made adjutant-general on the staff of Gen. Thom¬ 
as Pinckney. In 1826 he moved to Pendleton, S. 
G, but toward the close of his life returned to 
Charleston, where he died at the age of eighty- 
one. 


[E. P. Huger, Statement of the Attempted Rescue of 
Lafayette from " Olmuts” (1881 or 1882); Josiah 
Quincy, Figures of the Past (1926) ; K. A. Vamhagen 
von Ense, Denkwurdigkeiten und Vermischte Schriften 
(1837) i T. T. Wells, The Hugers of S.C. (1931) ; Old 
Penn (a weekly mag. of theUniv. of Pa.), Oct. 30, 
^909 ’ Joseph Johnson, Traditions and Reminiscences 
(1851) ; A. S. Salley, Jr., Marriage Notices in the S. C. 
Gazette (1909) ; F. B. Heitman, Hist. Reg. and Diet, of 
U. S. Army (1903), vol. I; 5 *. C. Hist, and Geneal. 

Ju y 1909 and Apr. 1920; D. E. H. Smith and 
A. S. Salley, Jr., Reg. of St. Philip’s Parish (1927); 
Charleston Daily Courier , Feb. 15,1855.] j q 


HUGER, ISAAC (Mar. 19,1742/43-Oct 17, 
l 797 )i Revolutionary leader, was the son of 
Daniel and Mary (Cordes) Huger and the 
grandson of Daniel Huger, a Huguenot mer¬ 
chant of good family, who emigrated to South 
Carolina in 1685, settled on a plantation on the 
Santee River, and acquired a good deal of 
wealth. Isaac’s father became one of the richest 
men in the province and liberally educated his 
five sons, all of whom performed distinguished 
services during the American Revolution. The 
first important public service of Isaac, the second 
son, was during the Cherokee War of 1760, 
when, with his brother, John \_q.v.~\ t he served 
as lieutenant in a militia regiment. In January 


344 



Huger 

1775 he was a member of the Provincial Con¬ 
gress, which, after adopting the “Association” 
recommended by the Continental Congress, ap¬ 
pointed him as one of a committee to exchange 
rice for other commodities during the period of 
boycott. He and his brother Daniel were elected 
to the Provincial Congress in November 1778, 
although his military duties probably prevented 
his performing much service in that body. On 
June 17, 1775, he had been commissioned lieu¬ 
tenant-colonel of the 1st South Carolina Regi¬ 
ment, which the Provincial Congress resolved 
to raise after the battle of Lexington. On Sept. 
16, 1776, he was promoted to be colonel of the 
5th Continental Regiment, and on Jan. 9, 1779, 
he became brigadier-general of the southern 
army. He made an able attempt to defend Geor¬ 
gia from the invasion of Campbell and Prevost. 
In June 1779 he commanded the left wing at the 
battle of Stono Ferry, where he was severely 
wounded, but in October of that year was able to 
lead the South Carolina and Georgia troops in 
an unsuccessful attack on Savannah. During the 
siege of Charleston he attempted to cut off Brit¬ 
ish supplies with a party of skirmishers, which 
was, however, surprised and routed by Tarleton 
at Monks Corner. He then joined Greene’s 
army, in which he commanded the Virginians at 
Guilford Court House, where he was again 
wounded, and at the battle of Hobkirk’s Hill he 
commanded the right wing. At the end of the 
war he was sent to the General Assembly of 
South Carolina that met in January 1782. In 
August 1783 he was elected first vice-president 
of the South Carolina branch of the Society of 
the Cincinnati. On March 23,1762* he married 
Elizabeth Chalmers by whom he had eight chil¬ 
dren. 

[Yates Snowden, Hist, of S. C. (1920), vol. I; The 
South in the Building of the Nation, vol. XI (1909); 
F. B. Heitman. Hist. Reg, and Diet, of U. S. Army 
(1903), vol. I; David Ramsay, The Hist . of the Revolu¬ 
tion ofS. C. (1785), vol. I; Edward McCrady, The Hist, 
of S, C. in the Revolution (1901) ; A. E. Hirsch, The 
Huguenots of Colonial S. C. (1928); Trans. Huguenot 
Soc . of S. C., no. 4 (1897); Records of the Probate 
Court, Charleston; D. E. H. Smith and A. S. Salley. Jr., 
Reg. of St. Philip’s Parish (1927) ; S. C . Hist, and Gen - 
eal. Mag., Oct. 1909, Jan. 1911, Apr. 1914; City Gazette 
and Daily Advertiser (Charleston), Nov. 2, 17 97 \ W. 
G* DeSaussure, The Original Institution of the General 
Soc. of the Cincinnati (1880).] J.G.V-D. 

HUGER, JOHN (June 5,1744-Jan* 22,1804), 
Revolutionary leader, the third son of Daniel 
and Mary (Cordes) Huger and the brother of 
Isaac Huger [ q.v .], was bom at Limerick plan¬ 
tation, S. C. He was probably educated in Eng¬ 
land. In 1760 he served as ensign in the Chero¬ 
kee War and just before the Revolution was^ a 
member of the commons house of the Provincial 


Huggins 

Congress. At the outbreak of the Revolution, 
with twelve others, he was chosen a member of 
the colonial Council of Safety, which was the 
Revolutionary executive government of the col¬ 
ony and was invested with supreme power over 
military affairs, including the power “to certify 
commissions, to suspend officers, and to order 
courts-martial for their trial; and to have the 
direction, regulation, maintenance and ordering 
of the army, and of all military establishments 
and arrangements, and to draw on the treasury 
for the demands of the publick service” (Ram¬ 
say, post, I, 38). When the new state constitu¬ 
tion was adopted he became the first secretary 
of state. His duties were of the most varied 
character. We find him countersigning military 
and naval commissions, letting contracts for 
building or purchasing frigates, and issuing proc¬ 
lamations against counterfeiters of state and con¬ 
tinental currency (South Carolina Historical and 
Genealogical Magazine , Oct. 1908, p. 192). For 
some years he served as intendant of the city of 
Charleston. He was married twice: first on 
Mar. 15, 1767, to Charlotte Motte, daughter of 
the treasurer of the province, and, second, to 
Mrs. Anne (Broun) Cusack on Jan. 11, 1785. 
These marriages brought five sons and three 
daughters. Of his children the most distinguished 
was Alfred (1788-1872), who was a Unionist dur¬ 
ing the Nullification struggle and, afterward, the 
postmaster at Charleston for a generation. Like 
other members of the Huger family, John Huger 
had a good deal of wealth. He was able in his 
will to provide a plantation for each of his four 
surviving sons, and possessed in addition a 
house in Charleston and numerous slaves (Will 
Book, D. p. 431, Probate Court). 

[David. Ramsay, The Hist, of the Revolution of S.C. 
(2 vols., 1785); John Drayton, Memoirs of the Am. 
Revolution (2 vols., 1821); S. C. Hist, and Geneal, 
Mag., Oct, 1902, Oct. 1908, July 19*9 ; W. M. Clemens, 
N. and S. C. Marriage Records (1927) ; A, S, Salley, 
Jr., Marriage Notices in the S. C. Gazette (1902); D. 
E, H. Smith and A. S. Salley, Jr., Reg. of St. Philip’s 
Parish (1927); Trans. Huguenot Soc, of S. C., no. 4 
(1897); Records of the Probate Court, Charleston.] 

J.G.V-D. 

HUGGINS, MILLER JAMES (Apr. 19, 
1879-Sept. 25,1929), professional baseball play¬ 
er, son of James Thomas Huggins and Sarah 
(Reid) Huggins, was born and grew up in Cin¬ 
cinnati, Ohio. He was the third child in a family 
of four children and the youngest boy. He went 
through public school and high school in Cin¬ 
cinnati and entered the University of Cincinnati, 
graduating from the law school of that institu¬ 
tion in 1902 and being admitted to the bar at 
Columbus, Ohio, the same year. 

At an early age he displayed unusual still at 


34 S 



Huggins 

baseball and was captain of the team in high 
school and college. Though he became one of the 
famous ball players of his time, Miller Huggins 
was very small in comparison with his rivals on 
the diamond. He was a scant five feet four inches 
tall and never weighed more than 140 pounds. 
Through his active playing career he was a sec¬ 
ond baseman. His first professional engagement 
was with the Mansfield, Ohio, club in 1899* 
Later he played with St. Paul, American Asso¬ 
ciation (1900-03), Cincinnati Reds, National 
League (1904-08), and St. Louis Cardinals, Na¬ 
tional League (1909-17). Early in his big-league 
career he took rank with the leading players, 
excelling in fielding and ingenuity on the attack 
and defense. What he lacked in size he more 
than made up by his alertness, physical and men¬ 
tal. He was appointed manager of the St. Louis 
team in 1913 but, handicapped in various ways, 
made little progress with the team. It was as 
manager of the New York Yankees from 1918 to 
the time of his death that Huggins rose to nation¬ 
wide prominence in the field of sport. The Yan¬ 
kees, organized in 1903, had never won a pen¬ 
nant. Most of the time the team had been well 
down in the race. In the twelve years of Hug¬ 
gins's leadership, the Yankees won three world's 
championships and six American League pen¬ 
nants, a record that no other manager or team 
equaled. Because of his unimpressive appear¬ 
ance and modest retiring disposition, the general 
followers of baseball did not at first realize just 
how much the directing genius of the “mite man¬ 
ager" had to do with the success of his teams. 
The earlier championships were generally attrib¬ 
uted to the liberality of the Yankee owners in 
spending money for the purchase of good ball 
players, and to the skill of these ball players 
rather than to the shrewdness of the manager; 
but when his first championship team fell to 
pieces and in two years Huggins built up an¬ 
other, using young players he developed himself, 
credit could be withheld no longer. At the time 
of his death he was regarded as one of the ablest 
managers in baseball history. 

Though his life work lay among crowds, he 
kept himself in the background as much as pos¬ 
sible, He was studious, on and off the ball field. 
He completed his education and law course in 
the fall and winter seasons when he was playing 
professional ball through the spring and summer. 
He was also a keen student of financial affairs 
mif through profitable investments, was a 
wealthy man at the time of his death. He never 
married His sister kept house for him and was 
the principle legatee of his estate. Never physi¬ 
cally strong, the burden and worry of directing, 


Hughes 

handling, building, and rebuilding championship 
teams wore down “the little fellow." He took 
up golf a few years before his death but he was 
far from strong when, late in the baseball season 
of 1929, blood poisoning resulted from the in¬ 
fection of a cut under his eye, and he died in a 
short time. He is buried in his native city of 
Cincinnati. 

[Spaulding*s Official Base Ball Guide, 1914-30; G. 
L. Moreland, Bcdldom: the Britannica of Baseball (2nd 
ed., 1927); Collier's, May 24, 1930; Literary Digest, 
Oct. 12, 1929; N . Y. Times, N. Y. Herald Tribune, 
Cincinnati Enquirer, and St. Louis Globe Democrat, 
Sept. 25, 1929; personal acquaintance.] 

HUGHES, CHRISTOPHER (1786-Sept. 18, 
1849), diplomat and wit, was bom at Baltimore, 
Md., the son of Christopher Hughes of County 
Wexford, Ireland, who had settled in Baltimore, 
and of Margaret (Sanderson) Hughes. He was 
educated for the bar, and in 1811 married Laura 
Sophia, daughter of Gen. Samuel Smith, United 
States senator from Maryland. In 1814 he en¬ 
tered the diplomatic service and was appointed 
secretary to the American Peace Commission at 
Ghent, where, by his wit and ability, he made a 
favorable impression upon the commissioners 
and formed life-long friendships with John 
Quincy Adams and Henry Clay. He was given 
the honor of conveying one of the copies of the 
treaty to Washington but, owing to a stormy 
crossing, he did not reach the United States un¬ 
til after the arrival of Henry Carroll who bore 
a duplicate. In 1815-16 Hughes was a member 
of the Maryland House of Delegates, where, ac¬ 
cording to Adams, he made “laws and speeches 
and puns" ( Writings, V, 533). 

In 1816 he was sent on a special mission to 
Cartagena (New Granada), where he obtained 
the release of a number of American citizens im¬ 
prisoned by the Spanish authorities and brought 
them back to the United States. His next ap¬ 
pointment, in the same year, was as secretary of 
legation at Stockholm (Sweden and Norway) 
where he served for nine years, for the greater 
part of that period being in charge of the lega¬ 
tion with the rank of charge d'affaires. In 1825 
President John Quincy Adams appointed him 
charge d'affaires at the court of the Netherlands 
and also charged him with a temporary special 
mission to Denmark. In 1828 Adams endeavored 
to raise him to the rank of minister, but the 
nomination was not confirmed by the Senate and 
Hughes remained in the Netherlands as charge. 
Two years later (1830) he was transferred to 
Stockholm as charge d'affaires and retained that 
position until 1842 when he returned to the 
Netherlands in the same capacity. In 1845 he 


346 



Hughes 

retired from the service and took up his resi¬ 
dence in Baltimore, where he died in 1849. 

Christopher Hughes was in the diplomatic 
service for over thirty years, and his success in 
his career was greatly due to his good-humored 
wit and social qualities. Although he never held 
higher rank than that of charge d'affaires, he won 
for himself at all his posts a unique place in the 
inner circle of social and diplomatic life. Henry 
Clay declared that while he was secretary of 
state, Hughes sent him more news and more im¬ 
portant news than all the other diplomatic agents 
put together (Clay to Gallatin, MSS., Depart¬ 
ment of State, Netherlands, vol. VIII). Collect¬ 
ing and forwarding news was an important part 
of his service, and many volumes of his long, 
rambling, humorous letters now lie in the ar¬ 
chives of the Department of State. His more 
serious qualities are described by John Quincy 
Adams (Adams to Samuel Smith; MSS., De¬ 
partment of State, Netherlands, vol. VIII) as 
“quick observation and accurate judgment, great 
facility and great assiduity in the transaction of 
business and an entire devotion to the interests 
of his country.” 

[This article is based chiefly on unpublished letters 
in the Department of State and in the Library of 
Congress. A few of Hughes’s letters and frequent men¬ 
tion of him occur in published memoirs of the period, 
English as well as American; see especially Memoirs 
of John Quincy Adams (12 vols., 1874-77); Writings of 
John Quincy Adams . (7 vols., 1913-17) i J- Bagot, Geo . 
Canning and His Friends (1909), vol. II; The Speeches 
of the Rt. Hon . George Canning , , , and Christopher 
Hughes, Esq. (London, 1823). See also H. M. Wris- 
ton, Exec. Agents in Am. For . Relations (1929) ; Let¬ 
ter of Miss Margaret Smith Hughes to Her Father 
(Baltimore, 184s); Md. Hist. Mag., June 1913, June 
1915; “Between the Acts at Ghent/’ Va. Quart. Rev-, 
Jan. 1929; “Christopher Hughes/’ Baltimore Sun, Jan. 
13, 1929; Baltimore Patriot and Commercial Gazette, 
Sept. 18, 1840.] E.S.W. 

HUGHES, DAVID EDWARD (May 16, 
1831-Jan. 22,1900), inventor, was bom in Lon¬ 
don, England, of Welsh stock, the son of David 
Hughes. When he was seven years old his par¬ 
ents came to the United States and settled in 
Virginia. There he received his primary educa¬ 
tion, but in his teens he entered a school in Bards- 
town, Ky., where he specialized in music and 
after his graduation at the age of nineteen taught 
music and natural philosophy. Soon tuning forks 
and synchronism led him into telegraphic ex¬ 
perimentation which, in turn, suggested ideas on 
telegraphic printing. By 1853 he had become so 
engrossed in these researches that he gave up hi$ 
teaching and settled in Bowling Green, Ky., 
where he could continue his experiments with¬ 
out interruption. For bread and butter he gave 
private music lessons. Two years later, still at 
work with his problem, he was discovered by D. 


Hughes 

H. Craig, general agent of the Associated Press 
and manager of the Commercial Printing Tele¬ 
graph Company owned by the Associated Press. 
Although the Commercial Company already con¬ 
trolled the printing telegraph patents of Royal 
Earl House [g.v.], inventor of the first practical 
printing telegraph, Craig was quick to realize 
the superiority of Hughes's ideas and induced 
him to go to New York. There on Nov. 1,1855, 
Hughes sold his uncompleted device to the Com¬ 
pany for $100,000 furnished by Peter Cooper 
[q.v.]. The following year he perfected his in¬ 
strument and was granted patent no. 14,917, on 
May 20, 1856. Meanwhile the American Tele¬ 
graph Company was organized by Cyrus Field 
Iq.z?.] and Peter Cooper, who purchased the Com¬ 
mercial Company. Hughes was taken into the 
new organization and his instruments subse¬ 
quently were placed on its lines. Thus the two 
practical printing telegraph systems (House and 
Hughes) came under the control of one concern. 
Both had many imperfections, but through the 
able work of George M. Phelps the best features 
of each were joined into an instrument used in 
the United States for many years. To introduce 
his system abroad, Hughes went to England in 
1857. Being unsuccessful there after three years' 
effort, he proceeded to France in i860 and suc¬ 
ceeded in having the system adopted by the 
French government after a year's trial. In quick 
order between 1862 and 1869 all the major Eu¬ 
ropean countries adopted the Hughes printing 
telegraph and conferred honors upon the inven¬ 
tor. During these years and for some time there¬ 
after, Hughes resided in Paris, but in 1877 he 
settled in London and thenceforth devoted most 
of his time to further experimental work in elec¬ 
tricity and magnetism, publishing some of his 
findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society 
of London , and in the Comptes Rendus . . . de 
VAcademic des Sciences, Paris. Abroad, Hughes 
is considered the inventor of the microphone 
(1878), and the induction balance (1879)- Be- 
tween 1879 and 1885 he conducted many experi¬ 
ments in aerial telegraphy, but he made no pub¬ 
lic announcements; nevertheless, from his letters 
and from intimate knowledge of his work many 
authorities consider him to have been far ahead 
of his time even in this field. Besides the gov¬ 
ernmental honors which he received, Hughes 
was successively a fellow and vice-president of 
the Royal Society; and president of the Insti¬ 
tution of Electrical Engineers, London. He re¬ 
ceived the Royal Society's gold medal for 
“experimental research in electricity and mag¬ 
netism” and the Society of Arts conferred the 
Albert Medal on him in 1897 “for his numerous 


347 



Hughes 

inventions in electricity and magnetism, es¬ 
pecially the printing telegraph and the micro¬ 
phone.” Hughes married Anna Chadbourne of 
London who survived him. He died in London 
and was buried there. 

TSee The Electrical Trades Directory, 1900; Who's 
Who, 1900 ; Jour. Inst. Elec . Engrs., vol. XXIX (1900) ; 
Jour. Soc . of Arts, Jan. 26,1900; Nature, Feb. 1,1900; 
Electrician, Jan. 26, 1900; and The Times, Jan. 24, 
1 goo ; all of London. See also Electrical World and 
Engineer (N. Y.), Feb. 3, 1900; Electrical Rev. (N. 
Y.), Jan. 24, Mar. 14, 1900; Am. Cath. Quart. Rev., 
Apr. 1900; J. D. Reid, The Telegraph in America 
(1879) ; T. P. Shaffner, The Telegraph Manual (1859); 
J. J. Fahie, A Hist, of Wireless Telegraphy (1899) ; H. 
H. Harrison, Printing Telegraph Systems and Mecha¬ 
nisms (1923) ; U. S. National Museum records.] 

C.W.M. 

HUGHES, DUDLEY MAYS (Oct. 10,1848- 
Jan. 20,1927), farmer and member of Congress, 
was born on a plantation in Twiggs County in 
the central part of Georgia. His parents were 
Daniel Greenwood and Mary Henrietta (Moore) 
Hughes, of South Carolina and Virginia ances¬ 
try. Daniel Hughes, a graduate of the Univer¬ 
sity of Georgia in 1847, was a member of the 
planter aristocracy of the ante-bellum days, own¬ 
ing 3,000 acres of land and 200 slaves; his father, 
Hayden Hughes, was also a native of Twiggs 
County and a planter of extensive properties. 
Shortly after the close of the Civil War, Dudley 
Mays Hughes matriculated at the University of 
Georgia as a member of the class of 1871, but he 
did not finish the course. He returned in 1870 
to the plantation in Twiggs County and through¬ 
out his long life was primarily interested in 
agricultural operations and plans to improve 
agricultural conditions, though on several oc¬ 
casions he held political offices of one sort or an¬ 
other. He was a member of the state Senate in 
1882-83, and had four terms in Congress, 1909- 
17 . 

As a congressman, Hughes was principally in¬ 
terested in legislation designed to benefit farm¬ 
ers. President Wilson appointed him to serve on 
a commission to study the problem of vocational 
education. As a result of this work, Hughes, 
who had become chairman of the House Commit¬ 
tee on Education, joined with Senator Smith, of 
Georgia, in introducing and piloting through 
Congress the Smith-Hughes Bill (approved Feb. 
23, * 9 x 7 )t since known as the Vocational Edu¬ 
cation Act This measure has exerted a far- 
reaching influence in the betterment of our rural 
civilization. Under the terms of the act, a Fed¬ 
eral Board of Vocational Education was set up, 
to administer, in cooperation with the state gov¬ 
ernments, large sums in the preparation of teach¬ 
ers of agriculture, trades, industry, and home 
economics, and for the payment of salaries of 


Hughes 

teachers, supervisors, and directors in giving in¬ 
struction in such vocational subjects in the 
schools. 

Hughes’s high standing as a leader of the 
agricultural interests in his state is further evi¬ 
denced by his service as president of the State 
Agricultural Society (1904-06) and president of 
the Georgia Fruit Growers’ Association. He 
was one of the leaders in the movement to create 
the State College of Agriculture and was a mem¬ 
ber of its board of trustees, and was a member of 
the board of trustees of the University of Georgia 
and of the Georgia State College for Women. 
One of the original projectors of the Macon, 
Dublin & Savannah Railroad, he served as its 
president during the period of construction. In 
1904 he was commissioner-general from Georgia 
at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. 
Louis. Hughes was married in 1873 to Mary 
Frances Dennard, daughter of a Houston County 
planter. Three children were bom to them. 
Hughes was a lifelong member of the Baptist 
Church and was a deacon for forty years. 

[See Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928); Who's Who in 
America, 1918^-19; L. L. Knight, A Standard Hist . of 
Ga. and Georgians (1917), vol. V ; Men of Mark in Ga., 
vol. V (1910); Clarke Howell, Hist, of Ga. (1926), vol. 
IV; Bull, of the Federal Board for Vocational Educa¬ 
tion, no. 1 (1917).. The text of Hughes’s speech July 
29, 1916, on Vocational Education is in the Cong. Rec¬ 
ord, 64 Cong., 1 Sess., pp. 11818-21. Information as 
to certain facts has been supplied by members of the 
famfiy.] R.P.B. 

HUGHES, GEORGE WURTZ (Sept. 30, 
1806-Dec 3,1870), topographical engineer, sol¬ 
dier, was the son of John Hughes who, about the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, emigrated 
from Ireland and settled in the Chemung Valley, 
in New York, where he shortly afterwards mar¬ 
ried Anna Konkle, the daughter of a prosperous 
farmer. Here, at Elmira, George was born. At 
the age of seventeen he entered the United States 
Military Academy at West Point, where he re¬ 
mained for four years but did not graduate or 
take a commission. Regarding his activities for 
the several years following little is recorded, but 
by 1837 published reports reveal, he was making 
surveys about the District of Columbia for the 
United States as a civil engineer. The next year, 
July 7, he joined the army and was commissioned 
captain in the topographical engineers. About 
1840 he was sent to Europe to examine and re¬ 
port on public works. In the August of 1847, 
after the opening of the war with Mexico, 
Hughes enlisted, with the Maryland and Dis¬ 
trict of Columbia volunteers, and was placed on 
the staff of General J. E. Wool He did 

his share in mapping the country for the advance 
of the army and saw action at Cerro Gordo. His 


348 



Hughes 


Hughes 


gallant services earned him the rank of major 
and later of colonel. After the capture of Mexico 
City and pending the ratification of the peace 
treaty, he was made governor of the province of 
Jalapa. He proved a good governor, controlling 
the banditti with an iron hand, but at the same 
time entering into cordial relationship with the 
fo x ing clergy of the province. He was con¬ 
vinced, however, that Mexico should be under 
the control of the United States, and in course of 
time, become virtually an outlying province (J. 
H. Smith, The War with Mexico, 1919, I, 271, 
II, 224, 230; letters from Hughes to Francis 
Markoe during the war, in the Markoe Papers, 
Library of Congress). 

After the treaty of peace was signed Hughes 
was engaged by W. H. Aspinwall and J. L. Ste¬ 
phens [gg.w.], promoters of a railroad across the 
Isthmus of Panama, to take charge of a survey 
to determine the best route, a work which was 
completed under his guidance in 1849 (Tracy 
Robinson, Panama, 1907, pp. 7 ~ 9 ’> Report of the 
Directors of the Panama Railroad to the Stock - 
holders, 1849). The next year he resigned from 
the army. In 1854 he was president of the Bal¬ 
timore & Susquehanna Railroad, which in De¬ 
cember merged into the Northern Central, and 
in 1857 he was quartermaster general of Mary¬ 
land ( Twenty-seventh Report of the Baltimore 
and Susquehanna Railroad, 1854; James Win¬ 
gate, The Maryland Register for 1857 , p. 24). 
His active life was honorably rounded out by a 
term in Congress, i 859~during which he 
presented his resolution calling for a department 
of agriculture ( Congressional Record, Feb. 9, 
i860, 36 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 727), and made a 
speech, Feb. 5, 1861, on the right of the South 
to secede, which, without going into the political 
philosophy of the matter, was entirely Southern 
in cast of thought (Ibid., 3b Cong., 2 Sess.,. pp. 
147-51). After retiring from Congress, he lived 
at Tulip Hill on the West River, near Annapolis, 
the beautiful old estate of the Markoe family. 
Here he spent his time as consulting engineer 
and planter until his death. His wife was Ann 
Sarah Maxey, daughter of Virgil Maxey (Swep- 
son Earle, The Chesapeake Bay Country, 1923* 
p. 180). 

[Dates for birth and death are based on family rec¬ 
ords; some of Hughes’s reports of surveys are m tne 
library of Congress; see also Ausburn Towner, Our 
County and Its People: A Hist, of the Valley and Coun¬ 
ty of Chemung (1892); F. B. Heitman, Biog. Reg. and 
Diet U. S. Army (1903) ; J* R- Kwly, Memoirs of a 
Md. Volunteer: War with Mexico, m the Years 1S4 
(1873) ; Biog . Dir . Am. Cong . (1928).] 

C. W * V.T. 

HUGHES, HECTOR JAMES (Oct. 23,1871- 
Mar. 1, 1930), civil engineer, was the son of 


James H. and Mary (Miller) Hughes. He was 
born at Central ia, Pa., and attended the public 
schools of Williamsport. Here, and by private 
studies, he fitted for college and entered Harvard 
in the fall of 1890. His studies during the suc¬ 
ceeding four years were largely in the traditional 
classical field, but he took courses in history and 
economics, and in the last-named subject re¬ 
ceived an honorable mention at his graduation 
in June 1894. Immediately on receiving his de¬ 
gree he entered the employ of the town engineer 
of Brookline, Mass., and spent nearly four years 
in the considerable variety of municipal and sani¬ 
tary engineering work which such a post in¬ 
volves. Feeling the need of more formal techni¬ 
cal training in his chosen profession, in the fall 
of 1897 he entered the Lawrence Scientific School 
course in civil engineering, which he completed 
in 1899. He then joined the engineering staff of 
the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad in 
Chicago as assistant engineer of maintenance, 
later becoming resident engineer in charge of 
construction in Iowa. Early in 1902 he left the 
railroad and spent a few months as designer with 
the American Bridge Company in Pittsburgh. 

With this background of rugged and varied 
practical experience he returned to Cambridge 
in 1902 as instructor in hydraulics in Harvard 
University. In 1914 he was made professor of 
civil engineering at Harvard, which chair he 
held until his death. From 1914 to 1918 he held 
the same title also in the Massachusetts Insti¬ 
tute of Technology under the cooperative agree¬ 
ment between those two engineering schools. 
When this agreement terminated and the new 
Harvard Engineering School was established, 
Hughes became chairman of its Administrative 
Board, and in the following year (1920) he was 
appointed dean. Thus, for the first eleven years 
of the life of the school Hughes was its executive 
and administrative head. He had already built 
up with marked success the Harvard Engineer¬ 
ing Camp at Squam Lake, of which he was di¬ 
rector, and he brought to the new deanship a 
keen interest in the problems of engineering edu¬ 
cation and noteworthy administrative ability. 
He was not a popular teacher but he had tact and 
skill to hold together a distinguished faculty, and 
he made the school a widely recognized institu¬ 
tion, His greatest contribution to the engineer¬ 
ing profession was a quiet and constant insistence 
on the highest professional standards of thought 
and action and a broad interpretation of engineer¬ 
ing training. The engineering school was an in¬ 
tegral part of Harvard University, not merely a 
technical establishment in a comer by itself, and 
he wanted his students—-without sacrificing 



Hughes 

thoroughness of technical training—to get all 
that they could of the broadening influences that 
such an environment offered. 

He published comparatively little. A Treatise 
on Hydraulics (1911), written with A. T. Saf- 
ford, was widely used as a textbook, although it 
was really far more. Theory and practice, the 
problems confronting the designer of hydraulic 
structures and the relation of these problems to 
experimental investigations, were discussed with 
clearness and balance. Due regard for the limits 
of accuracy in experimental work was insisted 
upon, a note of warning much needed in the 
literature of hydraulics at that time. Hughes 
was the author, also, of two articles, “Roads” 
and “Toll Roads,” in the Cyclopedia of American 
Government (1914), edited by A. C. McLaugh¬ 
lin and A. B. Hart Later, he frequently took 
part in the discussion at meetings of engineering 
educators but rarely cared to have his remarks 
printed. Two of these contributions, however, 
are preserved in the Proceedings of the Society 
for the Promotion of Engineering Education 
(vol. XXXVI, 1928) and show his rare gift of 
dear thinking and vigorous expression. At one 
meeting the slogan of “education for leadership” 
had been put forward as the keynote of the gath¬ 
ering. Hughes brought the over-enthusiastic 
ones back to a solid footing by remarking that 
“executive ability, or qualities of leadership, can¬ 
not be created by educational processes,” al¬ 
though they may, of course, be stimulated and 
developed. This careful, exact and sane thinking 
on the details of professional education was, per¬ 
haps, his outstanding characteristic. 

He was married on Apr. 15, 1902, to Elinor 
Lambert of Cambridge, Mass., who with two 
daughters survived him. His figure was slight 
but active and well-knit, and was kept in condi¬ 
tion by means of his favorite pastime, golf. In 
manner he was quiet and serious. He enjoyed 
meeting old friends, especially to the accompani¬ 
ment of his favorite black pipe, and was a ready 
talker and good companion. 

[Personal acquaintance; Harvard Engineering Sac, 
Bull,, vol. XI, no. 2; Harvard College Class of 1894, 
Twenty-fifth Anniversary Report (1919) ; Who’s Who 
%n America, 1928-29; Who's Who in Engineering , 
1925; J. M. and Jacques Cattell, Am. Men of Science 
(1927) ; Boston Herald, Mar. 2,1930.] C. J.T. 

HUGHES, HENRY (d. Oct. 3,1862), writer, 
lawyer, grew up at Port Gibson, Miss. After a 
precocious childhood he went to Oakland College 
in his own state and graduated in 1847. While 
still in college he began writing his Treatise on 
Sociology, an examination and defense of slav¬ 
ery in the Sooth, which, after some delay and a 
revision, appeared in 1854. Hughes practised 


Hughes 

law half-heartedly at Port Gibson, spending most 
of his time in social studies. Foreseeing the out¬ 
break of the Civil War, he had for some years 
been reading on military tactics, and drilling as 
a private in the Port Gibson Riflemen. In this 
organization he entered the war. Within a month 
he was elected captain of the Claiborne Guards 
and later colonel of the 12th Mississippi Regi¬ 
ment, of which the Guards formed a company. 
After heavy campaigning in Virginia, during 
which he constructed fortifications at Bull Run, 
he returned to Mississippi with authority from 
the war department to raise a regiment of par¬ 
tisan rangers for the defense of Claiborne and 
adjoining counties on the Mississippi River. He 
was soon brought to his bed with inflammatory 
rheumatism, contracted during his hardships in 
Virginia, and died shortly afterward at Port 
Gibson. 

His chief work was as an apologist for South¬ 
ern slavery. He read to the Southern Commer¬ 
cial Convention at Vicksburg, 1859, “A Report 
on the African Apprentice System” which advo¬ 
cated reopening the African slave trade and fur¬ 
ther expounded his characteristic doctrine that 
slavery had progressed in the South into a status 
which he called “warranteeism.” He held that 
“warranteeism” afforded all the benefits of a 
stable society with coordination of management 
and labor, but with none of the injustices of 
chattel slavery which had been the first condi¬ 
tion of the negroes in America. Masters of 
slaves, he contended, were magistrates of the 
State in ordering work and warranting security. 
What the master owned was not the body of the 
“warrantee,” but a “labor obligation” capitalized. 
“Warranteeism” he believed was not repugnant 
to the Constitution, though the slavery out of 
which it evolved he believed was. In 1857, as 
senator, Hughes had introduced a bill in the Mis¬ 
sissippi legislature to charter the African Immi¬ 
gration Company of which he was a promoter, 
but this and similar bills in other Southern legis¬ 
latures failed of passage. He wanted to bring in 
Africans under fifteen-year indentures; at the 
conclusion of this period the negroes would con¬ 
tinue as “warrantees,” with more regulation by 
the State of working conditions. His writings 
were thin sophistry, encumbered with pseudo¬ 
scientific terminology, and he produced no evi¬ 
dence to justify his contention that slavery had 
changed essentially as a social institution since 
its introduction into America, 

[W. D. Moore, The Life and Works of Col . Henry 
Hughes; A Funeral Sermon Preached in the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, Port Gibson , Miss., Oct 26, 1862 
(1863) ; Proc. Miss . Valley Hist. Asso. . . . 1914-1$ 
(1916) ; Dunbar Roland, Mississippi (1907), vol. 1.3 

B. M— 1 . 



Hughes 

HUGHES, HOWARD ROBARD (Sept. 9, 

1869-Jan. 14,1924), inventor, manufacturer, was 
the son of Felix Turner and Jean Amelia (Sum¬ 
merlin) Hughes and was born in Lancaster, Mo. 
He was descended on both sides of his family 
from English land-grant colonists in Virginia, 
the first Hughes having settled in Kent County 
in 1645, and the first Summerlin in Isle of Wight 
County in 1717. His father was a lawyer widely 
known for his conduct of the Scotland County 
Bond Cases, which extended over a period of 
twenty-six years (1872-98), and was a railroad 
president and judge. During his youth Hughes 
lived in Lancaster, Mo., and Keokuk, Iowa, 
where he attended school. He prepared for col¬ 
lege at the military academies at Morgan Park, 
Ill., and St. Charles, Mo., and entered Harvard 
College with the class of 1897, taking a special 
course, 1893-95. He then studied law at the 
State University of Iowa, 1895-96, and without 
graduating began practice with his father in 
Keokuk. He had meanwhile become intensely 
interested in mining, and he shortly left home to 
engage in lead and zinc mining in southwestern 
Missouri. He was happily at work here until, in 
1901, the news reached him of the discovery of 
oil at Spindletop, near Beaumont, Tex. Rushing 
immediately to Beaumont, he quickly learned the 
practical end of the oil game. He then estab¬ 
lished a drilling contracting business and for 
seven years, most of the time in partnership with 
Walter Sharp, he engaged in contracting and in 
drilling wells for himself, following the oil in¬ 
dustry from one field to another both in Texas 
and in Louisiana, and experiencing all of the 
fortunes and misfortunes which that industry 
affords. The common method of drilling an oil 
well at that time was the rotary system, using a 
chisel-faced cutting tool shaped like a fish tail 
With such an outfit Hughes, about 1907, started 
a well at Pierce Junction, Tex., which he had to 
abandon because the drill could not penetrate the 
hard rock. After a similar experience at Goose 
Creek, Tex,, on the suggestion of his partner, 
Sharp, he went to his parents* home in Keokuk 
for a vacation, determined to devise a drill to 
bore through hard rock formation. Succeeding 
after two weeks* work, he filed patent applica¬ 
tions on Nov. 20, 1908, and on Aug. 10, 1909, 
was granted two United States patents (numbers 
930,758 and 930,759) for rock drills. These are 
the basic patents of the cone-type drill now used 
throughout the world in rotary drilling systems. 
Hughes first tested his newly invented bit at 
Goose Creek, drilled through fourteen feet of the 
hard rock in eleven hours, brought in a well, and 
thus discovered the Goose Creek field, which be- 


Hughes 

came one of the greatest oil fields in the Gulf 
Coast region. In like manner he discovered 
Pierce Junction field, and then in 1909 organized 
with his partner the Sharp-Hughes Tool Com¬ 
pany in Houston, Tex., to manufacture his drill. 
Overcoming innumerable difficulties in intro¬ 
ducing the new implement, the partners eventu¬ 
ally established a most successful business. Af¬ 
ter Sharp’s death in 1917 Hughes became sole 
owner of the Hughes Tool Company, and not 
only directed the activities of his constantly 
growing enterprise, which now had branch plants 
in Oklahoma City and Los Angeles, but also car¬ 
ried on his inventive work. Following his initial 
invention he patented twenty-five improvements 
of his cone-type drill and other drilling equip¬ 
ment, and had instituted experimental research 
leading to the manufacture of a steel wedge-type 
gate valve for high pressure service in the oil in¬ 
dustry. Unfortunately he did not live to see this 
device perfected During the World War he 
adapted his cone bit for horizontal boring be¬ 
tween trenches and offered it to the federal gov¬ 
ernment, but the war ended before any definite 
action was taken in the matter. Hughes’s phi¬ 
lanthropies were many—-he was particularly in¬ 
terested in universities and deserving students— 
and all were anonymous. He was an ardent 
sportsman and traveled extensively both at home 
and abroad. In 1904 he married Allene Gano of 
Dallas, Tex., and at the time of his sudden death 
in Houston was survived by a son. 

[Mining and Oil Bull., Feb. 1924 ; Petroleum World, 
Feb. 1924; Oil Age, Feb. 1924; Oil Trade Jour., Feb. 
1924 ; publications of the Hughes Tool Company; Har¬ 
vard College Class of i% 97 , Fourth Report (1912) and 
. . . Twenty-Fifth Anniv. Report (1922); Houston 
Post, Jan. 15, 1924; Patent Office records; information 
as to certain facts from Hughes’s brother, Rupert 
Hughes.] C.W.M. 

HUGHES, JAMES (Nov. 24, 1823-Oct 21, 
1873), lawyer, judge, politician, was born at 
Hamstead, McL When a small child he was taken 
to Bloomington, Ind., by his mother. His father 
was never a resident of the state. The mother 
died soon after migrating from her eastern home 
and her son grew up in the families of relatives. 
He received an appointment to West Point, but 
he decided that, since he did not care to enter 
upon a military career, he ought not to be edu¬ 
cated at the expense of the government Resign¬ 
ing his cadetship, therefore, he returned to In¬ 
diana, studied law, and was admitted to practice 
in 1842. Late in the Mexican War he entered 
the army as a lieutenant, but the regiment of 
which his company formed a part got no farther 
than New Orleans. He then resumed the prac¬ 
tice of law in Bloomington. He was an ardent 



Hughes 

Democrat, but won a place as a judge of the 
local circuit court against the Democratic in¬ 
cumbent on the ground that the judiciary should 
be rescued from politics. He was an able but 
opinionated judge, who won the respect of the 
lawyers that rode the circuit with him, though 
they resented his arbitrary methods. While serv¬ 
ing as judge he taught classes in and directed the 
law school of Indiana University. In 1856 he 
was elected to Congress and served a single term, 
failing of reelection in 1858. With plenty of con¬ 
fidence in himself, he was very active through¬ 
out both sessions. He did not hesitate to enter 
into debate with any member and rose to “object” 
so often that his colleagues expected him to pro¬ 
test at every opportunity. He supported Presi¬ 
dent Buchanan in opposition to Douglas on the 
Lecompton Bill. In Indiana politics, he was 
aligned with the proslavery faction of his party 
led by Senator Jesse D. Bright In i860 he sup¬ 
ported Breckinridge, rather than Douglas, but 
was not active during the campaign. On the 
death of Judge Isaac Blackford of the United 
States Court of Claims in December 1859, Presi¬ 
dent Buchanan appointed Hughes to the bench. 
When the Confederacy was formed, Hughes be¬ 
came a vehement Union man, and was later no 
less extreme as a Republican than he had been 
as a Democrat. After resigning from the Court 
of Claims in 1864, he practised law in Washing¬ 
ton, D. C., and also served as cotton agent for 
the Treasury Department. 

Although Hughes had maintained only a nomi¬ 
nal residence in Indiana for a few years, in 1866 
he sought and obtained the Republican nomina¬ 
tion as representative from Monroe County in 
the state legislature. After a whirlwind cam¬ 
paign he was elected. His party was in the ma¬ 
jority, and he became the recognized leader of 
the House during the session of 1867. In 1868 
he was elected to the state Senate. He now as¬ 
pired to a seat in the United States Senate, hut 
he failed to secure the united support of his 
party. He then returned to Washington and re¬ 
sumed his law practice. It has been said of him 
that he kept a fine stock of liquors and was so 
generous with political friends who visited him 
that some were overcome by his hospitality. His 
death occurred in Bladensburg, Md., in 1873. 
His remains were interred in the Rose Hill 
Cemetery at Bloomington, Ind. 

[The best treatment of Hughes is a biographical 
sketch by H. C. Duncan, in the Ind. Quart. Mag. of 
Hist*, Sept. 1909. See also Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. 
(1938); and the Evening Star (Washington, D. C), 
Oct at, 1873.3 W.O.L. 

HUGHES, JOHN JOSEPH (June 24,1797- 
Jam 3,1864), Roman Catholic prelate, was bom 


Hughes 

at Annaloghan, County Tyrone, Ireland, to Pat¬ 
rick and Margaret (McKenna) Hughes, small 
farmers and linen weavers. Ruined by the Na¬ 
poleonic wars, the family withdrew John from 
school, despite his call to the priesthood, and 
apprenticed him to a gardener. In 1816 the fa¬ 
ther and a son, Patrick, emigrated to Cham- 
bersburg, Pa.; a year later, they sent for John; 
and in another year their combined savings 
brought out the mother and the remainder of 
the family. John found work as a laborer on the 
Eastern Shore of Maryland and in Emmitsburg, 
where he boarded with an Irish schoolmaster 
through whom he won the friendship of Samuel 
Cooper, a distinguished convert-priest. With 
their indorsement, he was hired as a gardener 
at Mount St. Mary's College. He studied Latin 
and in 1820 was admitted as a seminarian by Dr. 
John Dubois [q.v.], although he continued to 
earn his way by supervision of the gardens. Not 
until he commenced studying theology under 
Simon W. G, Brute [ q.v .] did he give evidence 
of marked ability. Ordained a priest, Oct 15, 
1826, he was temporarily assigned to St. Augus¬ 
tine's Church, Philadelphia, where he was further 
trained by Michael Hurley, O.S.A., a noted 
preacher. 

After brief periods at Bedford, Pa., and at St 
Joseph’s, Philadelphia, Hughes was named pas¬ 
tor of old St. Mary’s Church in that city, then 
passing through a schism arising out of the trus¬ 
tee system. Despite temporary difficulties in 
parochial readjustment, he seized the oppor¬ 
tunity of defending Catholicism against nativist 
charges; to enter the lists with prominent Protes¬ 
tant clergymen in controversies carried on in 
periodicals; to promote a tract society; and to 
write a novelette. The Conversion and Edify¬ 
ing Death of Andrew Dunn (1828). Although 
Bishop Henry Conwell [q.v.] favored the selec¬ 
tion of Hughes as his successor in Philadelphia, 
Rome named F. P. Kenrick [q.v.] coadjutor. As 
Kenrick's secretary, founder of St. John's or¬ 
phanage (1829), a theologian at the First Pro¬ 
vincial Council of Baltimore, builder of St John's 
Church, conqueror of trusteeism, founder of the 
Catholic Herald (1833), and author of anti- 
Catholic canards under the pseudonym of Cran- 
mer, which were printed by the deluded editor 
of the Protestant (Feb. 13 to Mar. 13, 1830), 
Hughes, despite an irregular education, was 
easily the leading priest in the diocese. In 1833 
he entered into a series of debates with Rev. 
John Breckinridge [q.v.], a Presbyterian po¬ 
lemical writer, carried on in a series of letters 
in the Presbyterian and in the Catholic Herald, 
and abounding in caustic recriminations and 


35 2 



Hughes 

theological lore. They were printed under the 
title, Controversy between Rev. Messrs. Hughes 
and Breckinridge on the Subject , “Is the Prot¬ 
estant Religion the Religion of ChristV 9 (1834?; 
1864). Hardly was this controversy finished 
when Hughes published A Review of the Charge 
of Bishop Onderdonk on the Rule of Christ 
(1833). Soon Breckinridge returned to the 
fight, and the champions debated before the 
Philadelphia Union Literary Institute the double 
question: “Is the Roman Catholic Religion in 
Any or in All its Principles or Doctrines Inim¬ 
ical to Civil and Religious Liberty?” and “Is the 
Presbyterian Religion . . . Inimical, etc.,” pub¬ 
lished in 1836. 

A nominee for the See of Cincinnati (1833), 
Hughes was actually published as coadjutor- 
bishop of Philadelphia in 1836 when Kenrick 
was transferred to the proposed new see of Pitts¬ 
burgh ; but the division of the diocese was post¬ 
poned. Not long afterward, however, on the 
nomination of the Council at Baltimore, Rome 
named him coadjutor-bishop of New York with 
the right of succession, and on Jan. 7, 1838, he 
was consecrated titular bishop of Basileopolis. 
While he did not succeed to formal command 
until Dec. 20, 1842, Hughes immediately seized 
control of the diocese, for so forceful a character 
could hardly qualify as a subservient assistant. 
He found an apologetic people who were grop¬ 
ing toward active citizenship and improved so¬ 
cial and economic position, and he left a militant 
people who insisted on the rights to which their 
growing numerical strength entitled them. Large 
numbers of Irish and German immigrants were 
becoming citizens, and Hughes was an active 
supporter of emigrant associations as an Amer¬ 
icanizing force. The growth of Catholic churches 
and institutions during the bishop's regime was 
enormous. Much of this development can be as¬ 
cribed to his skillful management and business 
acumen, as well as to the general respect, if not 
love, which he won both from Catholics and from 
others. Hughes was a fighter, and as such chal¬ 
lenged the Irish of the whole land, who soon 
came to regard him as their spokesman. 

His first fight was against trusteeism. He 
appealed to the congregation of St. Patrick's 
Church over the heads of usurping trustees, and 
it accepted his episcopal authority. Mismanaged 
by the trustees, St. Peter's was in bankruptcy 
and Hughes was able to buy the property at the 
auctioneer's block. He discharged a debt of 
$140,000, for which he was morally but not legal¬ 
ly bound. The troublesome congregation of St 
Louis in Buffalo was forced into ecclesiastical 
obedience. With the assistance of Bishop John 


Hughes 

McCloskey [q.r.], his nominee to the See of Al¬ 
bany, he obtained a modification of the state law 
so that church properties could be held in the 
name of the bishop and his appointees. In time, 
this arrangement became general throughout the 
country, and trusteeism disappeared. He labored 
incessantly to place his diocese on a sound fi¬ 
nancial basis, although his Church Debt Asso¬ 
ciation (1841) was of little assistance. He made 
frequent journeys to Europe in quest of volun¬ 
teer priests and nuns; and of material support 
from the various missionary societies of Vienna, 
Paris, and Munich. He thus came into close 
contact with religious and political leaders 
abroad and, incidentally, attained a strategic po¬ 
sition at Rome as an authority on American 
affairs. As a result of these missions, he intro¬ 
duced into the diocese the Ladies of the Sacred 
Heart under Princess Elizabeth Gallitzin, a 
cousin of Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin [q.zv], 
who established the Sacred Heart Academy in 
Manhattanville (1841); the Sisters of Mercy 
(1846); the Sisters of Qiarity of St Vincent de 
Paul, who were organized as a diocesan com¬ 
munity with a mother-house and academy at 
Mount St Vincent on the Hudson (1846) ; and 
a band of Christian Brothers for the parochial 
schools (1853), who later founded Manhattan 
College. In 1839, he purchased the Rose Hill 
estate near Fordham, to which he removed the 
diocesan seminary from Lafargeville (1840) 
and where he founded St. John’s College (1841), 
which was later assigned to the Jesuits (1846). 
Hughes was also a co-founder of the provincial 
seminary at Troy and a leader in the establish¬ 
ment of the North American College in Rome, 
The bishop became widely known for his fight 
against the Public School Society, a private cor¬ 
poration, Protestant in sympathies, which domi¬ 
nated the local school system and distributed the 
funds provided by the municipality. The Catho¬ 
lics had a few starved parochial schools in 
church-basements, which he insisted should have 
a share of the school funds, both as a matter of 
justice and also as a compromise which would 
enable each denomination to maintain schools of 
a high character and yet teach its own tenets. 
Through Dr. Power's Catholic Association he 
appealed for a share in the funds to the city 
council, and then to the state assembly, which 
postponed action, though he had won over such 
powerful politicians as Governor Seward and 
Thurlow Weed. Thereupon he entered the po¬ 
litical lists. Four days before the fall election 
(Oct 29, 1841), he called a meeting at Carroll 
Hall to which he addressed a powerful appeal for 
support of his political slate. This was composed 


353 



Hughes 

of friendly candidates on both tickets and a few 
Catholics, who were at that time virtually re¬ 
garded as disqualified for public office. Both 
parties were horrified and James G. Bennett 
in his New York Herald, charged the 
bishop with an attempt “to organize the Irish 
Catholics of New York as a distinct party, that 
could be given to the Whigs or Loco-focos at the 
wave of his crozier.” The Hughes ticket polled 
only 2,200 votes, yet it demonstrated what might 
be done with time and more perfect organization. 
Politicians did not care to force a continuation of 
the experiment, however; and a law was enacted 
which secularized the public-school system. This 
Hughes accepted as a necessary reform, while he 
condemned in principle a school program which, 
in an effort to satisfy men of all creeds or none, 
included no moral or religious teaching. He 
committed Catholics to the construction of pa¬ 
rochial schools at an enormous expense and at 
the cost of double school-taxation. Nativists 
made Hughes their target, and charged him and 
his co-religionists with hostility to American in¬ 
stitutions. He kept the peace when they invaded 
the Irish wards with “no-popery” banners (April 
1844), but he boldly assailed J. G. Bennett and 
W. L. Stone of the Commercial Advertiser as 
the virtual instigators of the nativist mobs, and 
assured an inactive mayor that he would protect 
his own institutions from threatened burnings 
such as had taken place in Philadelphia. No 
churches were burned in New York, and the city 
took steps to keep rioters under control. Threats 
of assassination left an Ulsterite like Hughes un¬ 
concerned. Again he was an object of attack in 
the Know-Nothing days. In 1853, he was as¬ 
sociated with Msgr. Bedini, papal legate, and 
with him was subjected to the abuse of nativists 
and foreign radicals. Through Postmaster-Gen¬ 
eral Campbell he sounded the administration re¬ 
garding the acceptability of a nunciature repre¬ 
senting the Holy See at Washington, only to 
learn that the administration would receive only 
lay representation from the papal states. In 1855, 
he published as Brooksiana, his letters to Erastus 
Brooks, state senator and editor of the New York 
Express, in answer to charges concerning the 
episcopal holding of church properties. In 1856, 
when Cassius M. Clay [q&J] urged the merits 
of the Republican party for Catholics, Hughes 
denied that he was a party man or that there was 
a Catholic vote save in the popular mind. Other¬ 
wise^ he did not concern himself to any extent 
with the charges of the American party. Called 
from tiie Cornell at Baltimore to confer with the 
War Departoent concerning the appointment of 
amy c ha pl ains, Hughes declined a mission to 


Hughes 

Mexico when Polk could not accord him the full 
rank of envoy. While on confidential terms with 
Democratic chieftains, he could hardly be de¬ 
scribed as a Democrat, for his only known vote 
was for Clay in 1832 when his congregation was 
furiously Jacksonian. At the request of J. Q. 
Adams, Calhoun, Benton, Douglas, and others, 
he preached before Congress on “Christianity 
the only Source of Moral, Social, and Political 
Regeneration” (Dec. 12,1847). About this time 
he published in the New York Freeman's Jour¬ 
nal (1847-48) his letters to “Kirwan” ( Kirwan 
Unmasked; a Review of Kirwan in Six Letters 
Addressed to Rev . Nicholas Murray, 1848), in 
reply to the bitter anti-Catholic and personal 
charges of Rev. Nicholas Murray's letters. 

No man was more active in famine relief and 
in movements which he judged beneficial for 
Irish immigrants, though Hughes never offi¬ 
ciously concerned himself with Irish politics and 
always urged the American Irish to cling to 
America as their first and chosen allegiance. For 
the Young Irelanders and the Smith O'Brien 
fiasco, he had only contempt. He also fought the 
radical Irish press established in New York by 
political exiles like Thomas Darcy McGee of 
the Nation and John Mitchell of the Citizen, 
and he opposed Kossuth from his very arrival as 
a demagogue and enemy of the Catholic Church. 
In no way was Hughes more mistaken than in 
his opposition to the Irish movement westward 
in the fifties. His intentions were honest, but he 
must bear the blame of keeping many Irish im¬ 
migrants on the seaboard when cheap lands and 
opportunity were beckoning them elsewhere. In 
1850 New York was created an archdiocese with 
Hughes as archbishop. Going to Rome, he re¬ 
ceived the pallium from the hands of Pius IX on 
Apr. 3, 1851. Three years later he returned to 
Rome to attend the Council on the definition of 
the dogma of the immaculate conception. In 
1858, what he himself regarded as the high point 
in his career occurred, when he laid the corner¬ 
stone of St. Patrick's Cathedral, though the 
country was more acquainted with his part in 
the ceremonies at the completion of the Atlantic 
Cable. A year later, he took a bold stand for the 
papacy and the inviolability of the papal states. 

Far from being an Abolitionist, Hughes had 
a horror of slavery, yet he opposed the manifesto 
of his Irish friends, Daniel O'Connell and Theo¬ 
bald Mathew, who urged the American Irish to 
vote against the slave interest (1842). After he 
had traveled through the South, slavery ceased 
to shock him and he wondered if emancipation 
would not be detrimental to the negroes. With 
regretted bitterness in 1861 he answered in his 


354 



Hughes 

recently established organ, the Metropolitan 
Record, the argument of Orestes Brownson 
[#.?’.] for emancipation as a means of effectively 
ending rebellion. In correspondence with South¬ 
ern prelates, he denounced the right of secession 
and attempts at its theological justification. 
When the Civil War came, he accepted the war 
as a fact and encouraged the support of the 
Union ( New York Freeman's Journal, Apr. 27, 
1861). The flag flew from his cathedral, al¬ 
though J. A. McMaster [q.vJ\, to whom he had 
sold his Freeman's Journal, maintained that 
flags from spires would soon mean political 
harangues from pulpits. His personal letters to 
Seward were read by Lincoln who corresponded 
with him relative to chaplains for army hospitals. 
He claimed to be one of the first advocates of 
conscription as more democratic than voluntary 
enlistment as a means of raising troops. Invited 
to Washington (Oct. 21, 1861), Hughes met 
Lincoln and his cabinet. He made it known that 
he could not accept an official appointment, but 
at the President’s request he became one of his 
personal agents with a carte blanche to present 
the Northern cause in Europe. In Paris, he in¬ 
terviewed Napoleon III and the Empress at the 
Tuileries (Dec. 24, 1861) and preached in vari¬ 
ous churches. In private interviews with French 
statesmen he disabused their minds of misappre¬ 
hensions regarding the American crisis. He 
visited Rome ostensibly for the canonization of 
the Japanese martyrs. In Dublin, he spoke in 
the Rotunda on the American situation and laid 
the corner-stone of the new Catholic University 
(July 20, 1862), whose American collections he 
had assisted generously. His visit to Ireland was 
influential in strengthening Irish opinion, which 
was strongly pro-Northern despite the anti- 
American propaganda of the ascendancy press. 
On his return, he was given a popular reception 
in New York, and the administration in recog¬ 
nition of his efforts intimated to the Holy See 
that any honor given to him would be appreciated. 
His Sermon on the Civil War in America De¬ 
livered Aug. 17,1862 (1862) annoyed Catholics 
in the South and anti-war groups, but he de¬ 
fended himself from attacks which appeared in 
the Baltimore Catholic Mirror and in his own 
Metropolitan Record from which he soon broke 
because of its editorial criticism of the conduct 
of the war. During the drafts riots (July 1863), 
solicited by municipal authorities, he invited the 
rioters, of whom a large proportion were Irish, 
to his Madison Avenue residence. From a chair 
in the balcony he sympathetically addressed sev¬ 
eral thousand men as he gave them his blessing, 
and pleaded for obedience to the conscription 


Hughes 

acts. His counsel ended the disorder more ef¬ 
fectually than soldiers’ bayonets. Not long af¬ 
terward he was prostrated with Bright’s disease, 
and the end came with the turn of the year. 

A bitter fighter of unbending will, Hughes con¬ 
tended openly and resolutely for what he believed 
was right. Often wrong, he was wrong in a 
large way. He selected few intimate friends, al¬ 
though in unofficial intercourse he had a winning 
kindness and a playful humor. His presence im¬ 
pressed strangers. As a speaker he was direct, 
petulant, and Celtic. As a firm superior, he 
merited the love of his priests. As a bishop, he 
was above racial narrowness. He commanded 
the respect of men who honestly detested his 
creed and principles. At his death resolutions 
were passed by the state assembly and the city 
council, and letters came from religious and po¬ 
litical leaders of widely divergent views. The 
Complete Works of the Most Rev, John Hughes, 
edited by Lawrence Kehoe, appeared in two vol¬ 
umes in 1863. 

[J. R. G. Hassard’s Life of Most Rev. John Hughes 
(1866) is still the best source of information; Peter 
Guilday is preparing an elaborate study; see also H. A. 
Brann’s Most Rev. John Hughes (1892) ; Biog. Sketch 
of the Most Rev. John Hughes (pub. by the Metro¬ 
politan Record, 1864) ; Life of Archbishop Hughes 
(The American News Co., 1864) ; Life of Archbishop 
Hughes (T. B. Peterson, pub., 1864) ; R. H. Clarke, 
Lives of the Deceased Bishops of the Catholic Ch. in 
the U . S., vol. II (1888) ; Cath. Hist . Rev., Oct. 19x7; 
T. R. Bayley, Brief Sketch of the Early Hist. of the 
Cath. Ch. on the Island of N. Y. (1870); J. T. Smith, 
The Cath. Ch. in N. Y. ( 1905) ; Constantine McGuire, 
Cath. Builders of the Nation, V (1923), 65-84; U. S . 
Cath . Hist. Soc. f Records and Studies, I (1900), 171; 
W. S. Tisdale, The Controversy between Senator Brooks 
and John, Archbishop of N. Y . (1855) ; files of the 
N. Y. Freeman's Journal and especially biographical 
notices in issues of Jan. 9, 16, Feb. *3, Apr. 9, 1864; 
N. Y . Times, Jan. 4, 1864,] R. J.P. 

HUGHES, PRICE (d. 1715), was a Welsh 
gentleman of Kavllygan, Montgomeryshire, 
whose brief American career made him an out¬ 
standing frontier figure of the South. With his 
brother Valentine he was concerned in a scheme 
of Welsh colonization in South Carolina, in¬ 
spired, apparently, by Thomas Kairne 
He received large grants near Port Royal and in 
Craven County, and transported several servants, 
but soon after his emigration (c. 1712) he em¬ 
barked upon a series of western adventures. 

"An English Gent., who had a particular fancy 
of rambling among the Indians,” was Spots- 
wood’s characterization of Hughes (Official Lei* 
ters of Alexander Spotswood, edited by R. A. 
Brock, vol. II, 1885, p. 331). By testimony of 
Cadillac, “U etoit inginieur, it ghgraphe * and, 
moreover, "homme d'esprit" (Crane, post, p. 
99). As a volunteer Indian agent he traveled 
widely among the Cherokee and the more distant 


355 



Hughes 

tribes, and developed a grandiose scheme for 
supplanting the French in the lower Mississippi 
Valley. He was intoxicated by his first view of 
the West and its resources. “There’s no land in 
America now left yt’s worth anything/’ he 
wrote, “but what’s on the Mesisipi” (Crane, 
post, pp. 100-01). Accordingly he transformed 
his colonization scheme into a project for a new 
British province of Annarea, on the Mississippi, 
with its center apparently at Natchez or on the 
Yazoo. He sought the favor of his friend the 
Duchess of Powis, and of the Duchess of Or¬ 
monde; and he petitioned Queen Anne for aid 
in transporting poor families thither from Wales. 
French opposition he anticipated, but he stoutly 
asserted the prior English claim, based upon the 
Carolinian Indian trade. Meanwhile, Hughes led 
a new English trading offensive, which, be¬ 
tween 1713 and 1715, threatened to undermine 
French control in Louisiana. As a result, new 
trading factories were established; a firmer 
league was formed with the Chickasaw; and 
even the Choctaw, with the exception of two 
loyal villages, were persuaded to desert the 
French. On the Mississippi his intrigues em¬ 
braced the tribes from the Illinois country to the 
Red River and the Gulf, He even dispatched 
two renegade conreurs de bois as English emis¬ 
saries to the remote Missouri River Indians. In 
Canada, as in Louisiana, it was realized that 
“master You” had precipitated a serious crisis 
in the West. The winter of 1714--15 saw the cli¬ 
max of Hughes’s enterprise, and the debacle . 
After visiting all the old centers of trade he was 
making his way down the Mississippi from 
Natchez when, at Manchac, he was seized by 
the French. In the absence of Cadillac, Bien¬ 
ville had already taken measures to check 
Hughes’s schemes, realizing that “without a 
prompt remedy the colony would fall into the 
power of the English/’ A prisoner at Mobile, 
Hughes debated with Bienville the claims of 
their sovereigns to an imperial region, and boast¬ 
ed of his intended colony. On his release he 
visited Pensacola, and then set out, alone, through 
the woods to the Alabamas. Not far from the 
mouth of the Alabama River he was waylaid and 
slain by a band of Tohome Indians. Already the 
wilderness from Port Royal to the Mississippi 
was aflame with the great Indian rising of 1715. 

[See V. W. Crane, The Southern Frontier , 1670- 
2732 (1928), pp. 99-107, and references therein.] 

V.W.C. 

HUGHES, ROBERT BALL (Jan. 19, 1806- 
Mar. 5, 1868), sculptor, was born in London, 
England, and came to New York with his bride 
in 1828 or 1829. It is said that he early showed 


Hughes 

talent by making from candle-ends a wax bas- 
relief from a picture, “The Judgment of Solo¬ 
mon.” At sixteen or seventeen, he was placed in 
the studio of the sculptor Edward Hodges Baily, 
R. A. Here he remained several years, mean¬ 
while studying in the Royal Academy school, 
where in 1823 he won a gold medal for an original 
bas-relief, “Pandora brought by Mercury to 
Epimetheus.” Many other school prizes and 
honors were his. In 1822, he exhibited a bust of 
his father; in 1824, the aforesaid “Pandora”; in 
1825, an “Achilles”; and in 1828, “A Shepherd 
Boy.” When he arrived in New York City, a 
young man in his early twenties, he had a con¬ 
siderable facility in his art, gained under Baily 
as well as in the school and through independent 
work. He at once found occupation. According 
to the New York Mirror on Feb. 13, 1830, “The 
directors of Clinton-hall association, some time 
since, applied to Mr. [Ball] Hughes, the sculptor, 
for the model of a projected statue of our late 
Governor, intended for the front of Clinton-hall. 
This model has been completed, and the exquisite 
accuracy of its execution has so fully satisfied 
the directors that they have ordered one of mar¬ 
ble, larger than life.” In 1831 Hughes finished 
his model for the large high-relief marble me¬ 
morial to Bishop John H. Hobart, for Trinity 
Church, New York. His marble statue of Alex¬ 
ander Hamilton, placed in the rotunda of the 
Merchants’ Exchange, New York City, and de¬ 
stroyed by fire eight months later (Dec. 16, 
1835), is believed by many to have been the first 
marble portrait statue carved in the United 
States; Hughes imported English carvers for 
the work, refusing to employ Frazee and Launitz 
[qq.v.]. Moreover, his bronze memorial statue 
of Nathaniel Bowditch [ q.v .], the mathematician, 
was the first bronze statue to be cast in this 
country (1847). Unfortunately the original 
bronze, doubtless because of obvious defects, was 
removed in 1886 from its site in Mount Auburn 
Cemetery, and there replaced by a better cast 
from the foundry of Gruet Jeune in Paris. In 
the vestibule of the Boston Athenaeum is a plaster 
cast of this monument. The mathematician, 
draped and seated, holds upright on his knee a 
book, his English translation of Laplace’s Me- 
canique Celeste; other books, with a globe and 
a sextant, round out a capable composition. The 
Athenaeum’s storeroom shelters the small model 
of Hughes’s “Hamilton,” and, presumably, a 
copy of his oft-mentioned “Uncle Toby and 
Widow Wadman.” His “Little Nell” (1858), a 
seated figure, under life size, of sentimental in¬ 
terest and mediocre modeling, is still on view in 
plaster in one of the Athenaeum halls. The Penn- 


35 6 



Hughes 


Hughes 


sylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has his bust 
of Chief Justice John Marshall; the Yale Art 
Gallery, his bust of John Trumbull, considered 
his best work of this kind. Other titles men¬ 
tioned are a “Mary Magdalen,” a bust and a 
statuette of Washington Irving, and a small 
model for an equestrian statue of General Wash¬ 
ington. After a few years in New York Hughes 
moved to Dorchester, Mass., which was his home 
for the rest of his life. He made interesting 
sketches in burnt wood, and for a season lec¬ 
tured on art. He died in Boston, without hav¬ 
ing accomplished as much as was expected from 
a man of his facility. In a recent monograph on 
American Wax Portraits , Ethel Stanwood Bol¬ 
ton brings to light twenty-three titles of wax 
portraits by him, including those of Chief Jus¬ 
tice Marshall, President William Henry Harri¬ 
son, and Robert Charles Winthrop. The New 
York Historical Society has a white wax bust of 
a man, signed “Ball Hughes, sculpt. 1830.” This 
variety of activities may account for the meager¬ 
ness of his output in monumental work. 


[Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts 
(1006), IV, 1905; W. D. Orcutt, Good Old Dorchester 
(1803): I. N. P. Stokes, The Iconography of Manhat¬ 
tan Island, V (1926), 1690, I735J T. H. Bartlett, 
“Early Settler Memorials” Ant. Arch, and Building 
News, Aug. 6, 1887; Lorado Taft, The Hist . of Am. 
Sculpture (enl. ed., 1924); E. S. Bolton, Am. Wax 
Portraits (1929); Sun (N. Y.), Mar. 7, 1868; T)ict. 
Nat. Biog.; Art-Journal (London), July 1, 1868, copied 
from N. Y. Tribune .] A. A. 


HUGHES, ROBERT WILLIAM (Jan. 16, 
1821-Dec. 10, 1901), editor, jurist, was born on 
Muddy Creek Plantation, Powhatan County, Va., 
the son of Jesse and Elizabeth Woodson (Mor¬ 
ton) Hughes. He was a descendant of Jesse 
Hughes, a Huguenot refugee who came to Vir¬ 
ginia some time between 1695 and 1700 and 
settled on the south side of the James in what is 
now Powhatan County (Frank Munsell, Ameri¬ 
can Ancestry , vol. IV, 1889, p. 7 7 )- Robert’s 
parents both died in 1822 and he was reared by 
Gen. Edward C. Carrington, of Halifax County* 
When he was twelve years old, “he was put to 
the carpenter’s trade in Princeton, N. J., where 
he remained for rather more than four years” 
( Papers , post , p. 24). Later he attended the 
Caldwell Institute, Greensboro, N. C., for eigh¬ 
teen months, and then became tutor of mathe¬ 
matics in the Bingham high school, Hillsboro, 
N. C. In 1843 be entered upon the study of Jaw 
at Fincastle, Va., and began to practise in Rich¬ 
mond in 1846. On June 4,1850, he married Eliza 
M. Johnston, niece of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston 
and adopted daughter of Gov. John B. Floyd 
[q.v.~\. Already distaste for office work and a 
flair for literature had set him to writing edi¬ 


torials for the Richmond Examiner , with the 
young editor of which, John M. Daniel [g.r.], 
he had established in the Patrick Henry Literary 
Society a friendship that was to prove enduring; 
and from 1853 to 1857, while Daniel was in Eu¬ 
rope, he was the Examiner's editor. He vigor¬ 
ously advocated state’s rights and believed in the 
right of secession as an abstract doctrine, but was 
opposed to it as a measure, though he uttered 
the warning that, logically, slavery agitation 
would bring it about. From November 1857 to 
February 1861 he was an editor of the Wash¬ 
ington Union (from Jan. 1, 1859, States and 
Union), residing in Secretary of War Floyd’s 
house and advocating “the old State Rights doc¬ 
trines of the National Democratic party, under 
the eye of President Buchanan, with General 
Cass ... as my much consulted personal friend 
and mentor” (A Chapter of Persona! and Po¬ 
litical History ). Chronic disease now caused his 
retirement to his farm near Abingdon in Wash¬ 
ington County, where he lived until 1874, in¬ 
terested in horses and, occasionally, in the Cum¬ 
berland Gap railroad, but always watching 
politics. When Virginia seceded, unable to join 
General Floyd’s command, he at once resumed 
connection with the Examiner , and until the sum¬ 
mer of 1864 he wrote many of its leading edi¬ 
torials, for the most of the time from his some¬ 
what distant home in the country. He then, like 
the editor, Daniel, lost hope in the Confederate 
cause and felt unequal to the task of further in¬ 
spiriting soldiers, which the paper had made one 
of its chief undertakings. Hostile to the Davis 
administration from the beginning, he later 
printed guarded suggestions of peace through 
separate state action, and also the extraordinary 
attack of March 1865 on the secret preparations 
for the evacuation of Richmond ( Editors of the 
Past, post , pp. 29, 30). In the confused politics 
of Reconstruction days his course was deemed 
“nimble” by some: he edited the Richmond Re¬ 
public, the first Republican paper published in 
Richmond after the war, 1865-66; he attended 
the National Democratic Convention in 1868; 
and from 1869 to 1870 he was editor of the Rich¬ 
mond State Journal . An editorial in the Journal 
which virtually charged prominent white people 
with inciting the murder of negroes led to a duel 
with William E. Cameron [q.v.] r in which Cam¬ 
eron was wounded. The Grant administration, 
anxious to improve the quality of the Republican 
party in Virginia, made Hughes federal district 
attorney (1872); nominated him for Congress 
(1872), and for governor (1873), but failed to 
elect him to either office; and then made him 
judge of the federal court for the eastern district 



Huidekoper 

His course as judge (1874-98), and his oppo¬ 
sition to “readjustment” of the state debt, re¬ 
stored the prestige of the court and regained him 
many old-time friends. During this period he 
edited five volumes of United States circuit and 
district court reports, and published A Popular 
Treatise on the Currency Question Written from 
a Southern Point of View (1879); A Chapter of 
Personal and Political History (1881); The 
American Dollar (1885), in behalf of bimetal- 
ism; and several suggestive historical addresses, 
among them Editors of the Past (1897), which 
contains some autobiographical material. Cool¬ 
ness, intelligence, aggressiveness were his strik¬ 
ing characteristics. He died at his home near 
Abingdon; two sons survived him. 

fin addition to the pamphlets above mentioned, see 
also L. G. Tyler, Bncyc. of Va. Biog . (1915), vol. Ill; 
Papers Showing the Political Course of R. W. Hughes 
.. . Prefixed by a Biog. Sketch (1873) J F. G. Ruffin, 
An Examination of Judge Robert W. Hughes* Decision 
in the Case of John P. Faure vs. the Commissioners of 
the Sinking Fund of Va. (1884) ; Who’s Who in Amer¬ 
ica, X901-02; the Times (Richmond), Dec. 11, 1901.] 

C.C.P. 

HUIDEKOPER, FREDERIC (Apr. 7,1817- 
May 16, 1892), theologian, fourth son of Harm 
Jan Huidekoper [q.vJ] and Rebecca Colhoon, 
his wife, was born in Meadville, Pa. His impres¬ 
sionable and happy boyhood was fully responsive 
to the high aims cherished in his father's house¬ 
hold and to the intensive instruction given in the 
family school by a succession of gifted young 
graduates of Harvard College. Despite serious 
limitation of eyesight, he was able to join the 
sophomore class of Harvard at the age of seven¬ 
teen and there his intimate relations with An¬ 
drews Norton and Charles Follen [qq.v.] had 
permanent effect on his life. During his junior 
year the malady of his eyes compelled him to 
leave college, and for four ensuing years, while 
healthfully active in farm life at home, his read¬ 
ing was restricted to half an hour or less a day. 
Nevertheless, his accurate acquisition and reten¬ 
tive memory made him already a learned man 
when, at the age of twenty-two, he went to Eu¬ 
rope for travel and study. In the universities of 
Geneva, Leipzig, and Berlin he was occupied 
with history, literature, and Biblical studies, and 
he enjoyed personal intercourse with Cousin, 
Picot of Geneva, Neander, and DeWette. 

His letters from Europe show that he was spe¬ 
cially observant of the social care of the poor 
and the sick and of the treatment of prisoners. 
As fee defeated the question how to live most use- 
fuBy for others, this humanitarian interest made 
him decide for the vocation of a minister-at-large 
—a minister engaged in social service. He re- 


Huidekoper 

logical study at Harvard, and Oct 14,1843, was 
ordained as an evangelist in the Unitarian 
Church in Meadville, intending to work in rural 
centers of the neighborhood without a parish set¬ 
tlement. He was diverted, however, to the career 
of a scholar and teacher. His father had advo¬ 
cated provision for the theological training of the 
itinerant preachers of the Christian Connection, 
and others had discussed plans for a Unitarian 
school west of New England. Accordingly, at 
his ordination he was urged by his brother-in- 
law, Rev. James Freeman Qarke [q.v.], and Dr. 
George Hosmer of Buffalo to receive as pupils 
aspirants for the preacher's vocation. This proj¬ 
ect was rapidly broadened and the result was the 
foundation in 1844 of the Meadville Theological 
School. As a professor in this school he taught 
with conspicuous intellectual power until, in 
1877, he was checked by complete blindness. He 
served without monetary reward, contributing 
from his private means to the maintenance of the 
institution and sharing with it the use of his ex¬ 
tensive library. He taught in the fields of the 
New Testament and church history, but later of 
church history alone, concerned more with pre¬ 
cision of detail than with large construction of 
the process of historical development 
His publications began in 1854 with a mono¬ 
graph on The Belief of the First Three Centuries 
Concerning Christ's Mission to the Underworld . 
In this he argued that the absence from the Gos¬ 
pels of a belief common in the second century 
disproved certain efforts to establish very late 
dates for the Gospels. In 1876 he produced an 
extensive treatise on Judaism at Rome , a work 
of pioneer research in a subject since then thor¬ 
oughly investigated by others. In 1879 he pub¬ 
lished The Indirect Testimony of History to the 
Genuineness of the Gospels , opposing the claim 
that the present form of the Gospels is due to late 
editors using early materials in the interests of 
second-century controversies. These works show 
an astonishing acquaintance with the texts of 
Greek and Roman authors and the Church Fa¬ 
thers, though they lack clear construction in the 
argument and popular effectiveness of style. He 
was a conservative Unitarian, little affected by 
the Transcendentalist movement, convinced by a 
survey of history that faith in a Moral Ruler of 
the Universe found security only in revelation, 
but he stressed and practised independence of 
thought. Before critical views were acceptable 
in America, he rejected the Mosaic authorship of 
the Pentateuch and in 1857 published a demon¬ 
stration of the analysis of Genesis into Jahvist 
and Elohist sources. He was a man of stately 
form, of courtly dignity, always urbane in col- 


toned to America in 1841, completed his theo- 

358 



Huidekoper 

lisions of opinion, and given to deeds of gen¬ 
erosity where there was need. On Nov. io, 1S53, 
he married in New York Harriet Nancy, fifth 
daughter of Henry Sturges Thorp and Julia 
Ann (Parker) Thorp. At his death in Meadville, 
he was survived by two of his four children. 

[Huidekoper, Am. Branch (1928), comp, by F. L. 
Huidekoper; N. M. and Francis Tiffany, Harm Jan 
Huidekoper (1904) ; E. M. Wilbur, A Hist . Sketch of 
the Independent Cong . ChMeadville, Pa. f 1825-1900 
(1902) ; F. A. Christie, The Makers of the Meadville 
Thcol. School , 1844-1894 (1927); Christian Register, 
May 26, 1892.] F.A.C. 

HUIDEKOPER, HARM JAN (Apr. 3,1776- 
May 22, 1854), business man, lay theologian, 
founder of the Meadville Theological School, 
was descended from a Frisian family of Men- 
nonite faith. He was born in Hoogeveen, Prov¬ 
ince of Drenthe, Holland, son of Anne Jans 
Huidekoper by his second wife, Gesiena Fred¬ 
erica Wolthers. Completing in 1795 his formal 
education in a school in Hasselt and an Institute 
in Crefeld, Germany, he found Holland held by 
the French, at war with England, and ruined in 
its commerce. Aided by his half-brother, Jan, who 
had made a tour in America, he therefore sought 
a career in the United States and arrived in 
New York Oct. 14, 1796, on the American brig 
Prudence. A winter spent with a marriage con¬ 
nection of his brother in Cazenovia, N. Y., con¬ 
vinced him that to make a farm from the wilder¬ 
ness was of prohibitive cost, and in the next 
summer he removed to Oldenbarneveld to join a 
group of notable Hollanders banished or self- 
exiled following the struggle with the House of 
Orange for free government in 1787. After em¬ 
ployment in the local office of the Holland Land 
Company, he became in February 1802 the book¬ 
keeper of its general agency in Philadelphia and 
secretary of the Pennsylvania Population So¬ 
ciety. These were companies of Holland mer¬ 
chants who had invested the proceeds of their 
loans to the American colonies during the Revo¬ 
lution in large land purchases in New York 
State and northwestern Pennsylvania. Desiring 
a country life, Huidekoper secured appointment 
as local agent in Meadville, Pa., purchasing also 
for himself extensive holdings in that neighbor¬ 
hood. He entered upon his duties in January 
1805 amid disordered frontier conditions that ex¬ 
acted skill and courage. Indian warfare had 
made it impossible for the land company to com¬ 
ply with some provisions of a Pennsylvania land 
act of 1792, and when peace came in 1796 many 
squatters took possession, claiming that the for¬ 
mer owners had forfeited title. Lawless intruders 
even plotted to destroy the offices and records 
of the company and to drive away or kill the 


Huidekoper 

agents. Although a state supreme court decision 
had impaired the company's titles, Huidekoper, 
on his arrival, began suit in the United States 
circuit court for the ejectment of an intruder, 
and a construction of the law by Chief Justice 
Marshall necessitated a judgment of the circuit 
court in Huidekoper’s favor. This remedied the 
general situation. Orderly civilization in the 
region owed much to his firm policy, his eminent 
integrity, his personal aid of struggling farmers, 
and the example of his own arduous grappling 
with economic difficulties in an area isolated be¬ 
cause of primitive means of transportation. Af¬ 
ter the Hollanders sold their company holdings 
(1810) and some land of the Population Society 
(1813), Huidekoper as agent of the new owners 
had profitable commissions due to the influx of 
settlers after the War of 1812. Finally, in 1836, 
he purchased for $178,400 the lands retained in 
the sale of 1813. This prosperous Hollander early 
became an ardent American, rejoicing in Amer¬ 
ican freedom and in the responsibilities of citizen¬ 
ship. While not enrolled in the army in 1812, he 
was of service to Perry in the preparation of the 
Lake Erie fleet and in the equipment of the 
militia. 

Through his home life, also, Huidekoper was 
a social force. Having married, Sept. 1, 1806, 
Rebecca Colhoon, daughter of Andrew Colhoon 
of Carlisle, Pa., he built in fair surroundings a 
spacious home, Pomona Hail, celebrated for cul¬ 
tured life and hospitality in the letters and jour¬ 
nals of many notable visitors, among them 
Harriet Martineau. Concerned for the religious 
education of his children, he became a patient 
student of Scripture and of church history. He 
had been reared in the Dutch Reformed Church 
but its Calvinism had been modified in his case 
by the influence of Mennonite preaching in Cre¬ 
feld and the catholicity of a union church in Old- 
enbameveld. Disturbed by the rigor of the Pres¬ 
byterian Church in Meadville and responsive to 
the Unitarian movement in New England, he 
created in 1825 a home school for his children, 
with public Unitarian worship on Sunday, under 
a succession of young graduates of Harvard Col¬ 
lege of later distinction in Unitarian pulpits. In 
defence of his new theology he maintained for 
two years (1831-32) a monthly periodical, The 
Unitarian Essayist, in which he published a com¬ 
plete controversial survey of doctrine, and he 
made later contributions to The Western Mes¬ 
senger, a journal founded at his instance and 
edited successively by Ephraim Peabody in Cin¬ 
cinnati, James Freeman Garke in Louisville, and 
W. H. Channing in Cincinnati, The permanent 
result of this religious zeal was the Unitarian 


359 



Hulbert 


Hull 


Church in Meadville and the Meadville Theo¬ 
logical School which he founded in 1844 for the 
joint interests of the Unitarians and the Chris¬ 
tian Connection. To these foundations he and 
his descendants gave bountiful gifts and foster¬ 
ing care. His daughter Anna became the wife 
of James Freeman Clarke [q.v.]. 

[Huidekoper, Holland Family (1924), comp, by 
Edgar Huidekoper; Huidckoper, Am. Branch (1928), 
comp, by F. L. Huidekoper. N. M. and Francis Tif¬ 
fany, Harm Jan Huidekoper (1904) ; P. D. Evans, The 
Holland Land Company (1924) ; E. M. Wilbur, A Hist. 
Sketch of the Independent Cong. Church of Meadville, 
Pa., 1825-1900 ( 1902) ; F. A. Christie, The Makers of 
the Meadville Theol. School , 1844-1894 (1927) ; F. 
A. Christie, Five Noble Lives (privately printed, 1928) ; 
J. F. Clarke, in Christian Examiner, Sept. 1854.] 

F.A.C. 

HULBERT, EDWIN JAMES (Apr. 30,182^ 
Oct 20, 1910), surveyor, mining engineer, was 
bom at Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., the son of John 
Hulbert (or Hurlbut) and Maria Elvendorf 
Schoolcraft, and a descendant of Thomas Hurl¬ 
but who emigrated to America in the seventeenth 
century and settled in Connecticut. His father 
was sutler to the garrison at Fort Brady, Sault 
Ste. Marie ; his mother was the sister of Henry 
R, Schoolcraft [g.r.]. In 1852, after the Michi¬ 
gan copper district had been opened to settlement, 
Hulbert went there on a road survey and acted 
as surveyor and engineer for several copper- 
mining companies. For a time he was engaged 
as copyist of maps in the United States Land 
Office at Sault Ste. Marie, in which employment 
he familiarized himself with the surface features 
of the Keweenaw Peninsula, then recently opened 
to copper-mining development Resuming his 
work as surveyor in this copper region, he found 
samples of copper-bearing breccia and began a 
search for the mother lode, which was rewarded 
in the years 1858 and 1859. His discoveries 
were on the site of the later-developed Calumet 
and Hecla copper mine. 

Hulbert had carried forward his search for 
this mother lode with the greatest secrecy; but 
in order to realize on his discovery it was neces¬ 
sary for him to secure the land containing the 
lode. His first purchase was from the United 
States government, to which he later added a 
tract obtained from the St. Mary’s Mineral Land 
Ganpany, recipient of a large federal land grant 
in compensation for the construction of the canal 
at Sault Ste, Marie, He then organized the Hul- 
feert Mining Company, to work the property, but 
the Civil War retarded its development In 1864 
and 1866 openings were made on the site of the 
lode and rich copper deposits were uncovered. 
To assist in financing these mining ventures at 
Calumet, Hulbert had recourse to Boston capital¬ 


ists for loans secured by his stock holdings in his 
Michigan mines. He was temporarily employed 
as superintendent of these mines but eventually 
lost both his employment there and his stock 
interest in the company, leading to years of con¬ 
troversy and litigation with Quincy A, Shaw of 
Boston, and others. Apparently in consideration 
of the receipt of a stipulated regular income Hul¬ 
bert withdrew his suit against Shaw and the 
Calumet and Hecla Company, left the country, 
and resided in Rome, Italy, until his death. He 
is remembered mainly for his discovery of the 
Calumet conglomerate, copper-bearing deposits 
in the Calumet copper district of northern Michi¬ 
gan. Although these achievements were for a 
time called into question, there are probably to¬ 
day no mining men of standing in the Lake Su¬ 
perior mining region who doubt that the dis¬ 
covery was made largely as Hulbert claimed to 
have effected it. He recorded his labors and dis¬ 
coveries in the Michigan copper district in Calu¬ 
met-Conglomerate (1893), followed in 1899 by 
Calumet-Conglomerate Discovery. On Oct. 22, 
1856, Hulbert married Frances C. Harback. He 
was a member of the Michigan legislature, 1875- 
76, and member of the American Institute of Min¬ 
ing and Metallurgical Engineers, 1874-86. 

[Geo. E. Edwards, “The Late Edwin J. Hulbert,” 
Mining World, Nov. 26, 1910; Mich. Biogs. (1924), 
vol. I; A. P. Swineford, Hist, and i?m of the Copper, 
Iron, Silver, Slate, and Other Material Interests of the 
South Shore of Lake Superior (1876) ; A. C. Lane, The 
Keweenaw Series of Mich. (2 vols., 1911) ; Proc. of 
the Lake Superior Mining Inst., vol. II, 1894 ; Hist, of 
the Upper Peninsula of Mich. (Chicago, 1883); G. R. 
Agassiz, Letters and Recollections of Alexander Agassiz 
(1913) ; H. H. Hurlbut, The Hurlbut Geneal. (1888).]. 

L.A.C. 

HULL, ISAAC (Mar. 9, 1773-Feb. 13,1843), 
naval officer, was descended from Richard Hull 
who migrated from Dorchester, Mass., to New 
Haven, Conn., in 1639. The family moved to 
Derby, a near-by town, where Lieut Joseph 
Hull, an officer of the Revolution, was bom in 
1750. He married Sarah, daughter of Daniel 
Bennett, and built a house across the river in 
Huntington, now Shelton. Here Isaac was born, 
the second of seven children, all sons. When 
quite young he was adopted by his uncle, William 
Hull and lived in Newton, Mass. He 

went to sea at fourteen as a cabin-boy and at 
sixteen was shipwrecked and saved the life of 
his captain. Before he was twenty-one he com¬ 
manded a ship and made deep-sea voyages. He 
was appointed a lieutenant in the United States 
Navy, Mar. 9, 1798, and served in the naval war 
with France on board the frigate Constitution. 
In 1800 he commanded a cutting-out expedition 
and captured a French armed ship at Porto Plata, 


360 



Hull Hull 


Santo Domingo (Goldsborough, post , p. 171). 
When the navy was reorganized at the conclusion 
of hostilities, Hull stood second on the new list 
of lieutenants, Mar. 3, 1801. War with Tripoli 
soon followed and in 1803 he was given command 
of the schooner Enterprise and shortly after of 
the brig Argus, in which he took part in the at¬ 
tacks on Tripoli by Commodore Edward Preble’s 
squadron in 1804. On May 18 of that year he 
was promoted to commander. In 1805 he co¬ 
operated with Gen. William Eaton in the 
assault and capture of Derne. He was promoted 
to captain Apr, 23, 1806. In the summer he re¬ 
turned to the United States and was employed 
on shore duty for nearly four years. 

In 1810 Hull was given command of the Con- 
stitution . The next year he was sent to Europe 
with Joel Barlow, minister to France, and with 
specie for payment of the interest on the Dutch 
debt After having landed Barlow at Cherbourg 
and the money at the Texel, he spent several 
weeks in the English Channel. One of his men 
deserted, claiming British protection, and the 
British admiral refused to give him up. Conse¬ 
quently, when a British sailor swam to the Con¬ 
stitution and claimed protection as an American, 
Captain Hull refused to surrender him. Trouble 
over this matter was expected, but did not come. 
The Constitution returned to the United States 
early in 1812 and was thoroughly overhauled 
and made ready for service. War against Great 
Britain was declared June 18. 

On July 12 the Constitution sailed out of 
Chesapeake Bay, bound to New York to join the 
squadron of Commodore Rodgers. She was 
chased nearly three days by five British men-of- 
war and only consummate seamanship enabled 
her to escape and take refuge in Boston. She 
set sail on a cruise to the eastward Aug. I, and 
on Aug. 19 fell in with the British frigate Guer- 
rilre. After considerable maneuvering, during 
which the British ship fired rapidly but with 
little effect, about six o’clock in the afternoon the 
Constitution delivered her first broadside, within 
pistol-shot. After fifteen minutes the Guerrifre’s 
mizzen-mast went over the side, in another quar¬ 
ter of an hour the mainmast followed, and about 
the same time the foremast also fell. The Guer- 
rikre then surrendered, a total wreck. Although 
the Constitution was superior in number of guns 
and men, the injury inflicted on her opponent 
was out of all proportion to the difference in 
force. The British loss was fifteen killed and six¬ 
ty-four wounded, eight of them mortally; the 
American, seven killed and seven wounded. The 
Constitution received some damage to her spars 
and rigging, while the Guerrihre , a helpless hulk, 


could not be brought into port and was burned. 
On this battle Captain Hull’s fame chiefly rests. 
His expert seamanship and training of his crew 
in gunnery have ever since been recognized by 
authorities as placing him among the ablest of 
naval commanders. It was the first important 
naval battle of the war, and had he been defeated, 
the moral effect would have been disastrous. He 
returned to Boston and was given a most en¬ 
thusiastic reception. He did not go to sea again 
during the war, since other officers had to be 
given their turn. 

He commanded the Boston Navy Yard a few 
months and then the Portsmouth Navy Yard. 
In New York, Jan. 2, 1813, he married Anna 
McCurdy Hart, daughter of Capt. Elisha Hart 
of Saybrook. They had no children. In 1815 
Hull was appointed navy commissioner, but he 
soon resigned this office to take command of the 
Boston Yard again. During his eight years there 
charges of financial irregularities were brought 
against him, but a court of inquiry completely 
cleared him (Minutes of the Proceedings of the 
Court of Inquiry into the Official Conduct of 
Capt Isaac Hull , 1822). About this time he ex¬ 
pressed advanced views on the subjects of naval 
policy, rank and command. 

His next sea service was in command of the 
Pacific Station. He now first received the title 
of commodore. Sailing in the frigate United 
States , Jan. 5, 1824, accompanied by Mrs. Hull 
and her sister, he arrived at Callao, Peru, three 
months later. At that time the South American 
colonies were ridding themselves of the Spanish 
yoke, and conditions were much disturbed. Dur¬ 
ing his stay of three years, Hull cooperated with 
the United States consul in the protection of 
American interests and the relief of ill-used 
American seamen and others. He remained at 
Callao most of the time, though he cruised about 
frequently, visiting Valparaiso and other ports. 
His relations with General Bolivar were friendly. 
He was relieved in January 1827, and returned 
home. Again charges, mainly of misusing funds 
which he controlled, were brought against him, 
this time before a congressional committee, and 
an investigation of his conduct on the Pacific 
Station was demanded. Again, however, he was 
completely exonerated (see Papers, post, pp. 64- 
67 and House Report No . 77 ,22 Cong,, 2 Sess., 
Jan. 29, 1833). t , 

After a leave of absence, he was appointed 
in 1829, commandant of the Washington Navy 
Yard, a post which he held six years, following 
which service another leave, obtained on account 
of Mrs. Hull’s ill health, was spent in European 
travel. In 1838 Hull was chairman of the Board 


361 



Hull Hull 


of Revision, organized for the purpose of revis¬ 
ing the tables of allowances for vessels of the 
navy, and upon completing this work, was or¬ 
dered to the command of the Mediterranean 
Station. Again Mrs. Hull and her sister went 
with him. His flagship, the Ohio , arrived on 
Jan. 4, 1839, at Port Mahon, Minorca, the head¬ 
quarters of the station. His vessels, Ohio , Cyane, 
Brandywine, and later Preble , cruised about vis¬ 
iting various ports between Spain and Syria, 
looking out for the interests of American citi¬ 
zens, especially seamen, inquiring into and re¬ 
porting on the condition of American commerce. 
In 1841 the relations between the United States 
and Great Britain were strained to an alarming 
degree, owing to irritation over the northeastern 
boundary dispute, the Oregon question, and in¬ 
cidents arising from the Canadian rebellion of 
1837. On Mar. 24 Hull summoned his captains 
to a council of war on the flagship, but within a 
short time the trouble subsided. On June 5,1841, 
the Ohio sailed from Gibraltar homeward bound. 
She arrived at Boston July 17, and on the 27th 
the commodore hauled down his flag for the last 
time. In October he was given a year’s leave of 
absence and spent the winter in New Haven. In 
the summer of 1842 he bought a house, and set¬ 
tled down in Philadelphia, where he died a few 
months later. His tomb is in Laurel Hill Ceme¬ 
tery, Philadelphia. 

Hull was called by Farragut “as able a seaman 
as ever sailed a ship” (Wilson, post , p. 101). 
Edmund Quincy, who knew him personally, said, 
“His manners were plain, bluff, and hearty, as 
became ‘a rough and boisterous captain of the 
sea,* and indicated a good heart and a good tem¬ 
per, though not incapable of being ruffled on a 
sufficient occasion” (Life ofjosiah Quincy, 1867, 
p. 263). There is some evidence of a temper not 
always easy to control, but he was kindly and 
took an interest in the young officers under him. 
He was an active, busy man and had no patience 
with the shiftless and lazy. He was thrifty but 
not penurious; he lived well and comfortably. 
By good business judgment he accumulated a 
reasonable competence. He bought real estate 
adjacent to the Boston Navy Yard and in other 
places. Rents from this property formed a sub¬ 
stantial part of his income. While living in Wash¬ 
ington he bought a slave, and gave him his free¬ 
dom when he left there. 

[There is a large collection of Hull papers in the 
Boston Athenaeum, some of which have been printed in 
Commodore Hull: Papers of Isaac Hull (1929), ecL by 
G, W. Alto. For genealogy, vital records, and early 
hfe, see C. H. Weygant, The Hull Family in America 
(*9*2) * E, and E. M. Salisbury, Family-Histories 
md Genealogies (1892), vol. I, pt. i,p. 88; New Haven 
GeneaL Mag,, Dec. 1926. In the following works will 


be found mention of Hull and reference to other au¬ 
thorities : C. W. Goldsborougb, The U. S. Naval Chroni¬ 
cle (1824); The Autobiog. of Commodore Charles Mor¬ 
ris (1880); C. O. Paullin, Commodore John Rodgers 
(1910); G. W. Allen, Our Navy and the Barbary Cor¬ 
sairs (1905); J. G. Wilson, “Commodore Hull and the 
Constitution,” N. Y. Geneal . and Biog. Record , July 
1880; “The Hull-Eaton Correspondence During the 
Expedition Against Tripoli,” Proc. Am. Antiq . Soc., 
vol. XXI (1911); Pub. Ledger (Phila.), Feb. 14,1843.] 

G.W.A. 

HULL, JOHN (Dec. 18, 1624-Oct. 1, 1683), 
mint-master and treasurer of the Massachusetts 
Bay Colony, merchant prince, silversmith, was 
the son of Elizabeth Storer and Robert Hull, 
who in 1635 came with their children from Mar¬ 
ket Harborough, Leicestershire, to Boston in 
New England. John Hull was sent to the school 
of Philemon Pormort, opened that year. After a 
time he was kept at home to help his father with 
the farming until, as he wrote in his diaries, “I 
fell to learning (by the help of my brother) and 
to practice the trade of goldsmith.” In his twen¬ 
ty-third year he married Judith Quincy. 

John Hull’s diaries reveal his careful thor¬ 
oughness in business, his close orthodoxy and 
conservatism as a church member, his important 
part in the affairs of the colony. The earliest 
diary record of public service is that of his elec¬ 
tion as corporal in the militia. In 1652 the 
Colony of Massachusetts Bay, suffering under 
the disabilities of trade carried on in barter and 
in coin—often counterfeit—of various nations, 
decided to set up a mint and put out coin of 
standard fineness. “They made choice of me 
for that employment,” wrote Hull; “and I chose 
my friend, Robert Sanderson, to be my partner, 
to which the Court consented.” Hull was to have 
one shilling for each twenty coined. The design 
chosen was that of a tree surrounded by a double 
ring and an inscription. Though the willow tree 
and the oak tree were both represented in the 
early coinage, it is the pine tree, adopted in 1662, 
by which the Boston or Bay shillings are best 
known. Hull and his partner also coined two-, 
three-, and sixpences. In 1654 Hull was ensign 
of the South Military Company; in 1657 one of 
the seven selectmen of Boston, in which capacity 
he served for several years; in 1658 town treas¬ 
urer ; in 1660 a member of the Artillery Com¬ 
pany, and later ensign of this organization, lieu¬ 
tenant, and captain. He served many times as 
deputy to the General Court He helped found 
the Old South Church. He became “one of the 
Committee for the War and also Treasurer for 
the War” in 1673, and in 1676 he noted that he 
was “chosen by the General Court to be the 
Country Treasurer.” He was released from this 
office in 1680 when he was elected one of the 
governor’s assistants. He was one of the lead- 


362 



Hull 


Hull 


ing merchants in the colonies, marketing furs 
and other colonial products in England, the West 
Indies, and France and importing sugar, cocoa, 
tobacco, and molasses into Massachusetts. He 
was also interested in a number of land projects. 
His wealth enabled him to be most useful as a 
banker to the struggling colony, to which he oc¬ 
casionally advanced money from his own pocket 
In addition to his many other activities he con¬ 
tinued to practise his craft, and today his name 
survives chiefly in the pieces of silver still pre¬ 
served and bearing his mark, surprisingly lovely 
monuments to the austere old Puritan. His mark 
consisted of crude initials with a fleur-de-lys in 
a heart below or with a rose above in superim¬ 
posed circles. Some pieces bear both Hull’s 
mark and that of his partner, Sanderson. 

Of his children only one, Hannah, survived 
him. She was married in her eighteenth year to 
Samuel Sewall (later Judge Sewall) and even 
at the time of her marriage her father’s pros¬ 
perity was such that the romantic folk-tale grew 
up that her dowry had been her weight in pine- 
tree shillings. 

[See “The Diaries of John Hull,” in Archaeologia 
Americana: Trans, and Colls. Am. Antiq. Soc.,y ol. Ill 
(1857) : “Diary of Samuel Sewall,” Mass. Hist. Soc. 
Colls., s ser., V-VII (1878-82) ; Hollis French, A List 
of Early Am. Silversmiths and Their Marks (1917) • 
F H. Bigelow, Historic Silver of the Colonies and Its 
Makers (1917); C. L. Avery, Am. Silver of the XVII 
and XVIII Centuries: A Study Based on the Clearwater 
Coll. (1920) ; S. S. Crosby, The Early Coins of America 
(1875) ; S. G. Drake, The Hist, and Antiquities of Bos¬ 
ton (1856) ; S. E. Morison, Massachusettensis de Con- 
ditoribus or the Builders of the Bay Colony (1930). 
The story of Hull's daughter's dowry (actually £500, 
paid in instalments, according to Morison, p. 138) finds 
a place in literature in Hawthorne’s Grandfather's 
Chair.] K.H.A. 

HULL, WILLIAM (June 24, 1753-Nov. 29, 
1825), soldier, was the son of Joseph and Eliza 
(Clark) Hull, and fifth in descent from Richard 
Hull, who emigrated from Derbyshire, England, 
to Massachusetts at some time prior to 1634. 
The family later removed to Derby, Conn., and 
here William was bom. He graduated from 
Yale College at the age of nineteen, studied law 
at Litchfield, Conn., and was admitted to the bar 
in 1775. In July of that year he joined the 
American army before Boston as captain of the 
militia company from his native town. During 
the Revolutionary War he saw active and almost 
continuous service, taking part in the battles 
of White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga, 
Monmouth, and Stony Point, and commanding, 
for three successive winters, the American ad¬ 
vanced lines just above New York City. In these 
campaigns he displayed bravery and energy, won 
the commendation of both General Washington 
and Congress, and was promoted to the rank of 


major and later to that of lieutenant-colonel. Af¬ 
ter the close of the Revolution, he practised law 
at Newton, Mass., the home of his wife, Sarah 
Fuller, whom he had married in 1781. He adopted 
his nephew, Isaac Hull [g.z\], son of his brother 
Joseph. In 1784 and 1793 he went on missions 
to Canada. He helped to put down Shays’s re¬ 
bellion, served as a judge of the court of common 
pleas and as a state senator, was prominent in 
organizing the Society of the Cincinnati, and be¬ 
came known as an ardent supporter of the Jef¬ 
fersonian party. 

On Mar. 22,1805, he was appointed by Presi¬ 
dent Jefferson governor of the newly organized 
Michigan Territory. As governor he secured 
from the Indians large cessions of land in south¬ 
eastern Michigan, his energy in this undertaking 
contributing to the rise of Indian discontent and 
hostility in the Northwest (Annual Report of 
the American Historical Association , 1906 } 1908, 
I, 267). In the spring of 1812, while on an of¬ 
ficial visit to Washington, he was persuaded 
against his wishes to accept a commission as 
brigadier-general and the command of the army 
designed to defend Michigan Territory and at¬ 
tack Upper Canada from Detroit. Although he 
had pointed out to the War Department the ne¬ 
cessity of a naval force on Lake Erie to insure 
the communications of Detroit, he had made at 
the same time the utterly impracticable sugges¬ 
tion that a superior American army at Detroit 
might force the British to abandon their ships on 
the lake and thus secure naval control without 
the expense of building a fleet. Upon this unfor¬ 
tunate suggestion the Administration based its 
plans for Hull’s campaign, and to this extent 
Hull was responsible for the faulty strategy. On 
July 5,1812, he arrived at Detroit with an army 
of some 2,000 men, the majority of them Ohio 
militia. A week later, pursuant to orders from 
Washington, he crossed into Canada. At this 
time his force was superior to that of the British 
at Amherstburg, and it is possible that a sudden 
blow at that post might have resulted in success. 
Hull delayed in the belief that the Canadian mili¬ 
tia would desert and make his task easier. Events 
now began to turn against him. British and In¬ 
dian detachments cut his exposed communica¬ 
tions along the shore of the lake and the Detroit 
River. The British captured the American post 
at Mackinac, with the result that the Michigan 
Indians openly espoused the British side. Gen. 
Henry Dearborn [#.#.], who had been expected 
to create a diversion on the Niagara River, failed 
to do so, and British reinforcements reached 
Amherstburg from that quarter. Gen. Isaac 
Brock, lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, an 


3 6 3 



Hullihen 


Hullihen 


energetic and very able soldier, took command in 
person. Hull retreated to Detroit, and after futile 
attempts to open his communications with Ohio, 
surrendered his army and fortifications to Brock 
on Aug. 16, 1812. His excuses were that he was 
cut off from his base of supplies with provisions 
that would last a month at most, that he was un¬ 
able to break through the encircling enemy, and 
that resistance would expose the population of 
the territory to Indian massacre. The court mar¬ 
tial which tried him upon charges of treason, 
cowardice, and neglect of duty found him guilty 
upon the second and third counts and sentenced 
him to be shot President Madison approved the 
sentence, but remanded its execution because of 
Hull’s Revolutionary services. These charges 
would hardly be sustained today. Blame should 
fall, first, upon a faultily conceived plan of cam¬ 
paign, for which Hull was jointly responsible 
with his superiors, Secretary Eustis and Presi¬ 
dent Madison; second, upon Hull’s excessive con¬ 
cern for the safety of non-combatants (part of 
his own family among them), which was greater 
than a soldier can well afford to exercise. His 
surrender without a battle was a blow to Amer¬ 
ican morale from which it took nearly two years 
to recover. Hull was dropped from the army 
and spent his remaining years with his family at 
Newton, Mass. Three days after the General’s 
surrender his nephew, Capt. Isaac Hull, com¬ 
manded the Constitution in her victory over the 
Guerriere. 

[See Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of Gen. 
Wm* Hull Prepared from His Manuscripts, by His 
Daughter, Mrs. Maria Campbell: together with the 
Hist of the Campaign of 1812, and Surrender of the 
Post of Detroit , by His Grandson, James Freeman 
Clarke (1848) ; Report of the Trial of Brig. Gen. Wm . 
Hull {1814;; two defenses prepared and published by 
Hull himself. Defence of Brig. Gen. IV. Hull (1814), 
and Memoirs of the Campaign of the North Western 
Army (iB24); E. A. Cruikshank, Docs . Relating to the 
Invasion of Canada and the Surrender of Detroit, 1812 
<Pubs. of the Canadian Archives, no. 7, 1912) and 
“General Hull's Invasion of Canada in 1812," Trans. of 
the Royal Society of Canada, 3 ser., vol. I, sect. II, 
no. Ill (1908) ; Henry Adams, Hist, of the If. S voL 
VI (1890); C. H, Weygant, The Hull Family in Amer¬ 
ica <1913) ; F. B. Dexter, Biog. Sketches Grads . Yale 
Coll., vol. Ill (1903) ; Charles Moore, Governor, Judge 
and Priest (1891); Columbian Centinel (Boston), Nov. 
30, 1825. J. G. Van Deusen makes an able presentation 
of the case for Hull in two articles in the Mich. Hist. 
M ag. t July, Oct 1928.] j ^ p t 

HULLIHEN, SIMON P. (Dec. 10,1810-Mar. 
27» 1857), plastic surgeon and dentist, son of 
Thomas and Rebecca (Freeze) Hullihen, was 
horn in Point Township, Northumberland Coun¬ 
ty, Pa. His academic education was limited to 
available in the township district school and 
was completed at the age of seventeen years. 
When he was about nine, he fell into a smoulder¬ 


ing kiln, an accident which resulted in severe 
bums on both feet, inability to walk for about 
two years, and permanent contractures that 
greatly handicapped him throughout life. His 
innate ingenuity enabled him to construct plaster 
models for a shoe last that permitted him to walk 
with some degree of comfort His interest in 
surgery and dentistry became an absorbing one, 
and before reaching manhood he had developed 
such dexterity in the extraction of teeth that all 
work of this nature was referred to him by the 
medical practitioners of the community. 

He began the practice of surgery and dentistry 
at Canton, Ohio, in 1832. Two years later he 
married a Miss E. Fundenburg at Pittsburgh 
and immediately moved to Wheeling, Va. (now 
W. Va.). The degree of M.D. was conferred on 
him by the medical department of Washington 
College, Baltimore, McL He was especially in¬ 
terested in plastic surgery and operative surgical 
procedures involving face, mouth, nose, eyes, and 
teeth. In the early days of his practice in Wheel¬ 
ing he encountered much underhanded oppo¬ 
sition; but his sterling qualities as a man, his 
eminent professional qualifications, and his sym¬ 
pathy for the needy and those in distress soon put 
his critics to shame. He was richly endowed with 
the creative instinct and manual dexterity. These 
faculties, combined with excellent judgment, na¬ 
tive ability, a thorough knowledge of anatomy, 
and a tendency to work out improvements in 
operative technique, enabled him to contribute 
greatly to plastic surgery of the face and mouth. 
His most important contributions were those re¬ 
lating to operations for cleft palate, harelip, and 
deformities of the lower jaw, the nose, and the 
lips. He was also a distinguished dentist and 
devised many dental instruments and new and 
improved methods for treating diseases of the 
teeth. Among his published articles are “Hare- 
Lip and Its Treatment/’ American Journal of 
Dental Science, June 1844; “Cleft Palate and Its 
Treatment/’ Ibid., March 1845; “Abscess of the 
Jaws and Its Treatment,” Ibid., December 1846; 
“Cases of Tic Douloureux,” Ibid., October 1848; 
“Observations on Such Diseases of the Teeth, as 
Induce Facial Neuralgia or Tic Douloureux,” 
Dental Register, January 1850, 

His interest in civic affairs and social condi¬ 
tions was unflagging. It was due primarily to 
his efforts that the Wheeling Hospital came into 
being as a corporate body on Mar. 12,1850. Per¬ 
haps his greatest contribution to medicine in its 
broadest sense was the conception, which he con¬ 
stantly advocated, that the practice of dentistry 
is one of the specialties of medicine and that den¬ 
tal practitioners should have the same type of 


364 



Humbert 


Hume 


training in the basic medical sciences as do prac¬ 
titioners in other branches of the healing art. 

[North Am. Medico-Chirurgical Rev., Jan. 1858 ; Am. 
Jour, of Dental Science , Apr. 1857; Dental Register , 
June 1857; Quart. Jour, of Dental Sci., Apr. 1857; A. 

D Black’s Index of the Periodical Dental Literature , 
1839-1875, gives a list of articles published by Hulli- 
hen.] J.F.S. 

HUMBERT, JEAN JOSEPH AMABLE 
(Nov. 25, 1755-Jan. 2, 1823), French general, 
resident of New Orleans who served tinder Jack- 
son, was a typical son of the French Revolution. 
Born in Rouvray (Meuse) of humble parentage 
and orphaned at an early age, he earned his live¬ 
lihood as best he could until 1792 when he or¬ 
ganized a company of volunteers to help protect 
invaded France. Within two years he became 
general of brigade taking an active part in Jaco¬ 
bin circles in Paris. Sent into Vendee, he soon 
took a leading role in the merciless pacification 
of that revolted province. In 1798 he was in Ire¬ 
land hoping to join Irish revolutionists against 
the English. The English overwhelmed his little 
French army, but Humbert was exchanged and 
was soon on his way to join Massena under 
whom he was wounded near Zurich in 1799. His 
next activity was with Le Clerc in the expedition 
to Santo Domingo which captured the leader of 
black revolt, Toussaint L’Ouverture. By win¬ 
ning the affection of Le Clerc’s widow, Pauline 
Bonaparte, whom Napoleon had destined to mar¬ 
ry a Borghese, Humbert incurred Napoleon’s 
displeasure. Exiled in Brittany, he fled to the 
United States, apparently arriving in New Or¬ 
leans in 1814. He took an active part in the bat¬ 
tle of New Orleans, delighted at the opportunity 
to fight the English. He directed the mounted 
scouts and was commended by Jackson in Gen¬ 
eral Orders of Jan. 21, 1815, for having “con¬ 
tinually exposed himself to the greatest dangers 
with characteristic bravery” (Fortier, post, III, 
1S9). The following year Humbert joined a fili¬ 
bustering expedition to Mexico, hoping to take 
part in the Mexican war of liberation, but he 
arrived too late. Returning to New Orleans, he 
taught school, ending his years in dissipation, 
and dying of dysentery after a long illness. The 
French Restauration paid him a pension for a 
short while. The records of the Saint Louis 
Cathedral, New Orleans, show that he was buried 
in the parochial cemetery on Jan. 3, 1823. He 
was accorded a military burial and his funeral 
was well attended. 

Humbert was a product of the French Revo¬ 
lution ; as cruel as he was brave, he did the work 
assigned regardless of humanity; a martinet in 
discipline, trained in European warfare, he was 
a true soldier of the Napoleonic era. Louisiana 


tradition paints him as tall, possessor of a pleas¬ 
ant personality and good manners. He is the 
hero of Ponsard’s drama Le Lion amourenx 
(1866). 

[Biographic Univcrselle (Michaud), vol. XX (1858); 

J. G. Rosengarten, French Colonists and Exiles in the 
U. S. (1907); Alcee Fortier, A Hist, of La. (1904), 
vol. Ill ; S. C. Arthur, The Story of the Battle of New 
Orleans (1915). H. C. Castellanos, New Orleans as 
It Was ( 1S95) ; E. L. M. Guillon, La France ct VIrlande 
sous le Dircctoire (1888), pp. 366 ff.; Courricr dc la 
Louisiana (New Orleans), Jan. 6, 1823.] L.C.D. 

HUME, ROBERT ALLEN (Mar. 18, 1847- 
June 24, 1929), Congregational clergyman, mis¬ 
sionary, the son of Robert Wilson and Hannah 
Derby (Sackett) Hume, was bom at Byculla, 
Bombay, India, where his parents were mis¬ 
sionaries of the American Board of Commission¬ 
ers for Foreign Missions. He was a grandson 
of Robert Hume of Berwickshire, Scotland, who 
emigrated to America and settled in Galway, N. 
Y., in 1795. On the death of his father in 1854, 
young Robert went with his mother, a brother, 
and five sisters to Springfield, Mass. He pre¬ 
pared for college at the Springfield high school 
and at Williston Academy, and entered Yale in 
1864. During his college course he won prizes 
in English composition and took high rank as a 
scholar. After graduation in 1868 he spent the 
ensuing year as a teacher in General Russell’s 
Collegiate and Commercial Institute, New Ha¬ 
ven. He was a student in Yale Divinity School 
during the next two years and received from 
the College the degree of M.A. in 1871. He 
then taught one year in the Edwards School, 
Stockbridge, Mass., and entered Andover Theo¬ 
logical Seminary, from which he received the 
degree of B.D. in 1873. He was ordained to the 
Congregational ministry on May 10, 1874, in 
New Haven, and on July 7 was married to Abbie 
Lyon Burgess, daughter of the Rev. Ebenezer 
Burgess, of New Haven. Hume and his wife 
sailed in August 1874, from New York for Bom¬ 
bay, via Glasgow, under appointment as mis¬ 
sionaries of the American Board. Being as¬ 
signed on his arrival to Ahmednagar, he begaj* 
his service there in October. That city was his 
headquarters during his entire missionary ca¬ 
reer. He founded there in 1878 ^theological 
seminary, known as United Divinity College 
since 1921 when the United Free Church of Scot¬ 
land joined in the work, and remained its head 
until 1926. This was his chief, although by no 
means his only, work. For forty years he was 
superintendent of the Paraer district, west of 
Ahmednagar, in which over a thousand conver¬ 
sions occurred and eighteen churches and schools 
were built during his administration. He served 


3 6 5 



Hume Hume 


at various times as principal of the Ahmednagar 
high school, opened in 1882, and the Ahmednagar 
girls’ school; as secretary of the Bombay branch 
of the British and Foreign Bible Society; as 
English editor of the Dnyanodaya, an Anglo- 
Marathi periodical; and he was for a time a 
member of the Ahmednagar Municipality, and 
was chosen a delegate to the unofficial Indian 
National Congress of 1907. In 1901 he received 
the Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal from the British 
government in recognition of his services as ad¬ 
ministrator of funds sent from America in re¬ 
lief of the famine of 1897-1900. He was presi¬ 
dent of the All-India Christian Endeavor Union 
for the year 1902-03, president in 1914 of the 
Christian Endeavor Union of the Bombay Presi¬ 
dency, and president in 1916 of the Bombay Rep¬ 
resentative Council of Missions. He served by 
appointment of the Governor of Bombay on the 
Presidency Committee on Problems of Religious 
Mendicancy, and was the only American called 
to testify before the Montague-Chelmsford com¬ 
mission on reform in Indian government In 
1925 he was chosen the first moderator of the 
United Church of Northern India, and in 1927 
represented the United Church at the World 
Conference on Faith and Order, held in Lau¬ 
sanne, Switzerland. 

During his periods of furlough in America, he 
engaged in various activities, including instruc¬ 
tion during 1904-05 in Andover Theological 
Seminary and the publication of the substance 
of his course as Missions from the Modern View 
(1905) ; the delivery of lectures at the Univer¬ 
sity of Chicago, Oberlin College, Union Semi¬ 
nary, and elsewhere, and their publication as 
An Interpretation of Indicts Religious History 
(1911). In 1919-20 he acted as a professor 
in the Kennedy School of Missions, Hartford, 
Conn., and served as vice-moderator of the Na¬ 
tional Council of Congregational Churches. A 
prolific writer, in addition to the works already 
cited he was the author of many translations, 
articles and pamphlets, including a Marathi 
version of Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Tes¬ 
tament, Christianity Tested by Reason (Bom¬ 
bay, 1893), A High Emprise (Calcutta, 1916), 
and an autobiography, “Hume of Ahmednagar” 
(in the Congregationdist, Boston, 1921#.). His 
articles appeared frequently in such periodicals 
as the Missionary Herald, the Indian Review , 
the Modem Review, the Indian Interpreter, 
Tmmg Men of India, and the Missionary Review 
of the World, 

Hume was twice married. His first wife died 
at Panchganj, India, July 25, 1881. Two sons 
and two daughters were bom of this union. On 


Sept. 7, 1887, he was married in Ahmednagar to 
Katie Fairbank, a missionary in Ahmednagar 
since 1882, and the daughter of the Rev. Samuel 
Bacon Fairbank of the Marathi Mission. Three 
sons and one daughter were born to them. He 
spent his last days, after retirement from the 
India service in 1926, at Auburndale, Mass., and 
died in Brookline, Mass. His body was cre¬ 
mated at his own request, and his ashes lie in 
Ahmednagar in the Memorial Church which 
bears his name. 

[Information regarding Hume may be found in the 
files of the Missionary Herald, 1874-1920, and especial¬ 
ly in the issue of Feb. 1925 ; see also the Missionary 
Rev . of the World , Nov. 1929; Boston Transcript , June 
29, 1929) Yale Obit . Record (1929); Who’s Who in 
America, 1928-29.] j q ^ 

HUME, WILLIAM (Nov. 19, 1830-June 25, 
1902), a pioneer in the salmon industry, was 
born in Waterville, Me., the son of William and 
Harriett (Hunter) Hume. His grandfather, of 
Scotch descent, and his father were fishermen. 
As a youth he spent little time in school, and 
when he was twenty-two years of age he went 
to California. There he fished and hunted for a 
living along the Sacramento River. In 1856 he 
went back to Maine and returned to California 
that same year with his two brothers, John and 
George W. Hume. The latter had a friend in 
Maine, Andrew S. Hapgood, who had learned 
the tinsmith trade and had done a little canning 
of lobster meat. He was persuaded to come to 
California and in 1864 the canning firm of Hap¬ 
good, Hume & Company was established on the 
Sacramento River at Washington, Yolo County. 
The cannery was a crude affair and William 
Hume peddled the first cans of fish from door to 
door, carrying them about in a basket. Finding 
the run of fish in the Sacramento rather disap¬ 
pointing, Hume did some prospecting on the 
Columbia River in 1865, and the following year 
a cannery was built at Eagle Cliff, Wash., the 
first on the Columbia. Here the Royal Chinook 
salmon, cooked in the cans, was packed. During 
its opening season the firm put up 4,000 cases, 
each containing four dozen one-pound cans, and 
the next season 18,000. The most of the early 
product was sold in Australia. The industry 
grew rapidly and in 1881 had become the most 
extensive in the Northwest, with the exception 
of wheat raising. Of the thirty-five canneries on 
the Columbia at that time more than half had 
been established by the Hume brothers. When 
the industry reached its height in 1883, William 
Hume's interest in it was larger than that of any 
other individual. It absorbed his interest until 
his death. He was conservative in business, in¬ 
troduced no new machinery, and opposed the es- 


366 



Humes 


Humiston 


tablishment of salmon hatcheries. He never 
sought public office, was a member of no church 
nor secret society. In 1876 he was married to 
Emma Lord of San Francisco. 

[J. N. Cobb, Pacific Salmon Fisheries (1917); R. D. 
Hume, “The First Salmon Cannery/* Pacific Fisher¬ 
man, Jan. 1904; Portland Oregonian, Mar. 10, 1868, 
July 16, 1874, Aug. 1, Sept. 8, 1881, July 31. 1883, 
June 29, 1902; Fishing Gasette, July 5, 1902.J 

R. C. C—k. 

HUMES, THOMAS WILLIAM (Apr. 22, 
1815-Jan. 16, 1892), Protestant Episcopal cler¬ 
gyman, was the first president of the University 
of Tennessee. His father was Thomas Humes, 
merchant, native of Armagh, Ireland, and his 
mother was Margaret (Russell), widow of James 
Cowan. Born in Knoxville, Tenn., he graduated 
from the local East Tennessee College at the age 
of fifteen and three years later received the mas¬ 
ter's degree from that institution. Having al¬ 
ready made some study of theology, in 1833 he 
spent a few months in Princeton Theological 
Seminary only to find that he could not subscribe 
to the Westminster Confession of Faith. He re¬ 
turned to Knoxville, became a merchant, and on 
Dec. 4, 1834, married Cornelia Williams. Since 
mercantile pursuits did not appeal to him, he next 
tried journalism, in 1839 as editor of the Knox¬ 
ville Times and in 1840, of the Knoxville Regis¬ 
ter and of a Whig campaign paper, the Watch 
Tower . An unsuccessful candidate for the state 
legislature in 1841, he turned again to the min¬ 
istry, was ordained deacon in March 1845 an ^ 
presbyter in July, and in 1846 became rector of 
St. John's Episcopal Church in Knoxville. On 
Apr. 12,1849, his first wife having died, he mar¬ 
ried Anna B. Williams, a school-teacher from 
New Hartford, Conn. During the Civil War he 
was a Unionist in his sympathies, and when Ten¬ 
nessee seceded, he resigned his pulpit; but in 
1863, after Knoxville had been occupied by Fed¬ 
eral troops, he resumed it and continued in it for 
six years more. During and just after the war, 
he was chairman of the executive committee of 
the East Tennessee Relief Association, an or¬ 
ganization for the distribution of the necessities 
of life to distressed Unionists of eastern Ten¬ 
nessee. War had brought distress also to his 
alma mater, by then in name East Tennessee 
University though in reality still a small classical 
college, and it had closed its doors. In 1865 
Humes accepted the presidency of this institu¬ 
tion and in the following year was able to reopen 
it. As clergyman and as educator, he was well- 
bred, cultured, public-spirited, with a strong 
sense of duty, frequently called upon for public 
addresses. In his theological and educational 
views he was dogmatically conservative: modern 


science did not attract him; evolutionary philoso¬ 
phy he rejected; his faith was in the older clas¬ 
sical education. Yet during his administration 
foundations were laid for a broadening of the 
work of his institution. In 1869 the legislature 
granted to it the state's proceeds from the Mor¬ 
rill Act for the development of colleges of agri¬ 
culture and mechanic arts, and converted it, 
though still largely in name only, into the Uni¬ 
versity of Tennessee. In 1883 Humes resigned 
the presidency. By 1888 he had written and pub¬ 
lished a not unbiased volume, The Loyal Moun¬ 
taineers of Tennessee . The last six years of his 
life he served as librarian of the Lawson-McGhee 
Library of Knoxville. 

[Genealogical notes in McGung Collection, Knox¬ 
ville ; T. C. Karns, “President Thomas W. Humes/* in 
UniiK of Tenn. Record, July 1898; lengthy obituary in 
Knoxville Journal, Jan. 17, 1892.] P.M.H, 

HUMISTON, WILLIAM HENRY (Apr. 27, 
1869-Dec. 5, 1923), musician, critic, composer, 
was bom in Marietta, Washington County, Ohio, 
the son of Henry Humiston and Margaret Voris. 
While he was still a boy his parents moved to 
Chicago and he passed in succession through the 
Chicago High School and the Lake Forest Col¬ 
lege, where in 1891 he received the degree of 
A.B. From boyhood he had shown a talent for 
music, and while at college he had begun the 
more serious cultivation of his art, studying the 
piano with W. S. B. Mathews, and the organ 
with Clarence Eddy until 1894. He then went to 
New York and continued his study of the piano 
with R. Huntington Woodman. In 1896, when 
the department of music was created at Colum¬ 
bia University, he studied composition with Ed¬ 
ward MacDowell. During his study years and 
later he held a number of organ positions and 
was successively organist at the Lake Forest 
Presbyterian Church, 1889-91, 1893-94; First 
Congregational Church, Chicago, 1891-93; Trin¬ 
ity Congregational Church, East Orange, N. J., 
1896-1906; and the Presbyterian Church at Rye, 
N. Y., 1906-09. By temperament and inclina¬ 
tion, however, he was drawn to a field less re¬ 
stricted in its musical activities than that of 
sacred music. From 1909 to 19 12 he gained ex¬ 
perience as a conductor of road companies giv¬ 
ing both grand and comic opera. After 1912 he 
became definitely associated with the musical life 
of New York City. His reputation as an au¬ 
thority on the music of Bach, Wagner, and Mac¬ 
Dowell was already established. In 1912 he 
became program annotator of the New York 
Philharmonic Society, succeeding H. E. Krdb- 
biel, and in 1914 he conducted what was probably 
the first American performance of Mozart’s oper- 


367 



Hummel 


Hummel 


etta Bastien and Bastienne, given by the Mac- 
Dowell Club. He was also during this time 
lecturing on Bach and Wagner, contributing 
articles to the musical journals and, as a close 
friend and associate of the late Henry T. Finck 
[q.s 1 .], writing music criticism. In 1916 he was 
made assistant conductor of the New York Phil¬ 
harmonic, and that same year he conducted a 
MacDowell Club program of “lighter Bach” 
music, the outstanding feature of which was a 
scenic version of “The Peasant Cantata.” In 
1918 he conducted another Bach concert of mis¬ 
cellaneous numbers in which the Triple Concerto 
in D minor was performed. He remained with 
the Philharmonic Society both as program an¬ 
notator and as assistant conductor until 1921. 

Despite his other activities Humiston did not 
neglect the field of composition. His “Suite in 
F sharp minor” for violin and orchestra (1911, 
revised in 1915) had been preceded by his 
“Southern Fantasie” (1906), introducing Amer¬ 
ican negro themes, the most popular of his 
orchestral numbers. In 1913 he composed his 
“Iphigeneia,” a dramatic scena for soprano, 
chorus, and orchestra, performed by the People’s 
Choral Union of Boston. He also arranged the 
music to accompany the Wagner centennial film 
produced that year. His overture, “Twelfth 
Night,” written for Maude Adams’ production of 
the drama in 1916, and a few songs complete the 
list. Although these compositions were all per¬ 
formed, and although they showed in their work¬ 
manship a certain skill and a sense of dramatic 
values, they fall short, perhaps, in inspirational 
quality. The “Southern Fantasie” may be said to 
have won its favor because of the folk-flavor of 
its thematic material. It was rather as a direct, 
aggressive influence toward the cultivation of 
musical appreciation and performance, especially 
with regard to the composers to whom he had 
specifically devoted himself, that Humiston was 
important in American music. He possessed a 
scholarship which commanded the respect of his 
colleagues, and his detailed knowledge of the life 
and works of Bach and Wagner—he knew the 
Wagner scores almost note for note—made him 
very nearly omniscient where they were con¬ 
cerned. 


Who's Who in Music (1918); biographical 
Retell in Programme of People's Choral Union, Boston, 
Jan, *6, 1913 ; the Musical Courier, Dec. 13, 1923; 
Xmvel Amerw^Jtec. 15, 1923; obituaries in the N. 
F, Times, N. Y. Tribune , and Brooklyn Eagle, Dec. 6, 

***** F.H.M. 

HUMMEL, ABRAHAM HENRY (July 27, 
1850-Jam 22,1926), lawyer, was born in Boston, 
the son of a Jewish pedler, Moses Hum- 
sad, and life wife Hannah. The family having 


moved to New York, he attended Public School 
No. 15 on East Fifth Street and in January 1863 
became office boy to William F. Howe [q.v.]. 
With Howe’s connivance he was admitted to the 
bar in 1869, when but nineteen years old, and a 
few months later their partnership was in full 
swing. For thirty years they were the cleverest, 
most picturesque, most sought-after, most highly 
remunerated criminal lawyers in the country. 
Although they defended clients accused of every 
perpetrable crime, their specialty was theatrical 
cases, divorces, and homicides. One factor in 
their success was a complete unscrupulousness 
of which Hummel was chief engineer, Howe’s 
forensic and histrionic feats being reenforced by 
the office work of his partner, a master at beating 
a case on the facts ’ and at working up a case 
out of the scantiest and most unpromising ma¬ 
terials. In genius complementary, the two men, 
bound together by a romantic friendship, were 
otherwise in sharp contrast. “Little Abe,” con¬ 
spicuous only for his large, bald head and rap¬ 
torial features, was less than five feet tall, was 
dressed always in sober black, and saved his af¬ 
fability till after business hours. His huge win¬ 
nings he squandered in the Tenderloin, at the 
race-track, and in fast society; he was an in¬ 
variable first-nighter and a noted gourmet. On 
Howe s retirement in 1900 the firm’s offices were 
removed to the New York Life Insurance build¬ 
ing, and the business declined somewhat. 

Though even dull nostrils could detect in his 
activities a reek of sharp practice, bribery, per¬ 
jury, and blackmail, Hummel remained practical¬ 
ly immune, having powerful friends in the un¬ 
derworld, among politicians, and among men of 
wealth, and his brother-lawyers being disposed 
to tolerate him. Once, however, he was disbarred 
for a short period for attempting to bribe a 
Westchester County judge. Early in 1904 one 
of his tools was indicted for perjury and offered 
to turn state’s evidence; during the next eleven 
months Hummel used his every resource in an 
effort to spirit the man out of the country or to 
kill him by dissipation. On Jan. 27, 1905, Dis¬ 
trict-Attorney W. T. Jerome secured Hummel’s 
indictment for conspiracy and subornation of 
perjury in a suit to set aside the divorce of Mrs. 
Charles F. Dodge, who had later married Charles 
W. Morse. He was convicted on the conspiracy 
charge Dec. 20,1905, and sentenced to a year in 
the penitentiary and a fine of $500. Until actual¬ 
ly incarcerated on May 21, 1907, in the Black¬ 
well’s Island prison, “the smartest lawyer in New 
York” was imperturbable; the next day a guard 
found him completely collapsed, Jerome pro¬ 
duced him, still a sick man, as a witness in the 


368 



Humphrey 

trial of Harry K. Thaw; and on Mar* 19, 1908, 
with time off for good behavior, he was released. 
Two days later he sailed for England on the 
Lusitania. He was in reduced circumstances, 
but former friends and clients, hearing that he 
was going to write his memoirs, saved his re¬ 
maining years from poverty. Except for a trip 
round the world in 1911, he lived obscurely in 
London with his two sisters and died in the 
Baker Street flat in 1926. His body, attended 
only by a trust company's representative, was 
buried in Salem Field Cemetery, Queens. A sup¬ 
posititious son appeared to contest the will, which 
was rumored to dispose of an estate worth $1,- 
250,000. When it was learned that the dead man 
left only $51,000, the son's lawyer threw up the 
case, and the young man returned to his Port¬ 
land, Me., milk route. 

[The New York newspapers are the chief source of 
information. Arthur Train, “The Fall of Hummel,” 
Cosmopolitan Mag., May and June 1908, is authoritative. 
A few details^ in this account have been taken from 
Who's Who in America t 1906-07; Daily Telegraph 
(London), Jan. 25, 1926; Boston and New York city 
directories.] q jj q 

HUMPHREY, HEMAN (Mar. 26,1779-Apr. 
3, 1861), Congregational clergyman, president 
of Amherst College, was bom in West Sims¬ 
bury, now Canton, Hartford County, Conn., the 
son of Solomon and Hannah (Brown) Humph¬ 
rey, and a descendant of Michael Humphrey who 
was living in Simsbury, Conn., in 1643. Heman 
attended the district schools and received also 
some excellent private instruction until his seven¬ 
teenth year, when he in turn, for several years, 
became a successful teacher in the schools of his 
neighborhood during the winters. In the sum¬ 
mers he worked as a farm hand. This latter oc¬ 
cupation brought him into the employ and to the 
notice of Governor Treadwell of Connecticut, 
who placed his well-stocked library at the service 
of his young helper. Learning by teaching and 
by hard study directed by friends, Humphrey 
prepared himself for college and in his twenty- 
fifth year was received by Yale College into its 
junior class, with which he graduated in 1805. 
He immediately joined a class in theology con¬ 
ducted by the Rev. Asahel Hooker of Goshen, 
Conn., and in 1806 received a license to preach 
from the Litchfield North Association. “With 
my license in my pocket,” he wrote later, “I pur¬ 
chased a horse, saddle, bridle and portmanteau, 
and was ready to enter the field, without know¬ 
ing or conjecturing in what comer of it I was to 
find employ.” He found his “comer” in Fair- 
field, Conn., where he was ordained in March 
1807, and on Apr. 20, 1808, married Sophia, the 
daughter of Noah Porter [g.z/.] of Farmington. 


Humphrey 

Before his ordination a conflict with his pro¬ 
spective parishioners had arisen which illustrates 
his characteristic firmness and devotion. While 
he was preaching at Fairfield as a candidate, he 
found the Half-Way Covenant sanctioned by the 
church. Humphrey declared that he found no 
warrant in Scripture for this institution, and that 
in no case could he administer the ordinance of 
baptism to children neither of whose parents was 
in full communion with the church. This uncom¬ 
promising attitude was unanimously, though re¬ 
luctantly, approved by the church and Humphrey 
entered upon a most successful pastorate of ten 
years' duration. It was in the third year of this 
term (1810) that he began his pioneer preaching 
in support of temperance, which soon took on the 
more radical form of an appeal for total absti¬ 
nence. His position in this matter was one both 
delicate and bold for a minister to take at a time 
when indulgence in stimulants, even by his broth¬ 
ers in the cloth, was widespread and often un¬ 
restrained. In 1813 with Rev. R. R. Swan and 
Rev. William Bonney he published Intemper¬ 
ance: an Address to the Churches and Congre¬ 
gations of the Western District of Fairfield . A 
later address. Parallel Between Intemperance 
and the Slave Trade (1828) attracted wide at¬ 
tention. In 1817 Humphrey was called to a more 
important pastorate at Pittsfield, Mass., where in 
a period of six years he succeeded in closing a 
schism which had bade fair to destroy the influ¬ 
ence of the church. 

It was his record of firm orthodoxy in these 
two charges, his leadership in the cause of tem¬ 
perance, and more particularly his conspicuous 
success with the younger members of his con¬ 
gregations that led the trustees of the Charitable 
Collegiate Institution (Amherst College) to call 
him to the presidency in 1823. The institution 
had been founded two years before by the good 
people of the Connecticut Valley, in “the con¬ 
viction that the education of pious young men of 
the first talents is the most sure method of re¬ 
lieving our brethren, by civilizing and evangeliz¬ 
ing the world.” Humphrey's presidency lasted 
twenty-two years and in that time 765 young 
men graduated, of whom over 400 entered the 
ministry. In 1830 he founded in the college the 
Antivenenean Society, the members of which 
promised to refrain from the use of alcoholic 
liquors, opium, and tobacco; and during his in¬ 
cumbency more than eighty per cent of the stu¬ 
dents took this pledge. The ideal benefits to be 
hoped for as the result of education were thus set 
out in his inaugural address: “It is education 
that pours light into the understanding, lays tip 
its golden treasures in the memory, softens the 


369 



Humphreys 

asperities of the temper, checks the waywardness 
of passion and appetite, and trains to habits of 
industry, temperance, and benevolence” {An Ad¬ 
dress, Delivered at the Collegiate Institution in 
Amherst, Mass., 1823, p. 8). The records of Am¬ 
herst graduates of his time and of many years 
thereafter would seem to show that it has been 
given to few college presidents to make so pro¬ 
found an impression on their institutions. After 
his resignation he supplied churches in the neigh¬ 
borhood of Pittsfield and conducted revivals. He 
published: Great Britain, France and Belgium, 
A Short Tour in 1835 (1838 ); Domestic Edu¬ 
cation (1840); Thirty-four Letters to a Son in 
the Ministry {1842); Letters to a Son in the 
Ministry (1845); Memoir of Rev. Nathan W. 
Fiske ( 1850) ; Life and Labors of Rev. T. H. Gal - 
laudet (1857). He left in manuscript, Sketches 
of the Early History of Amherst College, which 
was published in 1905. 

[Frederick Humphreys, The Humphreys Family in 
America (1883); Z. M. Humphrey and Henry Neill, 
Memorial Sketches, Heman Humphrey and Sophia Por¬ 
ter Humphrey (1869); Edward Hitchcock, Reminis¬ 
cences of Amherst Coll. (1863) ; W. S. Tyler, Hist, of 
Amherst Coll. (1873); F. B. Dexter, Biog. Sketches of 
Grads, of Yale Coll., vol. V (1911); John Todd, The 
Good Never Die : A Sermon Delivered at Pittsfield, Apr. 
8, 1861, at the Funeral of Rev. Heman Humphrey 
(1861); Boston Transcript, Apr. 5, 1861; Springfield 
Republican, Apr. 6,1861, ] F. L. T. 

HUMPHREYS, ALEXANDER CROMBIE 

(Mar. 30, 1851-Aug. 14, 1927), mechanical en¬ 
gineer, educator, was born in Edinburgh, Scot¬ 
land, son of Edward R. Humphreys and Mar¬ 
garet (McNutt) Humphreys. At the age of eight 
he was brought to Boston, Mass., by his parents, 
where he attended his father's private school. At 
fourteen he passed the preliminary examination 
for the United States Naval Academy but, barred 
from admission by his youth, he went to work in 
a Boston insurance office. Removing to New 
York in 1866, he entered the employ of the New 
York Guaranty & Indemnity Company and was 
soon made receiving teller and assistant book¬ 
keeper. So diligent and capable was he that in 
1872 he became secretary-treasurer and, shortly 
afterward, superintendent of the Bayonne & 
Greenville Gas Light Company, Since his duties 
took him into the operating branch of the busi¬ 
ness, he felt the need of technical training. His 
employers agreed to give him two mornings a 
week for attending classes at Stevens Institute of 
Technology on condition that he make up his 
work in the evenings, which he also used for 
studying. By exceptional application he com¬ 
pleted the six years' course, for part-time at¬ 
tendance, In four years, and was graduated in 
1881, at the age of thirty, with a special com- 


Humphreys 

mendation from the faculty. He had married on 
Apr. 30, 1872, Eva Guillaudeu of Bergen Point, 
N. J., and during his college years he served as 
vestryman, church treasurer, and Sunday-school 
superintendent, a member of the board of educa¬ 
tion of Bayonne, N. J., and foreman of the vol¬ 
unteer fire department. After graduation he be¬ 
came chief engineer for the Pintsch Lighting 
Company, for which he built oil-gas plants, con¬ 
ducted extensive experiments, and improved the 
business organization. When in 1885 he became 
superintendent and chief engineer for the United 
Gas Improvement Company of Philadelphia, he 
showed similar ability both in technique and or¬ 
ganization. While continuing to build gas plants 
for this company, he joined with Arthur G. 
Glasgow in 1892 to form the firm of Humphreys 
& Glasgow, designers and constructors of water- 
gas plants in all parts of the world, with head¬ 
quarters in London; this firm built the first suc¬ 
cessful water-gas plant in England. In 1894 he 
left the United Gas Improvement Company and 
organized the New York firm of Humphreys & 
Glasgow; he retired from the London firm in 
1908, and in 1910 reorganized the New York 
firm as Humphreys & Miller, Inc. At that pe¬ 
riod the possibility that gas-engines might sup¬ 
plant steam-engines gave additional importance 
to his researches and consulting practice; he also 
conducted researches on illumination, photom¬ 
etry, and candlepower. His practice was very 
profitable, and he was known as a leader in tech¬ 
nology with a sound foundation of business 
ability. 

In 1902, when he was fifty-one, he was asked 
to become president and chairman of the board of 
trustees of Stevens Institute, his alma mater, 
while still retaining his consulting practice. He 
accepted and served as its president for twenty- 
five years, being long past the usual age limit 
when he retired. To his work in education he 
brought the experience of a man of affairs and a 
successful consulting engineer. His presidential 
address before the American Society of Me¬ 
chanical Engineers in 1912 ( Transactions, vol. 
XXXIV, 1913) reveals an engineer's dislike of 
waste, and the conservatism and high standards 
of a man accustomed to hard work and logical 
principles. Humphreys had the engineering 
trait of believing a thing to be either black or 
white, rather than gray; his consulting practice 
had trained him to advise his clients either “yes” 
or “no.” His influence in engineering education 
was criticized for producing narrow and over¬ 
specialized technicians rather than adaptable and 
broadly educated scientists. His authority at the 
Institute was rarely questioned, and he showed 


370 



Humphreys 

little tendency to compromise. Andrew Carnegie 
was attracted to him, established endowments at 
Stevens, and made him a trustee of the Carnegie 
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 
In 1905 he published Lecture Notes on Some 
Business Features of Engineering . An unusual 
interest for an engineer was his patronage of 
American artists. His valuable collection of 
paintings was sold in 1917 and brought nearly 
$200,000. He was survived by his wife and one 
daughter; his two sons were drowned in the Nile 
in 1902 when the older tried to save the younger. 

[ Twenty-third Annual Report of the President and 
of the Treasurer, Carnegie Foundation for the Advance¬ 
ment of Teaching (1928) ; Morton Memorial, A Hist, 
of the Stevens Inst, of Technology (1905), ed. by F. 
DeR. Furman; Stevens Institute Indicator, Oct. 1902; 
Mechanical Engineering, Oct. 1927; Jour, of the Am. 
Institute of Electrical Engineers, Sept. 1927; Electrical 
World, Aug. 20, 1927; N. Y. Herald-Tribune and N. Y. 
Times, Aug. 15, 1927; Who's Who in America, 19 26- 
27; Who’s Who in New York, 1924; Who's Who in En¬ 
gineering, 1925; J. McK. Cattell, Am. Men of Science 
(19 27)0 P.B.M. 

HUMPHREYS, ANDREW ATKINSON 

(Nov. 2, 1810-Dec. 27, 1883), engineer, scien¬ 
tist, soldier, the son of Samuel and Letitia (At¬ 
kinson) Humphreys, was born in Philadelphia. 
His grandfather, Joshua Humphreys [g.z/.], was 
an eminent ship-builder who during the admin¬ 
istration of Washington designed the first large 
warships for the United States Navy. His fa¬ 
ther was chief constructor of the navy from 1826 
until his death in 1846. His grandfather on his 
mother's side was Andrew Atkinson, an officer 
of the British navy who settled in Florida in 
1784. Humphreys entered the United States 
Military Academy in 1827 and on graduation 
in 1831 was commissioned a lieutenant in the 
artillery. As such he took part in the Seminole 
War in Florida in 1836. After this campaign he 
resigned his commission to follow the profes¬ 
sion of engineering. He became a civil engineer 
under the Topographical Engineers of the army 
and was engaged in 1837 and 1838 on plans for 
Delaware River fortifications and harbor works. 
This led to his appointment as lieutenant in the 
Corps of Topographical Engineers when it was 
increased in 1838. In 1844, at the request of 
Alexander Dallas Bache [g.z/.], the superintend¬ 
ent, he was assigned to duty in the Coast Survey 
and served under its distinguished head for six 
years. He was commissioned captain in 1848. 

In 1850, at the request of the chief of his corps, 
he was relieved from duty in the Coast Survey to 
take charge of the topographic and hydrographic 
survey of the delta of the Mississippi River, 
which had just been authorized by Congress. 
He took charge of this work in October 1850 and 


Humphreys 

carried it on with his accustomed energy until 
he was disabled by a sunstroke in the summer of 
1851. The work was temporarily suspended, and 
as soon as he was able to do so he was given au¬ 
thority to visit Europe to study the methods of 
improvement of the deltas of European rivers. 
He returned to the United States in 1854, but be¬ 
fore resuming work on the Mississippi was di¬ 
rected by the Secretary of War to take charge 
of the explorations and surveys ordered by Con¬ 
gress "to ascertain the most practicable and eco¬ 
nomical route for a railway from the Mississippi 
River to the Pacific Ocean.” His report, submit¬ 
ted in the latter part of 1855 ( Senate Executive 
Document 78 and House Executive Document 
91 , 33 Cong., 2 Sess.) described five practicable 
routes which are substantially the routes of five 
of the present transcontinental railroads. In 
1857 his work on the Mississippi River was re¬ 
newed, in association with Lieut. Henry L. Ab¬ 
bot [q.v. 1 , and was continued until the outbreak 
of the Civil War in 1861. The Report upon the 
Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi River 
(1861), submitted by Humphreys and Abbot, 
was so valuable a contribution to the knowledge 
of the hydraulics of great rivers that it was 
translated into foreign languages and perma¬ 
nently established the reputation of its authors 
as investigators, scientists, and engineers of a 
high order. It formed the basis for the flood 
control and the improvement of the navigation 
of the great river. 

In the latter part of 1861, with the rank of ma¬ 
jor, Humphreys was appointed to the staff of 
General McClellan. He rendered valuable serv¬ 
ice in the Peninsular campaign as brigadier-gen¬ 
eral of volunteers and chief of the Topographical 
Engineers. During the Antietam campaign he 
commanded a division of new troops assigned to 
the V Corps. In the battle of Fredericksburg he 
led this division in a desperate attack on Marye 
Hill for which he received the brevet of colonel. 
United States Army. After the battle of Chan- 
cellorsville he was assigned to the command of 
a division of the III Corps and in the battle of 
Gettysburg fought it with great skill in resisting 
Longstreet’s attack on the afternoon of July 2. 
For this service he received the brevet of briga¬ 
dier-general, United States Army. After the 
Gettysburg campaign, at General Meade's ear¬ 
nest request, he accepted the position of chief of 
staff of the Army of the Potomac with the rank 
of major-general, which position he held until 
November 1864 when he was selected by Gen¬ 
eral Grant to command the II Corps. In the final 
campaign he won the brevet of major-general. 
United States Army, in the battle of Sailor's 


371 



Humphreys 

Creek. In 1866 he was appointed chief of the 
Corps of Engineers with the rank of brigadier- 
general, United States Army, and in that capac¬ 
ity he served until his retirement in 1879; he also 
served as consulting engineer for several civil 
projects. After his retirement he wrote From 
Gettysburg to the Rapidan (1883) and The Vir¬ 
ginia Campaign of 3 64 and 3 65 (1885), which 
have been generally accepted as among the most 
reliable works on these campaigns. 

As a scientist, Humphreys was a member of 
the American Philosophical Society, the Ameri¬ 
can Academy of Arts and Sciences, an incor¬ 
porator of the National Academy of Sciences, 
and an honorary or corresponding member of 
societies in Austria, France, and Italy. Harvard 
University conferred on him the degree of LL.D. 
His associate, Gen. Henry L. Abbot, said of him 
(National Academy of Sciences, Biographical 
Memoirs, pp. 210-14) that, as a soldier, “to cour¬ 
age of the brightest order, both moral and phys¬ 
ical, he united the energy, decision and intellec¬ 
tual power which characterized him in civil ad¬ 
ministration. . . . In official relations . . . [he] 
was dignified, self-possessed and courteous. His 
decisions were based on full consideration of the 
subject, and once rendered were final. ... In 
his social relations . . . [he] exerted a personal 
magnetism which can hardly be expressed in 
words.” In 1839 he married his cousin, Rebecca 
Hollingsworth, by whom he had two sons and 
two daughters. 

[H. H. Humphreys, Maj. Gen. Andrew Atkinson 
Humphreys {1896) and Andrew Atkinson Humphreys 
(1934); memoirs by H. L. Abbot in Nat. Acad. Sci. 
Biog. Memoirs , vol. II (1886), Fifteenth Ann. Reunion 
Asso. Grads. U. S. Mil. Acad. (1884),and Science, Apr. 
*8* *884; H. L. Carson, in Proc. Am. Phil. Soc vol. 
^1 C 1 8S5) ; Proc. Am. Acad. Arts and Set., n.s., 
Y?.* XI (1884); J. W. De Peyster, in Mag. of Am. 
Hist., Oct. 1886; Frederick Humphreys, The Hum - 
phreys Family in America (1883) ; G. W. Cullum, Biog. 
Reg. {3rd ed., 1891); War of the Rebellion: Official 
Records (Army) ; Army and Navy Jour., Dec. 29, 1883, 
Jan. s, 1884; Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), Dec. 
*8,1883.] g.J.F. 


HUMPHREYS, BENJAMIN GRUBB (Aug. 
24 or 26, 1808-Dec. 20, 1882), Confederate sol¬ 
dier, governor of Mississippi, was bom in Clai¬ 
borne County, Mississippi Territory, His father, 
George Wilson Humphreys, son of Col. Ralph 
and Agnes (Wilson) Humphreys, was a planter 
and attained some prominence in the civil and 
m 2 itary life of this frontier region. His mother 
was Sarah, daughter of Major David Smith. 
Benjamin was apparently the ninth of her six¬ 
teen children, of whom only six survived child¬ 
hood. The boy attended school at Russellville, 
Ky^ and Morristown, N. J., and in 1825 entered 
the Military Academy at West Point, from 


Humphreys 

which, however, with a number of other frolic¬ 
some cadets, he was dismissed, following a stu¬ 
dent riot on Christmas Eve, 1826. Returning 
home in the spring of 1827, he served as over¬ 
seer on his father's plantation, studied law, and 
in 1832 married Mary, daughter of Dugald Mc¬ 
Laughlin, who, before her death three years later, 
bore him two children. In December 1839 he 
married Mildred Hickman, daughter of James 
H. Maury; she became the mother of twelve, 
among whom the mortality was excessive. In 
1838 and 1839 be was a representative of Clai¬ 
borne County in the legislature and from 1840 
to 1844 he was a state senator. In 1846 he re¬ 
moved to Sunflower County, where the outbreak 
of the Civil War found him living the life of a 
planter. 

Humphreys, an ante-bellum Whig, had op¬ 
posed secession, but when war came he raised a 
company, which was later assigned to the 21st 
Mississippi; he was commissioned captain on 
May 18, 1861. On Sept, n he became colonel of 
the regiment and he led it through the major bat¬ 
tles of the Army of Northern Virginia, except 
Second Manassas, until Gettysburg, when, after 
Brig.-Gen. William Barksdale was mortally 
wounded, he was given command of the brigade. 
Barksdale's brigade and the 21st Mississippi 
gained notable distinction at Fredericksburg (see 
Humphreys' “Recollections of Fredericksburg” 
in Southern Historical Society Papers, XIV, 
1886, pp. 415-28). From September 1863 until 
the following spring, the brigade served under 
Longstreet in Georgia and Tennessee, and was in 
Virginia at the end of the war, although Hum¬ 
phreys, wounded at Berryville in September 
1864, was then in command of a military district 
that included his native section. He was fre¬ 
quently commended in official reports and was 
without doubt a gallant and capable officer. 

Humphreys was the first elected governor of 
Mississippi after the war. The convention of 
August 1865, called by the provisional gov¬ 
ernor, William L. Sharkey [q.z/.], nominated for 
the governorship, “in a sort of unofficial way,” 
Judge Ephraim S. Fisher, an old-line Whig who 
had had no part in the war (Garner, post, p, 93). 
Humphreys had taken the amnesty oath and ap¬ 
plied for a special pardon, but had no assurance 
at the time of the election (Oct. 2, 1865) that it 
would be granted (Ibid., p. 95). His victory by 
a plurality of more than 3,000 over Fisher and 
of more than 8,000 over William S. Patton (Row¬ 
land, Official and Statistical Register, p. 245) 
seems to have been due chiefly to his military 
record. The question of admitting negro testi¬ 
mony to the courts, which he favored (Rowland, 


372 



Humphreys 

Mississippi, I, 893) and which many of his sup- 
porters opposed, was the main issue in the cam¬ 
paign, though the real division of opinion on the 
subject was not made clear. President Johnson 
was disappointed at the defeat of Fisher, but, on 
Sharkey’s recommendation, proceeded to pardon 
Humphreys. The latter was inaugurated on Oct 
16; he was recognized in some part by Johnson 
by Nov. 17, but not until Dec. 14 was Sharkey 
fully relieved. Humphreys remained in office 
until June 15,1868, when he was ruthlessly eject¬ 
ed by federal military authority and the “restored 
government” of Mississippi was brought to an 
unhappy end. 

His problems were essentially similar to those 
faced by other Southern governors elected under 
the presidential plan; they proved insoluble not 
merely because of their inherent difficulty but 
also because of the pressure of Northern opinion. 
National attention was focused on Mississippi as 
a result of the enactment of the famous “Black 
Code” of 1865, a well-intentioned but hasty at¬ 
tempt to define the legal status of the freedmen 
which was interpreted in the North as an effort 
to reestablish slavery in another form. Even in 
the North, the recommendations of Humphreys 
were regarded at the outset as reasonable, al¬ 
though he was felt to be insufficiently submissive 
in spirit. He later urged the rejection of the 
Fourteenth Amendment, though suggesting a re¬ 
laxation of the negro code of 1865. He saw no 
necessity for the presence of Federal troops and 
sought vainly to secure permission to disarm the 
freedmen, but in general he heartily cooperated 
with the military authorities and accepted suc¬ 
cessive humiliations with all the grace that could 
have been expected. Because of his opposition 
to many legislative measures that he deemed un¬ 
constitutional, he was called “Old Veto” (New 
Eclectic Magazine, August 1869, p. 179 )- On 
July 10, 1868, when the constitution of that year 
was rejected, he was triumphantly reelected gov¬ 
ernor by a majority of 8,000 (Gamer, post, p. 
216). It was no fault of the electorate as then 
constituted that he was retired to private life. 

For a time he was an insurance agent at Jack- 
son and Vicksburg, but for several years before 
his death in 1882 he lived on his plantation, “Itta 
Bena,” in Leflore County. He was buried at Fort 
Gibson. His son and namesake was a member of 
Congress and a man of some importance (see 
Hoztse Document No . 667 , 68 Cong., 2 Sess.). 

[F. Humphreys, “Humphreys Family of Miss.,” in 
The Humphreys Family in America (1883); Canfea. 
Mil. Hist. (1899), vol. VII, “Mississippi,” pp. 259-6* i 
War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), see in¬ 
dex; J. W. Gamer, Reconstruction in Miss. ( 1901); 
Dunbar Rowland, ed., The Official and Statistical Reg. 
of the State of Miss . (1908), and Mississippi (1907), 


Humphreys 

I, 893-906 ; R. Lowry and \V. H. McCardle, A Hist, of 
Miss. (1891) ; Biog. and Hist . Memoirs of Mississippi 
(1891), 1 ,983-85 ; D. A. Planck, eulogy of Humphreys, 
in Southern Hist. Soc. Papers , vol. XI (1883}; Sew 
Eclectic Mag. (Baltimore), Aug. 1869, pp. 177-79; 
Vicksburg Daily Commercial , Dec. 52, 23,1882.3 

D.M. 

HUMPHREYS, DAVID (July 10, 1752-Feb. 
21, 1818), soldier, statesman, poet, was born in 
Derby, Conn., the youngest son of the Rev. Daniel 
Humphrey and his wife, Sarah (Riggs) Bowers, 
widow of John Bowers. He was a descendant of 
Michael Humphrey who was living in what is 
now Simsbury, Conn., in 1643. Daniel Hum¬ 
phrey was a graduate of Yale in the class of 1732, 
a capable scholar, and much beloved in the Con¬ 
gregational church of Derby. David entered 
Yale College at the age of fifteen, in the class of 
1771, and at once manifested his energetic and 
somewhat showy taste for public activity and 
oratory. Even in these days he was known as 
the upholder of the “respectability and rights of 
the Freshmen.” Although in a different class in 
college, while at Yale he knew well John Trum¬ 
bull [q.v.], the poet, and Joel Barlow [g.t/.], 
whose career resembled his own. His most en¬ 
during friendship of college days was with Tim¬ 
othy Dwight [ q.v ,]. He received the degree of 
Master of Arts from Yale in 1774. 

After a brief interval of schoolmastering in 
Wethersfield, Conn., and at Philipse Manor, on 
the Hudson River, he declined a position as tutor 
at Yale, and in 1776 he volunteered as adjutant of 
the 2nd Connecticut militia regiment. “Adieu,” 
he wrote, “thou Yale, where youthful poets 
dwell.” He was already moved by an ardent and 
rather unthinking patriotism, which found ex¬ 
pression, in speeches, an enormous correspond¬ 
ence, and sonorous verse. “Adieu thou Yale,... 
Hear ye the din of battle? Clang of arms?” At 
about this time, also, began his life-long devotion 
to the Commander-In-Chief of the American 
armies, that won him the title which followed 
him everywhere in his career, “belov’d of Wash¬ 
ington.” Humphreys' record in the army during 
the Revolution was brilliant; at the age of twen¬ 
ty-five he was a brigade major, and at twenty- 
eight a lieutenant-colonel and aide-de-camp to 
Washington. He had a natural talent for mili¬ 
tary science, and there are few more intelligent 
contemporary pictures of certain important cam¬ 
paigns, notably the battle of Long Island and the 
retreat from Harlem, than those contained in his 
Essay on the Life of the Honorable Major-Gen¬ 
eral Israel Putnam (1788). In this he wrote as 
he fought, coolly and vigorously, and the bock 
remains a testimonial to Putnam, to the effort and 
sacrifice of these stirring days, ami to Hum¬ 
phreys* own victorious good sense. This Essay 


3 73 



Humphreys 

alone is sufficient to explain the confidence that 
Humphreys inspired in both his own soldiers and 
in his superior officers. 

The greatest reward of his practical capacity 
was not so much his fame among patriots as the 
warm personal friendship of Washington, more 
important for Humphreys’ future than the fact 
that he ended the war as lieutenant-colonel. He 
appeared with the Commander-in-Chief in im¬ 
posing paintings of the American general’s staff; 
he celebrated Washington in verse; and he visited 
him at Mount Vernon. On May 24,1784, he ac¬ 
cepted—it was the beginning of his career as 
diplomat—the “Secretaryship to the Commission 
for Negotiating Treaties of Commerce with For¬ 
eign Powers,” and within three months was in 
Paris, discussing with Benjamin Franklin the 
duties of his new' office. For the minister’s son 
from Derby, Conn., the “circle of noble and Liter¬ 
ary Characters” (all of whom, he tactfully as¬ 
sured Washington by letter, “are passionate ad¬ 
mirers of your glory”) was a new and colorful 
experience, but he was unabashed. His energy 
and practical sense served him well, and the two 
years in France and England, whether at the 
King’s levees or at the dinners of the Duke of 
Dorset, strengthened the habit of success with 
which nature seems to have endowed him. His 
biographer says that he “returned . . . with 
added grace of manner and polish of speech; but 
with the same strong patriotism and desire for 
America’s glory as when he had fought in her 
battles” (F. L. Humphreys, post, I, 352). 

New honors were awaiting him. After stays at 
Mount Vernon with his “Dear General,” he was 
elected in 1786 a member of the Assembly of 
Connecticut, and in the same year he was ap¬ 
pointed commandant of a new regiment created 
for operations, should these be necessary, against 
the Indians on the middle-western frontier. Amid 
all the tumult of these years of conventions, re¬ 
bellions, political controversies, and animad¬ 
versions against the new government, Hum¬ 
phreys by letter, oration, and poem upheld the 
principles of Washington. In 1790, when war 
threatened between Spain and England, he was 
chosen as a special secret agent to obtain infor¬ 
mation for the American government, at London, 
Lisbon, and Madrid. His letters from Europe to 
Thomas Jefferson, then secretary of state, show 
his capacity for this new task, and also reveal the 
interesting relations of the new republic to the 
inirigt^s of the old European nations. He 
achieved, in an amateur way, considerable knowl¬ 
edge of Spanish and Portuguese affairs, and out 
ol his mission came his appointment in 1793 as 
sole commisskmer in Algerine affairs, and his 


Humphreys 

appointment three years later as minister pleni¬ 
potentiary to Spain. Meanwhile he had fallen in 
love, and in 1797 he wrote Washington of his en¬ 
gagement to Ann Frances, daughter of John 
Bulkeley, a lady, he told the General, who has 
“formed exactly that opinion of you . . . which 
she ought to entertain.” It was almost his last 
letter to his benefactor, whose death two years 
later moved Humphreys to write to his widow a 
stately, solemnly poetic, but sincere letter of con¬ 
dolence. 

Humphreys’ sagacity in public affairs had won 
him success in Spain and Portugal. One triumph 
was his successful negotiation, in conjunction 
with Joel Barlow, of a treaty with the Algerine 
states for the freeing of American prisoners. He 
was now one of the Royal Society of London, and 
he enjoyed the intimacy of the Due de la Roche- 
foucauld-Liancourt. Nevertheless, in 1801, the 
new president, Jefferson, recalled him abruptly. 
He returned in the spring of 1802 laden with 
honors, with a belt and sabre presented him by 
the Dey of Algiers, and plans to improve the 
breed of sheep in New England. One sees him, 
not without amusement, bringing his famous 
merinos across Spain and Portugal, leading them 
into his well-named sloop, Perseverance, sailing 
with them across the ocean, and up the Housa- 
tonic River to Derby, and receiving, in the same 
year, the gratitude of Connecticut farmers and a 
gold medal from the Massachusetts Society for 
Promoting Agriculture. Humphreys’ tremen¬ 
dous energy was exceeded apparently only by 
the variety of his interests. 

In the year of his return he moved to Boston. 
His career now took on the air of the retired 
soldier, statesman, and successful merchant. In 
1806 and 1807 he again traveled in Europe, but 
his chief interest during these last years was in 
mills for the manufacture of doth, at Humphreys- 
ville, near Derby, of which his political enemy, 
Thomas Jefferson, became a patron. Their suc¬ 
cess was partly a result of the importation of the 
merino sheep, some of which brought in the 
market the sum of two thousand dollars each. 
The capital stock of the Humphreysville Manu¬ 
facturing Company in 1810 was $500,000. Hum¬ 
phreys was, in addition, still active in the affairs 
of his country. During the War of 1812 he be¬ 
came captain-general of Veteran Volunteers, 
wrote addresses to the President, and, as usual, 
supported the powers of conservatism. At the 
end we see him, in his prosperous home in Bos¬ 
ton, with Madame Humphreys, a very incarna¬ 
tion of those conservative ideals of the eighteenth 
century in America for which he fought “I re¬ 
member him,” wrote a lady who as a little girl 


374 



Humphreys 

knew him at this time: “. . . in a blue coat with 
large gold . . . buttons, a buff vest, and lace 
ruffles around his wrists and in his bosom. His 
complexion was soft and blooming like that of a 
child, and his gray hair, swept back from the 
forehead, was gathered in a cue behind and tied 
with a black or red ribbon. His white and plump 
hands I recollect well, for whenever he met me 
they were sure to ruffle up my curls, and some¬ 
times my temper” (F. L. Humphreys, pp. 428-29). 
To the very last, Humphreys rendered char¬ 
acteristic services to state and church, to the his¬ 
torical society and the farmer of New England, 
to the President of his country, and to the work¬ 
man of his factory, always with the same tireless, 
somewhat impersonal benevolence. 

This mood of grandiose altruism is still more 
apparent in a lesser but quite as interesting side 
of his nature, active throughout this career of 
public service. Humphreys was a poet; he has 
a place in the history of American literature. It 
was like him that he classed in his matter-of-fact 
way the art of writing with that of saving nations 
or raising sheep. His prose, such as the letters, 
the biography of Putnam, and his various speech¬ 
es, is the natural expression of a mind in which 
fancy, humor, and the higher qualities of the im¬ 
agination are conspicuously absent. His poetry, 
which he composed with the same calm assurance 
in his own ability, makes us feel less the influ¬ 
ence of Pope, of whom he was a disciple, than 
the temper of his age, which could believe the 
raising of sheep a delightful subject for the Muse. 
In the writing of verse he was a persistent jour¬ 
neyman ; he wrote it out with the same order and 
urbanity with which he carved the chicken for 
Washington’s family at Mount Vernon. His in¬ 
terest in poetry had begun in college, and in 1779 
he wrote his stiff and sanguinary “Elegy on the 
Burning of Fairfield in Connecticut.” His first 
serious effort, however, was A Poem Addressed 
to the Armies of the United States of America 
(1780), a compound of patriotism and doggerel, 
and an unconscious parody on Addison and Pope. 
The year 1786 brought forth A Poem on the Hap¬ 
piness of America: Addressed to the Citizens of 
the United States of America. This poem begins 
with an invocation to the “Genius of Culture,” 
calls on Congress to encourage labor, exhorts 
Washington to protect manufacture, and invites 
all American ladies to set examples of home 
manufacture: 

“First let the loom each lib’ral thought engage 
Its labours growing with the growing age . . . 
Then rous'd from lethargies—up I men! increase, 

In every vale, on every hill, the fleece !” 

The 1804 edition of The Miscellaneous Works of 


Humphreys 

Col . Humphreys includes his “Poem on the Fu¬ 
ture Glory of the United States.” 

Most of Humphreys’ poetry is worthless, and 
innumerable examples might be cited of his fool¬ 
ish rhymes, pompous diction, and ridiculous sub¬ 
jects ; yet he had a certain fluency and at times 
wit, as is shown by his participation in the fa¬ 
mous satire, “The Anarchiad” (The New Haven 
Gazette and the Connecticut Magazine , October 
1786-September 1787), as well as by certain 
clever bagatelles, such as “The Monkey.” It is 
unlikely that Humphreys took himself very seri¬ 
ously as a poet, and he would probably be sur¬ 
prised to find himself included in anthologies of 
American poetry. In literature he is linked with 
our first literary coterie, with his friends Barlow 
and Trumbull and Dwight, and he is not wholly 
unworthy of the distinction. The explanation of 
his interest in poetry is connected with his ideals 
for his country and himself: a gentleman, a Fed¬ 
eralist, a patriot who knew the pen as well as the 
sword. 

[The chief printed source of information concerning 
David Humphreys is F. L. Humphreys, Life and Times 
of David Humphreys (2 vols., 1917). This contains a 
vast number of letters to and from Humphreys, but is 
uncritical. Moreover, there are many other uncollected 
letters of Humphreys, particularly in the N. Y. Hist. 
Soc., the Dept, of State, and the Mass. Hist. Soc. A 
very brief but excellent summary of Humphreys’ re¬ 
lation to the literature of his time occurs in The Con- 
necticut Wits (1 926), by Y. L. Farrington. This vol¬ 
ume contains the best of Humphreys* poetry. Other 
accounts are: H. A. Beers, The Connecticut Wits 
(1920); W. B. King, “First American Satirists,” in 
Connecticut Magazine, July-Sept. 1906; A. R. Marble, 
“David Humphreys: His Services to American Free¬ 
dom and Industry,'* New England Mag., Feb. 1904; A. 
R. Marble, Heralds of American Literature (1907) I 
Lindsay Swift, “Our Literary Diplomats," Book Buyer, 
June 1900; S. T. Williams, “The Literature of Con¬ 
necticut,” in Vol. II of Hist . of Conn. (1925), ed. by 
N. G. Osborn. See also Frederick Humphreys, The 
Humphreys Family in America (1883) ; F. B. Heitman, 
Hist. Reg. of the Officers of the Continent at Army 
(1893) ; F. B. Dexter, Biog. Sketches Grads . Yale Coll., 
1763-1778 (1903) ; R. W. Irwin, The Diplomatic Re¬ 
lations of the U. S. with the Barbary Powers, 1276-1816 
O93O.J S.T.W. 

HUMPHREYS, JAMES (Jan. 15,1748-Feb. 
2, 1810), Loyalist printer and publisher, was 
bom in Philadelphia, the son of James and Su¬ 
sanna (Assheton) Humphreys. His father was 
a conveyancer who served as clerk of the orphans 
court and as justice of the peace in Philadelphia. 
Young Humphreys entered the College of Phila¬ 
delphia in 1763, but did not graduate, and was 
subsequently placed under the care of an uncle 
to study medicine. Disliking the profession of 
physic, however, he was apprenticed by his fa¬ 
ther to William Bradford the younger [q.v.] to 
learn the printer’s trade. He became his own 
master in 1770. In 1773 he printed Wettenhall’s 
Greek Grammar, corrected for the use of the 


375 



Humphreys 

College of Philadelphia, probably the first Greek 
text to be printed in the American colonies. The 
following year he published one of the first sets 
of books to be printed in what is now the United 
States, the Works of Laurence Sterne, in five 
volumes; and in January 1775 he began the 
publication of a newspaper, The Pennsylvania 
Ledger: or. The Virginia, Maryland, Pennsyl¬ 
vania and New Jersey Weekly Advertiser . He 
announced that his journal would be conducted 
with political impartiality, but since he had previ¬ 
ously taken the oath of allegiance to the British 
king, he refused to bear arms against his govern¬ 
ment In 1776 he published a pamphlet, Stric¬ 
tures on Paine f s Common Sense, which went 
through two editions “of several thousand copies” 
in a few months. 

Although Humphreys managed to keep his 
newspaper going for a time, a writer in Towne’s 
Evening Post (Nov. 16,1776) attacked him as a 
Tory, and on other occasions Towne had pointed 
the finger of suspicion against him. Humphreys, 
accordingly, feeling that he might get himself 
into serious trouble with the patriots, discon¬ 
tinued his paper with the issue of Nov. 30, 1776, 
and retired to the country, returning to Phila¬ 
delphia only when the British took possession of 
the city. Reestablished, Dec. 3, 1777, as The 
Pennsylvania Ledger or the Philadelphia Market 
Day Advertiser, the paper was issued twice a 
week on market days until its final suspension, 
May 23, 1778. When the British troops left 
Philadelphia, Humphreys accompanied them to 
New York, where he engaged in merchandising. 
On the return of peace, he went to the Loyalist 
colony of Shelburne, Nova Scotia, where he at¬ 
tempted to establish another paper, the Nova 
Scotia Packet Success did not favor this enter¬ 
prise, however, and he again became a merchant. 
In this capacity he continued until 1797, when, 
having suffered severe losses through the opera¬ 
tions of French privateers, he decided to return 
to Philadelphia. There he again opened a print¬ 
ing house, and from that time until his death, ac¬ 
cording to Isaiah Thomas, he “was employed in 
book printing.” Thomas adds, “A number of 
valuable works have come from his press. He 
was a good and accurate printer, and a worthy 
citizen.” He died in Philadelphia, in 1810, and 
was buried in the graveyard of Christ Church in 
that city. His wife was Mary Yorke. 

[Isaiah Thomas, The Hist, of Printing in America 
(a repub., 1874, as vols. V and VIof Trans. 

**i Coils. Am. Antig. Soc .; Wm. McCulloch, <4 Addi- 
t»®£ to Thomas's History of Printing/' Proc. Am. 
^**Jjf* ■Stofv b*s*» vol. XXXI (1922); A. B. Slauson, 
A Cmtk List of Am. Newspapers in the Lib. of Cong. 
<****) * Unm. of Pa. Biog. Cat, of the Matriculates of 


Humphreys 

the t College . . . 1749-1893 (1894); Poulson’s Am. 
Daily Advertiser, Feb. 3, 1810.] jj 

HUMPHREYS, JOSHUA (June 17, 1751^ 
Jan. 12, 1838), ship-builder and naval architect, 
was born in Haverford township, Delaware 
County, Pa., the son of Joshua Humphreys, a 
farmer and large land-owner, and Sarah (Wil¬ 
liams) Humphreys. He came of substantial 
Quaker stock, his ancestor, Daniel Humphreys, 
having emigrated from Merionethshire, Wales, 
in 1682, to settle in Haverford township. At an 
early age Joshua was apprenticed to a ship-car¬ 
penter in Philadelphia. Before the completion 
of his apprenticeship his master died and he was 
placed in charge of the ship yard. Within a few 
years he established his own yard and became 
widely known as the leading naval architect in 
America. He was commissioned to fit out the 
fleet of vessels of the Continental Navy which 
sailed from Philadelphia in 1776 under Esek 
Hopkins [ q.v .]. 

After the organization of the federal govern¬ 
ment, the defenseless state of American com¬ 
merce forced upon Congress the necessity of pro¬ 
viding a navy; and on Mar. 27, 1794, an act was 
approved providing for a naval force for the 
protection of the commerce of the United States 
from the Algerine pirates. On Apr. 12, 1794, 
Humphreys wrote to General Knox, the secre¬ 
tary of war, suggesting some radical and impor¬ 
tant improvements which might be embodied in 
the six frigates authorized by Congress as the nu¬ 
cleus of the American navy. His idea was that, 
since the number of ships which the United States 
could support would for a long time be less than 
the number in any of the large European navies, 
such ships as the young nation did possess should 
be fast-sailing enough to fight or run at will; and 
when they chose to fight they should be equal, 
ship for ship, to anything afloat. To accomplish 
this end, he suggested, the new vessels should be 
longer and broader than any previously con¬ 
structed, but should not rise so high out of the 
water. He maintained that a ship built accord¬ 
ing to his suggestion could carry as many guns 
on one deck as the others carried on two; could 
work them to better advantage; and, being more 
stable, could carry much more canvas. He was 
asked to supply models constructed in accordance 
with these ideas, and his plans were finally 
adopted. 

On June 28,1794, he was appointed naval con¬ 
structor and directed to have the models for the 
six frigates prepared with all possible dispatch. 
The Untied States was built under his personal 
supervision at Philadelphia; the Constitution, by 
George Claghom [q.v.] at Boston; the Chesch 


3 7 6 



Humphreys 

peake at Norfolk, the Constellation at Baltimore, 
the President at New York, and the Congress at 
Portsmouth, N. H. Humphreys' plans met with 
some opposition even after they had been officially 
adopted, and the Chesapeake was actually con¬ 
structed on different lines and a smaller scale. 
The ships designed by Humphreys became fa¬ 
mous for their speed and for their individual ac¬ 
complishments. Their efficiency in active serv¬ 
ice fully satisfied the country as to the value of 
his innovations, and led to a modification in the 
system of naval construction in European coun¬ 
tries. It is said that he received a number of of¬ 
fers to give the benefit of his talents to foreign 
governments, all of which he refused. The first 
officially appointed naval constructor in the 
United States, he continued in office until Oct. 
26,1801, when he was dismissed because of lack 
of further employment at the time. In 1806, he 
was commissioned by the government to purchase 
a site in Philadelphia to be used as “a building 
yard, and Dock for seasoning Timber for the use 
of the Navy of the United States." After this 
was obtained he was authorized to build docks 
and wharves and to make the tract ready for prac¬ 
tical use. He took an active part in local political 
affairs and was regarded as one of the most in¬ 
fluential business men in Philadelphia. He mar¬ 
ried Mary Davids of Philadelphia and had eleven 
children; Andrew Atkinson Humphreys [ q.v .] 
was his grandson. 

[Humphreys* letters and documents in the possession 
of the Hist. Soc. of Pa., Phila.; letters published in Pa, 
Mag. of Hist, and Biog., July, Oct. 1906, in Jour . Am. 
Hist., Jan.-Feb.-Mar. 1916, and in New-England Hist . 
and Geneal. Reg., July 1870; Frederick Humphreys, 
The Humphreys Family in America (1883); Henry 
Simpson, The Lives of Eminent Philadelphians (1859) ; 
E. P. Oberholtzer, Phila.: A Hist, of the City and Its 
People (n.d.), vol. I; J. T. Scharf and Thompson West- 
cott, Hist, of Phila. (1884), I, 490; J. R. Spears, The 
History of Our Navy (1897), vol. U F. A. Magoun, 
The Frigate Constitution and Other Historic Ships 
(1928).} J.H.F. 

HUMPHREYS, MILTON WYLIE (Sept. 
15,1844-Nov. 20,1928), scholar and teacher, was 
bom in Greenbrier County, Va. (now W. Va.). 
He was a great-grandson of Andrew Hum¬ 
phreys who emigrated from Ireland to Pennsyl¬ 
vania about 1775, and the son of Dr. Andrew 
Cavet Humphreys and Mary McQuain (Hefner) 
Humphreys. Naturally an avid student, he sup¬ 
plemented by his own efforts the woefully inade¬ 
quate resources of the schools accessible to him, 
and was finally prepared to enter Washington 
College (now Washington and Lee University) 
at Lexington, Va., in September i860. No sooner 
had he completed his freshman year than the col¬ 
lege was disrupted by the Civil War. Young 
Humphreys had set his heart on joining the ar- 


Humphreys 

tillery, and after many difficulties and delays he 
was in March 1862 mustered in as a gunner in 
the battery of Capt. Thomas A. Bryan, of the 13th 
Virginia Light Artillery. “I became known," 
he wrote later, “as ‘the first gunner of Bryan's 
Battery/ a title in which I take more pride than 
in any other ever bestowed upon me.” Until the 
end of the war he served his gun not only with 
bravery and affection, but with great scientific 
ingenuity; and long years after his active sendee 
his interest in the theory of gunnery made him a 
frequent and valued contributor to the United 
States Journal of Artillery. 

When the guns were silenced in 1863, Hum¬ 
phreys returned to an impoverished home. While 
planning to go into business for a livelihood, he 
learned that Robert E. Lee had accepted the presi¬ 
dency of Washington College. “This changed 
the whole course of my life,” he wrote. Lee was 
his hero, in peace as well as in war. Accordingly, 
after a brief period of school-teaching, he got 
back to Lee's side at Lexington in the spring of 
1866; and there he remained, for poverty could 
not dislodge a student of such brilliant promise. 
In June 1869 he was graduated with the degree 
of M. A., at the head of his class. 

For two sessions previous he had been assist¬ 
ing in Latin and Greek, and upon the classics as 
his special field of study his choice now became 
fixed; although he had long been distracted by 
the beckonings of other intellectual adventures, 
and although, when a boy preparing for college, 
his “aversion to the very thought of studying 
Greek,” he writes, “was intense," He accepted 
an assistant professorship in Washington Col¬ 
lege, and subsequently served as adjunct profes¬ 
sor of ancient languages until June 1875. For 
two sessions of this tenure he was on leave of 
absence in Germany for graduate study, and re¬ 
ceived the degree of Ph.D. from Leipzig in 1874* 

In September 1875 the new Vanderbilt Uni¬ 
versity made him its first professor of Greek, and 
he remained there eight years, marrying on May 
3,1877, Louise Frances Garland, daughter of Dr. 
Landon C Garland [q.v.], chancellor of the uni¬ 
versity. Still another Southern university he 
helped to launch was the University of Texas; 
he became in its opening year, 1883-84, professor 
of Latin and Greek, and remained there until 
1887 when he became professor of Greek in the 
University of Virginia. This position he held for 
twenty-five years, resigning in 19x2, but con¬ 
tinuing to make his home in Charlottesville until 
his death. 

Physically and mentally Humphreys was cast 
in a large mould. Powerful, rugged, and awk¬ 
ward, his body never outgrew the young xnoun- 


377 



Humphreys 


Humphreys 


taineer, and there was something elemental also 
in the scope and profundity of his mind The 
variety of his intellectual capacities, and the 
breadth and accuracy of his information were 
phenomenal. During his long career as a teach¬ 
er of the classics, he declined university profes¬ 
sorships in English, in modern languages and in 
physics; gave courses in Hebrew, botany, and 
mathematics; and twice declined the presidency 
of a state university. In his special field his 
achievement must be rated high. His interests 
were predominantly linguistic rather than liter¬ 
ary, but his contributions cover a wide range. 
His monographs are to be found mainly in the 
Transactions and Proceedings of the American 
Philological Association, of which organization 
he was president in 1882-83, and in the American 
Journal of Philology . A chapter of his doctoral 
dissertation, published under the title De accentus 
momenta in versu heroko (Leipzig, 1874), was 
the first of a notable series of articles on ancient 
metric, most of which appeared in the Transac¬ 
tions and Proceedings . Apart from these, per¬ 
haps his most important monograph is “The 
Agon of the Old Comedy” (American Journal of 
Philology, July 1887). His annotated texts, 
Aristophanes: Clouds (1885), The Antigone of 
Sophocles (1891), and Demosthenes on the 
Crown (1913), are of great value, and cannot be 
neglected by any student of these authors. For 
years he served as American reviewer for the 
Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift, and from 
1878 to 1888 was editor general for North Amer¬ 
ica of the “Revue des Revuesf* appended to the 
Revue de PhUologie . 

[Sources of information include personal acquaint¬ 
ance ; manuscript autobiography in the library of the 
University of Virginia; Daily Progress (Charlottesville, 
Va.), Nov. 20, 1928; College Topics (Univ. of Va.), 
Nov. 21, 1928. See also Who's Who in America , 192&- 
29; Frederick Humphreys, The Humphreys Family in 
America <1883).] R.H. W. 

HUMPHREYS, WEST HUGHES (Aug. 26, 
i8o6-Oct 16, 1882), jurist, was bom in Mont¬ 
gomery County, Tenn., the son of Parry Wayne 
Humphreys, a circuit judge and member of Con¬ 
gress, and his wife, Mary (West) Humphreys. 
Parry Humphreys' father was a silversmith of 
Welsh descent, who moved to Kentucky from 
Virginia. West entered Transylvania Univer¬ 
sity, but his health failed and the rest of his gen¬ 
eral education was obtained in schools of Mont¬ 
gomery County. Having studied law in his 
father's office in Nashville, Tenn., and attended 
lectures at Lexington, Ky., he was licensed to 
practise in Tennessee in 1828. Ten years before, 
the region between the Tennessee and Mississippi 
Sims had been opened to settlement by the 


treaty of Shelby and Jackson with the Chicka¬ 
saw Indians, and young Humphreys removed to 
Somerville in the new county of Fayette in the 
“Western District.” He was that county's dele¬ 
gate to the constitutional convention of 1834, 
and was influential as chairman of the committee 
on legislation. In 1835 he was unsuccessful as 
an anti-Jackson candidate for governor—the first 
to offer from West Tennessee. He served in the 
lower house of the General Assembly, 1835-38. 
In January 1839 he married Amanda M. Pillow, 
sister of Gideon J. Pillow [q.vJ]. Elected attor¬ 
ney-general of the state and reporter of the de¬ 
cisions of the Tennessee supreme court, he served 
two terms, 1839-51. Removing to Nashville he 
won distinction by editing Reports of Cases . . . 
in the Supreme Court of Tennessee, 1839 to 1851 
(11 vols., 1841-51; cited as 1-11 Humphreys ). 
Upon returning to regular practice, he was soon 
appointed United States district judge of the 
three districts of Tennessee, and commissioned 
Mar. 26, 1853. Before and during his tenure as 
judge the opinions of the lower Federal courts 
were not officially published by the government, 
and private enterprise was not tempted to enter 
the field of law-reporting. There is therefore no 
gauge by which to measure the ability of the 
judges of those courts. Humphreys, however, 
gave satisfactory service on the bench. 

When the Civil War was approaching he ad¬ 
vocated the right of secession; and upon Tennes¬ 
see's entering into a compact with the Confed¬ 
erate States of America he accepted in 1862 a 
commission from that government for the district 
judgeship of Tennessee, and held the courts. He 
was impeached as a Federal judge by the lower 
house of Congress and tried upon seven articles 
by the Senate. Not appearing or pleading, he 
was found guilty and disqualified to hold any of¬ 
fice under the Federal government, June 26,1862. 
On the crucial article of impeachment—that he 
had acted as a judge of the Confederacy—the 
vote was thirty-six “guilty,” only Senator Grimes 
voting “not guilty.” On the charge that he had 
as a judge decreed confiscation of the property 
of Andrew Johnson, military governor, and John 
Catron, justice of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, he was found not guilty by a vote 
of twelve to twenty-four. 

At the end of the war Judge Humphreys re¬ 
turned to the bar, but not to an active practice. 
He was portly and handsome, and is said to have 
been of judicial temperament, though somewhat 
restless on the bench. He was an independent 
thinker. This is evident from his advocacy of 
prohibition of the liquor traffic. He published 
Suggestions on the Subject of Bank Charters 


378 



Huneker Huneker 


(1859), Some Suggestions on the Subject of 
Monopolies and Special Charters (1859), and 
An Address on the Use of Alcoholic Liquors and 
Its Consequences (1879). His death occurred at 
the residence of his son-in-law, near Nashville. 

[Frederick Humphreys, The Humphreys Family in 
America (1883); John Livingston, Portraits of Emi¬ 
nent Americans now Living, vol. II (1853) ; C. A. Mil¬ 
ler, The Official and Political Manual of Tenn. (1890) ,* 
House Report No. 44 , 37 Cong., 2 Sess.; Extracts from 
the Journal of the Senate of the U. S. of America in 
Cases of Impeachments (1904) ; Jour, of the Cong, of 
the Confederate States of America , 1861-65, II (1904, 
108 f .); Daily American (Nashville), Oct. 17, 19,1882.] 

S.C.W. 

HUNEKER, JAMES GIBBONS (Jan. 31, 
1860-Feb. 9,1921), musician, author, critic, was 
bom in Philadelphia, Pa., the son of John and 
Mary (Gibbons) Huneker and grandson of 
James Gibbons, an Irish poet, and of John Hune¬ 
ker, an organist. To these grandparents may per¬ 
haps be traced the bent of his mind. He was 
graduated from Roth’s Military Academy in 
Philadelphia and studied law for a time at the 
Philadelphia Law Academy. He also studied for 
a time at the Sorbonne in Paris. His musical 
education had begun in his native city under 
Michael Cross, pianist, and in Paris he became 
a pupil of Georges Mathias at the Conservatoire. 
At this time he seemed destined to become a 
pianist and on returning to New York in 1886 
studied under Rafael Joseffy. He became assist¬ 
ant to the latter in the piano department of the 
newly founded National Conservatory of Music 
in New York and taught there ten years. 

Huneker’s sensitiveness to impressions, his 
swift receptivity and avid interest in all forms of 
art were rapidly developed during his stay in 
Paris, where he became acquainted with some of 
the young literary men and painters and saw and 
worshipped at a distance Flaubert, and Victor 
Hugo. He read omnivorously and absorbed ideas 
with apparently no effort, but the thought of 
launching upon a literary career did not occur to 
him until several years after his return to Amer¬ 
ica. His first published work was a weekly col¬ 
umn of musical comment and gossip contributed 
to the Musical Courier of New York from 1887 
to 1902, The vivacity and penetration of his 
comments attracted immediate and wide atten¬ 
tion. When the New York Evening Recorder , a 
newspaper, was established in 1891, Huneker 
was engaged as music critic. This was his entry 
into daily journalism, in which he speedily be¬ 
came recognized as a real force. When the Re¬ 
corder died after half a dozen years Huneker be¬ 
came music critic of the Morning Advertiser, 
which also lasted only a brief period. In 1900 he 
joined the staff of the New York Sun as music 


critic and in 1902 transferred his activities to the 
dramatic department. Subsequently he also wrote 
for the columns on art and literature and contrib¬ 
uted some of the articles which earned him dis¬ 
tinction on both sides of the Atlantic. Between 
1902 and 1917 he wrote more about art and liter¬ 
ature than music, but in the latter year he as¬ 
sumed the post of music critic of the Philadelphia 
Press . When Richard Aldrich, music critic of 
the New York Times , went to Washington to 
serve in the army during the World War, Hun¬ 
eker occupied his position in New York. On 
Aldrich’s return he became music critic of the 
New York World and held that post at the time 
of his death. He was an officer of the Legion of 
Honor and a member of the National Institute 
of Arts and Letters. 

In his early days in New York Huneker was 
fonder of a witty saying than of serious thought, 
and this feeling never left him; but musical art 
slowly grew to grave importance in his mind and 
in 1899 he published his first book, Mezzotints in 
Modern Music . This collection of essays on 
Brahms, Chopin, Liszt, and others revealed the 
author as a writer of unusual insight, ardent ad¬ 
mirations, and frequently, passionate expressions. 
Although his style was vivid, his writing was not 
yet so brilliant as it became later, but it was suf¬ 
ficiently individual and picturesque in quality to 
give the author immediate recognition. Between 
the time of the publication of this first book and 
his death, Huneker made several visits to Europe 
where he was received with cordiality by Ibsen, 
Maeterlinck, George Brandes, George Bernard 
Shaw, and others, of whom he afterward wrote 
with the charm of intimacy. Published letters 
and articles by various literary celebrities and 
distinguished artists showed that he had been ac¬ 
cepted by them as an equal. Some of his critical 
works were translated into German, French, and 
Italian and gained considerable circulation in 
Europe, where also the strong personality of the 
man won for him general welcome. He had a 
massive head and powerful shoulders and an ag¬ 
gressive face. He worked at white heat and 
wrote with incredible rapidity. When his work¬ 
ing hour was over he could relax delightfully 
and became as easily a captivating conversation¬ 
alist But his talk flashed from subject to sub¬ 
ject ; his mind traveled too quickly for his speech. 
Two of his published works, Old Fogy (1913) 
and Steeplejack (1920), which are chiefly auto¬ 
biographical, reflect the vivacity of his thought 
and the scintillant character of his conversation. 
What will probably be generally accepted as 
his most important bode is his Chopin; the Man 
and His Music (1900). This work consists of a 

379 



Huneker 

biographical sketch of the composer and a schol¬ 
arly analysis of his works, in which the knowl¬ 
edge of Huneker, the pianist, is conveyed with all 
the skill of Huneker, the critic. Of his other 
works the more important are: Melomaniacs 
(1902) ; Overtones (1904); Iconoclasts, a Book 
of Dramatists (1905) ; Visionaries (1905) ; Ego¬ 
ists, a Book of Supermen (1909); Promenades 
of an Impressionist (1910) ; Frans Liszt (1911) ; 
The Pathos of Distance (1913); Ivory Apes and 
Peacocks (1915); New Cosmopolis (1915), a 
study of New York; Unicorns (1917); Bedouins 
(1920), and Variations (1921). There was also 
a novel, Painted Veils (1920), printed only for 
private circulation. Melomaniacs reveals his 
bent for fiction, with satirical comment on life 
and the shams of art as its basis. 

Readers of Huneker’s works will realize that 
he lived intensely in his own time and that his 
fervid literary art recorded the activities of let¬ 
ters, painting, the drama, and music with fidelity 
and keen sympathy. He was sometimes charged 
with a want of fixed convictions, but this criti¬ 
cism betrays a misconception of the man. He was 
above all else an explorer. When he heard of a 
new territory he went to it at once; and if there 
he found new gods, he bowed before their altars 
till he had learned all they could tell him and then 
set out in search of farther lands. This trend of 
mind gave him his astonishing versatility. As a 
literary worker he was primarily a prose stylist. 
He knew verse and loved it, but the technique of 
poetry never interested him as that of prose did. 
Splendor in style always aroused him. He had 
the soul of a seventeenth-century Venetian. All 
that was most voluptuous in form and color filled 
him with a rapture which sought utterance in 
sonorous phrase. In Steeplejack we find him in 
his early years in Paris plunged in a whirl of 
painters from which presently emerges one dear 
figure—Monet* And when he begins to speak of 
French literature there stands before all other 
writers Flaubert, master of orchestral prose, of 
whom he wrote: “Above all Flaubert was a mu¬ 
sician, a musical poet. His ear was the final court 
of appeal, and to make sonorous cadences in a 
language that lacks the essential richness, the 
diapasonic undertow of the English, is just short 
of miraculous” ( Variations, p. 56). 

The parenthetic reference to the superiority 
of English as a medium for prose lyricism is a 
betrayal of Huneker’s secret aspiration. Flau- 
feerfs achievement in compelling French prose to 
slag might at least be equaled, if not surpassed. 
The musician in Huneker urged him to try to 
esapby his language not merely as an instrument, 
hut as an orchestra. These facts serve to explain 


Hunnewell 

his incessant flights into oratorical picturesque¬ 
ness and the variety of his luxurious imagery. 
Huneker’s first wife was Clio Hinton, a sculp¬ 
tress. His second wife was Josephine Lasca, 
who collected and published the two volumes of 
his letters. 

[Letters of las. Gibbons Huneker (1922) and Inti¬ 
mate Letters of Jas . Gibbons Huneker (1924), ed. by 
Josephine Huneker; Benj. de Casseres, Jas. Gibbons 
Huneker (1925) ; Who’s Who in America, 1920-21; E. 
P. Mitchell, Memoirs of an Editor (1924); H. L. 
Mencken, A Book of Prefaces (1917), and Prejudices: 
Third Series (1922) ; N. Y. Times, World (N. Y.), Feb. 
io, 1921; personal acquaintance.] W J H 

HUNNEWELL, HORATIO HOLLIS (July 
27, 1810-Mar. 20, 1902), banker, horticulturist, 
son of Dr. Walter and Susanna (Cooke) Hunne¬ 
well, was bom in Watertown, Mass. He was 
descended from Ambrose Hunnewell who emi¬ 
grated from Devonshire, England, and settled in 
Maine about 1660. His early education he gained 
in the schools of Watertown, but at the age of 
fifteen he abandoned formal training for a busi¬ 
ness opportunity of somewhat unusual character. 
Samuel Welles, of Natick, Mass., a kinsman, had 
a number of years before established a Paris 
banking house, and to this young Hunnewell was 
invited to come. Here after ten years’ sojourn, 
during which time Welles & Company had be¬ 
come one of the best known of American houses 
in Paris, he became a partner in the business and 
on Dec. 24, 1835, married a niece of Samuel 
Welles, Isabelle Pratt Welles, daughter of John 
Welles. Two years later Welles & Company 
were so badly crippled by the panic of 1837 that 
the Paris house was closed, and Hunnewell re¬ 
turned to Massachusetts, with no money and 
great uncertainty as to his future work. His first 
years at home were spent in settling the affairs 
of the Paris business; he then looked about for 
inviting business opportunities. New England 
capital was at the time being directed to western 
railroad building, and to this Hunnewell turned 
his energies, becoming interested in a large num¬ 
ber of railroads, both in New England and the 
Middle West He served at one time and another 
as president of three roads, all centering in Kan¬ 
sas City, and was on the boards of directors of 
nearly two score more, among which were the 
Vermont Central, the Old Colony, the Illinois 
Central, and the Michigan Central. In addition 
he was one of the incorporators and a member of 
the board of directors of the Webster Bank of 
Boston, was vice-president of the Provident In¬ 
stitution for Savings from 1861 to 2902, and was 
director of many mining and industrial concerns. 
In i860 he established the Boston business of 
H. H. Hunnewell & Sons, which for the next 
fifteen years specialized in foreign exchange. 

Io 



Hunnewell 


Hunt 


Active and fruitful as was Hunnewell’s finan¬ 
cial career, his energies were by no means 
absorbed by it In another field, remote from 
banking, his achievements were noteworthy. To 
the property in the present town of Wellesley, 
Mass., inherited by his wife from her father, he 
added a large acreage and there he not only made 
his summer home but also experimented with 
trees and shrubs which would grow in New Eng¬ 
land. His Italian garden, his many imported 
rhododendrons and azaleas, and a remarkable 
collection of coniferous trees gave evidence of 
his intense interest in horticulture. His efforts 
in this direction, however, were not limited to 
enriching his own estate. For forty years the 
Massachusetts Horticultural Society depended 
upon his intelligent interest and support; similar¬ 
ly the Arnold Arboretum owed much to him, 
and the botany departments of Harvard Univer¬ 
sity and Wellesley College received generous 
benefactions from him. Throughout his life 
Hunnewell was an active member of the Arling¬ 
ton Street Congregational Church of Boston. To 
him the town of Wellesley, named in compliment 
to his wife’s family, owes its public library and 
town hall as well as its park and playground. 

[The Life, Letters, and Diary of Horatio Hollis 
Hunnewell (3 vols., 1906), edited by a grandson, H. 
H. Hunnewell, is quite complete. Short sketches of 
Hunnewell’s life appear in the New-Eng. Hist, and 
Geneal. Reg., supp. to issue of Apr. 1903, and the 
Townsman (Wellesley, Mass.), Dec. 8, 1911. See also 
J. F. Hunnewell, Hunnewell, Chiefly Six Generations in 
Mass. (1900).] E. D. 

HUNNEWELL, JAMES (Feb. 10,1794-May 
2, 1869), sea captain, merchant, was born in 
Charlestown, Mass., the son of William and 
Sarah (Frothingham) Hunnewell. His father's 
ancestor, Ambrose Hunnewell, of Devonshire, 
England, settled at the mouth of the Kennebec 
River in Maine about 1660, whence a son Charles 
removed to Charlestown in 1698. The families 
of both parents were substantial farmers in that 
vicinity. An athletic and daring boy, James 
longed from early childhood for a seafaring life. 
At first he was discouraged, but finally at the age 
of fifteen he was allowed to leave school for a 
long voyage to Europe and the Mediterranean. 
In 1815 he went to China as a common sailor, 
and on Oct. 9 of the following year he shipped on 
a brig which traded along the California coast. 
At Honolulu the vessel was sold to Hawaiian 
chiefs, who were to pay in sandalwood, which 
had become the local currency when Americans 
discovered its value in China. The captain of the 
ship departed for Canton, and Hunnewell, now 
an officer, was left to collect payment. This task 
required several months of extensive travel 


through the islands and gave him an opportunity 
to become familiar with the natives, learn their 
customs, and gain the confidence of chiefs and 
royal family. He then sold the sandalwood in 
China and returned to America. He reached 
home in April 1819 and on Sept. 23 of that year 
married Susannah Lamson of Charlestown. Ex¬ 
actly a month later he sailed as second mate of 
the brig Thaddeus, which was taking to Hawaii 
the first American missionaries. Left at Hono¬ 
lulu to barter part of the cargo when the brig 
went to California, he aided in persuading an 
unwilling native king to receive the missionaries. 
When the Thaddeus returned to the islands she 
was sold, and Hunnewell a second time remained 
to collect the sandalwood. It came in so slowly 
that it was not until July 4,1825, that he arrived 
again in Boston. Determined to revisit Hawaii 
as an independent trader, and unable to buy a 
vessel, he agreed to take out the Missionary 
Packet, a schooner built for the mission, in return 
for the privilege of loading on her fifty barrels 
of merchandise and rum. On this tiny craft, 
forty-nine feet in length and thirty-nine tons in 
burden, comfortless and unseawdrthy, he made 
the extremely hazardous voyage around Cape 
Horn, reaching Honolulu in October 1826 after 
a passage of nine months and one day. During 
the next four years he developed there a large 
business, supplying to the natives rum, cotton 
goods, and “Yankee notions,” and to merchant¬ 
men and whalers, repair supplies and food. The 
proceeds in sandalwood and the furs of the 
Northwest coast he shipped to China. His busi¬ 
ness grew into the commercial house later known 
as G Brewer & Company. In 1830 he took his 
clerk, Henry A. Peirce [g.z/.], into partnership 
to manage the Honolulu establishment and he 
himself returned to Charlestown. There he spent 
the rest of his life, actively engaged until 1866 in 
exporting goods to Hawaii and California. He 
amassed a considerable fortune, of which he gave 
liberally to found Oahu College. 

[Hunneweirs Jour, of the Voyage of t the Missionary 
Packet (1880), contains a memoir by his son, James F. 
Hunnewell. See also Josephine Sullivan, Hist, of C. 
Brewer and Company (1926); and the Boston Tra*« 
script. May 3, 1869.] W. L, W-4. ,Jr. 

HUNT, ALFRED EPHRAIM (Mar. 31, 
1855-Apr. 26, 1899), metallurgist and engineer, 
son of Leander B. and Mary Hannah (Hanchett) 
Hunt [£.#.], was born at East Douglas, Mass. 
He was descended from William Hunt, who in 
1635 came from Salisbury, England, and settled 
with the first colony at Concord, Mass. Alfred's 
paternal grandfather was the founder of the Hunt 
Axe & Edge Tool Works of East Douglas, with 


381 



Hunt 

which Leander Hunt was connected. Alfred was 
educated at the Roxbury high school and at the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 
which he was graduated in 1876 in the depart¬ 
ment of metallurgy and mining engineering. 
During part of his senior year at the Institute he 
did analytic and metallurgical work for the Bay 
State Steel Company, and after graduating be¬ 
came chemist and assistant manager of the open- 
hearth plant of that company at South Boston, in 
which position he assisted in the erection of the 
second open-hearth furnace in America. He also 


Hunt 

with Spain, the battery was the earliest to volun¬ 
teer, and Captain Hunt put aside his important 
business interests to lead his command. His 
health was undermined at Chickamauga, and at 
Porto Rico he contracted malaria which affected 
his heart, causing his death, at Philadelphia, in 
less than a year. 

Hunt was a member of various American and 
British technical societies. From the American 
Society of Civil Engineers he received the Nor¬ 
man gold medal for a paper entitled “A Proposed 
Method of Testing Structural Steel,” presented 


. + _ Vr. . . ‘ -ivicinoo 01 1 estmg structural Steel," presented 

Sv H^ hlga ?- f ° r h ‘ S T pany 1 ° ,nvestI S ate a * International Engineering Congress of the 
newlv discovered iron-nrp _t*_ t- _ ... r „ & 


newly discovered iron-ore deposits there, and his 
reports on the iron fields of northern Michigan 
and Wisconsin had an important bearing on the 
development of ores in that region. In 1877 he 
moved to Nashua, N. H., where as manager and 
chemist he superintended the steel department of 
the Nashua Iron & Steel Company until 1881. 
He then went to Pittsburgh, Pa., as superintend¬ 
ent and metallurgical chemist with Park Broth¬ 
ers & Company, managing the open-hearth and 
heavy-forging department of their Black Dia¬ 
mond Steel Company. In 1883 he resigned and 
with George H. Clapp, also of Park Brothers, 
established a chemical and metallurgical labora¬ 
tory, and. acted as consulting engineer for many 
of the mills about Pittsburgh. In their labora¬ 
tory was done all of the chemical work for the 
newly established Pittsburgh Testing Labora¬ 
tory which they later bought, enlarged, and com¬ 
bined. This testing laboratory is regarded as 
the pioneer establishment of its flags It was 
equipped for the complete chemical and physical 
testing, of materials, its experts performed the 
inspection of construction and manufacturing 
work, served in the capacity of consulting engi¬ 
neers, and acted as expert witnesses in litigation. 

As a consultant Hunt had the process for the 
reduction of aluminum developed by Charles 
Martin Hall [(/."'.] brought to his attention, and 
was quick to see its merits. He was instrumental 
in the organization of a company which pur¬ 
chased the control of the Hall patents and under 
the name of the Pittsburgh Reduction Company 
erected the first works for the reduction of alumi¬ 
num ore by the Hall process. The process proved 
successful and the price of aluminum, which pre¬ 
vious to this time had sold for fifteen dollars a 
ponnd, dropped to a level low enough to fnah» 
it commercially practicable. Hunt was active in 
the militia, in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, 
and later in Pennsylvania, where he organized 
aad commanded Battery B, at one time one of the 
rawt efficient volunteer military organizations 
m the United States. At the outbreak of the war 


382 


-vuugiwa ut uic 

Columbian Exposition in 1893 and published that 
year in the Transactions of the society (Vol. 
XXX). On Oct 29, 1878, he married Maria T. 
McQuesten, of Nashua, N. H., daughter of Jo¬ 
seph and Elizabeth (Lund) McQuesten. They 
had one son. 

[Technology Review, July 1899; Proc. Am. Soc. Civil 
Engineers^ vol. XXVII (1901) ; Minutes of Proc. Inst, 
of Civil Engineers (London), vol. CXXXVII (1890); 
Trans. Am. Soc. Meek. Engineers, vol. XX (i8gg): 
Trans Am. Inst. Mining Engineers, vol. XXX (1901): 
The Tech (Mess. Inst, of Tech.), Mar. a, 1899; T. B 
Wyman, The Geneal. of the Name and Family of Hunt 
(1862-63) ; Pittsburgh Dispatch, Apr. 27, 1899.] 

F.A.T. 

HUNT, CARLETON (Jan. 1, 1836-Aug. 14, 
X 9 2I )> l&wyer, educator, member of Congress, 
was bom in New Orleans, La., the son of Dr. 
Thomas Hunt and Aglaie Carleton. Until he was 
thirteen he was privately educated, then he at¬ 
tended the grammar school attached to the Uni¬ 
versity of Louisiana (later Tulane University). 
In 1854 he entered Harvard College, receiving 
the degree of A.B. in 1856. He studied law in the 
office of his uncle William Henry Hunt [q.v.], 
and W. O. Denegre, in New Orleans, and at the 
University of Louisiana, from which he received 
the degree of LL.B. in 1858. In this year he was 
admitted to the Louisiana bar and began the 
practice of law in New Orleans. During his first 
year at the bar, as he liked to recall, he earned 
$500. On Dec. 24, i860, he married Louise Eliz¬ 
abeth Georgine Cammack, daughter of Robert C. 
Cammack of New Orleans. 

Like others of his family, Hunt had strong 
Union sympathies and supported the Constitu¬ 
tional Union party in Louisiana until the state 
seceded. Then, feeling that a successful revolu¬ 
tion had been accomplished, he entered the Loui¬ 
siana Heavy Artillery as first lieutenant in April 
186 r. After being on detached service as drill- 
master, he returned to his company in time to 
participate in the fighting at Fort Jackson and 
at Foi* St. Philip, where he was taken prisoner 
was exchanged in August. 
After the surrender of the forts he resigned his 




Hunt 


Hunt 


commission in October 1862 and lived in New 
York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore until the close 
of the war. He then resumed his law practice in 
New Orleans and shortly after his return was ap¬ 
pointed one of the administrators of the Univer¬ 
sity of Louisiana (1866-72). He served the Uni¬ 
versity as professor of admiralty and interna¬ 
tional law (1869-79), then as professor of civil 
law (1879-83), and was dean of the law depart¬ 
ment from 1872 to 1883. In the latter year he 
took his seat in the Forty-eighth Congress to 
which he had been elected as a Democrat. He 
was a member of the committee on banking and 
currency, and on American shipbuilding. In the 
discussions on the floor he spoke frequently, his 
subjects ranging from steamship subsidies and 
French Spoliation Claims to the Nicaragua 
Canal and the Mississippi River improvements. 

In 1879 Hunt declined appointment as justice 
of the supreme court of Louisiana. For many 
years he was an examiner of candidates for ad¬ 
mission to the bar. He was one of the founders 
of the American Bar Association (1878), chair¬ 
man of its committee on constitution, and chair¬ 
man of its committee on legal education and ad¬ 
mission to the bar. He was city attorney of New 
Orleans in Mayor Shakespeare’s reform admin¬ 
istration, 1888-92, in which capacity he argued 
successfully before the Supreme Court of the 
United States the case of Peake vs. New Orleans 
(139 [ 7 . S., 342), which involved the liability of 
die city for drainage warrants. On Mar. 19, 
1908, in recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of 
his admission to the bar, his colleagues presented 
him with a gold loving-cup. He continued the 
active practice of his profession until a few days 
before his death. For many years he had been 
recognized as the dean of the New Orleans bar. 
As a prominent citizen, he was frequently in de¬ 
mand as a speaker. His printed addresses reveal 
an interest in Roman law, and in general history; 
a fondness for Latin quotations; and a pardon¬ 
able pride in his family connections. He died 
suddenly at his New Orleans home. He was sur¬ 
vived by three sons; three daughters died in in¬ 
fancy. 

[Records of La. Confed . Soldiers and . . . Com¬ 
mands (1920), vol. Ill, book I; Who's Who in America, 
1920-21; the La. Hist. Quart., July 1922; Harvard 
Coll. Class of 1856: Secretary's Report, 1899 (1899); 
Memorial of the Harvard Coll . Class of 1856 (19 06) ; 
Biog. Dir . Am. Cong. (1928) ; the Times-Picayme, Aug. 
*5,19*1.3 R.P.M. 

HUNT, CHARLES WALLACE (Oct. 13, 
1841-Mar. 27, 1911), mechanical engineer and 
manufacturer, was born at Candor, Tioga Coun¬ 
ty, N. Y., the sixth child of William Walter and 
Elizabeth Bush (Sackett) Hunt. He was edu¬ 


cated at the Cortland Academy, Homer, N. Y., 
in the general science course, attending the Acad¬ 
emy until about 1861. When he was twenty- 
three he went to Yorktown, Va., for the War 
Department, to direct the work of caring for the 
negro refugees who came through the Federal 
lines from the Southern states. After a year of 
this work he was forced to return to his home 
because of ill health that continued for some time. 
In 1868 he purchased and began to operate a 
small coal business at West New Brighton, 
Staten Island. Dissatisfied with the clumsy and 
inefficient methods then in use for handling coal, 
he attempted to devise better methods, and in 
June 1872 patented a system of coal handling by 
which the coal was unloaded from cars or barges 
by small cars or skips which rose to inclined 
elevated tracks over which they traveled by grav¬ 
ity to all parts of the storage area. The little cars 
dumped automatically and were returned to the 
barges by the energy stored in weights which 
were raised by the cars during the loaded runs. 
The development and manufacture of this sys¬ 
tem, which was a practical and immediate suc¬ 
cess, was carried on by the C. W. Hunt Com¬ 
pany, established in 1871 with Hunt as presi¬ 
dent. From the engineering of coal-handling 
systems Hunt went into the design and construc¬ 
tion of complete coal storage plants. His success 
in this work is indicated by the many large coal 
terminals that he constructed throughout the 
world. These include the coal bases of the United 
States Navy at Guantanamo, Cuba, at Puget 
Sound, and at Manila; a plant at Copenhagen, 
Denmark; a plant for the Lehigh Coal & Iron 
Company at West Superior, Wis.; and a plant 
for the Calumet & Heda Company at Lake Lin¬ 
den, Mich. It is said that die equipment de¬ 
signed by Hunt reduced the cost of handling 
coal to one-tenth the prior cost of handling. His 
methods have since been applied to materials 
other than coal and some of the Great Lakes ore 
docks are of his design. Turning his attention 
to other kinds of material-handling systems, he 
was one of the first to manufacture a complete 
industrial railway system and probably the first 
to make the system of standard units which could 
be purchased and combined to form any desired 
arrangement of tracks about a factory or shop. 
He adopted a narrow gauge for his tracks, made 
his car wheels with flanges on the outside, de¬ 
signed and built his own locomotives, all with 
the idea of making the most compact and efficient 
system possible. He was also a pioneer in the 
development of the bucket conveyor systems for 
handling coal and ashes in power plants. When 
a quantity of his hoisting rope was used for driv- 


383 



Hunt 


Hunt 


ing the rolling mills of the Bay City Iron Works, 
he became interested in the possibility of using 
flexible steel cable for rope drives, and developed 
a flexible steel rope for this purpose. The results 
of his study in this connection were contained in 
his paper “Rope Driving ,, ( Transactions of the 
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, vol. 
XII, 1891), which remained for many years the 
best work on the subject. Hunt was an active 
member of the American Society of Mechanical 
Engineers and the author of other papers that 
were presented at its meetings ( Traiisacfions, 
Vols. XII, XV, XXII, XXIII, XXX). He was 
vice-president in 1892 and president in 1898. 
He was married twice: on Jan. 24,1868, to Fran¬ 
ces Martha Bush and on July 1, 1889, to Kath¬ 
erine Humphrey. He died on Staten Island, 
N.Y. 

{Trans, Am, Soc . Meek, Engineers, vol. XXXIII 
(1912); Proc, Am, Inst, Electrical Engineers, vol. XXX 
(1911); Engineering News, Apr. 6, 1911; Who's Who 
in N, Y, t 1911; Who's Who in America, 1910-11 ; C. H. 
Weygant, The Sacketts in America (1907); Brooklyn 
Daily Eagle, Mar. 28, 1911.3 F. A. T. 

HUNT, FREEMAN (Mar. 21, 1804-Mar. 2, 
1858), publisher and editor, bom in Quincy, 
Mass., was a descendant of Enoch Hunt of 
Bucks County, England, who came to America 
and settled in Weymouth, Mass., some time be¬ 
fore 1652, and the youngest child of Nathan and 
Mary (Turner) Hunt. His father, a ship-builder 
by trade, died when Freeman was three years 
old. He was only twelve when he left home for 
Boston to become an office boy for the Boston 
Evening Gazette. After learning the printer’s 
trade, he entered the employ of the American 
Traveller, afterward called the Boston Daily 
Traveller . Somewhat later the editor, in tracing 
the source of some commendable anonymous con¬ 
tributions, found to his surprise that they were 
written by his young workman, Hunt; thereafter, 
the lad’s worth received recognition by rapid ad¬ 
vancement. In 1828, however, he decided to go 
into the publishing business with John Putnam, 
and under the firm name of Putnam & Hunt they 
continued the publication of the Juvenile MisceU 
lany, edited by Lydia Maria Child [#.#.]. The 
firm also furthered the candidacy of Jackson by 
publishing a newspaper, the Jackson Republican, 
a sheet which did not long survive; it issued the 
first woman’s magazine of any consequence in 
the United States, the Ladies? Magazine, begun 
in January 1828; and in 1830 published Amm¬ 
on* Anecdotes in two volumes, prepared by Hunt. 
The partnership with Putnam dissolved. Hunt 
for fee next few years was associated wife vari¬ 
ous ventures: the Penny Magazine; fee estab¬ 
lishment m New York of a short-lived weekly 


newspaper, the New York Traveller; and the 
Boston Bewick Company, composed of authors, 
artists, printers, and booksellers united for the 
purpose of cooperative publishing, whose maga¬ 
zine, the American Magazine of Useful and En¬ 
tertaining Knowledge, Hunt for a time edited. 
Later, in New York, Freeman Hunt & Com¬ 
pany brought out, among other books, Letters 
about the Hudson River and Its Vicinity (1836), 
which went through at least three editions. 

Thus far in his career, Hunt’s son says, he 
had felt “a certain dissatisfaction with what he 
had accomplished, and a desire to do something 
in a literary way beyond merely transient and 
occasional writing, and which might prove of 
lasting benefit to his fellow man” (Freeman 
Hunt, Jr., post, p. 202). After a survey of fee 
periodical literature of the day, he saw an open¬ 
ing for a magazine in a field as yet untouched. 
There was not, he discovered, a single magazine 
to represent the claims of commerce. According¬ 
ly, with the encouragement and financial aid of 
friends, and the energetic exercise of his own 
business ability, he established a periodical of 
this character. It was known as the Merchantsf 
Magazine and Commercial Review until 1850, 
and from then until i860, when the original name 
was resumed, as Hunt's Merchants' Magazine . 
For nineteen years his time and energies were 
largely concentrated upon the development of 
this child of his brain. He even directed it from 
his bedside during his last sickness, and when 
the March 1858 number was placed in his hand 
the day before he died, he smiled and remarked: 
“This work has been my hobby in life and my 
hobby in death” {Ibid., post, p. 206). He also 
published during this later period, Lives of 
American Merchants (2 vols., 1858), and Wealth 
and Worth, a Collection of Maxims, Morals and 
Miscellanies for Merchants and Men of Business 
(1850). He was always interested in politics 
and, good New Englander that he was, strongly 
favored the abolition of slavery. His disposition 
was kindly, he was diligent in business, and keen¬ 
ly sympathetic with those struggling against ob¬ 
stacles. He had his own personal obstacle to 
struggle against in a “foible for drink” {New 
York Times, Mar. 4, 1858). He was married, 
first, May 6, 1829, to Lucia Weld Blake, who 
died ten months later; second* Jan. 2, 1831, to 
Laura Faxon Phinney, who feed in 1851; and 
third, October 1853, to Elizabeth Thompson Par- 
menter. 

[Freeman Hunt, Jr., in Memorial Biogs. of the New- 
Eng. Historic Gened. Soc,, vol. Ill (1883); T. B. 
Wyman, Gened, of the Name and Family of Hunt 
(1862-63) ; F. L. Mott, A Hist, of Am. Magazines, 
1741-18$o (1930); Hunt’s Merchants’Mag., Apr. 1858; 


384 



Hunt 

N. Y. Times and Tribune, Mar. 4, 1858, Evening Post. 
Mar. 3, 1858.] A.E.P. 

HUNT, GAILLARD (Sept. 8, 1862-Mar. 20, 
1924), government official, historical writer, 
born in New Orleans, was the seventh child and 
sixth son of William Henry Hunt iq.v.\ lawyer 
and Unionist, and his second wife, Elizabeth 
Augusta Ridgely. His father’s mother, Louisa 
Gaillard, from whom he received his name, was 
sister of John Gaillard [gw.], who long repre¬ 
sented South Carolina in the United States Sen¬ 
ate, and of Chancellor Theodore Gaillard. His 
mother, who died when he was less than two 
years old, was a grand-daughter of Chancellor 
Robert R. Livingston of New York. Born of 
aristocracy so complete that he never felt need 
of asserting it, and brought up by a father of 
character both sturdy and scrupulous and by de¬ 
voted aunts of old-fashioned gentility, he had 
always the high qualities and traditions of the 
old-school gentleman, with perhaps a few of the 
latter’s prejudices, humorously maintained. He 
was educated at the ancient Hopkins Grammar 
School in New Haven, Conn., and at the Emer¬ 
son Institute in Washington, to which city his 
father removed in 1878. 

In 1882 Hunt entered the government service, 
to which he devoted the remaining forty-two 
years of his life, never subdued by government 
routine but always looking at his duties with a 
fresh, alert, independent eye. After five years 
spent as a clerk in the Pension Office, he entered 
in 1887 the Department of State, henceforth the 
chief object of his loyal devotion, in which he 
served from 1887 to 1909 and from 1917 to 1924, 
while from 1909 to 1917 he was chief of the divi¬ 
sion of manuscripts in the Library of Congress. 
In the Department of State his principal service 
was as chief of the passport bureau and later as 
chief of the division of publications and editor. 
He had an important part in the drafting of leg¬ 
islation on citizenship and naturalization, wrote 
a book of history and law on The American 
Passport (1898) and a valued work on The De¬ 
partment of State of the United States; Its His¬ 
tory and Functions (1914), expanded from his 
earlier work (1893) on the same subject, and 
collaborated with James Brown Scott and David 
Jayne Hill in producing the report of 1906 on 
“Citizenship of the United States, Expatriation, 
and Protection Abroad” (House Document 326 , 
59 Cong., 2 Sess.). Parts of his work and some 
of his friendships in the department led him into 
historical and biographical writing. He did not 
come to that work through the conventional path¬ 
ways of academic scholarship, but supplied their 
place by industrious reading, quickness of appre- 


Hunt 

hension, knowledge of governmental ways, and 
robust common sense—brought to the work, in 
short, the best fruits of the amateur spirit. His 
bulkiest piece of work was the excellent edition 
of The Writings of James Madison (9 vols., 
1900-10), and of Volumes XVI-XXV of the 
Journals of the Continental Congress (19x0-22), 
produced while he was at the Library of Con¬ 
gress,. where his enthusiasm and tact and wide 
acquaintance brought a great increase to the col¬ 
lections in the division of manuscripts. His 
chief biographical books were The Life of James 
Madison (1902), appreciative and just, and his 
John C. Calhoun (1908), marked by insight and 
fairness and an especially successful portrayal of 
South Carolina life, character, and opinion. 
How delightfully he could deal with social his¬ 
tory was shown first in the editing of the letters 
of Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith, The First Forty 
Years of Washington Society (1906), but more 
fully by that very entertaining book, Life in 
America One Hundred Years Ago (1914). 

He served usefully in committees of the Amer¬ 
ican Historical Association, and at the time of 
his death (having been a Catholic since 1901) he 
was president of the American Catholic His¬ 
torical Association. Handsome, jovial, humor¬ 
ous, friendly in spirit, lively and original in talk, 
he was a favorite in Washington society, and 
had many devoted friends. He was married on 
Oct 24, 1901, to Mary Goodfellow, daughter of 
Maj. Henry Goodfellow, U. S. A. 

[Thos. Hunt, Life of William H. Hunt (privately 
printed, Brattleboro, 1922); H. Barrett Learned, in 
Ann. Report of the Am. Hist . Asso. f or the Year 1924 
(1929), pp. 57-60; family information; personal ac¬ 
quaintance.] j 

HUNT, HARRIOT KEZIA (Nov. 9, 1805- 
Jan. 2, 1875), pioneer woman physician and re¬ 
former, was bom in Boston, Mass., the daughter 
of Joab and Kezia (Wentworth) Hunt. She 
was descended from Enoch Hunt, who was ad¬ 
mitted a freeman of Newport, R. I., in 1638. Her 
father, a ship-joiner, lived in the old North-End 
of Boston; Harriot and a younger sister, Sarah 
Augusta, were brought up in a nautical, as well 
as a deeply religious, atmosphere. The family 
were greatly influenced by the Trinitarianism of 
John Murray. At an early age Harriot Hunt 
had a firm conviction that women should have 
some useful occupation. She began to put her 
thoughts into practice by taking pupils into her 
father’s house in 1827. This, her first endeavor, 
was moderately successful, but in 1833, when her 
sister had a long illness, she turned her attention 
from teaching to medicine. Sarah Hunt was 
treated by a Dr. and Mrs. Mott, both English 


385 



Hunt Hunt 


physicians of somewhat questionable reputation, 
and recovered. Meanwhile Harriot, under the 
influence of Mrs. Mott, began the practice of 
medicine and in 1835 had so far prospered that 
both she and her sister began to advertise them¬ 
selves as physicians. Their practice consisted 
largely of general hygiene and hydrotherapy, 
mixed with considerable psychotherapy; their 
patients were chiefly neurasthenic women. “We 
were frequently surprised/' Harriot Hunt wrote 
in her autobiography, “by the successful termina¬ 
tion of many of our cases through prescriptions 
for mental states.” After her sister's marriage, 
Harriot continued alone, her practice ever grow¬ 
ing and extending beyond the confines of Boston. 
She lectured frequently on the hygiene of sex 
and in 1843 formed a Ladies' Physiological So¬ 
ciety. At the meetings, often held in her house, 
she talked to large groups of women. She gained 
a certain notoriety by being refused admittance 
to the Harvard Medial School in 1847 and again 
in 1850. 

In the last twenty-five years of her life, in ad¬ 
dition to her medical practice in Boston, she be¬ 
came one of the “emancipated ladies” of the age 
and was well known as a temperance reformer, 
a phrenologist, an anti-tobacconist, and a leader 
in the anti-slavery movement. More important, 
however, was her work for woman's suffrage. 
She attended many of the early national conven¬ 
tions and often served on committees. By 1856 
she was known outside of Massachusetts as one 
of the ardent supporters of the feminist move¬ 
ment and in that year she wrote her autobiog¬ 
raphy, Glances and Glimpses, a book of consider¬ 
able value in depicting (in a rather narrow way) 
the times in which she lived. She added nothing 
definite to medicine, although she was part of the 
movement which opened medical education to 
women in America. Fredrika Bremer, after vis¬ 
iting Harriot Hunt in 1853, described her 
(Homes of the New World, New York, 1853, 1 , 
142) as a “zealous little creature” and a “very 
peculiar individual” but added that she was 
“really delighted with her.” 

[The principal reference is Harriot Hunt's autobiog¬ 
raphy. See also Harriet H. Robinson, Mass, in the 
Woman Suffrage Movement (1881); Jas. R. Chad¬ 
wick, “The Study and Practice of Medicine by Women/' 
Internet . Rev., Oct. 1879; Bessie Rayner Parkes, Vi- 
gmttes (1866) ; T. B. Wyman, Geneal. of the Name 
md Family of Hunt (1862-63) ; the Boston Jour., 
Jan. 5, 1875.3 H.R.V. 

HUNT, HENRY JACKSON (Sept. 14,181^- 
Feh. 3 i, 1889), soldier, artillery officer, was born 
at Detroit, Mich. Descended from Enoch Hunt, 
an emigrant from England, who was admitted 
freeman of Newport, R. I., in 1638 and later set¬ 


tled at Weymouth, Mass., he was the son of Lieut. 
Fanuel Wellington Hunt, 3rd Infantry, and 
grandson of Col. Thomas Hunt, 1st Infantry, 
who had served with distinction in the Revolu¬ 
tion. His mother was Julia Ann (Herrick) 
Hunt. Although the boy was but ten years old 
when his father died, he received a good educa¬ 
tion from friends and at sixteen went to West 
Point, graduating in 1839 and being assigned as 
second lieutenant to the 2nd Artillery. In 1846 
he participated in the siege of Vera Cruz and in 
the battles ending in the capture of Mexico City. 
Wounded at Molino del Rey, he was highly com¬ 
mended for gallantry and brevetted major. In 
1852 he was promoted to captain. In 1856, with 
W. F. Barry and W. H. French Iqq.v.], he was 
appointed to a board to revise the light artillery 
tactics. Their report, made three years later, 
was adopted by the War Department in i860, 
and was used throughout the Civil War. 

It was Captain Hunt who, early in 1861, pre¬ 
pared the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry for defense, 
or for destruction, should defense be impractica¬ 
ble. He left to go to the relief of Fort Pickens, 
which he secured to the Federal government. 
Arriving at New York on July 13, and at Wash¬ 
ington the next day, he marched his battery on 
July 19 to the extreme left of McDowell's army 
at Bull Run. On the 21st, after the Federal 
forces had been driven back, Hunt, at Black¬ 
burn's Ford, by artillery fire alone, broke the 
Confederate attempt to pursue the retreating 
troops. Promoted to major, 5th Artillery, he be¬ 
came chief of artillery of the Washington de¬ 
fenses, and on Sept. 28, 1861, he was commis¬ 
sioned colonel and placed in charge of training 
the artillery reserve of the Army of the Potomac. 

He took part in the Peninsular campaign, at 
Malvern Hill, July 1, 1862, handling a hundred 
guns with such skill as to overcome the hostile 
artillery and render great assistance in winning 
the battle. For his services he was appointed 
brigadier-general of volunteers. At Antietam he 
served with distinction. He organized the great 
battery of 147 guns which opened the battle of 
Fredericksburg, and suggested sending infantry 
across in boats to seize the houses nearest the 
water's edge, a move which led to the capture of 
the town. Soon afterward his authority was ma¬ 
terially curtailed by Hooker, the new army com¬ 
mander, but when in the Chancellorsville cam¬ 
paign the artillery was evidently poorly handled, 
Hunt's authority was immediately restored and 
enlarged. 

At Gettysburg he was instrumental in secur¬ 
ing the Peach Orchard for the Federals. Placing 
seventy-seven guns along Trostle Lane, he en- 


386 



Hunt 

gaged the Confederate artillery in a duel on July 
3. As his ammunition approached exhaustion he 
stopped firing, and ten minutes later Pickett 
started his famous charge. With his remaining 
ammunition Hunt reopened fire and broke this 
charge, thus marking the turning point of the 
war. During the Wilderness campaign, he con¬ 
tinued to serve as chief of artillery. On June 27, 
1864, Grant issued an order placing him in gen¬ 
eral charge of all siege operations about Peters¬ 
burg. On this duty he remained until the end of 
the war. He was brevetted major-general, Mar. 
13,1865. 

After the war he was sent to Fort Smith, Ark., 
to command the Frontier District. In 1866 he 
was mustered out of the volunteer service, and 
reverted to his regular army rank of lieutenant- 
colonel, 3rd Artillery, to which he had been pro¬ 
moted in 1863. In 1869, he became colonel of the 
5th Artillery. In 1870 he collected, disarmed, 
and returned to their homes, without expense to 
the government, the bands of Fenians then dis¬ 
turbing the Canadian border. Ten years later he 
was assigned, under his brevet commission, to 
command the Department of the South, and re¬ 
mained in this assignment until he retired in 
1883. He then settled in Washington, becoming 
in 1885 governor of the Soldier’s Home in that 
city. His death occurred while on this duty. 
Hunt was married twice: first to Emily C. De 
Russy, daughter of Col. R. E. De Russy, who 
died in 1857, and second to Mary B. Craig, who 
survived him. Hunt was an exceptionally able 
artillery leader, whose services were not ade¬ 
quately appreciated by his government during 
his lifetime. 

War of the Rebellion: Official Records ( Army ), 

1 ser., XI (pts. 1 2, 3), XIX (pts. 1,2), XXI, XXV 
(pts. I, 2), XXVII (pts. 1, 2, 3), XXXVI (pts. 1,2, 3) ; 
David FitzGerald, In Memoriatn: Gen. Henry J. Hunt 
(1889); papers by Hunt and other valuable references 
in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (4 vols., 1887- 
88); G. W. Cullum, Biog. Reg. (3rd ed., 1891 ); John 
Bigelow, The Peach Orchard, Gettysburg (1910) ; Prof. 
R. M. Johnston, Bull Run (1913); W. E. Birkhimer, 
Hist. Sketch of the Artillery of the U. S. A . (1884) l 
W. E. Birkhimer and J. E. Johnston, in Twentieth Ann. 
Reunion Asso. Grads . U. S. MU. Acad. (1889); T. B. 
Wyman, Geneal. of the Name and Family of Hunt 
(1862-63) ; Army and Navy Reg., Army and Navy 
lour., Feb. 16, 1889; Evening Star (Washington), Feb. 
11, 1889; certain information from Col. J. E. Hunt, a 
son of H. J. Hunt.] Q m l. 

HUNT, ISAAC (c. 1742-1809), author, clergy¬ 
man, father of Leigh Hunt, was born in Bridge¬ 
town, Barbados. Isaac, his father, was the rec¬ 
tor of St. Michael’s; his mother was an “O’Brien, 
or rather Bryan” (Autobiography of Leigh 
Hunt, post, p. 7). While a child he was in¬ 
dulged and spoiled by his parents. For his edu¬ 
cation he was sent to the Academy at Phila- 


Hunt 

delphia (now the University of Pennsylvania), 
where he was entered by Thomas Gilbert in 1757. 
He graduated in 1763 and secured a tutorship in 
English, which he held three months. He first 
threw himself into the turbulent politics of the 
province by writing A Letter from a Gentleman 
in Transilvania under the pseudonym of Isaac 
Bickerstaff. This letter, published in August 
1764, reviewed the late disturbance in Pennsyl¬ 
vania and attacked the proprietors. About the 
same time he published The Medley, a broadside 
savagely attacking David James Dove Iq.v .] and 
accusing him of gross immorality. In 1765 Hunt 
launched a series of satires beginning with A 
Humble Attempt at Scurrility. In Imitation of 
Those Great Masters of the Art , the Rev . Dr. 
Sm—th; the Rev . Dr. At — n; the Rev. Mr. 
Ew-n; the Irreverend D. I. D-ve, and the Heroic 
J- n D - n, Esq.; ... by Jack Retort, Stu¬ 

dent in Scurrility. This was followed by The 
Substance of the Exercise Had This Morning in 
Scurrility-Hall (1765) and several numbers en¬ 
titled A Continuation of the Exercises in Scur¬ 
rility-Hall (1765). His humble attempts to lam¬ 
poon the authorities were successful, for in 1766, 
when he applied for his master’s degree at the 
college, the trustees decided that the author of 
such “scurrilous and scandalous pieces” was un¬ 
worthy of further honors. Five years later, how¬ 
ever, the authorities relented and conferred the 
degree. 

When he spoke the farewell oration on leaving 
college Mary Shewell, daughter of a prominent 
Philadelphia merchant, fell in love with him. 
His exquisite reading of poetry completed the 
conquest of her heart and they were married in 
Christ Church on June 17,1767. He studied law, 
was admitted to the bar, and on the eve of the 
Revolution was practising with distinction. He 
championed the British government with a ve¬ 
hemence beyond discretion. In 1775 he published 
The Political Family, urging the advantages 
which flow from an uninterrupted union between 
England and her colonies; this was the essay 
with which he had unsuccessfully competed for 
the Sargent Medal of the College in 1766. In Au¬ 
gust 1775, Hunt, representing William Conn, is¬ 
sued a summons against George Schlosser, who, 
acting as a member of the Continental Associa¬ 
tion, had seized linen imported by Conn. The 
committee summoned Hunt, and after discussion 
and delay they determined that he needed “a 
good American coat of tar and feathers laid on 
with decency.” On Sept 6, he was carted from 
his home to a coffee house, but his tact and hu¬ 
mility saved him from further injury. Escaping 
to England, he there took orders in the Church* 


3 8 7 



Hunt 

The misfortunes of the years that followed were 
the result of this injudicious step. He was curate 
in Paddington, occasional preacher at Hornsey, 
and later minister of Bentwick Chapel, Lisson 
Green, Paddington (E. A. Jones, American 
Members of the Inns of Court , 1924, p. 103). 
For a time his charity sermons, elegant in dic¬ 
tion and graceful in morality, were popular and 
were published. He became tutor in the house¬ 
hold of the Duke of Chandos, but his zeal on be¬ 
half of John Trumbull [g.z>.] cut his advance¬ 
ment short In 1791 he again threw himself into 
politics and published the Rights of Englishmen: 
an Antidote to the Poison now Vending by .. . 
Thomas Paine . Hunt’s interest in the Church, 
like his zeal for the good of the world and of his 
family, was merely theoretical. Visionary, im¬ 
practical, and irresponsible he was filled with 
beautiful schemes that bore neither blossom nor 
fruit He delighted in tobacco and in port; his 
happiest hours were spent in conversation. De¬ 
spite a royal pension and aid from relatives his 
distresses increased. He “grew deeply acquaint¬ 
ed with arrests/’ so that the first room of which 
his son, Leigh, had any recollection was in a 
prison. He died obscurely in 1809, neither un¬ 
derstanding the world nor understood by it. 

[The Autobiog. of Leigh Hunt ( 2 vols., London, 
1903L ed. by Roger Ingpen; Alexander Graydon, Mem¬ 
oirs of his own Time (1846), ed. by John S. Littell; 
Christopher Marshall, Passages from the Remembrancer 
of Christopher Marshall (1839), ed* by William Duane; 
Peter Force, American Archives, 4th ser., vol. Ill 
(1840) ; T. H. Montgomery, A Hist of the Univ. of Pa. 
(1900); T, F, Rodenbough, Autumn Leaves from Fam¬ 
ily Trees (1892).] F.M—n. 

HUNT, MARY HANNAH HANCHETT 
(June 4,1830-Apr. 24,1906), educator, temper¬ 
ance reformer, was born in Canaan, Conn., the 
daughter of Ephraim and Nancy Hanchett. Her 
father joined the first abstinence movement in 
America. She secured what for her day was a 
liberal education, graduating from Patapsco In¬ 
stitute, near Baltimore, under Almira Hart Lin¬ 
coln Phelps for whom she afterwards 

taught chemistry and physiology and with whom 
she collaborated in preparing scientific text¬ 
books. On Oct 27, 1852, she married Leander 
B. Hunt, of East Douglas, Mass.; later they lived 
in Hyde Park, Mass. Hunt died in 1887. It was 
not until Mrs. Hunt was past fifty that she found 
her distinctive work. Studying with her son Al¬ 
fred Ephraim the properties of alcohol as 
a reagent, she stumbled upon data regarding its 
physiological effects. Struck with the force of 
fee scientific versus the sentimental argument for 
atefeence, fee conceived the plan of grafting 
upon fee school system of America graded les¬ 
son® k hygteoe and temperance, based an scien- 


Hunt 

tific principles. She began agitation toward this 
end in Hyde Park, which, in 1878, became the 
first town to introduce temperance into the cur¬ 
riculum of the schools; and she extended her ac¬ 
tivities to other parts of Massachusetts. Experi¬ 
ence with school boards soon convinced her of 
the necessity of laws which would make the 
teaching of this subject mandatory. At this junc¬ 
ture the birth of the Woman’s Christian Tem¬ 
perance Union provided her with an organized 
force for campaigning. In 1879 Frances E. Wil¬ 
lard [g.z/.] invited her to lay before that body her 
plan, which involved appeal to the legislatures 
of all the then existing states and to Congress 
asking for laws requiring instruction in temper¬ 
ance in schools under state or federal control. 
The following year the Woman’s Christian Tem¬ 
perance Union created a department of scientific 
temperance instruction with Mrs. Hunt as na¬ 
tional superintendent, a post she held till her 
death. Between that date and 1901, when the 
last state, Georgia, fell into line, she worked 
steadily for the accomplishment of her purpose, 
personally conducting local campaigns, and ap¬ 
pearing before legislatures, where her command¬ 
ing presence and logical and convincing ad¬ 
dresses carried weight Victory in Vermont, in 
1882, precipitated the problem of proper text¬ 
books, and Mrs. Hunt had practically to create 
the literature and pedagogy of the new subject 
She negotiated with publishers and authors and 
carried on research, as well as editorial and pub¬ 
licity work. She defended the movement from 
attacks, notably that of the Committee of Fifty 
in 1903. From 1892 she edited the School Phys¬ 
iology Journal, for teachers. In 1890 appeals to 
her department from distant countries caused 
her appointment as international superintendent 
of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union 
of the World. She represented the United 
States at the International Congress against 
Alcoholism, held at Bremen in April 1903, and 
materially aided foreign campaigns for temper¬ 
ance education. Her indorsed textbooks were 
widely translated. For twenty-six years she 
gave her whole time to the work without salary, 
assuming a large part of the financial burden. 
She opened the door to the teaching of general 
hygiene as well as of facts about alcohol and 
narcotics. In 1897 she published An Epoch in 
the Nineteenth Century „ 

[T. B. Wyman, Geneal. of the Name and Family of 
Hunt (1862—63); Frank Waldo, "The Scientific Pe¬ 
riod of the Temperance Movement/' in School Physiol¬ 
ogy Jour., Apr. 1906; F. E. Willard and M. A. Liver¬ 
more, Am. Women (1897); Standard Encyc. of the 
Alcohol Problem, vol. III (19 26); Bull. Am. Acad, of 
Med., June 1905; Reply to the Committee of Fifty, 
Sen. Doc. i?i, 58 Cong., a Sess.; D. L. Colvin, Prohi- 



Hunt 


Hunt 


b i,ion in the U. S. (1026); School Physiology Jour., 
May and June 1906; N. Y. Tribune, Apr. 30, 1906.] 

M.B.H. 

HUNT, NATHAN (Oct‘ 26, i758~Aug. 8, 
^53), Quaker preacher, pioneer in education, 
was born in Guilford County, N. C. He was 
the son of William Hunt, a distinguished 
Quaker preacher who was born in 1733 in Ran- 
cocas, N. J. His mother's maiden name was 
Sarah Mills. The father died of smallpox while 
on a religious mission in England in 1772. Na¬ 
than received a meager school education, but 
possessed a mind of strong native capacity and 
by means of extensive reading and much medita¬ 
tion and reflection became a leader in his com¬ 
munity and in his religious denomination. 

He married Martha Ruckman in 1778 and 
settled on the paternal farm which was near 
the Revolutionary battlefield of Guilford Court 
House. The family suffered serious financial 
losses on the occasion of the conflict. His first 
wife died in 1789 leaving six children, and three 
years later he married Prudence Thornburgh, by 
which union there were two children. His power 
as a preacher developed late in life. Although he 
began to speak in public meetings at the age of 
twenty-seven, he was not recorded a minister 
until he was thirty-five. From that time until 
old age weakened him he was an almost constant 
traveler and itinerant preacher. A mystic and 
seer rather than a reflective and argumentative 
preacher, he had sudden “insights” and “saw” 
into the state and condition of individuals and 
meetings. He acquired a remarkable prestige 
and attained a rare influence in Quaker circles, 
both at home and abroad. During the years 
1820-21 he traveled in England, Ireland, and 
Scotland where large audiences, both Quaker 
and non-Quaker, came to hear his messages. He 
became the intimate and beloved friend of such 
distinguished men in England as the great chem¬ 
ist, William Allen, and the famous banker, Sam¬ 
uel Gurney. For some years previous to its open¬ 
ing in 1837 he was chairman of a committee to 
found and direct the New Garden Boarding 
School, which has since grown into Guilford 
College. He secured many contributions to the 
funds for this enterprise both in the United States 
and abroad. He was a powerful opponent of 
slavery in the midst of a slave-holding people. 
When the opposition, led by the conservative 
John Wilbur, of Westerly, R. I., to the “evan¬ 
gelical” teachings of the English Quaker Joseph 
John Gurney, was causing dissension and divi¬ 
sion in various parts of the country, Hunt ^ was 
instrumental in preventing a “separation” in 
North Carolina. He was a wise leader of public 


thought and sentiment and a strong religious 
guide within his own denomination; few per¬ 
sons have been more beloved by their contem¬ 
poraries. He died at a ripe old age, in August 

1853. 

[Memoirs of William and Nathan Hunt (1858) ; M. 
M. Hobbs, “Nathan Hunt and his Times/* Bull. Friends* 
Hist. Soc. of Phila Nov. 1907; A. G. Way, “Nathan 
Hunt/* in Quaker Biogs., 2 ser., vol. I (n.d., 1926); 
The Friend (Phila.), Eighth Month 20, 18531 The 
nual Monitor , 1854, pp. 167-208.] R.M.J. 

HUNT, RICHARD MORRIS (Oct. 31,1827- 
July 31, 1895), architect, was born in Brattle- 
boro, Vt He came from early Colonial stock, 
his paternal ancestry going back to Jonathan 
Hunt who was born at Winchester, Conn., in 
1637. The successive representatives of the fam¬ 
ily were men of substance and each one appears 
to have possessed an unusually forceful temper¬ 
ament. Toward the end of the eighteenth cen¬ 
tury a large part of the family estate was situated 
in Brattleboro, Vt, and this became the inheri¬ 
tance of two brothers, Jonathan and Arad, both 
of them born in Brattleboro, the former in 17871 
the latter in 1790. Jonathan became a member 
of Congress and died from cholera in Washing¬ 
ton in 1832. He married Jane Maria Leavitt 
who also came from old American stock and 
was born at Suffield, Conn. They had five chil¬ 
dren, Jane, William Morris [q.v.], John, who 
studied medicine, Richard, and Leavitt From 
his father Richard inherited the type of charac¬ 
ter that imposes its will on others. With it, re¬ 
deeming it from harshness or ruthlessness, went 
a warm-hearted and fair-minded perception and 
regard for the rights of others. From his mother 
cam, a love of art; and the combination of these 
qualities was the foundation of his success. 
While his artistic power is unquestioned, it 
would not have found fields in which to grow 
and expand had not his personal magnetism won 
him friends and inspired them with confidence 
in his ability. 

He and his brothers and sister made an inter¬ 
esting group and a large measure of the ability 
shown by all of the children doubtless came from 
the brilliant qualities of their mother. Both Mrs. 
Hunt and her daughter Jane painted, the former 
in oil and on china, in which mediums she ex¬ 
hibited unusual talent. This atmosphere of art 
was stimulated by the advent within the family 
circle of the Italian painter, Gambadella, a refu¬ 
gee from his native country. He gave lessons 
to Mrs. Hunt and Jane, and William probably 
received much of the impulse of his youth. to¬ 
ward painting from this early association. 
Richard was too young to do much as a painter 


3 ^ 



Hunt 

at that period, but he constructed a small brick 
house for himself in the back yard and from that, 
those who wish to, can trace the budding genius 
of the architect. As a boy, Richard attended a 
Quaker school at Sandwich, Mass., and subse¬ 
quently went to the Boston Latin School from 
which he graduated in 1843. In that year the 
family went to Paris. Richard was sent on to a 
military school in Geneva and expected to be¬ 
come a soldier. Fortunately, his interest in ar¬ 
chitecture manifested itself too strongly to per¬ 
mit such a waste and before long he went to 
work in the studio of Samuel Darier in Geneva. 
During the following year, 1843, he entered the 
studio of Hector Martin Lefuel in Paris and was 
admitted at the age of nineteen to the Beaux- 
Arts in December of 1846. He continued his 
studies in Paris for nine years. During this 
time he also worked with the painter, Couture, 
and the sculptor, Barye. At different times dur¬ 
ing this period he made trips through Europe, 
Asia Minor, and Egypt, going up the Nile in 
1852. He finally took up practical work in ar¬ 
chitecture (1854) under Lefuel as an inspector 
of construction employed on additions to the 
Louvre and the Tuileries. In 1855 he returned to 
America. His first job was as a draftsman un¬ 
der Thomas U. Walter, working on the Capitol 
at Washington. Toward the end of 1856 or the 
early part of 1837 he settled in New York and 
in 1838 opened a studio where a number of 
young architects obtained their first ideas of the 
art from him. William R. Ware, who developed 
the School of Architecture at Columbia Univer¬ 
sity, was one of his disciples. Other students 
were Henry Van Brunt, George B. Post, and 
Frank Furness. 

Hunt was not the kind of man to accept oppo¬ 
sition peacefully, especially if it was unreason¬ 
able or unfair. When a certain dentist. Dr. 
Parmly, built two expensive houses from de¬ 
signs which the young architect claimed to have 
drawn, and refused to compensate him, Hunt 
brought suit against him. He was awarded only 
a part of the usual commission, although he pro¬ 
duced a large mass of working drawings made 
by him and*used on the buildings. The case was 
of great benefit to American architects from the 
professional point of view as it developed better 
methods of professional practice. It had much 
to do with the young man’s early successes be¬ 
cause it brought him to the notice of wealthy 
New Yorkers. Shortly after this, during the 
sixties, he went again to Europe and remained 
there until 1868. Returning to New York, he 
reopened an office there and began the work by 
which he Is best known, His earlier buildings 


Hunt 

were not immune from criticism. One of them, 
the Tribune Building, built in 1873, was the 
first of the elevator office buildings. His most 
successful efforts were the Newport residences 
that he designed for such clients as Ogden Goe- 
let, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Oliver H. P. Belmont, 
and Mrs. William Vanderbilt His last, the most 
magnificent of his country-house creations, was 
“Biltmore,” at Asheville, N. C., designed and 
built in 1890 in the style of Francis I. He con¬ 
structed a number of town houses, one in 1891 
for Elbridge T. Gerry at Fifth Avenue and 
Sixty-first Street and one in 1893 for John Jacob 
Astor at Fifth Avenue and Sixty-fifth Street. 
Many architects believe that his preeminent 
masterpiece was the William K. Vanderbilt 
house, begun in 1878, on the northwest corner 
of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-second Street. It 
was also in French Renaissance design as far as 
the exterior, main staircase, hall, and banquet 
hall were concerned, although some of the salons 
were lovely examples of the Regence. The Caen 
Stone staircase was a particularly elaborate 
piece of stone carving and rose from the main 
hall opposite a large carved stone fireplace to a 
beautiful gallery above. The banquet hall across 
the rear of the house was two stories in height 
and was surrounded by a wainscot of carved 
oak panels, each a gem of design and of the carv¬ 
er’s art One of Hunt’s most important struc¬ 
tures was the Administration Building of the 
World’s Fair of 1893. He was also responsible 
for the main portion of the Metropolitan Museum 
of Art of New York, the base of the Statue of 
Liberty in New York Harbor, the Lenox Li¬ 
brary, Scroll and Key Club at Yale University, 
and the National Observatory in Washington. 
He was one of the founders of the American 
Institute of Architects and its first secretary 
from 1857 to i860. Most of its early meetings 
were held in his office and from 1888 to 1891 he 
was its third president. On Apr. 2,1861, in New 
York City, he married Catharine Clinton How¬ 
land, the daughter of Samuel Shaw Howland 
and niece of Gardiner Greene Howland [q.v.]. 
They had five children of whom Richard and 
Joseph studied architecture. 

Hunt acted as a member of the fine arts juries 
of the sections of architecture at the Paris Ex¬ 
position in 1867, of the Centennial Exposition at 
Philadelphia in 1876, and in 1891 of the forth¬ 
coming World’s Columbian Exposition. In 1892 
he received the honorary degree of LL.D. from 
Harvard University, the first artist so honored 
by that university. He was an honorary and 
corresponding member of the Academie des 
Beaux-Arts of the Institute of France and a 



Hunt 

Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. He was 
elected a member of the Societe Centrale des 
Architects and was an honorary and correspond¬ 
ing member of the Royal Institute of British 
Architects and of the Society of Engineers and 
Architects of Vienna. In 1893 he was awarded 
the Queen's Gold Medal by the Royal Institute 
of British Architects. He championed the theory 
of better education for the architect. Early 
American architecture grew up with the colo¬ 
nies. Many builders and wood carvers with 
natural talent and books brought over from 
England designed and constructed beautiful 
buildings in an adapted Georgian style, but, as 
they passed away, their places were taken by 
builders of a more speculative character and 
without real tradition. In the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury a bastard Romanesque became fashionable 
and an enormous number of buildings were con¬ 
structed by men without knowledge and without 
ability. While there were marked exceptions to 
this, it was chiefly through Hunt’s personality 
and example that realization of the defects of 
American architecture and of the need for more 
thorough training of its votaries took form. 
Hunt went farther by establishing a studio in 
his own offlce after the fashion of the French 
architects and actually taught some of the men 
who later received his mantle. It is for this, even 
more than for the buildings which he designed, 
that the monument erected to his memory on 
Fifth Avenue opposite the site of the Old Lenox 
Library is an expressive and merited tribute to 
his talent. 

[Henry Van Brunt, “Richard Morris Hunt,” Proc. 
Twenty-ninth Ann, Convention Am. Inst, of Architects 
(1895), PP* 71-89; Montgomery Schuyler, “A Review 
of the Works of Richard Morris Hunt,” Architectural 
Record, Oct.-Dec. 1895; Barr Ferree, “Richard Morris 
Hunt: His Art and Work,” Architecture and Building, 
Dec. 7, 1895; P. B. Wright, Richard Morris Hunt; 
Ferdinand Schevill, Karl Bitter (1917); Annuary of 
the Am. Inst, of Architects; “Architectural Appreci¬ 
ations . . . The New Metropolitan Museum of Art,” 
Architectural Record, Aug. 1902; Architects* and Me¬ 
chanics' Jour., Apr. 6, 1861; Gas Logic, Aug. 1924.; 
T. B. Wyman, Geneal. of the Name and Family of Hunt 
(1862-63) ; J. V. Van Pelt, A Monograph of the Wm . 
K. Vanderbilt House (1925); N. Y. Tribune, Aug. 1, 
1895; letters and records preserved by the Hunt family, 
including Hunt's diary of his trip up the Nile in 1852.] 

J.V.V-P. 

HUNT, ROBERT (c. 1568-1608), clergyman 
of the Church of England, was chaplain of the 
expedition which founded Jamestown, Va., and 
ministered to the settlers until his death. That he 
held a living in Sussex at the time the expe¬ 
dition was organized is indicated by the fact that 
in November 1606 a patent was issued to Richard 
Hakluyt “and to Robert Hunt clerk M.A. vicar 
of the parish church of Heathfield co. Suss. dioc. 


Hunt 

Chichester,” permitting them “full and free li¬ 
cense” to go to Virginia and, without giving up 
their parishes in England, to hold “one or more 
benefices, church dignities, or cures in the said 
parts of Virginia or America” (G, B. Parks, 
Richard Hakluyt and the English Voyages, 1928, 
p. 256). Hunt became vicar of Heathfield in 
1602. One month before the expedition sailed he 
made a will. A comparison of the signature with 
that on the parish records of Reculver, County 
Kent, proves that Robert Hunt of Heathfield was 
the same Robert Hunt who was vicar of Recul¬ 
ver from 1594 to 1602, and not son of the latter, 
as has been frequently conjectured. The will also 
reveals that he had a wife, Elizabeth, a son, 
Thomas, and a daughter, Elizabeth. The wife 
was Elizabeth Edwards of St. Margarets, Can¬ 
terbury, whom he married in 1597 ( Virginia 
Magazine of History and Biography, October 
1917, p. 412). Certain conditions imposed upon 
his bequest to her indicate an unhappy state of 
affairs in the home, which may have had some¬ 
thing to do with his desire to go to America. In 
1603 he had become a student in Trinity Hall, 
Cambridge, it being recorded under July 6 of 
that year that “Robertus Hunt electus Scholaris 
Dns Hervye ad I2d” (Warren's Book , 1911, ed. 
by A. W. W. Dale). He proceeded LL.B. in 
1606 (C. H. and Thompson Cooper, Athenae 
Cantabrigienses, vol. II, 1861, pp. 493-94)* 
While no conclusive proof is at hand, dates and 
other circumstances make it possible that he is 
the person referred to in the Alumni Oxonienses 
as “Hunte, Robert of Hants, pleb. Magdalen Hall 
matric. 14 Feb. 1588-9, aged 20; B. A. 23 Nov. 
1592, M, A. 4 July 1595” (Joseph Foster, Alum¬ 
ni Oxonienses, early series, 1891, II, 772). Ac¬ 
cording to Capt. Edward-Maria Wingfield, the 
first president of the Council in Virginia, it was 
at his suggestion that Hunt was chosen to go to 
Virginia. “For my firste worke (W^ was to 
make a right choice of a spiritual! pastor) I 
appeale to the remembraunce of my Lo. of Caunt. 
his grace, who gaue me very gracious audience 
in my request And the world knoweth whome 
I took w th me: truly, in my opinion, a man not 
any waie to be touched w th the rebellious hu¬ 
mors of a popish spirit, nor blemished ye 
least suspicion of a factius Scismatick, whereof 
I had spiall care” (“A Discourse of Virginia,” 
Archaeologia Americana: Transactions and Col¬ 
lections of the American Antiquarian Society, 
vol. IV, i860, p. 102). John Smith, however, 
says that the position was offered to Richard 
Hakluyt, prebend of Westminister, “who by his 
authority sent master Robert Hunt, an honest, 
religious, and couragious Divine” (“Advertise- 


39 1 



Hunt 

merits for the Unexperienced Planters of New 
England,” Travels and Works of Captain John 
Smith, 1910, ed. by Edward Arber, II, 958). The 
patent issued to Hakluyt and Hunt, mentioned 
above, indicates that Hakluyt probably had a 
hand in the appointment 

Contemporary references to Hunt agree in 
characterizing him as a man of the highest char¬ 
acter and the most unselfish devotion. He sailed 
with the other members of the expedition on 
Dec. 19, 1606, but adverse winds kept them for 
six weeks in sight of England, “all which time,” 
says a member of the party, “Master Hunt our 
preacher, was so weake and sicke, that few ex¬ 
pected his recovery. Yet although he were but 
twentie myles from his habitation (the time we 
were in the Downes) and notwithstanding the 
stormy weather, nor the scandalous imputations 
(of some few, little better then Atheists, of the 
greatest ranke amongst us) suggested against 
him, all this could never force from him so much 
as a seeming desire to leaue the business” 
(Travels and Works of Captain John Smith, II, 
386). At sea and on the land he was the peace¬ 
maker of the contentious company, with the 
“water of patience, . . . godly exhortations 
(but chiefly through his devoted examples),” 
quenching the flames of envy and dissension. 
After the arrival at Jamestown, he ministered at 
first under a sail attached to trees; later, in a 
“homely thing like a bame,” which served as a 
church. As long as he lived the settlers had 
prayers morning and evening, two sermons on 
Sundays, and Holy Communion every three 
months. In the fire that occurred Jan. 17, 1608, 
the church, all Hunt's books, and everything he 
had but the clothes on his back were consumed, 
yet none ever heard him repine at his losses. The 
physical hardships soon proved too severe for 
him, however, and he died shortly prior to June 
12, 1608, probably, since his will was probated 
July 14 (o.s.), 1608, and the last vessel, before 
that date, which could have brought the news of 
his death, left Virginia June 12. 

[A copy of Hunt's will may be found in the Vcu Mag . 
of Hist and Biog., XXV, 16 r (Apr. 1917). Other ref¬ 
erences occur on pp. 297 (July), 412 to 416 (Oct.) of 
the same volume, and in vol, XXVI, p. 81 (Jan, 1918). 
See, also, in addition to works cited above, Samuel 
Purcbas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pit - 
grimes (MacLefeose, Glasgow, 1906), vol. XVIII; J. 
S. M. Anderson, Hist of ike Ch. of Eng. in the Colonies 
(*8 4 $)> vol. I; F. L. Hawks, Contributions to the 
Ecclesiastical Hist, of the U. 5 . A., vol. I (1836) ; E. 
l» Goodwin* The Colonial Ch . in Va. (1927); Alex¬ 
ander Brown, The Genesis of the U . 5 . (2 vols., 1890).] 


Hunt 

ert A. Hunt, a physician, and Martha Lancaster 
(Woolston) Hunt. After his father's death in 
1855, young Hunt continued, for two years, the 
small drugstore in Covington, Ky., which his 
father had established after his retirement from 
medical practice in Trenton, N. J. His mother 
then moved to Pottsville, Pa., and Hunt found 
employment for several years at the iron rolling 
mill of John Burnish & Company, where he 
learned the practical side of the work. Upon the 
completion of a course in analytical chemistry in 
the laboratory of Booth, Garrett & Blair of 
Philadelphia, he established in i860 at the plant 
of the Cambria Iron Company, Johnstown, Pa., 
the first analytical laboratory to form an integral 
department of an iron works. 

In 1861 he entered military service, at Camp 
Curtin in Harrisburg, Pa., and in 1864 he 
was instrumental in recruiting Lambert's Inde¬ 
pendent Company, with which he served. Upon 
being mustered out at the close of the war, he 
returned to the Cambria Iron Company, and was 
sent to their plant at Wyandotte, Mich., where 
experiments were being made with the Bessemer 
steel process. He was in charge of this work 
until May 1866 when he was called back to 
Johnstown, where the erection of a Bessemer 
plant was then contemplated. Its construction 
was delayed, however, and Hunt rolled for the 
Pennsylvania Railroad, with Bessemer steel from 
the Pennsylvania Steel Company, the first com¬ 
mercial order for steel rails (1867). He then 
assisted John Fritz and Alexander Lyman Hol¬ 
ley in the design and erection of the 

Cambria Bessemer steel plant, of which, upon 
its completion in July 1871, he assumed charge. 
In September 1873 he moved to Troy, N. Y., 
where he became superintendent of the Bessemer 
steel plant of John A. Griswold & Company and 
in 1873, general superintendent of the combina¬ 
tion formed by this company and Erastus Corn¬ 
ing & Company which resulted finally in the 
Troy Iron & Steel Company. Hunt remained 
in charge until 1888 when he established at Chi¬ 
cago the firm of Robert W. Hunt & Company, 
consulting engineers. He completely rebuilt vari¬ 
ous works and erected large blast-furnace plants. 
He also invented, and with Wendel and Suppis 
patented, the very widely adopted automatic rail 
mills. 

Hunt was an important contributor to technical 
literature, his “History of the Bessemer Manu¬ 
facture in America" ( Transactions of the Amer¬ 
ican Institute of Mining Engineers, vol. V, 1877) 
and his “Evolution of the American Rolling 
Mill” (Transactions of the American Society of 
Mechanical Engineers , voL XIII, 1892) being 


H.E.S. 

HUNT, ROBERT WOOLSTON (Dec, 9, 
1838—Jfdy 11, 1923), metallurgist, was bom at 
Fa lfefa g ton, Bucks County, Pa^ the son of Rob- 

392 



Hunt 

the most notable of his publications. He was 
secretary of the committee of the American So¬ 
ciety of Civil Engineers which designed the rail 
section bearing the society's name, and of the 
“A. Section" of the American Railway Associ¬ 
ation; he inaugurated what was afterwards 
known as the “Special Inspection," which in¬ 
volved thorough supervision both of the manu¬ 
facture of the steel and of the rolling of the 
rails; and in 1921 he proposed a new rail section 
and the nick-and-break test for soundness of each 
ingot In 1912 he was awarded the John Fritz 
Medal, and in 1923 the Washington Award, in 
both instances for his early contribution to the 
manufacture of steel. He was a member of many 
technical societies in the United States and in 
England. There has been established in his mem¬ 
ory the Robert W. Hunt Medal, and also the 
Robert W. Hunt Prize awarded annually by the 
American Institute of Mining and Metallurgi¬ 
cal Engineers. On Dec. 5, 1866, he married 
Eleanor Clark of Ecorse, Mich., who survived 
him. There were no children. His death oc¬ 
curred in Chicago, and he was buried in Troy, 
N. Y. 

[Trans. Am. Inst . Mining and Metallurgical Engi¬ 
neers, vol. LXIX (1923) ; Trans. Am. Soc . Mechanical 
Engineers, vol. XLV (1923) ; Who's Who in America, 
1922-23 ; Chicago Daily Tribune, July 12, 1923; infor¬ 
mation as to certain facts from Mrs. R. W. Hunt and 
R. W. Hunt & Company.] r. C. C—y. 

HUNT, THEODORE WHITEFIELD (Feb. 
19, 1844-Apr. 12, 1930), author, professor of 
English at Princeton, was bom at Metuchen, N. 
J., the son of the Rev. Holloway Whitefield and 
Henriette (Mundy) Hunt. He was descended 
from Thomas Hunt who resided in Stamford, 
Conn., in 1650. After preparing at the Irving 
Institute, Tarrytown, N. Y., he graduated from 
the College of New jersey (later Princeton) at 
the head of his class in 1865. On the day of his 
arrival at Princeton he saw the members of the 
class of 1861 bidding farewell to each other, some 
to join the Confederate army, others the Union. 
The year after his graduation he taught in the 
Edgehill School, Princeton, and after attending 
Union and Princeton Theological seminaries was 
licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Eliza¬ 
beth. Appointed by McCosh in 1868 as tutor in 
English at the College of New Jersey, he won in 
the following year the Boudinot fellowship in 
belles-lettres and philosophy, the first university 
fellowship established there. Deciding definitely 
upon an academic career, he pursued studies 
chiefly in Old English at the University of Ber¬ 
lin from 1871 to 1873. On his return he became 
adjunct professor of rhetoric and English litera¬ 
ture at the college, and in 1881 full professor. 


Hunt 

He was the first chairman of the department of 
English, holding this position until his retire¬ 
ment in 1918, after fifty years of service under 
the administrations of Maclean, McCosh, Pat¬ 
ton, Wilson, and Hibben. In 1882 Hunt married 
Sarah Cooper Reeves of Camden, N. J. She 
died in 1906. The last twelve years of his life he 
spent as professor emeritus in Princeton, still 
actively interested in all the affairs of the uni¬ 
versity. 

With Marsh of Lafayette, Hunt was among 
the pioneers in the introduction of Old English 
studies into the curriculum of the American col¬ 
lege. In 1883 he edited Caedmon!s Exodus and 
Daniel as Volume II of Ginn's Library of Anglo- 
Saxon Poetry, on the basis of Grein's text, which 
went into several editions and was widely used. 
His interests were by no means confined to the 
older period of the language as evidenced by the 
long list of his publications ranging from Caed¬ 
mon to Swinburne. His critical writings were 
cast in the formal molds of a somewhat abstract 
rhetoric, but whenever he touched upon ethical 
values in literature, his own rich humanity en¬ 
livened the formalism of his style. One of his 
best pieces of criticism is his Ethical Teachings 
in Old English Literature (1892). His publi¬ 
cations include: The Principles of Written Dis¬ 
course (1884); Representative English Prose 
and Prose Writers (1887) ; Studies in Literature 
and Style (1890); American Meditative Lyrics 
(1896); Literature , Its Principles and Problems 
(1906); English Literary Miscellany (1914); 
Timely Topics (1921); besides numerous re¬ 
views and articles, and papers read before the 
Modem Language Association. His long life 
was spent almost entirely in Princeton, and he 
was held in affectionate regard by the graduates 
of Old Nassau as a link between the old and the 
new Princeton. Recognized in his youth by 
McCosh as a valuable lieutenant in his task of 
renovating the College of New Jersey after the 
war, Hunt later did much to make the precep¬ 
torial system introduced by Woodrow Wilson 
a signal success in his own department, by rally¬ 
ing under his wise and kindly leadership the 
group of younger English scholars brought by 
Wilson to the university. 

[Sources include: Princeton TJniv, archives; Prince¬ 
ton Alumni Weekly, May 30, 1930; the Princetomen, 
Apr. 18, 1930; Who's Who in America, 1028-29; T. 
B. Wyman, Geneal. of the Name and Family of Hunt 
(1862-63); N. Y. Times, Apr. 13. * 930 , personal 
recollections.] J.D.S. 

HUNT, THOMAS STERRY (Sept. 5 , 1826- 
Feb. 12,1892), chemist and geologist, tine son of 
Peleg and Jane Elizabeth (Sterry) Hunt, was 
born at Norwich, Cornu He prepared to study 


393 



Hunt 

medicine but abandoned this subject for chemis¬ 
try, which he first studied at Yale University as 
an assistant to Benjamin Silliman, Jr. In 1847 
he was appointed chemist and mineralogist of 
the geological survey of Canada. During the 
twenty-five years he held this joint position he 
made many chemical-geological reports of fun¬ 
damental importance and published several arti¬ 
cles of a speculative character. He taught chem¬ 
istry in Laval University, Quebec, from 1856 to 
1862, giving his lectures in French, and in Mc¬ 
Gill University, Montreal, from 1862 to 1868. 
During this period (1847-62), particularly about 
1850, he expounded by reviews and translations 
the views of Laurent and Gerhardt on atoms and 
molecules and supplemented the speculations of 
these eminent French chemists by publishing his 
own ideas on theoretical chemistry—especially 
on diatomic molecules of gaseous elements and 
on the structure of compounds of the water type. 
In this latter field he anticipated the views of the 
English chemist Williamson and the French 
chemist Wurtz. Indeed he often turned his bril¬ 
liant mind into theoretical fields and throughout 
his life was usually on the skirmish line. He an¬ 
ticipated Schonbein in the interpretation of the 
origin of nitrites and nitrates in nature, and 
Dumas in his researches on the equivalent vol¬ 
umes of liquids and solids. Always interested in 
organic chemistry, he published an “Introduc¬ 
tion to Organic Chemistry*' in the 1852 edition 
of Silliman's First Principles of Chemistry in 
which he defined organic chemistry, perhaps for 
the first time, as “the chemistry of the com¬ 
pounds of carbon.” In 1872 he was appointed 
professor of geology in the Massachusetts In¬ 
stitute of Technology, resigning, however, in 
1878 to devote his entire time to expert work and 
literary pursuits. Meanwhile, in 1877, he had 
married, but finding that marriage interfered 
with his career, he and his wife decided to live 
apart. He published about one hundred and six¬ 
ty scientific articles, chiefly in the American 
Journal of Science . He wrote several books 
dealing with chemistry and geology, the best 
known being Chemical and Geological Essays 
(1875,1878); Special Report on the Trap Dykes 
and Azoic Rocks of Southeastern Pennsylvania 
(1878 ); Mineral Physiology and Physiography 
{ 1886); A New Basis for Chemistry: A Chemi¬ 
cal Philosophy (1887), and Systematic Miner - 
(1891). He was conspicuous among the 
chemists who attended the Priestley Centennial 
at Northumberland, Pa., 1874, where he read a 
paper entitled “A Century's Progress in Chemi¬ 
cal Theory.” He was president of many scien¬ 
tific societies, was elected a fellow of the Royal 


Hunt 

Society of London in 1859, and a member of the 
National Academy of Sciences in 1873. 

[James Douglas, memoir in Proc. Am. Phil. Soc., 
Memorial Vol. No. I (1900 ); Am. Jour, of Sci ., Mar! 
1892; Persifor Frazer, article in the Am. Geologist, 
Jan. 1893 J J* C. K. Laflamme, Le Docteur Thos. Stcrry 
Hunt (189 2) ; Jour. Am. Chcm. Soc., Aug. 20, 1926; 
E. F. Smith, Chemistry in America (1914) ; G. P. Mer¬ 
rill, The First One Hundred Years of Am. Geology 
(1924); the Am. Chemist, Aug., Sept., Dec. 1874; T. 
B. Wyman, Geneal. of the Name and Family of Hunt 
(1862-63) ; N. Y. Times, Feb. 13, 1892.] L.C.N. 

HUNT, WARD (June 14, 1810-Mar. 24,1886), 
justice of the United States Supreme Court, was 
bom in Utica, N. Y., the son of Montgomery and 
Elizabeth (Stringham) Hunt, and a descendant 
of Thomas Hunt who resided in Stamford, 
Conn., in 1650. His father was for many years 
cashier of the First National Bank of Utica. He 
attended the Oxford and Geneva academies in 
both of which he was a classmate of Horatio 
Seymour. At seventeen he entered Hamilton 
College but transferred to Union College where 
he graduated with honors in 1828. After a peri¬ 
od of study in the law school at Litchfield, Conn., 
he returned to Utica and entered the office of 
Judge Hiram Denio. He was admitted to the 
bar in 1831 but his health broke down and neces¬ 
sitated his spending the winter in the South. On 
his return he entered a law partnership with 
Judge Denio and soon had an extensive practice. 
In 1838 he was elected as a Jacksonian Democrat 
to the New York Assembly from Oneida Coun¬ 
ty and served one term. He opposed the annex¬ 
ation of Texas and the extension of slavery. He 
served as mayor of Utica in 1844. As the slavery 
controversy increased in bitterness Hunt aban¬ 
doned his earlier affiliations and actively sup¬ 
ported the candidacy of Van Buren and Adams 
on the Free-Soil ticket in 1848. He helped or¬ 
ganize the Republican party in New York in 
1856, was a zealous supporter of its policies, and 
was actively considered by the Republican cau¬ 
cus in Albany in 1857 as a candidate for the 
United States Senate. 

Hunt had early ambitions for judicial office. 
In the late forties he ran for the supreme court 
of the state but was defeated, owing, it is alleged, 
to the opposition of the Irish vote which was 
antagonistic because of his successful defense of 
a policeman who had been charged with the 
murder of an Irishman. Again in 1853 he ran 
on the Democratic ticket for the same office, but 
his political deflection to the Free-Soilers five 
years earlier brought about his defeat In 1865 
he ran as a Republican for the court of appeals, 
to succeed his former partner, Judge Denio, and 
was elected. Three years later he became chief 
judge of that tribunal and remained as commis- 


394 



Hunt 

sioner of appeals under the judicial reorganiza¬ 
tion effected by constitutional amendment in 
1869. In the autumn of 1872 he was nominated 
by President Grant to the associate justiceship 
on the Supreme Court left vacant by the resig¬ 
nation of Justice Samuel Nelson, and he took his 
seat on Jan. 9, 1873. He never returned to the 
bench after the Court's adjournment for recess 
on Dec. 23, 1878. Early in January 1879 he suf¬ 
fered a paralytic stroke affecting his right side. 
He recovered slowly, but never completely, and 
remained an invalid until his death. In spite of 
his physical condition he did not resign from the 
Court until Congress by special act of Jan. 27, 
1882, extended to him the benefits of the act of 
1869 which permitted federal judges to retire on 
full pay at the age of seventy years after ten 
years of service. The special act was introduced 
and sponsored by Hunt's former colleague on the 
bench, Senator David Davis. Hunt had not 
served ten years; he had in fact served only six 
years, and in the debates on the bill to pension 
him he was sharply criticized for having con¬ 
tinued in office so long after becoming unfit to 
perform his judicial duties ( Congressional Rec¬ 
ord, 47 Cong., 1 Sess., pp. 505, 612-18). The act 
itself made the grant of Hunt's pension con¬ 
ditional upon his resigning within thirty days. 
He resigned on the day of its enactment 

Hunt was not a conspicuous member of the 
Supreme Court and his name is not associated 
with any outstanding decision or doctrine. He 
was, however, a hard-working and an able judge, 
and his decisions, though not brilliantly written, 
are clear and represent careful research. He 
wrote the opinion of the Court in 149 cases, only 
eight of which related to constitutional problems. 
He wrote four dissenting opinions and dissented 
without opinion in eighteen cases. He was mar¬ 
ried twice: to Mary Ann Savage, of Salem, N. 
Y., in 1837, who bore him a son and a daughter; 
and to Maria Taylor of Albany in 1853. 

[Hunt’s opinions are found from 15 Wallace to 98 
U. S. Reports . For a memorandum on his resignation 
and an obituary notice see 105 U . S., ix-x, and 118 
U. S., 701. Other sources include: M. M. Bagg, Me¬ 
morial Hist . of Utica, N. Y. (1891) ; H. L. Carson, The 
Supreme Court of the U. S.: Its Hist (189a), voL II; 
David McAdam and others. Hist, of the Bench and Bar 
°f N. Y. (1897), vol. I; D. S. Alexander, A Pot Hist 
of the State of N. Y ., vol. II {1906), vol. Ill (1909) ; 
T. B. Wyman, GeneaL of the Name and Family of Hunt 
(1862-63); C. E. Fitch, Encyc . of Biog. of N. Y. 
(1916) ; N. K. Times, N. Y. Tribune, Mar. 25, 1886.] 

R.E.C. 

HUNT, WASHINGTON (Aug. 5,1811-Feb. 
2, 1867), governor of the state of New York, 
son of Sanford and Fanny (Rose) Hunt, was 
born at Windham, N. Y. He was descended 
from Jonathan Hunt, who moved from Connecti- 


Hunt 

cut to Northampton, Mass., about 1660. In 1818 
his parents moved to Portage, N. Y., where he 
attended common school. In 1828 he moved to 
Lockport and two years later he took up the 
study of law. He was admitted to the bar in 
1834. In 1836 he became the first county judge 
of the newly organized Niagara County and in 
a comparatively short time was recognized as 
one of the political leaders in the western section 
of his state. Although early in his career he had 
been a Democrat, he was led to join the Whigs 
and in 1842 he was elected to Congress. He 
served continuously until 1849, and in the 
Thirtieth Congress he was chairman of the com¬ 
mittee on commerce. Opposed to human servi¬ 
tude and political proscription in every form, he 
severely criticized President Tyler because he 
believed Tyler labored zealously for the exten¬ 
sion of slavery in the Southwest In 1849, thanks 
to the efforts of Thurlow Weed, for many years 
Hunt's intimate friend and political backer, Hunt 
was chosen comptroller of the state of New 
York. The following year, by 262 votes, he de¬ 
feated Horatio Seymour for the governorship of 
the state. 

Hunt's administration as governor was far 
from brilliant Personally honest, and scrupu¬ 
lous in the performance of his duties, he was not 
always tactful and as a consequence he became a 
party to a legislative squabble regarding the Erie 
Canal. When in 1852 Seymour defeated him for 
reelection he retired to his farm near Lockport 
His interest in politics, however, did not cease 
and in 1856 he was chosen temporary chairman 
of the last national Whig convention. His re¬ 
fusal to ally nimself with the rising Republican 
party, largely on the ground that it was a sec¬ 
tional organization, led to his estrangement with 
Weed. In i860 he served as chairman of the 
Constitutional Union convention at Richmond, 
Va., which nominated Bell and Everett, he him¬ 
self declining the nomination for the vice-presi¬ 
dency. He was also influential in fusing the 
Douglas-Bell electoral tickets in New York. In 
the presidential campaign of 1864 he was a dele¬ 
gate to the National Democratic Convention and 
offered a resolution calling for a convention of 
the states, which was defeated in committee. He 
strongly opposed the rejection of Lincoln and 
in return was severely criticized by the Repub¬ 
lican press. His last appearance on the political 
stage was in 1866 as a delegate to the National 
Union Convention, Personally Hunt was very 
well liked and possessed a wide circle of friends. 
In 1834 he married Mary Hosmer Walbridge, 
daughter of Henry Walbridge of Ithaca, N. Y. 
He was a lifelong member of the Protestant 


395 



Hunt 

Episcopal Church and a prominent lay delegate 
to many of its conventions. He was interested 
in agriculture and devoted much of his time and 
effort to administering his large landholdings. 
He died in New York City. 

[C. Z. Lincoln, ed., State of N. Y.: Messages from 
the Governors (1909), vol. IV; D. S. Alexander, A 
Pol. Hist . of the State of N. Y., vols. II (1906) and 
III (1909); P. A. Chadbourne and W. B. Moore, eds., 
The Pub. Services of the State of V. Y .: Hist., Statis¬ 
tical, Descriptive and Biog. (1882); T. W. Barnes, 
“Memoir of Thurlow Weed” (1884), which is Vol. II 
of the Life of Thurlow Weed; C. E. Fitch, Bncyc . of 
Biog. of N. Y. (1916), vol. I; S. J. Wiley and W. S. 
Garner, Biog. and Portrait Cyc. of Niagara County, N. 
Y. (1892) ; T. B. Wyman, Geneal. of the Name and 
Family of Hunt (1862-63); N. Y. Times, Feb. 3, 
1867.] H.J.C. 

HUNT, WILLIAM GIBBES (Feb. 21,1791- 
Aug. 13, 1833), editor, literary journalist, the 
eldest child of Samuel and Elizabeth (Gibbes) 
Shepherd Hunt, was born at Boston, Mass. His 
father, a descendant of Enoch Hunt of Titenden, 
Buckinghamshire, who was admitted freeman of 
Newport, R. I., in 1638, was a graduate of Har¬ 
vard and the third of his line who studied at that 
college; his mother was the daughter of William 
Gibbes, a wealthy planter of Charleston, S. C. 
Hunt was educated in Boston under his father 
and Caleb Bingham, and at the age of fifteen he 
entered Harvard College where he received the 
degree of A.B, in 1810. After graduation he 
practised law for a time although it is not known 
where he received his legal training. In the 
spring of 1815 he emigrated to the Ohio Valley, 
settling at Lexington, Ky., then the seat of West¬ 
ern culture. On Aug. 25 of that year he became 
the editor of the Western Monitor , a Federalist 
paper of which Thomas T. Skillman was pub¬ 
lisher. With the issue for May 25, 1819, it be¬ 
came the Western Monitor and Lexington Ad¬ 
vertiser. 

On Hunt’s next undertaking, the Western 
Review and Miscellaneous Magazine, rests the 
principal source of his fame. The periodical was 
not much more successful, financially, than its 
predecessor, but the fault lay neither with the 
editor nor with the magazine itself. Despite its 
pedantry and its provincial character, it stands 
out as one of the best of its kind in the early 
West In the short two years of its existence it 
was a literary spokesman of the region. It car¬ 
ried reviews of contemporary writings in Amer¬ 
ica and England, poems by local and more 
celebrated authors, occasional disquisitions on 
politics, a series of stories of Indian fights, and 
other notes and articles. Horace Holley, the 
president of Transylvania University, and Con¬ 
stantine Rafinesque were among its faithful con- 
Perhaps the Review/s outstanding ar- 


Hunt 

tide was Rafinesque’s “Natural History of the 
Fishes of the Ohio River” which in 1820 was 
published by Hunt in book form under the title 
Ichthyologia Ohiensis and as such constitutes his 
outstanding publication. According to Mott 
(post, p. 312), after the Review ceased publica¬ 
tion, Hunt “apparently . . . began immediately 
thereafter the publication of a venture with a 
different appeal—the Masonic Miscellany and 
Ladies' Literary Magazine (1821-23).” 

In 1822 Hunt received the degree of LL.B. 
from Transylvania, and though he practised law 
a little during the next few years, his chief in¬ 
terests continued to be in journalism. Later he 
removed to Nashville, Tenn., where he formed a 
partnership with John S. Simpson to publish the 
Nashville Banner . In May 1826 it united with 
the Nashville Whig to form the Nashville Ban¬ 
ner and Nashville Whig. In 1830, with his broth¬ 
er, W. Hassell Hunt, and Peter Tardiff, Hunt 
purchased the paper and in 1831 it became the 
National Banner and Nashville Advertiser . Re¬ 
gardless of its name, it was a strong Jacksonian 
organ. Hunt came into some national promi¬ 
nence in these years as an ardent supporter of 
Freemasonry during the Anti-Masonic excite¬ 
ment. He remained at the head of the Banner 
until 1833. He was a strong advocate of the 
classical tradition in literature, and his few writ¬ 
ings, mainly of an editorial nature, are simple, 
forceful, and vigorous. His outstanding address 
was that delivered at Nashville upon the occasion 
of the deaths of Jefferson and Adams, July 4, 
1826. He died in 1833 survived by his wife, 
Fanny Wrigglesworth Hunt, whom he had mar¬ 
ried on Sept. 28, 1820, in Lexington. 

[W. H. Venable, Beginnings of Lit. Culture in the 
Ohio Valley (1891); R. L. Rusk, The Lit . of the Middle 
Western Frontier (1925), vol. I; C. S. Brigham, “A 
Bibliog. of Am. Newspapers (1690-1820),” Proc. Am. 
Antiquarian Soc., Oct ‘1914; F. L. Mott, A Hist, of 
Am. Magazines { 1930) ; T. B. Wyman, Geneal. of the 
Name and Family of Hunt (1862-63); Harvard Uni¬ 
versity records; the Columbian Centinel (Boston), Aug. 
29, 1810; the Nashville Republican , Aug. 15, 1833.] 

E.L.W.H. 

HUNT, WILLIAM HENRY (June 12,1823- 
Feb. 27,1884), jurist, secretary of the navy, dip¬ 
lomat, the son of Thomas and Louisa (Gaillard) 
Hunt, was born at Charleston, S. C. His father, 
of English West India colonial ancestry, was 
bom in Nassau, New Providence, and came to 
the United States about 1800. On his mother’s 
side he was descended from an old Huguenot 
family which had settled near Charleston about 
1680. Thomas Hunt died in 1832, leaving the 
family in straitened circumstances. The mother 
was sent to New Haven, Conn., with her five 
daughters and two younger sons, one of whom 


396 



Hunt 

was William, so that she could complete the edu¬ 
cation of her children. The two boys entered the 
Hopkins Grammar School, a preparatory school 
for Yale. In 1839 the family went to New Or¬ 
leans to make their permanent home. William 
remained in New Haven to enter Yale College. 
In the early part of his junior year poverty forced 
him to abandon the academic course. After a few 
months he entered the Yale law school, hoping 
in this way to facilitate his admission to the bar, 
but he was again obliged to cut short his studies 
and join his family in New Orleans. There his 
brothers were prominent young attorneys and 
they gave him an opportunity to study law in 
their office. In 1844 he was admitted to the 
Louisiana bar and successfully practised law in 
New Orleans until 1878. The best known cases 
in which he appeared as counsel or attorney were 
the Slaughter House cases and Jackson vs. Vicks¬ 
burg, Shreveport, and Texas Railroad Company. 
For a few months in 1866 he was professor of 
civil law in the law school of the University of 
Louisiana (later Tulane University), taking the 
place of his brother Randell, who was tempo¬ 
rarily absent. 

Hunt was married four times. His first wife, 
Frances Ann Andrews, of Hinds County, Miss., 
whom he married in Nov. 16,1848, died of tuber¬ 
culosis eight months after the wedding. On Oct 
14, 1852, he married, in the state of New York, 
Elizabeth Augusta Ridgely, daughter of Com¬ 
modore Charles G. Ridgely [ q.v .]. They made 
their home in New Orleans, where his son Gail- 
lard [q.vJ] and their other six children were 
born. Two years after her death in 1864, he mar¬ 
ried, in New Orleans, Sarah Barker Harrison, 
from whom he was divorced four years later. 
On June 1,1871, he married Mrs. Louise F. Hop¬ 
kins, niece of a prominent New Orleans mer¬ 
chant. While he did not hold a prominent politi¬ 
cal office until comparatively late in his career, 
Hunt was always interested in politics. As a 
child in South Carolina he had had his first les¬ 
son when his elder brothers fought against nulli¬ 
fication. From 1844 to 1854 he was a Whig, 
then he joined the Know-Nothings. In i860 he 
supported the ticket of the Constitutional Union 
party. From i860 to 1865 his status was that of 
a southern Unionist. Early in the Civil War he 
was embarrassed by being drafted into the Con¬ 
federate service and commissioned a lieutenant- 
colonel, but his military activities were confined 
to drilling troops for a few months at New Or¬ 
leans. After Farragut captured the city he en¬ 
tertained the admiral and the officers of his fleet. 
On July 3,1876, he was nominated for the office 
of state attorney-general by the Republicans and 
was later elected, but he lost the position when 


Hunt 

the Democrats gained control of Louisiana after 
the Hayes-Tilden election. He was appointed 
associate judge of the United States Court of 
Claims, May 15, 1878, and held the position un¬ 
til appointed secretary of the navy by President 
Garfield, Mar. 5, 1881. Here his most notable 
service was the appointment of the first naval 
advisory board which began the work of build¬ 
ing the new American navy. On Apr. 7, 1882, 
he was appointed United States minister to Rus¬ 
sia by President Arthur. According to his son 
and biographer, he considered the appointment 
equivalent to a dismissal from the office of secre¬ 
tary of the navy. After he reached Russia, his 
health, which had not been good since 1878, took 
a turn for the worse, and he died Feb. 27,1884. 
His body was brought to the United States the 
following March, and his funeral took place in 
St John's Episcopal Church, Washington, D, C., 
on Apr. 8. He was buried in Oak Hill cemetery, 
Washington. 

IThe Life of Wm. H. Hunt (1922), by his son, Thos. 
Hunt, has furnished most of the material for this 
sketch. Other sources include the La. Hist. Quart., 
July 1922; E, S. Maclay, A Hist . of the U. S. Navy 
from 1775 to 1893 (1894), vol. II; J. D. Long, The 
New Am. Navy <1903), vol. I; and the Washington 
Post, Feb. 28, Apr. 9, 1884.] H. J. W. 

HUNT, WILLIAM MORRIS (Mar. 31,1824- 
Sept. 8,1879), painter, brother of Richard Mor¬ 
ris Hunt [q.v .], was born at Brattleboro, Vt, the 
son of Judge Jonathan Hunt, a prominent jurist 
and member of Congress, who died in 1832, His 
mother, Jane Maria (Leavitt) Hunt, who went 
from Connecticut to Vermont after her marriage, 
was a woman of ability and character with a pen¬ 
chant for art. William, the eldest of five chil¬ 
dren, was precocious and learned to draw well at 
an early age, his first teacher being an Italian 
artist named Gambadella. In due time he entered 
Harvard College, but in his third year he was 
rusticated, “to his evident satisfaction,” and he 
never returned. His health was not good, and his 
mother took him to the South of France and to 
Rome. In 1843, at a £ e twenty-one, he 
entered the Dusseldorf academy of art, but he 
found the system there inflexible and left the 
next year for Paris, where he became a pupil of 
Thomas Couture. He made rapid progress and 
before long was rated the best painter in the 
class. He thoroughly assimilated and mastered 
Couture's famous method. 

At this time a new and powerful influence, that 
of Jean Franqois Millet, made itself felt To it 
Hunt owed much of his merit He sought out 
Millet and made his acquaintance; they became 
friends; and Hunt bought “The Sower,” “The 
Sheep Shearer,” and several other pictures by 


397 



Hunt 


Hunt 


Millet. His intimate association with Millet at 
Barbizon for two years and his admiration of 
Millet's art were factors of prime importance in 
the development of his own work. He also had 
the advantage of the friendship and counsel of 
Antoine Barye, the sculptor, and of John La 
Farge. Thus his style eventually became a com¬ 
posite of Couture's method plus Millet's ponder¬ 
ous virility, on which was superimposed his own 
serious and ardent nature. With his sensitive 
poetic temperament and all these valuable con¬ 
tributing elements, he seemed destined to go far. 

He returned to the United States in 1856 and 
settled for a time in Newport, R. I. Then he went 
to Brattleboro, Vt, to Fayal in the Azores, and 
finally, in 1862, to Boston. His first studio was 
in Roxbury, but in 1864 he moved to Summer 
Street. That part of the city was swept by the 
great fire of 1872, and much of Hunt's work 
done up to that time, together with paintings by 
Millet, Diaz, and other Barbizon painters, was 
destroyed. Fortunately he had hung some of the 
Millets in his Beacon Street house. By his mar¬ 
riage in 1855 to Louisa Dumeresq Perkins, he 
had entered “the charmed circles of what was 
considered the best society of the city." It is 
clear, however, that his life in Boston was not 
happy. He was ahead of his time in matters of 
taste; he felt like a missionary among the hea¬ 
then, whose ignorance and indifference got upon 
his nerves. Yet he was a personage in the city; 
he had many good friends, not a few admirers, 
and a few patrons. His company was much 
sought for; his brilliant talk, his wit, and his 
personal charm made him popular. He had an 
enthusiastic group of students in his class, to 
whom his lightest word was law. His propa¬ 
ganda in behalf of Millet, Corot, Rousseau, et id 
genus omne, succeeded so well that Boston at¬ 
tained the glory of providing the first market in 
America for those masters' works at a time when 
they were not yet fully acknowledged in France. 
If in spite of all this Hunt was not happy, one 
must ask whether the cause did not lie within 
himself. 

One of the earliest and best of his portraits is 
that of Chief Justice Shaw which hangs in the 
Essex County courthouse, Salem, Mass. It is a 
very imposing work. The portraits of Francis 
Gardner, master of the Boston Latin School, and 
Mrs. Charles Francis Adams are also represen¬ 
tative. The solid worth of such portraits as these 
goes far to justify the remark of Philip L. Hale 
to the effect that Hunt was better equipped for 
all kinds of art than either Copley or Stuart, and 
possessed a more artistic personality. In 1875 
Hunt was commissioned to paint two large mural 


decorations for the Assembly chamber of the 
Capitol at Albany, N. Y. These paintings, “The 
Discoverer," and “The Flight of Night," were 
each sixteen by forty feet in dimension; they 
were in oil colors, and were painted directly on 
the stone walls. The work had to be done swiftly 
and under trying conditions. Unhappily the 
panels have been ruined by the dampness of the 
walls. They were the most important and per¬ 
haps the best mural paintings that had been done 
in America up to that time. Hunt's death oc¬ 
curred in the Isles of Shoals, off the New Hamp¬ 
shire coast. He was drowned in a pool near 
Celia Thaxter's cottage. It is generally believed 
that it was a case of suicide. 


[Helen M. Knowlton, Art-Life of Wm. Morris Hunt 
(1899), and W. M. Hunt's Talks on Art (1875); 
Martha A. S. Shannon, Boston Days of Wm. Morris 
Hunt (1923) ; H. C. Angell, Records of Wm. M. Hunt 
(1881); F. P. Vinton, “Wm. Morris Hunt,” Am. Art 
Rev., Dec. 1879, Jan. 1880 ; Masters in Art, Aug. 1908; 
Samuel Isham, Hist, of Am. Painting (1905) ; M R 
Oakey, article in Harper's Mag., July 1880; Helen U. 
Knowlton, article in New Eng. Mag., Aug. 1894: H. 
T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists (1867) ; C. H. Caf- 
fin. The Story of Am. Painting (1907); J. C. Van 
Text ~ hook of the Hist, of Painting (1804); 
W. Lubke, Outlines of the Hist, of Art (ed. 1904); W. 
H. Downes, “Boston Painters and paintings,” Atlantic 
Monthly, Sept. 1888; exhibition catalogue of paintings 
and drawings by Hunt, Boston (1880); catalogue of 
the memorial exhibition of Hunt's works at the Mu- 
seum of Fine Arts, Boston (1879); and the catalogue 
of the Hunt loan exhibition held at the St. Botolph 
Cub, Boston (1894).] W H D 


HUNT, WILSON PRICE (i782?-April 
1842), commander of the Astoria overland ex¬ 
pedition, was bom in Hopewell, N. J., the son of 
John P. and Margaret (Guild) Hunt, and a de¬ 
scendant of John Hunt who settled in that vil¬ 
lage soon after 1700. He moved to St. Louis in 
1804, and on Dec. 18 was chosen a member of 
the village’s first grand jury. With John Hank- 
inson as partner he conducted a general store 
until June io, 1809. He had then doubtless al¬ 
ready engaged himself to Astor, for he soon af¬ 
terward left for New York. Early in 1810, as a 
partner of the Pacific Fur Company, he arrived 
in Montreal, and with another partner, Donald 
McKenzie, began to organize the expedition. 
Passing through St. Louis in September, he es¬ 
tablished a winter camp near the present St 
Joseph. On Apr. 21, 1811, with Hunt as sole 
commander, the party started up the river. At 
the Arikara villages Hunt abandoned the river 
route, and with his company partly mounted 
struck out westward. On reaching the Snake he 
made the blunder of loosing his horses and at¬ 
tempting to navigate the river. Baffled by the 
turbulent stream, the company broke up into sev¬ 
eral gToups, which after experiencing extreme 
privations straggled into Astoria during the 



Hunter 


Hunter 


fore part of 1812. On Aug. 4 of that year, to 
negotiate and trade with the Russian-American 
Company, Hunt sailed in the Beaver for New 
Archangel, Alaska, where he delivered his cargo 
of goods to A. A. Baranov [q.v.], receiving in 
return a load of sealskins. From New Archangel 
the Beaver sailed for Canton by way of the Sand¬ 
wich Islands, where Hunt left the ship. Learn¬ 
ing of the declaration of war with Great Brit¬ 
ain he chartered the Albatross and returned to 
Astoria, more than a year after his departure, 
to find that his partners had already arranged 
to sell the post to the North West Company. 
Though protesting against the act, he did not 
remain to oppose its consummation, but again 
sailed for the Sandwich Islands, not returning 
unt il nearly two months after the capture of the 
fort by a British gunboat. On Apr. 3, 1814, he 
left the Columbia for the last time. 

He returned to St. Louis, resumed business, 
and became prosperous. About 1819, aided by 
Astor, he bought a large tract of land eight miles 
southwest of the city, where he established a 
farm and erected a gristmill. In the spring of 
1820 he was an unsuccessful candidate for dele¬ 
gate to the constitutional convention. In Sep¬ 
tember 1822 he was appointed postmaster of St, 
Louis, a place he retained for eighteen years. He 
was married, Apr. 20, 1836, to Anne (Lucas) 
Hunt, widow of his cousin Theodore. Though 
a leading citizen of St. Louis and held in high 
esteem by those who knew him, he was not popu¬ 
lar, and his defeat in the election of 1820, when 
his party won a signal victory, was humiliating. 
His conduct of his own business appears in 
strong contrast with his management of the As¬ 
toria enterprise. Chittenden, who says he was 
not the man for the place, credits him with loyal¬ 
ty to his chief, but with “not much else.” On the 
journey he made a series of irreparable blunders, 
and as chief factor of the trading post he seems 
to have played directly into the hands of Astor's 
enemies. 

[T. B. Wyman, Geneal. of the Name and Family of 
Hunt (1862-63) ; F. L. Billon, Annals of St. pints in 
Its Territorial Days (1888); H. M. Chittenden, The 
Am. Fur Trade of the Far West (1902) ; Washington 
Irving, Astoria (1836) ; Grace Flandxaxi, Aster and the 
Ore . Country (pamphlet, n.d., 1926?); K. W. irorter, 
John Jacob Astor, Business Man ( 193 0 •] W. J. G. 

HUNTER, ANDREW *4, *& 3 )> 

Presbyterian clergyman, chaplain in both army 
and navy, was bom in York County, Pa., the son 
of David and Martha Hunter, David and his 
brother Andrew, a Presbyterian minister, of 
Scotch-Irish ancestry, had emigrated from Ire¬ 
land some time prior to 1750. Andrew settled in 
New Jersey and for upward of thirty years was 


pastor of the church in Greenwich ( Pennsylvania, 
Journal, Aug. 2, 1775). He adopted his nephew 
and namesake, who grew up in New Jersey un¬ 
der his care. In 1770 Andrew entered the Col¬ 
lege of New Jersey, according to Philip Vickers 
Fithian, who notes in his diary that “Mr, Hunter 
and myself were admitted into the junior-Class 
on the twenty second day of November, after a 
previous Examination by the president. Tutors, 
& some residing Graduates” ( Journal and Let¬ 
ters, p. 7). After his graduation in 1772, he 
studied theology with his uncle, and was licensed 
to preach, June 1774, by the Presbytery of Phila¬ 
delphia. He then made a missionary visitation 
to Virginia. An ardent patriot, with Fithian 
and some forty other young men, disguised as 
Indians, he assisted, Nov. 22, 1774, in burning 
a cargo of tea that had been stored in Greenwich, 
on Cohansey Creek, N. J. On Oct. 2, 1775, he 
was married to Nancy Riddle ( Pennsylvania 
Gazette, Oct. 4,1775). It is said that he accom¬ 
panied Gen. Montgomery's expedition to Quebec 
(Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical So¬ 
ciety, 3 ser., VI, 2). At all events, the following 
year, 1776, he was commissioned by the Pro¬ 
vincial Congress of New Jersey chaplain of Col. 
Philip Van Cortland's battalion, Heard's brigade. 
Serving with various organizations until the 
dose of the war, he had a distinguished record, 
and received the personal thanks of Washington 
for his conduct at the battle of Monmouth. 

Following the war, he seems to have been in¬ 
active for a period, but in 1786 he took charge of 
the Presbyterian churches of Woodbury and 
Blackwood, N. J., and continued in this relation¬ 
ship until 1797. At least twice during this peri¬ 
od, 1789 and 1794, he was a delegate to the Gen¬ 
eral Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. His 
interest in education was keen and he had ability 
as a teacher. The College of New Jersey elected 
him trustee in 1788, and in 1791 Joseph Bloom¬ 
field [q.v*] deeded to him and others a plot of 
land in Woodbury for the site of an academy. A 
building was erected and he served as principal 
of the institution until 1797, when, on account of 
his health, he retired to a farm on the banks of 
the Delaware near Trenton. In 1804 he became 
professor of mathematics and astronomy in the 
College of New Jersey, He relinquished this po¬ 
sition in 1808 to take charge of an academy at 
Bordentown, N. J., where he remained till 1810. 
He had resigned as trustee of the College of 
New Jersey upon becoming professor there, but 
served again from 1808 to i8n, in which year 
he was appointed chaplain in the navy, and sta¬ 
tioned at the Washington Navy Yard. His ap¬ 
pointment seems to have been due to the fact 


399 



Hunter 

that while a clergyman, he had also had much 
military experience, and was an excellent teach¬ 
er, for the Navy Register of 1812 states that in 
addition to the regular chaplain's pay of forty 
dollars per month and two rations a day, he was 
to receive twenty dollars per month and three 
rations per day as mathematician. He is the 
first chaplain who is known to have performed 
also the duty of schoolmaster in the United 
States naval service (T. G. Ford, in Proceed¬ 
ings of the United States Naval Institute, 
XXXII, 903). This position he occupied for the 
remainder of his career, more or less active ap¬ 
parently in the intellectual life of Washington, 
since he is listed as one of the incorporators of 
the Columbian Institute. The statement made 
in several sources that he died in Burlington, 
N. J., seems to be incorrect, since the National 
Intelligencer, Washington, Feb. 25, 1823, an¬ 
nounces his decease as occurring “yesterday 
morning, . . . after a long illness”; his funeral 
to take place “from his late residence, Capitol 
Hill.” After his first wife’s death he married 
Mary Stockton, daughter of Richard Stockton 
[q.v.~\ and Annis (Boudinot). Gen. David 
Hunter [q.vf], and Louis Boudinot Hunter, sur¬ 
geon in both army and navy, were his sons. A 
daughter, Mrs. Mary (Hunter) Stockton, be¬ 
came the second wife of Rev. Charles Hodge 
[?■»•]• 

[J. E. Norris, Hist, of the Lower Shenandoah Val¬ 
ley (1890) ; Archives of the State of N. /., 2 ser., Ill 
(1906); Proc . N. J . Hist. Soc 1 ser., IX (1864) and 
$ ser., VI (1909); Philip Vickers Fitkian: four . and 
Letters, 1767-1774 (1900), ed. by J. R. Williams; W. 
S. Stryker, Official Reg. of the Officers and Men of N. /. 
in the Revolutionary War (187.2); T. C. Stockton, The 
Stockton Family of N . J. and Other Stocktons (1911) ; 
Gen . Cat. of Princeton Univ1746-1906 (1908); S. D. 
Alexander, Princeton CoUege During the Eighteenth 
Century (1 872) ; C. O. Paullin, in Proc . 17 . S . Naval 
Inst. , vol. XXXII (1906).] H.E. S. 

HUNTER, DAVID (July 21, i8oa-Feb/^ 
1886), Union soldier, was bom at Washington, 
D. C., the son of Rev. Andrew Hunter [q.v.] and 
his second wife, Mary (Stockton) Hunter, 
daughter of Richard Stockton [#.£>.], a signer of 
the Declaration of Independence. In 1818, his 
father being at that time chaplain in the United 
States Navy stationed at the Washington Navy 
Yard, young Hunter was appointed to West 
Point Graduating in 1822, he served in the 5th 
Infantry until he became a captain in the 1st 
Dragoons in 1833. While stationed at Fort 
Dearborn, Chicago, he was married, between 
1828 and 1831 to Maria Indiana Kinzie. He in¬ 
vested in Chicago lands and in 1836, resigning 
the army, settled in Chicago to engage in 
l&siness with his brother-in-law, John H. Kin- 
afe. He reentered the army in 1842 as a pay- 


Hunter 

master with the rank of major, and in this ca¬ 
pacity was with General Taylor’s forces in the 
Mexican War. 

In i860, Hunter, then serving in Kansas, com¬ 
menced a correspondence with Lincoln advising 
him of secession rumors. Invited to accompany 
the President-Elect on his inaugural trip to 
Washington, he sustained an injury to his col¬ 
lar bone early in the journey and was unable to 
continue with Lincoln’s party. When he arrived 
at the Capital later, he was put in charge of a 
guard of 100 gentlemen volunteers to protect the 
White House, spending every night in the East 
Room. Commissioned colonel of cavalry in May 
1861, he was made brigadier-general of volun¬ 
teers a few days later and appointed to command 
the 2nd Division of McDowell’s army. In July 
he participated in the Bull Run campaign. Much 
straggling and disorder occurred, and the attack, 
led by Hunter’s division, was late, and was made 
by small detachments one at a time which were 
successively defeated. Hunter, however, severe¬ 
ly wounded at the beginning of the engagement, 
was not to blame for the poor conduct of the 
troops, which was due in the main to their lack 
of training. 

In October, he was sent to Missouri to relieve 
Fremont whom, on Nov. 2, he superseded as 
commander of the Western Department. He at 
once repudiated Fremont’s convention with Ster¬ 
ling Price whereby both generals agreed to force 
the disbandment of unauthorized armed bodies, 
and in accordance with orders withdrew the 
Union forces for rest and reorganization. Later 
in November he was assigned to command in 
Kansas, but since there was at the moment no 
enemy in that state, he was able to send troops to 
assist in the expedition against Forts Henry 
and Donelson, and to Canby in New Mexico. 

In March 1862 he assumed command of the 
Department of the South. Fort Pulaski, Ga., 
was at once besieged, and after heavy bombard¬ 
ment surrendered on Apr. 11. The next day 
Hunter issued an order liberating the slaves 
which had fallen into Federal hands, and on May 
9 followed it by another liberating all slaves in 
his department Applauded by abolitionists, this 
move caused uneasiness in border states and ex¬ 
citement in Congress, and on May 19 the Presi¬ 
dent issued a proclamation annulling the order 
on the ground that it exceeded the General’s au¬ 
thority. Hunter had also sanctioned the raising 
of a negro regiment (the 1st South Carolina), 
and in that action was upheld by Congress, The 
Confederate States proclaimed him a felon, and 
ordered his execution if captured. He now at¬ 
tempted to take Charleston, but lost the battle 


400 



Hunter 

of Secessionville on June 16, and was forced to 
suspend further operations. 

When he left his department on leave to seek 
more active duty, he was employed as president 
of courts martial which tried Gen. Fitz-John 
Porter [ q.v .] and inquired into the loss of Har¬ 
per’s Ferry. Returning to his department, he 
conducted minor operations until “temporarily” 
relieved in June 1863, when he was again em¬ 
ployed on court-martial duty and in making an 
extensive inspection of the troops and conditions 
in the Mississippi Valley. In May 1864, upon 
the defeat of Sigel in the Shenandoah Valley, 
Hunter was recalled and assigned to command 
this important sector. He was ordered to move up 
the Valley, cross the Blue Ridge to Charlottes¬ 
ville, and then proceed to Lynchburg, living on 
the country and cutting all railroads and canals. 
It was left to his discretion as to whether, upon 
completion of his mission, he should return to 
the Potomac, or join Grant’s army near Rich¬ 
mond. He marched south, and on June 5 won 
the battle of Piedmont. He captured many pris¬ 
oners and forced Lee to detach Breckinridge’s 
division, and later Early’s corps, to prevent the 
serious loss of supplies and destruction of com¬ 
munications which Hunter was accomplishing. 
On June 16 he invested Lynchburg, but the next 
day Early’s forces commenced to arrive, and 
skirmishing resulted. Since his ammunition was 
nearly exhausted, Hunter decided not to fight, 
and in order to avoid an engagement retired into 
West Virginia. He thus left the Shenandoah 
Valley open to Early, who, quick to seize his ad¬ 
vantage, marched down the Valley and threat¬ 
ened Washington. Hunter made every effort to 
reach railroads so as to be on the Potomac ahead 
of Early, but he failed to arrive in time to pre¬ 
vent the Confederates from raiding in the vicin¬ 
ity of the Capital. Hunter has been criticized 
for this campaign, though he succeeded in his 
principal mission, which was to weaken Lee’s 
army at a critical hour. 

On Aug. 4, Grant arrived at Hunter’s head¬ 
quarters, bringing with him Sheridan, whom he 
had selected to be the leader of the field forces 
under Hunter’s direction, with a view to driving 
the enemy once for all from the Shenandoah 
Valley, Hunter thought it better to resign his 
command so as to leave Sheridan entirely free, 
and his resignation was accepted on Aug. 8. He 
was again engaged on court-martial duty from 
Feb. 1, 1865, until the end of the war. Directed 
to accompany the remains of President Lincoln 
to Springfield, Ill., he was recalled to become 
president of the military commission which tried 
the conspirators. He later became president of 


Hunter 

the Special Claims Commission and of the Cav¬ 
alry Promotion Board. Brevetted brigadier- 
general and major-general for gallant and mer¬ 
itorious conduct during the war, he was retired 
from active service in 1866 as a colonel, and re¬ 
sided thereafter in Washington, where he died. 

Hunter was a handsome man, a typical beau 
sabreur. He was not a great general, but he had 
the highly commendable qualities of initiative 
and energy and he never allowed personal inter¬ 
ests to stand between him and duty. 

[War of the Rehellion: Official Records (Army), 1 
ser., II (Bull Run), III, VIII (Missouri), XX, LXV, 
LXVI (Atlantic Coast), LXX, LXXI (Shenandoah); 
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (4 vols., 1887- 
88) ; R. M. Johnston, Bull Run (1913); G. W. CulJum, 
Biog. t Reg. (3rd ed., 1891); Report of the Military 
Services of Gen. David Hunter during the War of the 
Rebellion (1873), a short autobiography; R.C. Scbenck, 
“Major-General David Hunter/' Mag. of Am. Hist., 
Feb. 1887 ; Papers of the Mil. Hist. Soc. of Mass., vol. 
VI (1907) ; Seventeenth Ann. Report Asso. Grads . 
U. S. Mil. Acad. (1886) ; T. C. Stockton, The Stockton 
Family of N. J. (1911); A. T, Andreas, Hist, of Chi¬ 
cago, vol. I (1884); Army and Navy Jour., Feb. 6, 
1886; Washington Post, Feb. 3, 1886.] CH.L. 

HUNTER, ROBERT (d. March 1734), royal 
governor of New York and New Jersey and 
later of Jamaica, was bom at Hunterston, Ayr¬ 
shire, Scotland, the son of James and Margaret 
(Spalding) Hunter. According to William 
Smith, the early historian of New York, he was 
apprenticed as a youth to an apothecary, only to 
flee from his master and join the English army; 
but Hunter’s friend Cadwallader Golden later 
questioned Smith’s statement Hunter mani¬ 
fested marked ability as a soldier and distin¬ 
guished himself with the forces of the Duke of 
Marlborough in the War of the Spanish Suc¬ 
cession. He fought in the battle of Blenheim in 
1704, probably with the 5th Royal Irish Dra¬ 
goons. Shortly afterwards he was promoted to 
the rank of lieutenant-colonel, in which capacity 
he served until 1707. The Earl of Orkney, gov¬ 
ernor of Virginia, secured for Hunter, who was 
a stanch Whig, the lieutenant-governorship of 
that colony. He embarked for America in 1707 
but was destined not to reach Virginia, being 
captured en route by an enemy privateer ami 
taken to France as a prisoner. The French evi¬ 
dently treated their captive leniently and his 
confinement was soon'translated into a series of 
social successes. These successes continued 
when he was returned to England in an ex¬ 
change of prisoners which brought the Bishop 
of Quebec back to France. It was his wide ac¬ 
quaintanceship, his record as a soldier, his ver¬ 
satility in language and literature, and the in¬ 
fluence of his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir 
Thomas Orby and widow of Brigadier-General 


401 



Hunter 

John Hay, that caused Hunter to be considered 
anew as a Crown official in America. 

In 1709 he received an appointment as cap- 
tain-general and govemor-in-chief of New York 
and New Jersey, thereby succeeding John, Lord 
Lovelace, who died in May of that year. He 
left for America in the early spring of 1710, and 
arrived at New York City on June 14. Thus 
commenced an administration which was to en¬ 
dure until July 1719, and which was to prove one 
of the most successful in the annals of American 
colonial history. At the outset of the adminis¬ 
tration both New York and New Jersey were 
tom by factionalism, the former still being har¬ 
assed by feuds which lingered from the old Leis- 
lerian conspiracy. The years 1710-15 were 
marked by a struggle between governor and as¬ 
semblies over the constitutional problem of the 
control of finance, in which the assemblies ulti¬ 
mately gained the upper hand. It took years to 
allay partisan feelings, to smoothe the rivalry 
between the legislative houses, and to secure a 
settlement of the financial problems, but in the 
end Hunter was largely successful. Further¬ 
more he had made himself popular, a rare 
achievement in the New World, where royal 
officials were viewed with suspicion and distrust. 

On coming to New York Hunter brought with 
him about three thousand refugees from the 
Rhenish Palatinate, who were to engage in the 
production of naval stores for the use of British 
vessels. The immigrants were settled on the 
banks of the Hudson River where there was an 
abundance of pine trees from which tar and pitch 
could be derived. High hopes were entertained 
at the outset of the project and it was believed 
that it would entirely relieve England from the 
necessity of purchasing naval stores from Swe¬ 
den, but the scheme was doomed to failure, inas¬ 
much as the British government was lax in its 
support and did not furnish the money (esti¬ 
mated at £15,000 per year) necessary for its con¬ 
tinuance. Hunter tried to prolong the venture 
at his own expense and indeed he claimed that in 
so doing he went in debt to the amount of £21,000 
but his efforts were unsuccessful. With the 
abandonment of the enterprise some of the Ger¬ 
mans left New York for Pennsylvania, while 
still others departed from their original settle¬ 
ments and went to Schoharie on the western 
frontier of the province. Frequently disaffected, 
the Rhenishers caused the Governor no little 
embarrassment during his entire administration. 
Inasmuch as the War of the Spanish Succession 
lagged on until 1713, the defense of the fron¬ 
tier against fee French in Canada was a major 
proMesn. Hunter not only rallied his own prov- 


Hunter 

inces, but at the Congress of New London (June 
1711) and later he endeavored to influence the 
neighboring colonies to take an active part in 
the campaign. One expedition resulted in fail¬ 
ure because the English fleet which was to 
cooperate with the provincial land forces was 
wrecked. Continuance of the campaign was 
abandoned, much to the disgust of Hunter and 
other colonial leaders. In connection with the 
war preparations, Hunter and Joseph Dudley 
\_q.v.], governor of Massachusetts Bay, inaugu¬ 
rated an express between Boston and Albany, 
probably the first organized postal service in 
English America. Although the Treaty of 
Utrecht concluded formal hostilities between 
France and England, Hunter continued to de¬ 
vote no little attention to the frontier and among 
other measures ordered the construction of a 
fort in the Indian country. He was responsible 
also for the erection of a court of chancery in 
New York which expedited the collection of 
quit-rents owed the Crown. 

It was with genuine sorrow that New York 
saw Hunter return to England in 1719, and the 
farewell address of the legislature reveals the re¬ 
spect which the colonists held for him. He was 
succeeded by William Burnet [g.z/.], with whom 
he exchanged his governorship for the position 
of comptroller of the customs. For several years 
he remained in England, where he was frequent¬ 
ly consulted as an authority on colonial prob¬ 
lems. Later (1727) he was appointed governor 
of Jamaica, that turbulent island where economic 
and social issues were paramount This post he 
held until his death in 1734. 

Hunter’s principal writings were his letters 
from the New World to the English government 
and to friends, including Jonathan Swift (see 
F. E. Ball, The Correspondence of Jonathan 
Swift, 2 vols., 1910-11) and the Earl of Stair. 
Cadwallader Colden mentions him as an occa¬ 
sional contributor to the Tatler and as being the 
author of “some elegant little pieces of poetry, 
which never appeared in his name.” A member 
of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
and active in the support of the church, he was 
nevertheless attacked by the High-Church party 
in the colony. At this time, to divert himself, 
says his friend Colden (post, p. 202), he com¬ 
posed the farce Androborus with the assistance 
of Lewis Morris, satirizing the Senate and lieu¬ 
tenant-governor, and thus turned the people into 
“a laughing humour.” A unique copy of this 
first play known to have been written and print¬ 
ed in America is now in the Huntington Library, 
San Marino, Cal. 

[R. L. Beyer, “Robert Hunter, Royal Governor of 


402 



Hunter 

New Yofk,” now in preparation; E. B. O’Callaghan, 
Docs. Relative to the Colonial Hist, of the State of 
H. 7., vols. V, VI (185s) ; N. Y. Colonial MSS. in 
Albany—see E. B. O’Callaghan, Calendar of Hist. 
MSS. in the Office of the Secretary of State, Albany 
(1866), vol. II; W. A. Whitehead, Archives of the 
State of N. 1 ser. IV\(i 882) ; sketch by H. M. Chi¬ 
chester in Diet. Nat. Biog.; H. L. Osgood, The Am. 
Colonies in the Eighteenth Century (1924), vol. II; 
C. W. Spencer, Phases of Royal Govt, in N. Y. (1905); 
j, F. Burns, Controversies between Royal Governors 
and Their Assemblies (1923) ; Wm. Smith, The Hist, 
of the Province of N. Y. (1757 ) ; Cadwallader Colden, 
"Letters on Smith's History of New York," in N. Y. 
Hist. Soc. Colls. Pub. Fund Ser., vol. I (1868) ; A. H. 
Quinn, A Hist, of the Am. Drama from the Beginning 
to the Civil War (i9 2 3) l Gentleman's Mag. (London), 
June 1734J R.L.B. 

HUNTER, ROBERT MERCER TALIA¬ 
FERRO (Apr. 2i, 1809-July 18,1887), lawyer, 
statesman, was the son of James and Maria 
(Garnett) Hunter; his mother was a sister of 
the first James Mercer Garnett [q.v .]. Hunter 
was born at the homestead of his maternal an¬ 
cestors in Essex County, Va., and like other sons 
of Virginia planters, received his primary edu¬ 
cation at home. He prepared for college under 
a teacher employed by his father and uncle, en¬ 
tered the University of Virginia, matriculating 
for its first session, and finished his course in 
July 1828. Deciding to read law, he chose as his 
preceptor that ardent apostle of particularism, 
Judge Henry St. George Tucker of Winchester, 
Va., and was admitted to the bar in 1830. At¬ 
taining his majority in a period of political un¬ 
certainty and confusion, he for some time re¬ 
fused to ally himself with any political party or 
faction. Nevertheless, he was elected as an inde¬ 
pendent to the Virginia General Assembly, serv¬ 
ing 1834-37. Following this term of office he 
was sent to Congress as a state-rights Whig, but 
to the surprise of party associates he supported 
most of the Van Buren program, notably the in¬ 
dependent or sub-treasury proposals. In 1839- 
40 he voted with the Whigs in the memorable 
contest between the rival delegations claiming 
the right to represent New Jersey in Congress. 
He thus became an available candidate for the 
speakership of the House and was elected, in 
the second term of his service in that body. 

During his one term as speaker, Hunter's 
leanings to particularism became pronounced, as 
did his devotion to the leadership of John C. 
Calhoun [q.v.']. In fact, Hunter's principles were 
then being molded by that capable exponent of 
Southern rights and interests, and they cannot 
be understood except in the light of his idol's 
plans and purposes. Fearing a revival of Clay's 
paternalistic program, Calhoun after the acces¬ 
sion of Van Buren to the presidency, forsook the 
Whigs, with whom he had been in brief alliance 
against the Jacksonians, and by gradual stages 


Hunter 

became fully identified with the state-rights 
Democrats, carrying a number of Southern 
leaders with him. For some time Hunter hesi¬ 
tated to follow, but Clay's unrelenting activity, 
together with the Whig triumph in 1840, left no 
alternative; and he, too, became a consistent 
state-rights Democrat. As such he was scarcely 
considered for reelection to the speakership. 
Moreover, factional differences within his dis¬ 
trict, which had been gerrymandered, caused 
him to fail of reelection to Congress in 1843. 

The years immediately following marked a 
determining period in the history of Virginia, as 
well as in the political fortunes of many of her 
leaders. The state-rights Democrats began to 
plan seriously for the election of Calhoun to the 
presidency and to make Virginia a strategic part 
of a united pro-slavery South. To this end they 
demanded the annexation of Texas and repu¬ 
diated Van Buren's candidacy for the presi¬ 
dency, already indorsed locally. Former Jack- 
son Democrats were won over to the new pro¬ 
gram by a skilful use of patronage and of Vir¬ 
ginia traditions. Though of moderate ability, 
Hunter played a leading role in the consumma¬ 
tion of the political part of this program. He 
lent his name to the campaign biography of Cal¬ 
houn published in 1843, which was written in 
large part by Calhoun himself (Gaillard Hunt, 
John C . Calhoun, 1908, pp. 250-51)* Beginning 
in that year Hunter carried on an extensive cor¬ 
respondence with the Tammany Society of New 
York City and with politicians throughout the 
Union to ascertain and to further Calhoun’s 
chances for election to the presidency in 1844. 
Finding them hopeless, he diverted his efforts 
to the consummation of the part of the program 
previously agreed upon regarding the state of 
Virginia. To this end he and James A. Seddon 
[q.v.] rewrote the platform of the local Demo¬ 
cratic party, committing it to the doctrine of 
Calhoun. 

Under this changed program Hunter was 
easily reelected to Congress, where he resumed 
his service Mar. 4, 1845. Before his term ex¬ 
pired, however, Seddon, Lewis E. Harvie, and 
others had secured his election to the United 
States Senate, where he took his seat Mar. 4, 
1847, and in time won distinction as a tireless 
worker, of genuine accomplishments. Disap¬ 
pointed at the failure of Calhoun to reach the 
presidency in 1848, and discouraged by the de¬ 
mands of the North as expressed in the Wilmot 
Proviso, Hunter attended the Nashville Conven¬ 
tion of 1850 and would not have been averse to 
the dismemberment of the Union at that time. 
During the discussion of the compromise meas- 


4°3 



Hunter 

tires of that year he was not more hopeful, ex¬ 
pressing the belief that the proposals of Clay 
could not produce permanent accord between the 
contending sections. 

Between 1850 and the Civil War, Hunter 
oscillated in his political attachments. When the 
interests of the South were attacked, he was as 
outspoken in their defense as was either Jeffer¬ 
son Davis or Robert Toombs As a re¬ 

sult these three were frequently referred to as 
the “Southern Triumvirate.” At other times 
Hunter’s natural conservatism and conciliatory 
temper asserted itself, and he drew closer to the 
North. As chairman of the Senate committee on 
finance he was in charge of the tariff bill of 1857 
and conducted himself in such a manner as to 
win friends in all parts of the Union. For this 
and other reasons he was generally mentioned 
for the presidency in i860, and Virginia cast her 
vote for him in the Charleston Convention of 
that year. It was only after all hope of compro¬ 
mise between the Southern and Northern De¬ 
mocracy had vanished after a second attempt 
(that in Baltimore), that Hunter advised his 
followers to support Breckinridge, the favorite 
of the extreme pro-Southern group. Following 
the election of Lincoln, Hunter was one of the 
Senate committee of thirteen appointed to con¬ 
sider “the grievances between the slaveholding 
and the non-slaveholding states.” In this capac¬ 
ity he voted with those favoring compromise and 
concession. Meanwhile, he continued to confer 
with and to advise President Buchanan. He re¬ 
mained in Washington long enough to see Lin¬ 
coln inaugurated, withdrawing from the Senate 
Mar. 28, 1861, less than one month before Vir¬ 
ginia seceded from the Union. 

During the Civil War Hunter was in the serv¬ 
ice of the Confederacy. Following the resigna¬ 
tion of Toombs, he became secretary of state, 
serving from July 25, 1861, to Feb. 18, 1862, 
when he gave way to J. P. Benjamin and became 
a member of the Senate. There he served with¬ 
out distinction until the fall of the Confederate 
government A peace movement, long cherished 
both at the North and the South called him from 
comparative obscurity, however, as the war 
neared its end. Many Southerners still hoped 
for a negotiated peace that would recognize the 
independence of the Confederate States. To pro¬ 
mote this end. Hunter, Alexander H. Stephens, 
and John A. Campbell [qq.vj were sent to con¬ 
duct informal negotiations with President Lin- 
ocfa and Secretary of State Seward, who had 
agreed to meet them. To Hunter the results of 
die Me conference at Hampton Roads on Feb. 
3* 1865, were disappointing indeed He saw Ut¬ 


il unter 

tle henceforth for the Southern cause but un¬ 
conditional surrender, or on the other hand, pos¬ 
sible victory as the result of a united and deter¬ 
mined effort. Accordingly, he joined President 
Davis and others in attempts to arouse the Con¬ 
federacy to an appreciation of the dangers and 
possibilities of the situation. On Feb. 6, 1865, he 
presided over a mass meeting at the African 
church, Richmond, which was addressed by 
Davis in one of the masterly speeches of his life. 
Three days later Hunter addressed a similar 
meeting at the same place (Daily Dispatch , 
Richmond, Feb. 7, 10, 1865). About this time, 
however, he opposed the action of the Confed¬ 
erate Congress in authorizing a levy of colored 
troops. 

Hunter was among the first to realize that the 
Confederacy was in its death struggle. Renew¬ 
ing his interest in peace, he urged President 
Davis to take the initiative in opening negotia¬ 
tions to that end, but Davis hesitated, passing 
the responsibility to his Congress, and Hunter 
came into some ridicule, being referred to local¬ 
ly as the “conquered Senator.” In this connec¬ 
tion also mention was made of his wealth, the 
inference being that he was seeking to save his 
slave property. To meet this and other charges 
he published a letter in the Richmond Examiner, 
Mar. 20, 1865, in which he denied the allegation 
that he favored a “reconstruction of the old 
Union.” After the collapse of the Confederate 
government he surrendered himself to the fed¬ 
eral authorities and announced his willingness to 
abide the wishes of Secretary of War Stanton, 
who ordered him sent to Fort Pulaski, where he 
was detained several months as a prisoner. 
While he was in prison Gen. B. F. Butler, bent 
upon vengeance, destroyed practically every¬ 
thing of value on his lands and dispersed his pos¬ 
sible labor supply. 

In December 1867, Hunter participated in the 
organization of a local conservative party that 
did much to save Virginia from many of the evils 
of Radical Reconstruction suffered by other 
states. Beginning with 1874 Be was treasurer 
of Virginia for six years, and at the time of his 
death he was collector for the port of Tappahan- 
nock. Meanwhile he had written articles on 
phases of Confederate history, one of which, 
published in the Southern Historical Society 
Papers for April 1877 (vol. IV), involved him 
in an unfortunate controversy with Jefferson 
Davis. He died at his estate, “Fonthill,” near 
Lloyds, Va. On Oct 4, 1836, he had married 
Mary Evelina Dandridge, a niece by marriage 
of his law-preceptor, Judge Henry St George 
Tucker. They had eight children. Hunter was 


404 



Hunter 


also greatly interested in the education of his 
nephew, Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett [g.w.], 
the son of his widowed sister. 


[D. R. Anderson, "R. M. T. Hunter,” in The John 
p Branch Papers of Randolph-Macon Coll., June 
1006: A Memoir of R. M. T . Hunter (1903), by his 
daughter, Martha T. Hunter; L. Q. Washington, “Hon. 
R, M. T. Hunter,” repr. from Richmond Dispatch, Dec. 
/ 1807’ in Southern Hist. Soc. Papers, vol. XXV 
(1897) ; T. S. Garnett, Ibid., vol. XXVII (1899); C. 
H. Ambler, “Correspondence of R. M. T. Hunter, 1826- 
76’' in Ann. Report Am. Hist. Asso., 1916, vol. II 
(1918); J. F. Jameson, “Correspondence of J. C. Cal¬ 
houn,” Ibid., 1899, vol. II (1900) ; John Savage, Our 
Living Representative Men (i860) ; A. R. Micou, in 
Richmond Dispatch, Dec. 13, 1891; obituary in the 
same journal, July 20, 1887; information as to cer¬ 
tain facts from descendants, through W. G. Chisolm, 
New York City.] C. H. A. 


HUNTER, THOMAS (Oct. 19,1831-Oct. 14, 
1915), educator, son o£ John and Mary Ewart 
(Norris) Hunter, was born at Ardglass, Ire¬ 
land, of a family in comfortable circumstances 
the members of which had been prosperous 
fanners and daring sea captains for generations. 
He was educated in the private schools of the 
village and at Dundalk Institute and Santry Sci¬ 
ence School, Anglican boarding schools of 
neighboring towns. Although he was enthusi¬ 
astic about his studies and ranked high in his 
classes, he did not enjoy boarding-school life. At 
Dundalk, where discipline was maintained by 
corporal punishment, he found the masters brutal 
and the boys cowardly. Santry suited him bet¬ 
ter. For one thing, no corporal punishment was 
permitted there, a prohibition which he consid¬ 
ered sufficient reason for the higher tone of the 
school. He never forgot the experiences of these 
years, considering them, as he often said, a great 
influence in shaping his later educational theo¬ 
ries. In 1849 he left Santry to become a teacher 
in the Callan School, which was under the super¬ 
vision of the Ossary Diocesan Church Educa¬ 
tion Society. There he taught for seven months 
at a small salary, supplementing his income by 
acting as parish clerk. His career at the Callan 
School was a brief one. Thoroughly in sympa¬ 
thy with the “Young Ireland’' party, he worked 
and wrote for the independence of Ireland. In 
his newspaper articles, he expressed views on 
the Established Church and the relations be¬ 
tween England and Ireland which so incensed 
the government that the principal of the school, 
and the constable of the town as well, advised 
his leaving Ireland. On Feb. 3, 1850, he sailed 
for New York, where he arrived after forty-one 
days a lad not yet nineteen whose worldly pos¬ 
sessions consisted of a few dollars and a box of 
books, but with a good education and a great 
courage. Absolutely unknown, he found it diffi¬ 
cult to secure employment, and for days walked 


Hunter \ 

the streets seeking work of any kind. Finality^ 
he succeeded in getting a position for a three 
months’ trial as teacher of drawing in the Thir¬ 
teenth Street School, later known as Number 35, 
and ever after associated with his name. He 
worked his way from this subordinate position 
to the principalship of the school (1857), by 
sheer force of character and remarkable teach¬ 
ing ability. Number 35 under him became known 
throughout the city, not only for its scholarship 
but also for its discipline. Many of his “boys” 
became leaders in all walks of life, and always 
to his training did they attribute much of their 
success. The Thomas Hunter Association, or¬ 
ganized in 1897 and composed of the graduates 
of the school, bears eloquent testimony to this 
fact. 

Great as was his influence within the doors of 
Number 35, it was equally great outside. He it 
was who, with other educational pioneers, advo¬ 
cated reforms in methods of teaching; who in¬ 
sisted upon the abolition of corporal punishment; 
and who worked for tenure of office for teachers, 
for properly trained teachers, and for adult edu¬ 
cation. While engaged in his usual school work, 
Hunter’s attention was called to those people 
who for various reasons were not able to attend 
the regular school sessions, but were eager for 
an education. For these, he first organized spe¬ 
cial classes and, in 1866, founded the first eve¬ 
ning high school in New York City. He gradu¬ 
ally became interested in secondary education 
for girls, for whom there was in New York City 
no public education beyond the grammar grades. 
He was acutely conscious also of the need for 
properly trained teachers. With the aid of the 
board of education, he worked upon the problem, 
and after overcoming much opposition, succeed¬ 
ed in starting in 1869 the Normal and High 
School, the name of which was changed in 1870 
to Normal College of the City of New York. In 
the service of this institution he spent the rest 
of his life, adding first one year and then another 
to its course until, in 1902, it gained full colle¬ 
giate rank. Then, in 1906, satisfied with his 
achievements, he resigned as president. In * 9*4 
the board of education, in compliance with an 
overwhelming demand, gave the Normal College 
its present name, Hunter College of the City of 
New York. 'With others he edited Home Cul¬ 
ture, A Self-Instructor and Aid to Socid Hours 
at Home (1884); A Narrative History of the 
United States for the Use of Schools (1890). 
his wife, Annie McBride, whom he marrim m 
1854, died several years before him, as did his 
only son. Three daughters survived him. 

IThe Autobiog. of Thomas Hunter (193 0 , <**. by 



Hunter Hunter 


his daughter; Harper's Weekly, July 25, 1874; N. Y. 
Times and N. Y . Tribune, Oct. 1 s, 1915*] 

A.B.MacL. 

HUNTER, WALTER DAVID (Dec. 14, 
1875-Oct. 13, 1925), entomologist, the son of 
Joseph and Mary Abbey (Crooker) Hunter, was 
born at Lincoln, Nebr. His grandfather Hunter, 
of Scotch-Irish descent, emigrated to the United 
States in 1825; his mother was of Scotch-Eng- 
lish origin. Hunter entered the preparatory 
school of the University of Nebraska at the age 
of fourteen, and graduated in arts in 1895. He 
and the other children in the family were ap¬ 
parently bom naturalists, for they knew all the 
birds and many of the plants and insects around 
Lincoln. In the university he studied ornithol¬ 
ogy and taxidermy, but was soon led into the 
study of insects. After graduation, he became 
an instructor in entomology, and in 1897 re¬ 
ceived his master's degree. On account of lack 
of sufficient appropriations from the state, in- 
structorships were abolished in 1900, and Hunter 
became assistant entomologist on the staff of the 
Iowa Agricultural College Experiment Station, 
where he served for one year. During his grad¬ 
uate work at Nebraska he had done some held 
work for the United States Department of Agri¬ 
culture, and when, in 1901, Congress made ap¬ 
propriations for the investigation of the cotton 
boll weevil, Hunter, on account of his former 
excellent record, was selected for field work. 
He established a laboratory at Victoria, Tex., 
and, with increasing appropriations and an in¬ 
creasing number of assistants, he continued the 
investigation of this pest until the time of his 
death. During this period he was in charge of 
the investigations of all insects affecting cotton. 
Becoming greatly interested also in medical en¬ 
tomology, he was put in charge of this branch 
of the federal Bureau’s work. While at Victoria 
he married, in 1906, Mary P. Smith, daughter of 
Dr. E. H. Smith of that city. The work upon the 
cotton boll weevil was of the most intensive 
character. It is probable that no other single 
species of insect had been studied as broadly and 
as carefully before. Had the early recommen¬ 
dations of Hunter and his force been generally 
adopted in the southwestern states of the cotton 
belt, the spread of the weevil would have been 
greatly retarded and an enormous monetary loss 
would have been prevented. In 1915 he was pres¬ 
ident of the Entomological Society of Washing¬ 
ton, and in 1913 president of the American As¬ 
sociation of Economic Entomologists. The bib¬ 
liography of his writings contains about one 
tmndrai titles. His early work in Nebraska was 
concerned largely with the taxonomy of certain 


his publications were almost entirely of an eco¬ 
nomic character. He died suddenly at El Paso, 
Tex., two months before the completion of his 
fiftieth year. 

[Proc. of the Entomological Sac. of Washington, 
Dec. 1925; Nebraska Alumnus, Nov. 1925; Jour, of 
Economic Entomology, Dec. 1925; Who's Who in 
America , 1922-23; Dallas Morning News, Oct. 14, 15, 
1925; Houston Post-Dispatch, Oct. 14, 1925,] 

L.O.H. 

HUNTER, WHITESIDE GODFREY (Dec. 
25,1841-Nov. 2, 1917)* congressman, politician, 
the son of William and Mary (Godfrey) Hunter, 
was born near Belfast, Ireland, where he re¬ 
ceived his early education. Emigrating about 
1858 to Newcastle, Pa., he shortly began to study 
medicine in Philadelphia and was admitted to 
practice. In 1861 he enlisted in the 45th Penn¬ 
sylvania Infantry, being later assistant-surgeon 
and surgeon (149th and 211th Pennsylvania). 
After service in South Carolina, he was in the 
Army of the Potomac from 1862 to 1865, and 
was twice captured: at Gettysburg and at the 
Wilderness. In 1865 he became a naturalized 
citizen of the United States, and, attracted by 
oil discoveries, settled in Burkesville, Ky. Here 
he practised medicine and in 1869 married Susan 
J. Alexander. Two sons and a daughter were 
born to them. 

Entering politics, Hunter soon became a Re¬ 
publican leader in Cumberland County. He was 
postmaster of Burkeville, 1860-73; represen¬ 
tative in the legislature, 1873-74,1874-75, 1881- 
82; and delegate to the national conventions of 
1880 and 1892, in the former supporting Grant 
to the end. Elected to the United States House 
of Representatives in 1886 and 1894, he was an 
unsuccessful candidate in 1888, 1892, and 1896. 
The quiet but thorough way in which he organ¬ 
ized the Republicans in his constituency earned 
him the nickname of “Gumshoe.” In 1895 he di¬ 
rected the state-wide precinct organization and 
canvass which gave Kentucky its first Repub¬ 
lican governor, William O. Bradley [g/z/.]. In 
1896 Hunter was nominated by the Republican 
legislative caucus for the United States Senate, 
but his election was opposed by Governor Brad¬ 
ley and his followers. He was several times 
within one vote of election, but the session ended 
in a deadlock. Renominated in 1897, after an¬ 
other long, bitter contest, he withdrew to allow 
the Republicans to elect W. J. Deboe. 

Hunter was minister to Guatemala and Hon¬ 
duras from Nov. 8, 1897, to Dec. 8, 1903. He 
seems to have been well disposed toward the 
governments to which he was accredited, op¬ 
posing certain claims by citizens of the United 
States and suggesting arbitration in other cases. 
In 1901 he signed two treaties with Guatemala, 


Diptera. After he entered the federal service 

406 



Hunter 

on trade marks and on property tenure. Return¬ 
ing to Kentucky politics, he was the real, though 
not the nominal, manager of the Republican 
gubernatorial campaign of 1903, which was un¬ 
successful. At the same time, he was nominated 
by a Republican convention in the eleventh con¬ 
gressional district, to fill the seat in the na¬ 
tional House vacated by the death of Vincent S. 
Boreing, while D. C. Edwards was nominated 
by another convention in the same district and 
accepted by the district committee. The state 
committee decided for Hunter, however, and 
after a three-cornered contest, in which Hunter, 
Edwards, and John D. White, candidate of the 
“Law and Order” Republicans, all claimed the 
election, the House Committee on Elections 
awarded Hunter the seat. He supported the re¬ 
nomination of President Taft in 1912 and him¬ 
self sought the senatorial nomination but later 
withdrew. 

Hunter for a time owned the water and light 
company at Somerset, Ky., and constructed a 
trolley line there. Later he sold his interests and 
invested in mines in Torreon, Mexico, which 
had to be abandoned because of disturbances. 
His last years were spent in Louisville, where 
he died. 

[Papers of W. A. Hunter, Louisville; files of the 
Louisville Courier-Journal and obituary in issue of 
Nov. 3, 1917; S. P.^ Bates, Hist, of Pa. Volunteers t 
vol. V (1871) ; Hearing before the Committee on Elec¬ 
tions, No. 2, House of Representatives . . . (1905) ; 
A. D. Albert, Hist, of the Forty-fifth Regt., Pa. (191a), 
p. 425; biog. sketches in Cong. Directory, 54 and $8 
Cong. (1895 and 1904) ; Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928) ; 
Appletons ' Ann. Cyc., 1896, 1897, sub “Kentucky”; 
W. E. Connelley and E. M. Coulter, Hist, of Ky. 
(1922), vol. II.] W.C.M. 

HUNTER, WILLIAM (Nov. 26, 1774-Dec. 
3, 1849), United States senator, minister to 
Brazil, was born in Newport, R. I. His father 
was Dr. William Hunter, a Scotch physician, 
who having avowed himself a follower of the ill- 
starred Prince Charles, the Pretender, found it 
discreet to leave Scotland after the disaster of 
Culloden. He came to Newport about 1752 and 
was evidently at once well received in that pros¬ 
perous community. He delivered a series of lec¬ 
tures on anatomy there in 1756. In 1761 he 
married Deborah, daughter of Godfrey Mal- 
bone, a wealthy merchant in the town, and Wil¬ 
liam was the youngest of their six children. 

The boy received his preliminary education 
under Robert Rogers, who conducted a well- 
known classical school in Newport. From this 
school he entered Rhode Island College (later 
Brown University), from which he was gradu¬ 
ated with honor in 1791, when not quite sev¬ 
enteen years old. It had been planned that he 


Hunter 

should follow his father’s profession, and he 
was sent to England to study under a cousin, 
the celebrated Dr. John Hunter. Medicine, how¬ 
ever, made no especial appeal to the young man, 
and he soon turned his attention to the law. His 
immediate supervisor was Arthur Murphy, a 
famous classical scholar of the day. Through 
him, young Hunter was able to hear and meet 
some of England's greatest orators—Burke, Pitt, 
and Fox. He returned to America in 1793 and 
after further study was admitted to the bar in 
1795. His abilities were promptly recognized. 
In 1799 he was sent to the General Assembly of 
Rhode Island and continued as a member of the 
state legislature through reelections until 1812, 
acting in the last year of his office as speaker of 
the House. In 1812 he was chosen to fill out 
the term of United States Senator Champlin, 
who had resigned, and in 1814 he was elected to 
the Senate for another six years. Though a 
member of the Federalist party, he was never 
violently partisan, nor was he acrimonious in 
debate. Rhode Island as a state had made itself 
unpopular because of its stand on paper money, 
just previous to the adoption of the federal Con¬ 
stitution, Hunter's tact, ability, and eloquence 
did much to redeem its lost prestige. The fact 
that he favored the Missouri Compromise was 
not entirely pleasing to his constituents, how¬ 
ever, and he failed of reflection to the Senate, 
but on returning to Rhode Island again became 
a member of the state legislature for the years 
1823-25. 

He served his college as trustee from 1800 to 
1838. In 1834 President Jackson recalled him to 
public life by appointing him charge d'affaires 
to Brazil. Later, at the request of the young 
emperor, Dom Pedro, he was elevated to the po¬ 
sition of minister plenipotentiary, and served in 
this capacity until 1845, when, under President 
Tyler, a change of policies brought about his re¬ 
tirement Once more at home, he occupied him¬ 
self in literary and historical research, intend¬ 
ing to publish a work on the history and prog¬ 
ress of religious freedom, especially as exempli¬ 
fied by the founders of his native state, but he 
died before he could complete the task. On July 
15, 1804, Hunter was married in New York by 
Bishop Moore, to Mary Robinson, daughter of 
William T. Robinson, a Quaker merchant of 
that city. They had eight children. Since Hunt¬ 
er was an Episcopalian, the marriage resulted 
in his wife's expulsion from the Society of 
Friends. 

[Biog. Cyc. of Representative Men of R* L (1881); 
Representative Men and Old Families of R. /. < 1908), 
vol. I ; Anna F. Hunter (a grand-daughter), "A New¬ 
port Romance of 1804,” in Bull. Newport Hist. Soc., 



Hunter 

Apr. 1927; W. G. Goddard, “Biographical Notices of 
Early Graduates at Brown University,” Am. Quart 
Reg., May 1839; Providence Daily Jour., Dec. 11, 
1849; Newport Mercury, Dec. 8, 1849.] E. R.B. 

HUNTER, WILLIAM C. (iSi2~June 25, 
2891), China merchant and writer, was born in 
Kentucky. When he was not yet thirteen years 
of age, he managed to secure engagement as an 
apprentice to the Canton (China) agency of 
Thomas H. Smith & Son of New York. Sailing 
from the latter port on Oct. 9, 1824, in the ves¬ 
sel Citizen, he reached Canton after a voyage of 
125 days. In preparation for his work in the 
Far East, he spent eighteen months studying 
Chinese in the Anglo-Chinese College at Ma¬ 
lacca. Upon his return to Canton, he continued 
these studies under the guidance of the eminent 
Protestant missionary, Robert Morrison, thus 
earning the distinction of being, perhaps, the 
first American to devote himself to a systematic 
study of the spoken and written language. This 
interest he continued to cultivate throughout his 
life in the Factories (1825-44), occasionally 
contributing articles of sinological interest to 
local English-language publications—such as 
the Canton Register and the Chinese Reposi¬ 
tory. The failure, in 1827, of Smith & Company 
necessitated a brief trip to New York, but by 
1829 he was again in Canton as a clerk in the 
firm of Russell & Company, of which he ulti¬ 
mately became a member. After the Anglo- 
Chinese War (1842) and the destruction of the 
Factories, he spent his life in virtual retirement 
at Macao, or in looking after his business inter¬ 
ests. He was part owner of the first American 
steamship to ply in Chinese waters—the Midas, 
which sailed from New York Nov. 4, 1844, 
reaching Hongkong, via Cape of Good Hope, 
May 14, 1845. His chief claim to distinction is 
the publication in London, in 1882 and 1885 re¬ 
spectively, of The c Fan Kwae 3 at Canton Before 
Treaty Days, 1825 - 1844 , by an Old Resident 
(fan kwae being Chinese for “foreign devils”), 
and Bits of Old China —both written with the 
encouragement of a former chief of Russell & 
Company, Robert B. Forbes of Boston. They 
constitute the most intimate and readable ac¬ 
count that has come down to us of the circum¬ 
scribed life in the Canton Factories which for 
more than a century were almost the sole win¬ 
dow through which the West obtained a glimpse 
of the Middle Kingdom. Writing some decades 
after the events, he did so with a detachment and 
a fairness, to both the Chinese and Western 
viewpoints, that is unusual in the narratives 
dealing with that period* He died in Nice, 
Franca 


Huntington 

[In addition to Hunter’s own writings, see R. B. 
Forbes, Personal Reminiscences (1876); the files of 
the Chinese Repository, and the Canton Register ; H. B 
Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese 
Empire (1910), Chronicles of the East India Co. Trad¬ 
ing to China, 1635-1834, vol. IV (1926), and The 
Gilds of China (1909) ; Samuel Couling, Encyc. Sinica 
(Shanghai, 1917).] A.W.H. 

HUNTINGTON, COLLIS POTTER (Oct. 
22, 1821-Aug. 13, 1900), railroad magnate and 
capitalist, was born at Harwinton, Conn. His 
parents were Elizabeth Vincent and William 
Huntington, both members of English families 
which had emigrated to America in the seven¬ 
teenth century. Collis was the fifth of nine chil¬ 
dren. He later declared that he started in life 
and business with advantages, for he had not a 
liberal education and had no money, while many 
of his boy neighbors had both, a circumstance, 
Huntington said, that prevented them from do¬ 
ing the hard and homely work which was near¬ 
est to them (San Francisco Examiner, Apr. 24, 
1892). His early years were certainly devoid 
of luxury. He began to support himself at the 
age of fourteen, when he worked for a neighbor 
for seven dollars a month and board. This was 
at the same time the end of his formal schooling. 
In September 1836 he went to New York, and 
soon afterward he began peddling merchandise, 
principally watches and watch findings, through¬ 
out the Southern states. During the six years 
that followed he accumulated some capital, and 
used it to establish himself at Oneonta, Otsego 
County, N. Y., in 1842. The store at Oneonta 
was conducted jointly by him and his brother 
Solon, and was said to do the largest business 
in the county. 

In 1849 the young merchant left for Califor¬ 
nia with a stock of goods purchased for trade. 
He arrived safely at San Francisco after a some¬ 
what eventful voyage via the Isthmus of Pan¬ 
ama, shipped in a schooner to Sacramento, and 
from there went into the mountains to try his 
hand at mining. One day’s work convinced him 
that mining was not for him. He therefore re¬ 
turned to Sacramento and set up a merchandis¬ 
ing business in miners' supplies. This was the 
beginning of the firm which later became pros¬ 
perous and well known under the name of Hunt¬ 
ington & Hopkins. Sacramento was a conven¬ 
ient distributing point from which to furnish the 
country merchant, and Huntington seems to 
have carried on there a jobbing as well as a re¬ 
tail trade in foodstuffs, powder, hardware—in 
short, in all the necessities of a pioneer commu¬ 
nity. Early California trade was not on a com¬ 
mission basis; it consisted rather in buying and 
selling in a highly fluctuating and speculative 


408 



Huntington 

market, and Huntington was eminently fitted to 
succeed in such an environment by virtue of his 
native shrewdness, his great physical strength 
and endurance, and his uninterrupted trading 
experience of thirteen years. 

The opportunity which was to bring wealth 
and power came to Huntington in i860 in the 
shape of a proposal to build a railroad across 
the Sierra Nevada Mountains as part of a trans¬ 
continental railroad route. The author of the 
project was an engineer, Theodore Dehone Ju¬ 
dah [q.v.]. Many residents of California had 
appreciated the importance of speedy and regu¬ 
lar communication between the Far West and 
the Eastern states, but Judah differed from the 
others in that he had a practicable route, a com¬ 
pany in process of organization, and something 
in the way of estimates of cost and of prospec¬ 
tive traffic. Huntington became interested in 
what Judah had to say, and discussed the matter 
with other Sacramento business men. From his 
point of view the scheme, quite certainly, then 
appeared as only another speculation; but he 
was keen enough to understand the possibilities 
of profit which it contained, and bold enough to 
contemplate the risk of his accumulated savings 
in such an enterprise. He and Leland Stanford 
[q.v .], together with his own partner, Mark 
Hopkins, and a fourth associate, Charles Crock¬ 
er [q.v.], agreed to finance an instrumental sur¬ 
vey of Judah's suggested route, and later sent 
Judah to Washington to solicit government sup¬ 
port. Huntington himself went east in 1861, al¬ 
though he lacked Judah's acquaintance with po¬ 
litical circles at Washington, and probably could 
not lend, in this matter, effective support. 

When the government grants that made con¬ 
struction possible were secured, Huntington and 
his friends pushed the work with vigor. Appar¬ 
ently there was some initial friction within the 
enterprise between groups led respectively by 
Huntington and Judah, and there was talk of 
the withdrawal of one or the other interest, which 
interfered with progress for a while. Judah's 
death in 1863 restored unity in management by 
placing the Huntington party in undisputed con¬ 
trol. Huntington served as eastern agent during 
the construction period, with full power of at¬ 
torney from the company, borrowing money 
when necessary, purchasing material, and char¬ 
tering vessels for shipments to the West Crock¬ 
er was in direct charge of construction, while 
Stanford was president of the company, and, as 
governor of California from January 1862 to 
January 1864, was in a position to assure the 
friendliness of the local political authorities. 
The only information that we have as to the skill 


Huntington 

with which the eastern business was conducted 
comes from Huntington himself in the form of 
two or three stories that have been widely re¬ 
peated. Huntington's acknowledged ability as a 
trader, however, his financial interest in the Cen¬ 
tral Pacific undertaking, and the continued con¬ 
fidence which his associates reposed in him, af¬ 
ford assurance that his task was well performed. 

The Central Pacific Railroad was completed 
to a junction with the Union Pacific on May 10, 
1869. ^ It is not known what gains Huntington 
and his partners derived from the construction, 
because the books of the company that did the 
work were subsequently destroyed, but the profits 
were certainly large. Following upon the open¬ 
ing of the transcontinental route via Ogden, the 
associates interested themselves in additional 
construction through the southern counties of 
California and, ultimately, in the establishment 
of a second transcontinental line from San Fran¬ 
cisco down the San Joaquin Valley and thence 
east by way of El Paso to New Orleans. Their 
motives in this can only be surmised, but it is 
probable that they wished to occupy California 
more fully as a protection against the possible 
invasion of competing companies, as well as to 
secure the benefits of a land grant offered by 
Congress in 1866 for construction of a line from 
San Francisco to Los Angeles and San Diego 
and through the County of San Diego to the 
eastern boundary of California. In 1869 the 
Central Pacific had already a branch through the 
San Joaquin Valley from Lathrop to Modesto 
which could be used as part of the projected 
route. This was later extended to Goshen. The 
new construction beyond Goshen was performed 
in the name of the Southern Pacific Railroad 
Company, and for a time sections were leased, 
as fast as they were opened, to the Central Pa¬ 
cific Railroad for purposes of operation. In 1884 
the Southern Pacific Company was organized, 
and subsequently the Central Pacific and the 
other California companies were leased to the 
Southern Pacific Company, which now became 
the controlling corporation in the entire sys¬ 
tem. In later years the original Central Pacific 
was heard of less and less, though it continued 
to be perhaps the most profitable of the large 
units assembled under the associates' manage¬ 
ment. 

From the early seventies Huntington may be 
regarded as definitely committed to a railroad 
career. There is little reason to believe that this 
was his original intention, but conditions had 
changed greatly since his first negotiations with 
Judah ten years before. He was now possessed 
of a large railroad interest, and he was unable to 



Huntington 

sell it, when the Central Pacific was completed, 
upon what he regarded as reasonable terms. It 
is credibly reported that eighty per cent, of the 
stock of the Central Pacific was offered to D. O. 
Mills, as late as 1873, for a price of $20,000,000, 
and this was probably the last of several unsuc¬ 
cessful offers made to different parties. Since he 
could not sell the Central Pacific system, Hunt¬ 
ington was forced to operate it in order to earn 
dividends and to give value to the Central Pa¬ 
cific stock in which his construction profits were 
expressed. It is probable also that opportuni¬ 
ties for power and profit in railroading were be¬ 
ginning to be apparent to Huntington’s eyes, and 
that he had begun to feel the creator’s pride in 
the Central Pacific-Southern Pacific organiza¬ 
tion which he retained until the end of his life. 
Partly, therefore, by accident and partly by con¬ 
scious plan he remained in railroad work. 

Until April 1890, Stanford remained presi¬ 
dent, first of the Central Pacific and then of the 
Southern Pacific Company. Huntington was 
agent and attorney for the Southern Pacific 
Railroad, vice-president and general agent for 
the Central Pacific Railroad, first vice-president 
of the Southern Pacific Company, and member 
of the boards of directors of the two last-named 
organizations. His offices were in New York, 
though it was his custom to make at least one 
visit of inspection west each year. Among his 
financial duties he had the task of arranging for 
the sale of company stocks and bonds and of bor¬ 
rowing from the banks. The burden of this re¬ 
sponsibility was particularly heavy during the 
decade from 1870 to 1880, while the construction 
of Southern Pacific mileage was causing a steady 
drain upon the resources of the system. If the 
new lines had been immediately profitable they 
could have been more easily financed, but they 
were being built for strategic and political rea¬ 
sons rather than because of anticipated earning 
power, and their effect was to cause the average 
earnings of the system per mile steadily to de¬ 
cline. Nor was there, as late as 1879, a market 
in New York for system securities except for 
Central Pacific first mortgage bonds. For sev¬ 
eral years, therefore, Huntington’s ingenuity 
was taxed to keep the credit of his companies in¬ 
tact, and it was not until after 1880 that condi¬ 
tions sensibly improved. 

At the same time that Huntington was busy 
wrestling with the financial problems of a newly 
completed railroad in undeveloped western ter¬ 
ritory, he undertook to represent his company 
at Washington in opposition to legislation which 
it considered detrimental to its interests. The 
bffls which Huntington opposed between 1870 


Huntington 

and 1878 covered a wide range, but the most im¬ 
portant were those providing for government 
aid to the Texas & Pacific Railway, and those 
relating to the ultimate repayment of the gov¬ 
ernment advances to the Pacific railroad com¬ 
panies under the acts of 1862 and 1864. The 
Texas & Pacific project, energetically advocated 
by Thomas A. Scott [q.v.], contemplated a gov¬ 
ernment guarantee of interest on that company’s 
construction bonds. Huntington fought the 
guarantee, because it seemed likely to create a 
rival transcontinental system over the southern 
route, and Scott failed to procure it. Doubtless 
Huntington’s objections were not the only, and 
perhaps not even the principal, reasons which 
led Congress to refuse to assist the Texas & Pa¬ 
cific at this time, but it may be assumed that 
they contributed to the result. The most impor¬ 
tant legislation relating to the Pacific railroad 
debt with which Huntington was concerned was 
that which finally became law as the Thurman 
Act of 1878. The main purpose of this was to 
compel the Pacific railroad companies to in¬ 
crease their annual payments into a sinking fund 
for the eventual retirement of the thirty-year 
government bonds lent to these companies in aid 
of their construction. The law was undoubtedly 
defective, if only because it did not cause the re¬ 
sources of the sinking funds to increase as rap¬ 
idly as was hoped; but the companies opposed it 
principally because they felt that they should not 
be compelled to repay the government advances 
at the end of thirty or of any other number of 
years. From their point of view the indebted¬ 
ness of the companies to the government was 
offset by their equitable claims upon the govern¬ 
ment, totaling far more than the principal of the 
debt. Huntington shared this view and vigor¬ 
ously opposed all compulsory sinking-fund legis¬ 
lation, although without success. 

It happens that Huntington’s legislative ac¬ 
tivities at Washington between 1870 and r88o 
were brought to general attention by the publi¬ 
cation, some time later, of a large number of let¬ 
ters which he wrote during this period to a 
friend and associate in Southern Pacific affairs 
then resident in the West. This was David D. 
Colton, “financial director” of the Central Pa¬ 
cific Railroad, and co-associate with Hunting- 
ton, Hopkins, Stanford, and Crocker, though 
possessed of only a minor interest in their prop¬ 
erties. Huntington wrote Colton frequently and 
freely, keeping him informed with respect to the 
legislative situation at Washington, offering 
suggestions as to company management, and 
making pungent comments upon men and upon 
affairs. Colton died suddenly in October 1878. 


410 



Huntington 

His handling of company's business proved to 
have been open to serious criticism, and the as¬ 
sociates, when this became known, compelled 
Mrs. Colton to liquidate her husband's interest 
in their companies upon terms which she con¬ 
sidered unjust. In litigation some years later 
the Huntington letters to Colton were read into 
the court record and became exposed to public 
view (New York Sun, Dec. 29, 30,1883). They 
did not, apparently, affect the disposition of the 
case at the bar, which was decided adversely to 
Mrs. Colton, but they profoundly impressed pub¬ 
lic opinion with respect to the character of Hunt¬ 
ington. The letters reveal him as an active, pro¬ 
fane, and cynical advocate of the company's in¬ 
terests before the national legislature. They 
show further that he continually contemplated 
the use of money, during the period covered by 
the correspondence, as a means of influencing 
members of Congress, and that he entertained 
no doubts but that money would be accepted if 
offered, although the letters contain no direct 
evidence of bribes given or received. The whole 
tone of the correspondence justifies much of the 
severest criticism directed against railroads in 
politics, and affords a highly unfavorable view 
of the ideals and moral standards of Huntington 
himself. 

Huntington's later life never received the pub¬ 
licity to which the Colton letters exposed his 
career as a lobbyist and political agent, nor did 
it possess the dramatic element attached to the 
years when he helped to build the first transcon¬ 
tinental railroad. He was, however, continuous¬ 
ly active, and as his wealth increased he became 
more and more an outstanding figure in the 
business world. His principal investment, out¬ 
side of the Southern Pacific, was in the Chesa¬ 
peake & Ohio. This railway he acquired in 
1869. He became its president, extended its line, 
under other charters, from Huntington, W. Va., 
to Memphis, Tenn., and founded the town of 
Newport News, Va., as its deep-sea terminus. 
The record shows that he invited his western as¬ 
sociates to participate in his eastern holdings, 
but they refused, and Huntington himself sold 
part or all of his eastern and southern railroad 
properties during the nineties in pursuance of a 
policy of concentration upon the territory west 
of the Mississippi. He was also president of the 
Pacific Mail Steamship Company, of the Mexi¬ 
can International Railway Company, and of 
various roads forming part of the Southern Pa¬ 
cific system. He was interested in the United 
States & Brazil Steamship Company, running 
a line of steamers from New York to Brazil, in 
the Old Dominion Steamship Company, in the 


Huntington 

Market Street Railway of San Francisco, in 
railroads in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, and 
he doubtless had holdings and influence in en¬ 
terprises with which he was not generally known 
to be connected. After April 1890, he served as 
president of the Southern Pacific Company. It 
was at this time that the differences which had 
existed for some years between Huntington and 
Stanford produced an open break. Huntington 
had long been dissatisfied with the amount of 
time which Stanford devoted to Southern Pacific 
affairs, and he believed, moreover, that the lat¬ 
ter's election to the United States Senate in 1885 
had occurred at the expense of A. A. Sargent, 
Huntington's personal friend. Huntington ac¬ 
cused Stanford openly, in 1890, of using Southern 
Pacific influence for Stanford's political advance¬ 
ment; procured his own election to the presi¬ 
dency of the Southern Pacific Company, a po¬ 
sition which Stanford had held since 1885; 
and announced a change of policy for the future 
in terms which his associate could hardly for¬ 
give. 

Physically, Huntington was a man of unusual 
strength and endurance, measuring more than 
six feet, and weighing in later life considerably 
more than 200 pounds. He was twice married: 
first, on Sept. 16, 1844, to Elizabeth T. Stod¬ 
dard of Litchfield County, Conn.; second, to 
Mrs. Arabella Duval (Yarrington) Worsham 
of Alabama, on July 12,1884, when he was near¬ 
ly sixty-three years old. By neither wife had 
he children, but he adopted and brought up a 
baby girl, his first wife's niece, and his second 
wife had by her first marriage a son, Archer, 
who took the name of Huntington and of whom 
Collis Huntington always spoke as his son. 
While he himself was too immersed in business 
affairs to be socially ambitious, he built or bought 
expensive houses on Fifth Avenue, New York, 
and on Nob Hill, San Francisco. His adopted 
daughter Clara married in 1889 a German no¬ 
bleman, Prince Hatzfeldt. Opinions differ wide¬ 
ly as to Huntington's character, and somewhat 
as to the motives which guided him on his long 
career. It is probably safe to say that he was 
vindictive, sometimes untruthful, interested in 
comparatively few things outside of business, 
and disposed to resist the idea that his railroad 
enterprises were to any degree burdened with 
public obligations. There is, on the other hand, 
no question with respect to his indomitable en¬ 
ergy, his shrewdness in negotiation, his inde¬ 
pendence of thought and raciness of expression, 
and his grasp of large business problems. He 
was the dominant spirit among the small group 
of men who built up the Southern Pacific sys- 


4 ” 



Huntington 


tem, and that great organization remains his 
monument. 

[There is a biography of_ Huntington in H. H. Ban¬ 
croft, Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth, 
vol. V (1891), and information concerning his work 
can be found in Stuart Daggett, Chapters on the Hist. 
J 7 Southern Pacific (1922), and in histories of 
California and of the Pacific railroads. The San Fran¬ 
cisco Examiner, Dec. 25. 1890; the Railway Age, Aug. 
l 7t 1900» and the Art 1. Monthly Rev. of Revs., Sept. 
^900 contain extended biographical sketches. The offi¬ 
cial death notice appeared in the N. F. Times, Aug* 17, 
1900. _ Genealogical information is contained in The 
Huntington Family in America (1915). Mention may 
also be made of C. E. Russell, Stories of the Great Rail¬ 
roads (19x2); E. L, Sabin, Building the Pacific Rail- 
**y H- J. Carman and C. H. Mueller, “The 

Contract and Finance Company of the Central Pacific 
Railroad, m Miss. Valley Hist. Rev., Dec. 1927 • and 
of the report of and the testimony taken by the United 
States Pacific Railway Commission, Senate Exec. Doc 
No 5/, so Cong., 1 Sess., vols. II, IV, V. Most of the 
statements m the text are based upon manuscript and 
other source material m the Bancroft Library of the 
Lmv. of Cal., and m the Hopkins Library at Stanford 
umv., Cal.} g ^ 

HUNTINGTON, DANIEL (Oct. 14, 1816- 
Apr. 18,1906), painter, brother of Jedediah Vin¬ 
cent Huntington [q.t'.j, was born in New York 
City, the son of Benjamin and Faith Trum¬ 
bull (Huntington) Huntington. His maternal 
grandfather was Gen. Jedediah Huntington 
When a boy Daniel was sent to New 
Haven to be prepared for Yale University by 
the Rev. Horace Bushnell. After a year at Yale 
he entered Hamilton College in central New 
York in 1832. It was while there that he 
made the acquaintance of Charles Loring Elliott 
Cs^-L who was only four years older than he 
but yet able to make a more or less precarious 
living by going from place to place painting por¬ 
traits at a nominal price. It was such an enter¬ 
prise that brought Elliott to Hamilton College 
where he painted students’ portraits at five dol¬ 
lars each. Huntington’s was one of those he 
painted. Encouraged by Elliott’s favorable com¬ 
ments on his work Huntington seems at that 
time to have determined to become an artist. At 
least he borrowed brushes and other materials 
from Elliott and made attempts at painting 
groups of his friends. After leaving college in 
1836 he at once returned to his home in New 
York City and forthwith placed himself under 
Samuel F. B. Morse who was president of the 
National Academy of Design and professor of 
the literature of art in the University of the City 
of New York. A little later he became a stu¬ 
dent under Inman. In time he entered the Na¬ 
tional Academy and progressed so rapidly that 
in 1838 he had the honor of having his portrait 
of his father hung “on the line.” In 1837 he 
had exhibited ‘“Die Barroom Politician" and 
A Toper Asleep,” and in the previous year 


Huntington 

he had spent some six months doing landscapes 
in the Catskills. He thus definitely associated 
himself with the so-called Hudson River School. 
To this period belong “Dunderberg Mountain” 
and “The Roundout Hill—Twilight.” 

The year 1839 Huntington spent in Rome, 
Florence, and Paris. From Florence came the 
“Florentine Girl” and the “Sibyl” which later 
was engraved by John William Casilaer [q.v.]. 
In Rome he painted “The Shepherd Boy” and 
the “Early Christian Prisoners.” Upon his re¬ 
turn to New York in 1840 he painted “Mercy’s 
Dream,” of which he later made several replicas. 
At this time he also produced “Christiana and 
her Children.” He had been elected an associ¬ 
ate of the National Academy in 1839 and in the 
following year he was made an Academician. 
He now found himself called upon to paint many 
portraits, and this work he alternated with an 
ambitious attempt to illustrate The Pilgrim’s 
Progress. Owing to an inflammation of the eyes, 
however, he was obliged to curtail his work, so 
with his bride, Harriet Sophia Richards, whom 
he had married on June 16, 1842, he departed 
once more for Italy. For three years he re¬ 
mained in Rome, whence he sent back “The Ro¬ 
man Penitents,” “The Sacred Lesson,” and some 
landscapes. After returning to New York in 
1845 he resumed his major work, portraiture, 
although at the same time he found opportunity 
to execute historic and genre subjects. In 1851 
he left America to visit the exhibition at the 
Crystal Palace, London. He was invited to 
paint the portraits of many distinguished for¬ 
eigners, among whom were Sir Charles East- 
lake and the Earl of Carlisle, and remained 
abroad until 1858. Except for the years 1869- 
77 he was president of the National Academy 
from 1862 to 1891. In 1882 he once more vis¬ 
ited Europe, this time going to Spain, where 
among other works he painted “The Goldsmith’s 
Daughter” and “The Doubtful Letter.” His life 
may be said to have spanned nearly a century of 
American painting. His early life, however, 
came at an unfortunate period when taste was 
low and platitude was mistaken for grandeur. 
His subjects, when not portraits, were largely 
devoted to narrative, historic themes in which 
morality and virtue were emphasized. Even his 
portraits, which totaled a thousand out of his 
list of twelve hundred works, are conspicuous 
for a quality of goodness which can be explained 
in part by the fact that the artist himself was 
a man of deep religious feeling. From the tech¬ 
nical point of view he suffered by having come 
just too late to be able to profit from the sound 
training he might have received in a studio such 


412 



Huntington 

as Benjamin West’s and he was too firmly set 
in his style and had enjoyed too great a popu¬ 
larity to take advantage of the discoveries of 
the last half of the nineteenth century. He did 
nevertheless have a good sense of color and in 
his earlier work a solid way of painting. 

[Samuel Isham and Royal Cortissoz, The Hist, of 
Am. Painting (1927); Who's Who in America, 1906- 
07; the Outlook, Apr. 2$, 1906; minutes of the Nat 
Acad, of Design, May 6, 1906; H. T. Tuckerman, Book 
of the Artists (1867) ; S. G. W. Benjamin, “Daniel 
Huntington/’ Am. Artists and Their Works, I (1878), 
81-96; The Huntington Family in America (1915).] 

O.S.T. 

HUNTINGTON, ELISHA (Apr. 9, 1796- 
Dec. 13, 1865), physician, public official, was 
born at Topsfield, Mass., where his father, Rev. 
Asahel Huntington, was pastor of the Congre¬ 
gational Church. He was a descendant of Si¬ 
mon Huntington who died on his way from Eng¬ 
land to Roxbury, Mass., in 1633. His mother 
was Alethea Lord, and his maternal grandfather, 
Elisha Lord, M.D., of Pomfret, Conn., whose 
Christian name he received. In their hope that 
Elisha would become a physician his parents 
were not disappointed. After graduation from 
Dartmouth College in 1815, he taught in Mari¬ 
etta, Ohio, from 1815 to 1819, and at an academy 
in Marblehead, Mass., from 1819 to 1820. He 
then entered the medical school connected with 
Yale College, from which he received the de¬ 
gree of M.D. in 1823. In 1824 (according to sev¬ 
eral Lowell historians, though his daughter, 
Mrs. J. P. Cooke, in A Few Memories of Wil¬ 
liam Reed Huntington , 1910, says in 1826) he 
settled at East Chelmsford, Mass., incorporated 
soon after his arrival as the town of Lowell. He 
became its foremost citizen—an able and popu¬ 
lar general practitioner whose ministrations cov¬ 
ered a wide territory in Middlesex County— 
and a public man who helped to shape many of 
the institutions of a fast-growing community. 
He married, May 31, 1825, Hannah, daughter of 
Joseph and Deborah Hinckley, of Marblehead. 

His public career began in 1826 when he was 
elected to the first Lowell school board. In 1833 
and 1834 he was a selectman, and when Lowell 
became a city in 1836, he was on its first coun¬ 
cil, of which he was chosen president in 1838. 
The following year he was elected mayor to suc¬ 
ceed Luther Lawrence, who had died in office. 
He was reelected seven times, though not in 
successive years. In 1852, running on the Whig 
ticket, he was elected lieutenant-governor of 
Massachusetts, his term beginning in 1853. 
Amidst these political activities Huntington, al¬ 
ways a family physician of the best type, kept 
up an extensive medical practice. He attended 
regularly the meetings of the Middlesex North 


Huntington 

District Medical Society, of which, in 1848-49, 
he was president. He served as president of the 
Massachusetts Medical Society from 1855 to 
1857* His Address on the Life, Character, and 
Writings of Elisha Bartlett (iS56), like his 
mayoral addresses, is a model of simple, digni¬ 
fied writing. When a state almshouse was es¬ 
tablished at Tewksbury, Dr. Huntington was 
appointed inspector for three years; later, as 
consulting physician, he had large influence in 
developing a technique for the treatment of the 
indigent and unfortunate. In honor of this citi¬ 
zen of many attainments, Lowell in 1853 dedi¬ 
cated a public auditorium, Huntington Hall, 
from the platform of which many notable men 
and women spoke in the heyday of the lyceum 
lecture. In i860 he was chosen an overseer of 
Harvard College. Through attendance at the 
overseers’ meetings and through possession of 
similar scientific and literary tastes, he became 
a close friend of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
Huntington’s death followed a severe cold con¬ 
tracted while he attended the funeral of a fellow 
physician, Dr. P. P. Campbell. The subsequent 
funeral services at St. John’s Episcopal Church, 
of which he was senior warden, were of unusual 
impressiveness. His memory is honored in this 
church by a memorial window depicting St. 
Luke. 

[The Huntington Family in America (1915); G. T. 
Chapman, Sketches of the Alumni of Dartmouth Colt. 
(1867); H. A. Miles, Lowell, as It Was and as It Is, 
(1846); D.H.Hurd, Hist.of Middlesex County (1890), 
vol. II; Illustrated Hist, of Lowell and Vicinity 
(1897); D. N. Patterson, A Necrology of the Physi¬ 
cians of Lowell and Vicinity (1898) ; F. W. Cobum, 
Hist, of Lowell and Its People (1920), vol. II; Lowell 
Courier, Dec. 14, 1865; Boston Transcript, Dec. 15, 
1865 ; Boston Medical and Surgical Jour., Jan. 4, 2866; 
tribute by 0 . W. Holmes in Lowell Weekly Jour., Dee. 
«» 1865.] F.W.C 

HUNTINGTON, FREDERIC DAN (May 
28, 1819-July 11, 1904), Unitarian clergyman 
and later Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Cen¬ 
tral New York, was of Puritan stock, a descend¬ 
ant of Simon Huntington whose widow arrived 
in Boston in 1633. His grandfather, William, 
served in the Revolution under General Putnam. 
His father, Dan, was a tutor at Williams and 
Yale and later a Congregational clergyman. His 
mother was Elizabeth Porter Phelps of North¬ 
ampton. Frederic was born at Hadley, Mass., 
and was baptized there at the Church of Christ 
Something of the independence which charac¬ 
terized his life he doubtless inherited from his 
mother, who was liberal in her views and read 
widely. In 1828 she was excommunicated from 
the Hadley parish and the Congregational com¬ 
munion because of absence from communion for 
a period of five years. She at once became a 


4*3 



Huntington 

member of the Unitarian Church at Northamp¬ 
ton. Frederic read Channing*, Dewey, Mar- 
tineau, the Bible, Sir Thomas Browne, Burke, 
and DeQuincey. He attended Hopkins Acad¬ 
emy, where it is recorded, he was suspended for 
one year because he failed in a Latin recitation. 
In 1839 he graduated from Amherst. He had 
been admitted to the Church of Christ, North¬ 
ampton, in 1835, and was one of two Unitarians 
in college during his four-year course. In De¬ 
cember 1839 he entered Harvard Divinity 
School, graduating in 1842. He had already 
shown a strong reaction against ecclesiastical 
intolerance and became deeply interested in 
Transcendentalism, then in full flower under 
such thinkers as Emerson, Theodore Parker, 
and others. Huntington, however, was a severe 
critic of the movement, though perhaps as a re¬ 
action from his Calvinistic background, he val¬ 
ued its freedom in the pursuit of truth. While 
at Harvard he received thorough training in city 
institutional work, particularly in prisons, thus 
developing an interest in social Christianity 
which he never lost During this period also 
he helped Dr. Francis Greenwood in the services 
at King’s Chapel, Boston, where he had his first 
experience in liturgical worship, another influ¬ 
ence which was to develop later in his life. He 
was ordained as pastor of the South Congrega¬ 
tional Church (Unitarian), Boston, Oct 19, 
1842, and the following year, Sept. 4, 1843, he 
married Hannah Dane Sargent, daughter of 
Epes Sargent From 1845 t0 1858 he was editor- 
in-chief of the Monthly Religious Magazine , 

In 1855 Huntington accepted a call to go to 
Harvard as preacher at the college chapel and 
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals. Dur¬ 
ing these years he went through the deep spir¬ 
itual conflict which ultimately led him away 
from Unitarianism and into the Episcopal 
Church. His bent for liturgical worship, in¬ 
spired by his experience at King’s Chapel, led 
him to prepare a service-book which was used 
in Appleton Chapel on Sunday afternoons. His 
spiritual struggle was reflected in his articles in 
the Religious Magazine , and his clear-cut argu¬ 
ments in that journal created wide-spread inter¬ 
est Finally, in 1859, his decision to leave the 
Unitarian faith and enter the Episcopal Church 
was made public in a volume of sermons under 
the title: Christian Believing and Living . In a 
letter of this period he wrote: “I was never so at 
rest, never less anxious, never so strong as now” 
(Memoir, post, p. 126). In i860 he resigned his 
positions at Harvard and in September of that 
year was called as rector of Emmanuel Church, 
Boston, which he organized. He was ordered 


Huntington 

deacon in the same month at Trinity Church, by 
Bishop Eastburn, and on Mar. 19,1861, was ad¬ 
vanced to the priesthood at the Church of the 
Messiah by Bishop Eastburn. In 1868 he de¬ 
clined the office of Bishop of Maine but upon his 
election, on Jan. 10, 1869, as the first bishop of 
the newly created Diocese of Central New York, 
he accepted. He was consecrated at Emmanuel 
Church, Boston, Apr. 8, 1869, by Bishop Smith. 
During his episcopate in Central New York he 
founded St. John’s School, Manlius, N. Y. 
(1869), which remains as one of his monuments. 
In his work he was deeply devoted to the wel¬ 
fare of the Indians of his diocese. While not a 
political partisan he was a strong free-trader 
and was opposed to the acquisition of the Philip¬ 
pines. He was also deeply interested in the sin¬ 
gle-tax movement and favored woman’s suf¬ 
frage. He died at Hadley, Mass. His published 
works include: Lectures on Human Society 
(i860) ; Helps to a Holy Lent (1872) ; Uncon - 
scions Tuition (1878) ; and Christ in the Chris¬ 
tian Year and in the Life of Man (2 vols., 1878- 
Si). 

[Arria S. Huntington, Memoir and Letters of Fred¬ 
eric Dan Huntington (1906) ; G. C. Richmond, Fred¬ 
eric Dan Huntington (1908) ; The Huntington Family 
in America (1915) ; Who's Who in America, 1903-05; 
the Boston Herald, July 12, 1904.] G.E. S. 

HUNTINGTON, HENRY EDWARDS 
(Feb. 27, 1850-May 23, 1927), railway execu¬ 
tive, financier, founder of the Huntington Li¬ 
brary and Art Gallery, was born in Oneonta, 
N. Y., the son of Solon and Harriet (Saunders) 
Huntington, and a nephew of Collis Potter 
Huntington He was educated in the 

public and private schools of Oneonta and start¬ 
ed in life with small resources. At an early age 
he became a clerk in a hardware store in his na¬ 
tive town and at twenty went to New York City 
with a large hardware firm where he remained 
until 1871. In that year he took charge of a saw¬ 
mill which Collis P. Huntington was running at 
St Albans, W. Va., to supply timber for his 
railway construction. Later becoming the owner 
of the mill, Henry continued this business ex¬ 
perience for five years, after which he returned 
to Oneonta, N. Y, In i88r, again at the request 
of his uncle, he became superintendent of con¬ 
struction on a portion of the lines which even¬ 
tually became the Chesapeake, Ohio & South¬ 
western Railroad. In 1884 he was appointed 
superintendent of construction of the Kentucky 
Central Railroad, in 1886 became receiver for 
it, and from 1887 to 1890 was its vice-president 
and general manager. During this period and 
for the next two years he was director and offi- 


4H 



Huntington 

cial in various roads in which Collis P. Hunt¬ 
ington was interested. He was then called to 
San Francisco to join his uncle’s greatest sys¬ 
tem, the Southern Pacific Railway. From 1892 
to 1900 he held the important positions of as¬ 
sistant to the president, second vice-president, 
and first vice-president in this transcontinental 
enterprise. While in San Francisco he became 
interested in the street railways of the city, his 
large holdings and progressive policy bringing 
about a great expansion of the system. Dispos¬ 
ing of this in 1898, he began to invest capital in 
Los Angeles, where he bought and consolidated 
city transportation lines until he became sole 
owner of one of the largest urban systems in the 
country. 

In 1900 Collis P. Huntington died, leaving to 
Henry a large portion of his immense fortune. 
He thus became the logical head of the Southern 
Pacific Railway, but shortly after his uncle’s 
death he sold advantageously the control of the 
road to E. H. Harriman and devoted his atten¬ 
tion to other forms of transportation, particu¬ 
larly inter-urban traffic. By purchase of exist¬ 
ing lines and by new construction he covered 
Southern California with a network of electric 
roads and elaborated plans for a still more com¬ 
plete system to extend from Santa Barbara to 
San Diego and from the ocean back to the moun¬ 
tains. At this point he sold these lines to the 
Southern Pacific Railway in 1910 and applied 
his energies to other interests. He became a 
dominant figure in the development of electric 
power. His foresight in the purchase of real 
estate made him for years the greatest single 
land-owner in Southern California, his holdings 
running into tens of thousands of acres of city 
and country property which grew in value with 
the development of the country. To his vision 
and activity was due in great measure the phe¬ 
nomenal growth of that portion of the state. 
Parks, beaches, boulevards, hotels, and land 
companies testify to the wide extent of his own¬ 
ership. After moving to Los Angeles he built 
up a fine private estate in San Marino, adjacent 
to the city of Pasadena, where a stately mansion 
was surrounded by many acres of park and gar¬ 
dens, planted with rare trees and shrubbery, as 
well as botanical specimens from distant sub¬ 
tropical climates. Here also he built the library 
and art gallery to which he devoted his chief at¬ 
tention during the later years of his life. 

The library represented the accumulations of 
some twenty-four years, but the most important 
collections were made after 1910. The first sig¬ 
nificant step was the purchase of the library of 
E. D. Church in 1911, followed in 1912 by the 


Huntington 

Beverly Chew collection and selections from the 
Robert Hoe library; part of the Duke of Devon¬ 
shire library in 1914; the Halsey collection of 
English, American, and French literature in 
1915; the best part of the Pembroke library in 
1916; and the Bridgewater in 1917. Other im¬ 
portant acquisitions include the Loudoun Papers 
and the library of Judge Russell Benedict; the 
Lincoln collection of Ward Hill Lamon; the 
Grenville Kane collection of Washington let¬ 
ters ; purchases from the Britwell library; not to 
mention individual rarities added from time to 
time. Huntington’s preferences were for books 
and manuscripts relating to England and Amer¬ 
ica, but the library is not exclusively confined to 
those fields. At his death it contained some of 
the rarest incunabula, was one of the best li¬ 
braries in America for materials on English lit¬ 
erature, and for original sources in the history 
of America was one of the great collections of 
the world. In art there was also a preference 
for English painters, the gallery containing some 
of the best works of Reynolds, Gainsborough, 
and others of the eighteenth century. Hunting¬ 
ton’s immense wealth and the exigencies of life 
in the early twentieth century made such an as¬ 
semblage possible. At first the books and art 
treasures were housed in his residence in New 
York City, but as this space was rapidly out¬ 
grown they were removed to San Marino and 
placed in die palatial building in the grounds of 
his estate, where he employed experts to con¬ 
tinue their care and classification. By deeds of 
gift made in 1919, 1920, 1921, and 1922, these 
collections together with the surrounding estate 
of more than two hundred acres were placed in 
the hands of five trustees with the duty of main¬ 
taining them for the use of the public after his 
death. When this occurred in 1927 the library 
and works of art were valued at $30,000,000, 
and an endowment of $8,000,000 was provided 
for their operation. 

In appearance Huntington was tall, erect, 
having in his later years the aspect of a retired 
army officer. Naturally modest and reserved, 
his methods of business were quiet but effec¬ 
tive. Approachable and friendly, he was at the 
same time an excellent judge of men, quick and 
decisive in action, with highly developed talent 
for organization. When asked for the reasons 
for his phenomenal success he would reply that 
there was no rule except to be well prepared and 
“on the job all the time.* His collections erf art 
expressed his refined taste as well as his desire 
to possess great rarities in painting. Able to 
purchase almost anything in the way of rare 
books and manuscripts, he consistently co nfi ned 



Huntington 

his attention to a few fields with extraordinary 
results. Huntington was married on Nov. 17, 
1873, to Mary Alice Prentice, the sister of Collis 
P. Huntington’s adopted daughter, from whom 
he was divorced in 1906. On July 16, 1913, he 
was married to Arabella Duval Huntington, nee 
Yarrington, widow of his uncle, who possessed 
great wealth in her own right She took special 
interest in the development of the botanical gar¬ 
den and in the collection of antique art and fur¬ 
niture. Shortly before his death Huntington 
dedicated this section of the gallery to her mem¬ 
ory. His other public benefactions included a 
bequest of $2,000,000 to found in Los Angeles 
the Collis P. Huntington and Howard Hunting- 
ton Memorial Hospital in memory of his uncle 
and son; $10,000 each to Occidental College and 
to the University of Southern California, in 
California, and to the College of William and 
Mary in Virginia; and smaller gifts to var ; ous 
churches and institutions. He died in Philadel¬ 
phia. 

[R. D. Hunt, ed., Cal. and Californians (1926), vol. 
Ill; I. F. Marcosson, A Little Known Master of Mil¬ 
lions; the Story of Henry E. Huntington, Construc¬ 
tive Capitalist (1914) ; Press Reference Lib., Western 
Edition (1913), vol. I; The Huntington Family in 
America (191$); Scribner's Mag., July 1927; the 
World’s Work, Jan. 1925; N. Y. Times, May 24, 27, 
1927; Times (Los Angeles), May 24, 25, 27-30, 1927; 
Robt. 0 . Schad, Henry Edwards Huntington, The 
Founder and the Library, Huntington Lib. Bull., no. 1, 
1931, and separate reprint; materials in the Henry E. 
Huntington Library.] j 

HUNTINGTON, JABEZ (Aug. 7,1719-Oct 
5, 1786), merchant, legislator, father of Jede- 
diah Huntington was born in Norwich, 

Conn., the son of Joshua and Hannah (Perkins) 
Huntington and a descendant of Simon Hunt¬ 
ington whose widow arrived in the Massachu¬ 
setts Bay Colony in 1633. He graduated from 
Yale College in 1741 and returned to Norwich 
where his father had been a successful pioneer 
merchant. There he united with the church and 
entered the West India trade. On Jan. 20, 1742, 
he married Elizabeth Backus. She died in 1745 
and the following year he married Hannah Wil¬ 
liams who survived him twenty-one years. In 
the midst of a prosperous commercial career 
Huntington devoted much of his time to public 
affairs. He was a justice of the peace for New 
London County and for many years represented 
Norwich in the Assembly. In May 1757 he was 
chosen clerk of the Assembly and in May 1760 
he became the speaker of the House of Repre¬ 
sentatives. In May 1754 he was captain of a 
troop of horse in the 3rd Regiment and in May 
1760 fee was made a lieutenant in the first com¬ 
pany of the 5th Regiment; four years later he 
became captain of this company. In the years 


Huntington 

immediately preceding the Revolution the Hunt¬ 
ingtons were a family of wealth and social pres¬ 
tige. Of the six chaises in Norwich, that of 
Jabez Huntington was undoubtedly the finest, 
being studded with brass nails and having a top 
that could be thrown back. In the early struggles 
between the Crown and the colonies he support¬ 
ed the colonists. When Gov. Thomas Fitch de¬ 
termined to support the Stamp Act and assem¬ 
bled his council that he might take the oath in 
their presence, Huntington was one of the seven 
members who withdrew rather than witness the 
offensive ceremony. In May 1764 he was chosen 
assistant by the Assembly and in May of the fol¬ 
lowing year he was made lieutenant-colonel of 
the 3rd Regiment of the colonial militia. He be¬ 
came probate judge for the Norwich district in 
May 1773 and the next year was chosen mod¬ 
erator of a large meeting assembled in Norwich 
on June 6 to “take into consideration the mel¬ 
ancholy situation of our civil, constitutional Lib¬ 
erties, Rights, and Privileges” (Caulkins, post, 
p. 219). In May 1775 he was made a member of 
the Council of Safety and for four years he 
served that committee with tireless zeal. In De¬ 
cember 1776 he was appointed one of the two 
major-generals from Connecticut, and when 
David Wooster died from a wound received dur¬ 
ing the retreat of the British forces from Dan¬ 
bury in April 1777, Huntington was appointed 
major-general over the entire militia of Con¬ 
necticut His excessive labors exhausted him 
and in February 1779 he was seized with a nerv¬ 
ous disorder which brought about his death, 
though he lingered on until October 1786. 

[The Huntington Family in America (1915); F. B. 
Dexter, Biog. Sketches of the Grads, of Yale Coll ... . 
1701-45 (1885); F. M. Caulkins, Hist, of Norwich, 
Conn. (1845) ; The Pub. Records of the Colony of 
Conn., vols. IX-XV (1876-90) ; The Pub . Records of 
the State of Conn. . . . with the Jour. of the Council 
of Safety, vols. I-III (1894-1922); Huntington Pa¬ 
pers in the Com. Hist. Soc. Colls., vol. XX (1923)*] 

F. M—n. 

HUNTINGTON JEDEDIAH (Aug. 41743 - 
Sept 25, 1818), Revolutionary soldier, born at 
Norwich, Conn., was the son of Gen. Jabez 
Huntington [q.v.] by his first wife, Elizabeth 
Backus. His father had accumulated a fortune 
in the West India trade, and the wealth and so¬ 
cial rank of his family caused his name to be 
placed second on the list of his class in the Har¬ 
vard College catalogue and above that of Josiah 
Quincy. He graduated in 1763 and settled in 
Norwich to assist his father in business. With 
the approach of the Revolution he became an ac¬ 
tive Son of Liberty. His military career began 
in October 1769, when the Connecticut Assem¬ 
bly appointed him ensign of the first Norwich 


416 



Huntington 

company; in 1771 he became lieutenant, and in 
May 1774 he was appointed captain of the com¬ 
pany. Five months later he was made colonel 
of the 20th Regiment of colonial militia. In the 
spring of 1776 he marched to Boston and was 
in service in that vicinity until after the British 
evacuation. He then marched to New York, 
where his men fought with conspicuous bravery 
at the battle of Long Island. During this year 
he was engaged at King’s Bridge, Northcastle, 
and Sidmun’s Bridge. In Apr. 1777, he cooper¬ 
ated with Arnold in harassing the British as 
they withdrew from Danbury to the sea. He 
was successively colonel of the 8th Connecticut 
Regiment (1775), of the 17th Regiment of Con¬ 
tinental Infantry (1776), of the 1st Connecticut 
Regiment (1777), and in May 1777 he became 
a brigadier-general in the Continental Army. 
He joined General Putnam at Peekskill in the 
following July but returned to the main army 
near Philadelphia in the fall. He was later sta¬ 
tioned at various posts in the Hudson Valley. A 
member of the court martial that tried Gen. 
Charles Lee in July 1778, he was also on the 
court of inquiry to investigate the case of Major 
Andre. He was one of a committee of four that 
drafted the constitution of the Society of the 
Cincinnati. At the close of the war he was 
brevetted major-general. 

After his retirement from the army he re¬ 
sumed his former business in Norwich but was 
drawn into many civic employments. He served 
as sheriff of New London county several months 
before he became treasurer of the state and a 
delegate to the state constitutional convention. 
In 1789 his friend President Washington ap¬ 
pointed him collector of the customs at the port 
of New London and this post he retained until 
shortly before his death. His first wife. Faith 
Trumbull, daughter of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull 
of Connecticut, had visited him in camp at Rox- 
bury in the early days of the conflict. The scenes 
of war affected her sensitive mind and she be¬ 
came deranged and died Nov. 24, 1775. His 
second wife was Ann Moore, daughter of a mer¬ 
chant of New York who had been impoverished 
by the Revolution. 

[The Huntington Family in America (1915) ; Hunt¬ 
ington Papers in Conn. Hist. Sac. Colls., vol. XX 
(1923) ; Mass. Hist. Soc. Colls., 5 ser., vol. IX (1885) ; 
Pub. Records of the Colony of Conn., vols. XIII-XV 
(1885-90) ; F. M. Caulkins, Hist, of Norwich, Conn , 
(1845); Abel McEwen, A Sermon, Preached at the 
Funeral of Gen . Jedediah Huntington (1818),] 

F.M—n. 

HUNTINGTON, JEDEDIAH VINCENT 
(Jan. 20, 1815-Mar. 10, 1862), novelist, editor, 
the son of Benjamin and Faith Trumbull (Hunt¬ 
ington) Huntington, was bom in New York 


Huntington 

City. His paternal grandfather was Judge Ben¬ 
jamin Huntington (1736-1800), a member of 
the Continental Congress and a Federalist con¬ 
gressman. His maternal grandfather was Gen. 
Jedediah Huntington While of “stand¬ 

ing order” stock of Connecticut, his maternal 
grandfather married a sister of Bishop Moore 
of Virginia, which accounted for the Episco- 
palianism of the youth’s family. As became a 
broker’s son, Jedediah was trained by tutors 
and in an Episcopalian private school which pre¬ 
pared him for Yale College. Transferring from 
Yale, he was graduated in 1835 from the Uni¬ 
versity of the City of New York (later New 
York University) and then earned a medical 
degreeat the University of Pennsylvania (1838). 
Experiencing a call to the ministry, he taught 
philosophy at St. Paul’s School, Flushing, L. I., 
and studied theology. In 1841 he was ordained 
an Episcopalian minister and assigned to a 
church at Middlebury, Vt. He married his first 
cousin, Mary Huntington, in April 1842. In the 
meantime he had won somewhat of a reputation, 
especially in England, on the publication of a 
sonnet sequence on the “Coronation Sonnets” 
{Blackwood*$ Edinburgh Magazine, September 
1838). This was followed in 1843 by Poems, 
which a reviewer in the London Athenceum for 
Jan. 6, 1844, regarded as “classical and Words¬ 
worthian.” Becoming unsettled in creed because 
of his interest in the Oxford Movement, he re¬ 
signed his rectorship in 1846 and went to Eng¬ 
land, where he accepted High-church princi¬ 
ples. Still dissatisfied, he journeyed to Rome 
where he lived with his brother, Daniel [g.r.], 
a painter. Here he wrote Lady Alice which was 
published both in England and America in 1849 
and was accepted as the work of an English 
Puseyite. In America it received severe criti¬ 
cism even on moral grounds (North American 
Review , January 1850) and possibly because of 
his conversion (and that of his wife) to Catholi¬ 
cism (1849). At any rate this step cost Hunt¬ 
ington many old friends if it did not lessen his 
reputation as a litterateur and the earnings of 
his pen. In a lecture some years later he de¬ 
scribed the problems of converts whose oppor¬ 
tunities as Catholics to earn a living with pen 
or by teaching were then quite impossible, and 
he suggested means in which they might be aided 
without recourse to charity (St. Vincent de Paul 
Quarterly ; May 1905). 

Returning to America, he engaged in the 
movement for an international copyright agree¬ 
ment as a means of protecting American and 
English authors from the piracy of publishing 
houses. For a time he was editor of the short- 


417 



Huntington 

company; in 1771 he became lieutenant, and in 
May 1774 he was appointed captain of the com¬ 
pany. Five months later he was made colonel 
of the 20th Regiment of colonial militia. In the 
spring of 1776 he marched to Boston and was 
in service in that vicinity until after the British 
evacuation. He then marched to New York, 
where his men fought with conspicuous bravery 
at the battle of Long Island. During this year 
he was engaged at King’s Bridge, Northcastle, 
and Sidmun’s Bridge. In Apr. 1777, he cooper¬ 
ated with Arnold in harassing the British as 
they withdrew from Danbury to the sea. He 
was successively colonel of the 8th Connecticut 
Regiment (1775), of the 17th Regiment of Con¬ 
tinental Infantry (1776), of the 1st Connecticut 
Regiment (1777), and in May 1777 he became 
a brigadier-general in the Continental Army. 
He joined General Putnam at Peekskill in the 
following July but returned to the main army 
near Philadelphia in the fall. He was later sta¬ 
tioned at various posts in the Hudson Valley. A 
member of the court martial that tried Gen. 
Charles Lee in July 1778, he was also on the 
court of inquiry to investigate the case of Major 
Andre. He was one of a committee of four that 
drafted the constitution of the Society of the 
Cincinnati. At the close of the war he was 
brevetted major-general. 

After his retirement from the army he re¬ 
sumed his former business in Norwich but was 
drawn into many civic employments. He served 
as sheriff of New London county several months 
before he became treasurer of the state and a 
delegate to the state constitutional convention. 
In 1789 his friend President Washington ap¬ 
pointed him collector of the customs at the port 
of New London and this post he retained until 
shortly before his death. His first wife, Faith 
Trumbull, daughter of Gov. Jonathan Trumbull 
of Connecticut, had visited him in camp at Rox- 
bury in the early days of the conflict The scenes 
of war affected her sensitive mind and she be¬ 
came deranged and died Nov. 24, 1775. His 
second wife was Ann Moore, daughter of a mer¬ 
chant of New York who had been impoverished 
by the Revolution. 

[The Huntington Family in America (191$) I H rnit- 
ington Papers in Conn. Hist. Soc . Colls., vol. XX 
(1923) ; Mass. Hist, Soc. Colls., 5 ser. # vol. IX (1S85); 
Pub. Records of the Colony of Conn,, vols. XIII-XV 
(1885-90) ; F. M. Caulkins, Hist, of Norwich, Conn . 
(1845); Abel McEwen, A Sermon, Preached at the 
Funeral of Gen . Jedediah Huntington (1818 ).3 

F.M—n. 

HUNTINGTON, JEDEDIAH VINCENT 

(Jan. 20, 1815-Mar. 10, 1862), novelist, editor, 
the son of Benjamin and Faith Trumbull (Hunt¬ 
ington) Huntington, was bom in New York 


Huntington 

City. His paternal grandfather was Judge Ben¬ 
jamin Huntington (1736-1800), a member of 
the Continental Congress and a Federalist con¬ 
gressman. His maternal grandfather was Gen. 
Jedediah Huntington [q.v.]. While of “stand¬ 
ing order” stock of Connecticut, his maternal 
grandfather married a sister of Bishop Moore 
of Virginia, which accounted for the Episco- 
palianism of the youth’s family. As became a 
broker’s son, Jedediah was trained by tutors 
and in an Episcopalian private school which pre¬ 
pared him for Yale College. Transferring from 
Yale, he was graduated in 1835 from the Uni¬ 
versity of the City of New York (later New 
York University) and then earned a medical 
degreeatthe University of Pennsylvania (1838). 
Experiencing a call to the ministry, he taught 
philosophy at St. Paul’s School, Flushing, L. I., 
and studied theology. In 1841 he was ordained 
an Episcopalian minister and assigned to a 
church at Middlebury, Vt. He married his first 
cousin, Mary Huntington, in April 1842. In the 
meantime he had won somewhat of a reputation, 
especially in England, on the publication of a 
sonnet sequence on the “Coronation Sonnets” 
(Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, September 
1838). This was followed in 1843 by Poems, 
which a reviewer in the London Athenaeum for 
Jan. 6, 1844, regarded as “classical and Words¬ 
worthian.” Becoming unsettled in creed because 
of his interest in the Oxford Movement, he re¬ 
signed his rectorship in 1846 and went to Eng¬ 
land, where he accepted High-church princi¬ 
ples. Still dissatisfied, he journeyed to Rome 
where he lived with his brother, Daniel [q.r.], 
a painter. Here he wrote Lady Alice which was 
published both in England and America in 1849 
and was accepted as the work of an English 
Puseyite. In America it received severe criti¬ 
cism even on moral grounds ( North American 
Review, January 1850) and possibly because of 
his conversion (and that of his wife) to Catholi¬ 
cism (1849). At any rate this step cost Hunt¬ 
ington many old friends if it did not lessen his 
reputation as a litterateur and the earnings of 
his pen. In a lecture some years later he de¬ 
scribed the problems of converts whose oppor¬ 
tunities as Catholics to earn a living with pen 
or by teaching were then quite impossible, and 
he suggested means in which they might be aided 
without recourse to charity (St Vmcmt de Pad 
Quarterly, May 1905). 

Returning to America, he engaged in the 
movement for an international copyright agree¬ 
ment as a means of protecting American and 
English authors from the piracy of publishing 
houses. For a time he was editor of the short- 


417 



Huntington 

lived Metropolitan Magazine (Baltimore, 1853- 
54) which was maintained on too high a literary 
level for the Catholic reading public of the fifties. 
Later he edited the St. Louis Leader (1855-56), 
a Catholic weekly, which became a daily with 
Catholic tendencies. Again he failed partly be¬ 
cause of his tactless observations on the social 
crudities of the frontier, on slavery, and other 
debatable issues. There was no cessation of liter¬ 
ary efforts, and though his novels were more 
severely criticized in America than in England, 
they were read. Alban, or the History of a 
Young Puritan (i8sr, 1853) recounted in auto¬ 
biographical form the story of a New Englander 
in Yale, in New York society, and in religious 
evolution from Anglicanism to Catholicism. The 
Pretty Plate (1852), a Sunday-school story 
which appeared in a number of editions, was fol¬ 
lowed by America Discovered: a Poem (1852) ; 
The Forest, a sequel to Alban (1852); Narrative 
of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America 
in the Years 1811,12,13,14 (1854), translated 
from the French of Gabriel Franchere; Blonde 
and Brunette (1859); and Rosemary (i860), 
which is usually regarded as his best work. 
Among his published lectures, St. Vincent de 
Paul and the Fruits of his Life (1852) was most 
widely circulated, and today he is known for his 
Short and Familiar Answers to Objections 
Against Religion (1855), translated from the 
French of Louis Gaston de Segur, which has 
passed through many editions. At Pau in France, 
death finally relieved Huntington from the rav¬ 
ages of phthisis which he had borne so patiently. 

[Cath. Encyc ,, vol. VII ; F. E, Tourscher, ed., The 
Kenrick-Frenaye Correspondence, 1830-62 (1920); C. 
E. McGuire, Caih. Builders of the Nation (1923). vol. 
IV; J. J. Walsh, “Doctor J. V. Huntington and the 
Oxford Movement in America,” Records of the Am. 
Cath. Hist. Soc., Sept., Dec. 1905; The Huntington 
Family in America (1915) ; Cath. Mirror, Feb. 26 , 
1859; N. Y. Times, Mar. 29, 1862.3 p 

HUNTINGTON, MARGARET JANE 
EVANS (Jan. 9, 1842-Mar. 17, 1926), educa¬ 
tor, club woman, was bom in Utica, N. Y., the 
daughter of Daniel M. and Sarah (James) 
Evans, who had come to the United States from 
Wales. There were eight children, five daugh¬ 
ters and three sons. While she was still a child, 
the family moved to Minnesota, settling in Wino¬ 
na County and later moving to Faribault, which 
became their permanent home. It was in Wino¬ 
na County that Margaret began her first teach¬ 
ing in a country school. In 1864 she entered 
Lawrence University at Appleton, Wis., because 
it was the only institution in the West at that 
time where a woman could study Greek. She 
graduated in 1869 and in 1872 received the de- 


Huntington 

gree of M.A., continuing at the college as pre¬ 
ceptress until 1874 when she accepted a position 
on the faculty of Carleton College at Northfield, 
Minn. There she remained in active service un¬ 
til 1908, with the exception of two years, 1878- 
79 and 1892-93, spent in study abroad, holding 
the positions of dean of women and professor of 
English literature. Early in the eighties she be¬ 
came interested in club work and founded the 
Monday Club, long a successful organization. 
In 1895 she took the leadership in the formation 
of the Minnesota Federation of Women's Clubs, 
of which she was elected president. Her interest 
in the state federation brought her into promi¬ 
nence in the General Federation of Women's 
Clubs which elected her second vice-president 
in 1898. She was also chairman of the commit¬ 
tee on education of the General Federation and 
made an intensive study of the needs of the pub¬ 
lic schools and educational standards throughout 
the country. For many years she was much in 
demand for speeches in connection with her club 
work and other interests but she did little writ¬ 
ing. A few of her speeches have been published. 
She was the president of the Minnesota Congre¬ 
gational Women's Board of Missions from 1879 
to 1914 and had the distinction of being the first 
woman to be elected a corporate member of the 
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
Missions. In addition to these activities, she 
held office in the Minnesota State Art Society 
and was chairman of the Minnesota State Public 
Library Commission from 1899 until her death. 
On Nov. 7, 1914, she was married to the Rev. 
George Huntington, pastor and professor of 
rhetoric and Biblical literature at Carleton Col¬ 
lege, who had long been her colleague, having 
joined the faculty in 1879. 

[Delevan L. Leonard, The Hist . of Carleton Coll. 
(1904.); Mary I. Wood, The Hist of the Gen. Federa¬ 
tion of Women's Clubs (1912) ; Minneapolis Morning 
Tribune, Mar. 18, 1926; Who's Who in America, 1924- 
«•] B.R. 

HUNTINGTON, SAMUEL (July 3, 1731- 
Jan. 5, 1796), signer of the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence, president of the Continental Congress, 
governor of Connecticut, was bom in Windham, 
Conn. He was the son of Nathaniel and Mehet- 
able Thurston Huntington and was descended 
from Simon Huntington whose widow settled in 
Boston in 1633. His father was a farmer and 
clothier, and he grew up on the farm and in the 
shop, receiving but scant education. At sixteen 
he was apprenticed to a cooper and served out 
his term of apprenticeship. He was naturally 
studious and, unaided, studied Latin and law. 
In 1758 he was admitted to the bar and began 


418 



Huntington 

to practise in Norwich, Conn. In May 1765 he 
represented Norwich in the General Assembly 
of the colony of Connecticut. Ten years later he 
was again chosen to represent Norwich, but 
when the General Assembly convened and the 
votes of the freemen had been counted, it was 
found that he had been elected an Assistant—an 
office to which he had been nominated in 1773 
and 1774. Accordingly he left the General As¬ 
sembly and took his seat in the upper house of 
the legislature. He was annually reelected an 
Assistant until 1784. During the Revolution he 
served on many committees in Connecticut In 
May 1775 the General Assembly appointed him 
a member of a committee for the defense of the 
colony. In July 1777 he was named by the gov¬ 
ernor and council one of a committee to meet 
the representatives from Massachusetts, New 
Hampshire, Rhode Island, and New York at 
Springfield to consult on the state of the cur¬ 
rency. In October 1777 he was named by the 
General Assembly a member of a committee to 
consult with the Corporation of Yale College 
in regard to putting “the education of youth in 
that important seminary . . . upon a more ex¬ 
tensive plan of usefulness” (The Public Records 
of the State of Connecticut , I, 424). He was ac¬ 
tive in the judicial as well as in the legislative 
affairs of the colony and state. In 1765 he was 
appointed King’s Attorney for Connecticut, and 
from 1765 to 1775 he was a justice of the peace 
for New London County. In 1773 he was ap¬ 
pointed a judge of the superior courts of the col¬ 
ony and was reappointed annually to that office. 
In 1784 he was appointed chief justice of the su¬ 
perior court of Connecticut 
Huntington represented Connecticut in the 
Continental Congress from 1775 until 1784. In 
that body he served on many committees, signed 
the Declaration of Independence, and in Sep¬ 
tember 1779 was chosen president of the Con¬ 
gress to succeed John Jay, who had just been 
appointed minister plenipotentiary to negotiate 
a treaty between the United States and Spain. 
He held the office until July 1781, when the 
state of his health forced him to resign and to 
request a leave of absence; but in 1783 he was 
again in attendance at Philadelphia. In 1783 
he was chosen lieutenant-governor of Connecti¬ 
cut and in the year following he was made gov¬ 
ernor, an office to which he was reelected an¬ 
nually for eleven years. He approved of the con¬ 
stitution drafted by the federal convention in 
1787 and gave it his hearty support in Connec¬ 
ticut; and when the federal government was in¬ 
stituted in 1789 he received two of the votes cast 
by the electors for the first president and vice- 


Huntington 


president of the United States. Huntington 
married Martha Devotion, the daughter of the 
Rev. Ebenezer Devotion of Windham, in 1761. 
From this marriage there were no children, and 
Huntington took into his home two children of 
his brother Joseph who had married the sister of 
his wife. One of these was Samuel Huntington, 
I 765-i8i7 \_q.vJ]. Huntington died at Norwich 
at the age of sixty-four. 


vtt the Colony of Conn., vois. 

"JWCV (1881—90); The Pub. Records of the State 
of Conn . (3 vols., 1894-1922) ; The Huntington Fam¬ 
ily m America (1915); Jos. Strong, A Sermon Deliv¬ 
ered at the Funeral of His Excellency Samuel Hunt¬ 
ington (1796); S. D. Huntington, “Samuel Hunting- 
ton, the Conn . Mag., May-June 1900; Frances M. 
Caulkins, Hist, of Norwich , Conn. (1845).] 


DeF.V-S. 

HUNTINGTON, SAMUEL (Oct. 4, 1765- 
June 8, 1817), governor of Ohio, was bom at 
Coventry, Conn. His father was Joseph Hunt¬ 
ington, a distinguished minister of liberal 
views; his mother was Hannah, daughter of the 
Rev. Ebenezer Devotion. As a boy he was 
adopted by his uncle, Samuel Huntington 
signer of the Declaration of Independence and 
governor of Connecticut. After attending Dart¬ 
mouth until the end of his junior year, he en¬ 
tered Yale, graduating at twenty (1785), and 
was sent abroad by his uncle for the “grand 
tour.” On his return to Connecticut he studied 
law and was admitted to the bar in 1793. He had 
married, on Dec. 20, 1791, Hannah Huntington, 
a distant cousin. Huntington had political aspi¬ 
rations but he found the times “out of joint” in 
Connecticut, for he was not in sympathy with 
the Federalist hierarchy. In 1800 he made a 
trip on horseback to Ohio. Determined on set¬ 
tling there, he gained admission to the bar and 
returned to bring his family west in a covered 
wagon. His first few years in Ohio were spent 
in the village of Cleveland, but believing the lo¬ 
cation unhealthful, he moved to Fainesville, 
where he lived until his death. 

He immediately identified himself with the 
politics of the Northwest Territory and was fa¬ 
vored by Governor St. Clair with minor ap¬ 
pointments. Foreseeing that Ohio would short¬ 
ly become a state, he chose to support the cause 
of statehood in opposition to St Clair. He first 
came into prominence in the constitutional con¬ 
vention of 1802, where he acted in harmony with 
the “Chillicothe Junto” which controlled that 
body. He was elected to the Senate of the first 
General Assembly and was chosen speaker, but 
in April 1803 he was appointed to the state su¬ 
preme court The load Jeffersonian party, 
which had achieved statehood for Ohio, was 
divided prior to the War of 1812 into liberal 


419 



Huntington 

and conservative factions. The Virginians, 
Worthington and Tiffin, were liberal leaders; 
Huntington, George Tod, and Return J. Meigs, 
Jr., all of Connecticut, led the conservatives. A 
victory was won for the conservatives when the 
supreme court asserted its right to nullify an 
act of the legislature on the ground of unconsti¬ 
tutionality. Huntington and his associate judge, 
George Tod, were responsible for this pro¬ 
nouncement. Tod narrowly escaped removal by 
impeachment proceedings. Huntington was not 
impeached, for in 1808 he was elected governor 
over Thomas Worthington by the concerted ac¬ 
tion of conservative Republicans and Federal¬ 
ists. Inasmuch as the constitution of 1802 had 
created a powerless executive, Huntington's ad¬ 
ministration was quite uneventful. He was not 
a candidate to succeed himself in 1810, for he 
hoped to be elected to the United States Senate, 
but Thomas Worthington defeated him by a nar¬ 
row margin. He was a member of the Ohio 
House of Representatives in 1811-12, During 
the War of 1812 he held the responsible and bur¬ 
densome office of district paymaster in the regu¬ 
lar army. As a judge, Huntington showed more 
than ordinary ability. In politics he was unfor¬ 
tunate in that he occupied ground midway be¬ 
tween the Virginia Jeffersonians and the Fed¬ 
eralist minority, and so pleased neither group. 

[See Western Reserve Hist. Soc . Tracis , no. 95 
(191S) ; W. T. Utter, “Judicial Rev. in Early Ohio,” 
Miss. Valley Hist. Rev., June 1927 ; F. B. Dexter, Biog. 
Sketches of the Grads, of Yale Coll., vol. IV (1907) ; 
J. H. Kennedy, A Hist, of the City of Cleveland (1896); 
Chas. Whittlesey, Early Hist, of Cleveland, Ohio 
(1867); M. E. Perkins, Old Houses of the Ancient 
Town of Norwich (1895) ; The Huntington Family in 
America (19 15) ; the Western Reserve Chronicle, June 
19, 1817.] W.T.U. 

HUNTINGTON, WILLIAM EDWARDS 

(July 30, 1844-Dec. 6, 1930), clergyman, uni¬ 
versity president, son of William Pitkin and 
Lucy (Edwards) Huntington, and nephew of 
Bishop Frederic Dan Huntington [<?.#.], was 
born in Hillsboro, Ill. He attended public and 
private schools in Milwaukee, Wis., interrupting 
his education in 1864 to enlist in the 40th Wis¬ 
consin Infantry. In 1865 he was made a lieu¬ 
tenant in the 49th Wisconsin Regiment. A year 
later he entered the University of Wisconsin, 
from which he was graduated in 1870 with the 
degree of A.B. Although of Unitarian par¬ 
entage, he had already in 1867 been licensed to 
preach in the Methodist Episcopal Church and 
while a student held a pastorate in Madison, 
Wis. In 1870 he went to Boston where he stud¬ 
ied for three years at the Boston University 
School of Theology, receiving the degree of B.D. 
m 1873, Admitted to membership in the New 


Huntington 

England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church in 1871, he held pastorates in and near 
Boston until 1880, when he went to Germany. 
There he studied for two years at the universi¬ 
ties of Leipzig and Gottingen. He received the 
Ph.D. degree in the field of ethics from Boston 
University in 1882. President Warren of Bos¬ 
ton University, impressed with Huntington’s 
character and training, obtained his appointment 
as dean of the college of Liberal Arts in the same 
year—a position which he occupied until his elec¬ 
tion to the presidency of the university in 1904 
on Warren’s retirement This office he resigned 
in 1911 on account of failing health, but he re¬ 
mained as dean of the graduate school until 1917 
when he retired from active service. During his 
presidency Boston University increased in en¬ 
rolment and maintained high standards and con¬ 
servative policies. When enthusiasm for elec¬ 
tives was at its height, Huntington resisted the 
demands of extremists, continuing both required 
and elective courses. He established the scien¬ 
tific departments of the College of Liberal Arts 
and enlarged the scope of the school’s activi¬ 
ties by the institution of extension courses for 
teachers and others. In 1907, with Hunting¬ 
ton’s cooperation, the College of Liberal Arts 
was moved from Beacon Hill to Copley Square, 
where it enjoyed increased facilities. On his 
motion an agreement by which a graduate of the 
Massachusetts Agricultural College (later the 
State College) had had the privilege of receiv¬ 
ing the degree of S.B. from Boston University 
was discontinued in 1911. But despite the con¬ 
structive features of his administration, he was 
greater as dean than as president Few educa¬ 
tors have had a greater influence upon the gen¬ 
eration of students with whom they had to deal. 
He was twice married: on Oct. 3, 1876, to Emma 
C. Speare, who died in 1877, and on May 10, 
1881, to Ella M. Speare, the sister of his first 
wife, who with one son and two daughters sur¬ 
vived him. 

[Boston Globe, Dec. 7, 1930; Zion’s Herald, Dec. 10, 
24, 1930; Bostonia, Jan. 1904, July 1911, Mar. 1917, 
Jan. 1931; J. C. Rand, One of a Thousand (1890); 
Who’s Who in America, 1930-31; Boston University, 
President's Reports, 1904-11; W. E. Leonard, The 
Locomotive-God (1927), p. 159; The Huntington Fam¬ 
ily in America (1915)-] R.E.M. 

HUNTINGTON, WILLIAM REED (Sept. 
20, 1838-July 26, 1909), clergyman and author, 
was bom in Lowell, Mass., the son of Elisha 
Huntington [ q.v .] a physician, and Hannah 
(Hinckley) Huntington, who was of Mayflower 
stock. From 1853 to 1855 he was a student at 
Norwich University, Vt, and in the latter year 
entered Harvard University, from which he 


420 



Huntington 

graduated in 1859. Deciding to enter the min¬ 
istry of the Episcopal Church, he studied under 
the Rev. Frederic Dan Huntington after¬ 
wards bishop of Central New York, and assisted 
at Emmanuel Church, Boston. Ordained Dec. 
3, 1862, he became the rector of All Saints 
Church, Worcester, Mass., which parish he 
served for twenty-one years. When the church 
building burned, he energetically gathered funds 
for the erection of a notable stone edifice of ar¬ 
chitectural beauty. His interest in religious art, 
thus stimulated, grew until he became a sensi¬ 
tive guide to the whole Church in matters of 
taste and reverence, his influence culminating in 
the part which he took in the founding and 
building of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine 
in New York City. Not only was he a wise and 
progressive rector in the expanding life of a 
large parish, but he became a leader in the con¬ 
ventions of the diocese. In these years were born 
his chief interests: the revision of the Book of 
Common Prayer, the comprehensiveness of the 
Church, and church unity. By sermons, books, 
resolutions in General Convention, and member¬ 
ship on commissions, he advocated a broad in¬ 
clusiveness which influenced the thinking and 
action of many different religious denomina¬ 
tions. In 1883, he became the rector of Grace 
Church, New York. Soon he was the leading 
presbyter of the Episcopal Church, the confiden¬ 
tial adviser of the clergy and laity, and the pro¬ 
moter of every good work in the city and in the 
nation. “The study in Grace Church rectory,” 
it was said, “became the clergy’s confessional 
box” ( Life and Letters , post , p. 465). Declining 
many elections as bishop, he remained the loved 
and honored rector of his great New York 
parish. 

Having an instinct for liturgical expression, 
he determined to lead the Church to a revision 
of the Prayer Book in the interests of a sane 
modernity and enrichment. “We certainly do 
not want to Americanize the Prayer Book in 
any vulgar sense,” he wrote, “but at the same 
time we cannot forget that it is in America we 
live, and to Americans we minister” ( Ibid p. 
146). He was a member of the joint commit¬ 
tee on the Book of Common Prayer appointed in 
1880, and The Book Annexed to the Report of 
the Joint-Committee . . . (1883) was the result 
of years of study by him, and led the way to the 
revision of the Prayer Book in 1892. The domi¬ 
nant purpose of his life, however, was to pre¬ 
pare the way for a common standing ground for 
all Christians. The divisions of Christendom 
were to him a fatal weakness. He sought to re¬ 
move differences by advocating a few great 


H unton 

structural ideas with liberty of interpretation. 
He felt that the Episcopal Church was ki the only 
Church anywhere which so much as attempts to 
do equal justice both to the sacramentalists and 
the antisacramentalists.” The basis of union he 
found in these four principles: first, the Holy 
Scriptures as the Word of God; second, the 
primitive creeds as the rule of faith; third, the 
two Sacraments ordained by Christ himself; and 
fourth, the Episcopate as the center or keystone 
of governmental unity. These principles were 
afterwards embodied in the famous Quadrilat¬ 
eral accepted by the Lambeth Conference in 
1889, an d became a challenge to all the Churches 
and the points around which most of the efforts 
toward church unity have revolved. He dis¬ 
cussed them extensively in three of his books: 
The Church-Idea (1870, 5th edition, 1928), The 
Peace of the Church (1891), and A National 
Church (1898). In sermons and addresses at 
church congresses, he popularized the thought 
of Christian unity. For twenty-two years he 
served as a trustee of the Cathedral of St. John 
the Divine. During this time, his influence was 
everywhere felt, in the constitution of the ca¬ 
thedral, in the selection of designs and archi¬ 
tects, and in the securing of funds for its erec¬ 
tion. A fitting memorial to his varied and up¬ 
lifting life is to be found in the beautiful Hunt¬ 
ington Memorial Chapel, in this cathedral. 

Mystical and poetical in temperament, he 
wrote occasional verse, which he collected and 
published as Sonnets and a Dream (1899, 2nd 
edition, 1903). Among his other writings were: 
The Causes of the Soul (1891), The Spiritual 
House (1895), Psyche (1899), Four Key 
Words of Religion (1899), Briefs on Religion 
(1902), and A Good Shepherd (1906). In con¬ 
nection with Prayer Book revision he wrote A 
Short History of the Book of Common Prayer 
(1893), Popular Misconceptions of the Epis¬ 
copal Church (1891), and Theology's Eminent 
Domain (1902). His Twenty Years of a Massa¬ 
chusetts Rectorship (1883) and Twenty Years 
of a New York Rectorship (1903) contain bio¬ 
graphical material. He was married, Oct 14, 
1863, to Theresa, daughter of Dr. Edward Reyn¬ 
olds of Boston. 

[The Huntington Family in America (1915) ; J* W. 
Suter, Life and Letters of William Reed Hunhngto* 
(1925) ; A Few Memories of William Reed Hunting- 
ton (1910), by his sister, II. H. Cooke; W. R. Stewart, 
Grace Church and Old New York (19*4); Outlook, 
Aug. 7, 1909; Churchman, July *$*>9; F. Times, 
July 27 ,1909; Who's Who in Amenca, 1906-07.] 

D. D.A. 

HUNTON, EPPA (Sept 22, i8aa-Oct. 11, 
1908), lawyer, Confederate soldier, and United 
States senator, son of Col Eppa and Elizabeth 


421 



Han ton Hunton 


Marye (Brent) Hunton, was born in Fauquier 
County, Va., where his family had been promi¬ 
nent for a hundred years. He studied in New 
Baltimore Academy, taught school three years, 
read law under Judge John Webb Tyler, was 
admitted to the Virginia bar in 1843, and at once 
settled in Prince William County. Inheriting a 
bent for military service from his father, he was 
soon a colonel in the Virginia militia and four 
years later (1847), a general. In June 1848, he 
married Lucy Caroline Weir of Prince Wil¬ 
liam, whose father, a Scotchman of the second 
generation, had formerly been a merchant at 
Tappahannock, Va. From 1849 to 1861 he was 
commonwealth attorney of his adopted county. 
As a member of the Convention of 1861 he ad¬ 
vocated prompt secession, believing that a sat¬ 
isfactory reconstruction of the Union without 
war would ensue. Resigning, on the unanimous 
petition of the convention’s members he was ap¬ 
pointed colonel of the 8th Virginia Regiment, 
which he was ordered to recruit and equip 
among his neighbors. Acting promptly, he was 
at Manassas three days in advance of the battle; 
and his knowledge of the country and military 
intuition, it is said, contributed much to the Con¬ 
federate success there ( Southern Historical So¬ 
ciety Papers, XXXII, 1904, 143). In command 
of this regiment he participated creditably and 
sometimes brilliantly in many Virginia battles. 
Wounded in Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, he 
was soon afterwards made brigadier-general, 
promotion having been previously deferred, it 
is alleged, because of his bad health; and with 
this rank he finished the war. He surrendered 
Apr. 6,1865, and was held at Fort Warren until 
July. His home having been destroyed during 
the war, he resumed the practice of law at War- 
renton in his native county. During Reconstruc¬ 
tion days he followed the orthodox course of 
Virginians. For his ability and his services the 
people sent him to the United States House of 
Representatives three times (1873-81); then 
he gave way to the astute and active politician 
John S. Barbour, Jr. [q.v.]. Subsequently he 
practised law successfully in Washington— 
among his clients being the Orange & Alexan¬ 
dria Railroad. On the death of Barbour, who 
had entered the Senate in 1889, he was appoint¬ 
ed his successor by Gov. McKinney; but the leg¬ 
islature in December 1893, though continuing 
him for the remainder of the term (to Mar. 3, 
1895), that he might round out his career, at the 
same time chose as his successor Thomas S. 
Martin [#.#.], the new leader of the Virginia 
Democracy ( Richmond Dispatch , and Times, 
Richmond, Dec. 8, g, 1893). to Congress he 


was known for solid sense, hard work, uniform 
fairness in debate, and undeviating support of 
his political party. Perhaps he was most con¬ 
spicuous as a member of the committee that ar¬ 
ranged for the electoral commission of 1877 (of 
which he did not altogether approve), and as the 
only Southern member of that commission; quiet 
influence, however, rather than activity marked 
this service (P. L. Haworth, The Hayes-Tilden 
Disputed Presidential Election, 1906). His 
work in connection with the “Mulligan Letters,” 
for the better governing of the District of Co¬ 
lumbia, and in behalf of a national university, 
for which, as chairman of a congressional spe¬ 
cial committee, he made an elaborate argument, 
received the commendations of his friends. 
Against his retirement from the Senate he seems 
to have made no protest; but he never forgave, 
it is said, the manner in which Fitzhugh Lee 
[q.v.] was prevented from becoming his suc¬ 
cessor. He died in Richmond; his only child, 
Eppa, survived him. 

[L. G. Tyler, Men of Mark in Virginia , vol. I (1906), 
and Encyc. of Va. Biog . (1915)? vol. IV; Biog. Dir. 
Am. Cong . (1928) ; House Misc. Doc. 76, 44 Cong., 1 
Sess.; Proc. of the Electoral Commission ... of .. . 
1B77 (1877); Times Dispatch (Richmond), Oct 12, 
1908; Confederate Veteran, Nov. 1908.] C.C.P. 

HUNTON, WILLIAM LEE (Feb. 16,1864- 
Oct. 12, 1930), Lutheran clergyman, editor, and 
author, was bom at Morrisburg, Ontario, Can¬ 
ada, the son of Rev. John H. and Lavinia 
(Baker) Hunton. He attended Thiel College, 
Greenville, Pa., from which he received the de¬ 
gree of A.B. in 1886, and graduated from the 
Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 
Pa., in 1889. That same year he was ordained to 
the ministry of the Lutheran Church by the Dis¬ 
trict Synod of Ohio, and became pastor of the 
church at Amanda, Ohio, where he remained un¬ 
til 1891. Subsequently he served Grace Church, 
Rochester, N. Y. (1891-94), the Church of 
the Atonement, Buffalo (1894-98), St. John’s, 
Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (1898-1901), and Holy Trin¬ 
ity, Chicago, Ill. (1901-06). During the last 
four years of this pastorate he was also instruc¬ 
tor in the Lutheran Theological Seminary of 
Chicago. 

After 1906 he lived in Philadelphia and his 
energies were directed to editorial work and 
general denominational activities. When the of¬ 
fice of literary secretary of the General Council 
Lutheran Publication Board was established in 
1906, he became the first incumbent, serving un¬ 
til 1917. He then assumed the management of 
the Council’s publication house. His leadership 
was helpful in the period of transition preceding 
and following the merger of the General Synod 


422 



Hurd 

of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the 
United States of America, the General Council 
of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North 
America, and the United Synod of the Evan¬ 
gelical Lutheran Church in the South into the 
United Lutheran Church in America, and from 
1919 to 1930 he was literature manager of that 
body's publication house. His duties included 
the editing of manuscripts and publications, and 
the preparation of pamphlets, hymnals, and other 
denominational literature. He was associate ed¬ 
itor of the Lutheran (1907-19) and of various 
Sunday-school publications, and editor of the 
Lutheran Messenger (1908-18), and of Lu¬ 
theran Young Folks (1908-30). In addition to 
many pamphlets and articles for the religious 
and secular press, he was the author of Favorite 
Hymns (1917), 1 Believe (1922), and Facts of 
Our Faith (1925), books which had a large cir¬ 
culation among Lutherans. His versatile gifts 
enabled him to accomplish an extraordinary 
amount of work involving an enormous number 
of details. In all his writing he was guided by 
consistent fidelity to his comprehensive ac¬ 
quaintance with Lutheran theology. On July 3, 
1894, he married Emma M. Hoppe, who with a 
son and a daughter survived him. 

[L. D. Reed, The Phila. Sent. Biog. Record, 1864- 
1923 (1923); Lutheran (Phila.), Oct 23, Nov. 6, 1930; 
Augsburg Sunday School Teacher (Phila.), Jan, 1931; 
Who's Who in America, 1928-29.] H.D.H—v—r. 

HURD, JOHN CODMAN (Nov. n, 1816- 
June 25, 1892), publicist, son of John Russell 
and Catharine Margaret (Codman) Hurd, was 
bom in Boston, though he was reared and lived 
much of his life in New York City. As a boy he 
attended the grammar school connected with 
Columbia College. His father was a sufficiently 
successful merchant to afford his son a college 
education, and having completed the freshman 
and sophomore years at Columbia College, he 
went to Yale, where he graduated in 1836. For 
a year longer he remained in New Haven, study¬ 
ing in the Yale Law School; he then returned 
to New York, where he spent two years more 
in a law office before being admitted to the bar. 
Though nominally engaged in the practice of 
law, he was never active in that profession. Be¬ 
ing a man of independent means, he devoted 
much of his time to business and indulged his 
scholarly inclinations. After his father died in 
1872, he traveled far and wide, particularly in 
the Orient, and returned to live the remainder 
of his life in Boston. He was never married. 

At the time when the slavery controversy was 
at its height, Hurd was engaged in a painstak¬ 
ing analysis of the legal phases of that problem. 


Hurd 

In 1856 he published Topics of Jurisprudence 
Connected with Conditions of Freedom and 
Bondage . The first thick volume of his Law of 
Freedom and Bondage in the United States ap¬ 
peared in 1858 and the second volume, four 
years later. For thorough research, exhaustive 
discussion, and impartial treatment, this treatise 
on the most exciting topic of the age has never 
been excelled. Beginning with elementary prin¬ 
ciples of jurisprudence pertaining to personal 
bondage, he traced the legal history of chattel 
slavery from ancient times as a background for 
his analysis of American constitutional and 
statutory law, including the judicial decisions 
and dicta relating to such legislation. This work 
established his reputation as one of the most 
learned legal writers in the country. After the 
Civil War he directed his attention to the prob¬ 
lem of reconstruction. This led him into the 
realm of political philosophy and in January 
1867 he contributed a discriminating article on 
“Theories of Reconstruction” to the American 
Law Review . After many years of careful study 
he came to the conclusion that the United States 
was a nation in fact He believed that the nature 
of the Union was determined by social and po¬ 
litical forces, not by the provisions of the fed¬ 
eral constitution. Sovereignty he conceived to 
be the authority behind the law rather than the 
law itself, and therefore the location of supreme 
power in the United States could be discovered 
only by an examination of actual conditions and 
events. In basing his explanation upon facts in¬ 
stead of premises selected to justify a precon¬ 
ceived opinion of what the American Union 
ought to be, he considered himself unique. These 
ideas he expounded with many nice distinctions 
in The Theory of Our National Existence 
(1881) and in The Union-State: a Letter to Our 
States-rights Friend (1890). 

and Biog . Record of the Class of 1836 in Y&le 
Coll. (1882); Obit. Record Grads . Yale U%iv. t 1890- 
190Q (1900); Boston Transcript, Jtrne 25, 1892.] 

J.E.B. 

HURD, NATHANIEL (Feb. 13, 1730-Dec. 
17, 1777), silversmith, engraver, was born in 
Boston, Mass., a descendant of John Hurd who 
settled in Charlestown, Mass., in 1639. His fa¬ 
ther was Jacob Hurd, a silversmith of Boston; 
his mother was Elizabeth Mason. Nathaniel fol¬ 
lowed his father’s trade and was the latter's suc¬ 
cessor in a flourishing business. Trained by his 
father to engrave on silver and gold, he began 
at an early age to experiment on copper, and at 
nineteen he executed a bookplate for Thomas 
Dering which is still in existence. In 1762 he 
engraved a cartoon of two counterfeiters who 


423 



Hurlbert Hurlbut 


were objects of popular interest of their day. 
In the same year he advertised in the Boston 
Evening Post his engravings of the King and 
his minister "fit for a Picture, or for Gentlemen 
and Ladies to put in their Watches.” He also 
made a portrait of the Rev. Joseph Sewall. With 
the exception of these few portraits and an oc¬ 
casional lodge emblem, his engraving on copper 
was confined chiefly to bookplates, the most fa¬ 
mous of which was made for Harvard College. 
His usual advertisement, such as that in the 
Boston Gazette for Apr. 28, 1760, announced 
that he did “Goldsmith’s Work, likewise en¬ 
graves in Gold, Silver, Copper, Brass, and Steel, 
in the neatest Manner, and at reasonable Rates.” 
In his bookplates he used the same device re¬ 
peatedly, an escutcheon with a shell at its base, 
from which water is flowing. His silver was 
marked “N. Hurd” in shaded Roman letters in 
a rectangle, or in a shaped rectangle, or in very 
small letters in a cartouche. His portrait by John 
Singleton Copley is in the Cleveland Museum of 
Art 

[“Early Am. Artists and Mechanics: No. 1, Na¬ 
thaniel Hurd,” New Eng . Mag,, July 1832; D. McN. 
Stauffer, Am. Engravers upon Copper and Steel 
(1907) ; Am, Graphic Art (1912); F. H. Bigelow, Hist, 
Silver of the Colonies (1917).] K.H.A. 

HURLBERT, WILLIAM HENRY (July 3, 
1827-Sept. 4, 1895), journalist and author, son 
of Martin Luther Hurlbut and Margaret Ash- 
bumer (Morford) Hurlbut and half-brother of 
Stephen Augustus Hurlbut [#.?/.], was born at 
Charleston, S. C. The change in his surname 
was brought about by the error of an engraver 
in making some cards for him, and he liked the 
spelling, “Hurlbert,” so much that he retained 
it Graduating at Harvard in 1847, be next en¬ 
tered the Harvard Divinity School, where he 
was graduated in 1849, then spent two years in 
study and travel in Europe. Returning to Amer¬ 
ica, he entered the Unitarian ministry, but served 
only a short time, though during that period he 
wrote some hymns which were long in use. In 
1852-53 he spent a year in the Harvard Law 
School. After visiting the West Indies, he pub¬ 
lished Gan-Eden or Pictures of Cuba (1854). 
In 1855 he became a writer on the staff of Put¬ 
nam's Magazine and dramatic critic for the Al¬ 
bion, and in 1857 joined the New York Times, 
His brilliant but erratic genius was manifested 
in many ways. It is said that he could work on 
two or three editorials at once, dashing off al¬ 
ternate pages of them to send to the typesetters. 
He wrote many poems, and a play of his, Amer¬ 
icans in Paris; or A Game of Dominoes , was 
performed at Wallaces in 1858 and published 
the same year. Having professed strong opposi¬ 


tion to slavery, he was arrested while on a busi¬ 
ness trip in the South in 1861 and confined for a 
number of months in Richmond, but escaped in 
the summer of 1862, making his way on foot 
through the lines and to Washington. He now 
declared the Republican party to be a menace to 
the nation, and joined the staff of the New York 
World, In 1864 he published McClellan and the 
Conduct of the War, and took the stump for 
McClellan in the campaign of that year. He 
headed a group which purchased the New York 
Commercial Advertiser in 1864, but he and his 
associates could not agree, and the paper was 
sold in 1867 to Thurlow Weed. In 1866 he visit¬ 
ed Mexico; the following year, as the repre¬ 
sentative of the World, he attended the Paris 
Exposition and the Festival of St. Peter in 
Rome. In 1871 he was special correspondent 
for the World with the commission sent by Pres¬ 
ident Grant to Santo Domingo. From 1876 to 
1883 he was editor-in-chief of the World, After 
1883 he spent most of his time in Europe, writ¬ 
ing many essays and articles for British and 
American periodicals during those latter years. 
He endeared himself to British Tories by his 
book, Ireland Under Coercion (2 vols., 1888) 
but, considering himself to have been insulted 
by a remark made by the Lord Chief Justice, 
Lord Coleridge, he wrote in retort a book of 500 
closely printed pages entitled, England Under 
Coercion (1893). A suit for breach of promise, 
which he won, nevertheless caused him to leave 
England in 1891. He died in Cadenabbia, Italy, 
with a warrant still out against him in London, 
for perjury in connection with the suit On Aug. 
9, 1884, he married Katharine Parker Tracy of 
New York. 

[See H. H. Hurlbut, The Hurlbut Gened. (1888); 
Cat. of the Artistic and Valuable Collections of Mr. 
Wm. Henry Hurlbert ... to be Sold by Auction 
(1883) ; J. M. Lee, Hist, of Am. Journalism (1923) ; 
N. Y. Times, Sept. 7, 1895; N. Y. Times Sat. Rev., 
June 14, 1902; Times (London), Sept. 7, 1895; World 
(N. Y.), Sept. 7, 8, 1895. The London newspapers of 
April 1891 and thereafter, during the trial of Evelyn 
vs. Hurlbert, contain much interesting material; though 
some of the charges made against Hurlbert in this trial 
would seem to have been refuted on good authority 
elsewhere (see letters of John Gilmer Speed of New 
York and W. W. Story, the sculptor, in the New York 
Sun, Dec. 8, 1893).] F. H. 

HURLBUT, JESSE LYMAN (Feb. 15,1843- 
Aug. 2, 1930), Methodist clergyman, editor, au¬ 
thor, was bom in New York City, a descendant 
of Thomas Hurlbut who settled at Saybrook, 
Conn., about 1635, and the son of Samuel and 
Evelina (Proal) Hurlbut. While he was a child 
the family moved to Orange, N. J., where his 
boyhood was spent He was one of twenty-three 
to graduate from Wesleyan University in the 
class of 1864, thirteen of whom became minis- 


424 



Hurlbut 

ters. After graduating from college he spent a 
year teaching in the Seminary at Pennington, 
N. J. In 1865 he joined the Newark Conference 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. His pastor¬ 
ates included Roseville Church, Newark, Trinity 
Church, Staten Island, and churches at Mont¬ 
clair, Paterson, Plainfield, and Hoboken. In 1875 
he visited Chautauqua, N. Y., where the year be¬ 
fore Lewis Miller and John H. Vincent [ qq.v .] 
had founded the Sunday School Assembly. This 
visit proved to be a turning point in Hurlbut’s 
life, as he tells us in The Story of Chautauqua 
(1921). It sent him to Chautauqua for over fifty 
consecutive years, and brought him into close 
connection with Vincent, to whom he was as¬ 
sistant, 1879-88, first as field agent, then as as¬ 
sistant secretary of the Methodist Sunday School 
Union and Tract Society and assistant editor of 
its publications. In 1888 when Vincent was 
elected bishop, Hurlbut was elected to succeed 
him, as secretary and editor. He was one of the 
first advocates of the graded Sunday school and 
largely prepared the way for the Religious Edu¬ 
cation Movement of a later generation. His in¬ 
terest in the Chautauqua Movement never abat¬ 
ed. He believed that nearly all of the older wo¬ 
man’s dubs grew out of it and that the Woman’s 
Christian Temperance Union had its beginnings 
there. He graduated with the first Chautauqua 
Literary and Scientific Cirde class in 1882, and 
was its president. 

In addition to his other duties he served as the 
first corresponding secretary of the Epworth 
League, 1889-92. He became a pastor again in 
1900 and served Morristown, South Orange, 
and Bloomfield, N. J., and was then for five 
years district superintendent of the Newark 
District, retiring in 1918. He was the author of 
a list of books numbering fully thirty titles, some 
of which ran through several editions and had 
large sales. Of these, besides The Story of 
Chautauqua , the most important were: Manual 
of Biblical Geography (1884; revised, 1899); 
Organizing and Building up the Sunday School 
(1910); Our Church: What Methodists Believe 
and How They Work (1902); Outline Normal 
Lessons for Normal Classes (1885); Revised 
Normal Lessons (1893); Sunday Half Hours 
with Great Preachers (1907). He was also the 
editor of many books. Some time after 1900 he 
formed a connection with the J. C. Winston 
Company of Philadelphia, and edited, revised, 
and rewrote a number of volumes for them. 
Of the teacher-preacher type, he was in great 
demand as a speaker at Chautauquas all over the 
country. His manner was gracious and cour¬ 
teous, his address pleasing. 


Hurlbut 


On Mar. 5, 1 867, he married Mary M. Chase 
of New York City, who died Feb. 16, 1913. 
They were the parents of seven children, three 
of whom survived their father. He died at 
Bloomfield, N. J., in his eighty-eighth year. 


Who s Who tn America , 1930-31; The New Schaff- 
Hersog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge , vol. V 
U909); Alumni Record of Wesleyan Univ . (1921): 
Christian Advocate (N. Y.), Aug. 14, 1030: J. H. 
Vincent, The Chautauqua Movement (1886); Albert 
Osborn, John Fletcher Hurst—A Biog . (1905) ; H. H. 
Hurlbut, The Hurlbut Geneal. (1888); N. Y. Times. 
Aug. 4 , 1930.1 S.G.A. 


HURLBUT, STEPHEN AUGUSTUS (Nov. 
2 9> 1815-Mar. 27, 1882), Union soldier, con¬ 
gressman, was born in Charleston, S. C. His 
father, Martin Luther Hurlbut, teacher and Uni¬ 
tarian minister, was a native of Southampton, 
Mass., and a descendant of Thomas Hurlbut 
who settled about 1635 at Saybrook, Conn., and 
later moved to Wethersfield; his mother, before 
her marriage, was Lydia Bunce of Charleston. 
William Henry Hurlbert Iq.v.], author and 
editor, was his half-brother. Stephen Hurlbut 
was admitted to the bar in 1837, served in the 
Seminole War, and in 1845 migrated to Illinois, 
settling at Belvidere, where two years later. 
May 13, 1847, he married Sophronia R. Stevens. 
He was elected as a Whig to the Illinois consti¬ 
tutional convention of 1847 from Boone and 
McHenry counties, was presidential elector on 
the Whig ticket in 1848, and was elected as a 
Republican to the Illinois General Assembly for 
1858-59 and 1860-61. At the outbreak of the 
Civil War, he was commissioned brigadier-gen¬ 
eral, May 17, 1861. He served in northern Mis¬ 
souri in 1861, and commanded the 4th Division 
at Shiloh, being stationed in reserve on the left, 
apparently handling his unit bravely and skil¬ 
fully. He was promoted to major-general, as of 
Sept 17, 1862. In the campaign of Corinth, he 
conducted the turning movement against the 
Confederate communications. During the re¬ 
mainder of the campaign of 1862-63, he was sta¬ 
tioned at Memphis, being assigned in Decem¬ 
ber to the command of the XVI Army Corps. In 
the Vicksburg campaign of 1863, his mission 
was to assure the safety of Memphis as the base 
of operation. In July 1863, he sought to re¬ 
sign on personal grounds, but a month later 
withdrew his resignation (Official Records, post, 
1 ser. LXVII, 398-99, 436-37). He took part in 
Sherman’s raid toward Mobile in February 1864. 
On Aug. 5 of that year he was ordered to report 
to General Canby in the division of West Mis¬ 
sissippi for assignment to duty. Assigned to 
command the Department of the Gulf, to Lin¬ 
coln's distress he harassed the loyal government 


425 



Hurst 


Hurst 


of Louisiana. Charges of corruption brought 
against him apparently had solid foundation 
(Chicago Tribune, Nov. i, 1872; Clark vs. 
United States, 102 U . S. Reports, 322). He was 
mustered out June 20, 1865. 

Upon his return to civil life, he became a Re¬ 
publican leader in Illinois. Charges of drunken¬ 
ness and corruption leveled at him thereafter ap¬ 
parently had much reason. He served in the Illi¬ 
nois General Assembly of 1867 and was elector 
at large in 1868. He was the first commander- 
in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, 
1866-68. Appointed minister to Colombia in 
1869, he served until 1872, apparently with little 
activity not of the routine order. He was an un¬ 
successful candidate for Congress in 1870, but 
in 1872 tried again with success. He was re¬ 
elected for the next Congress over J. F. Farns¬ 
worth, but in 1876 was defeated for the regu¬ 
lar renomination by William Lathrop, and, run¬ 
ning as an independent Republican, was defeat¬ 
ed in the election. Beyond some interest in inter¬ 
state commerce regulation his congressional 
service was not remarkable. Appointed minis¬ 
ter to Peru in 1881, at the time of the War of 
the Pacific, he showed himself an ardent partisan 
of Peru, making mistakes which seriously em¬ 
barrassed Trescot in his special mission to 
the belligerent nations. After Hurlbut's death, 
which occurred at Lima, a House committee ex¬ 
onerated him of the charge of using his official 
position to aid the Credit Industrie!, claimant of 
guano and nitrate rights in Peru, against rival 
interests. 

[H. H. Hurlbut, The Hurlbut Gencal . (1888) ; C. A. 
Church, Hist, of Rockford (1900); A. C. Cole, The 
Constitutional Debates of 1847 (1919) ; War of the Re¬ 
bellion: Official Records (Army) ; Battles and Leaders 
of the Civil War (4 vols., 1887-88) ; Papers Relating 
to the Foreign Relations of the U . S. } 1882 (1883); 
House Report No . 1790, 4 7 Cong., 1 Sess.; Chicago 
Tribune and New York World, Apr. 3, 1882.] 

T. C. P. 

HURST, JOHN FLETCHER (Aug. 17,1834- 
May 4, 1903), bishop of the Methodist Episco¬ 
pal Church, was bom near Salem, Dorchester 
County, Md., the son of Elijah and Ann Cath¬ 
erine (Colston) Hurst His grandfather, Sam¬ 
uel, bom in Surrey, England, settled in Mary¬ 
land about 1780, and in 1781 enlisted in the Con¬ 
tinental Army. John attended the district school 
and in his eleventh year entered the academy at 
Cambridge, the county seat In 1850 he enrolled 
as a student in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa., 
from which he was graduated on July 13, 1854. 
He taught for a few months in the Greensboro 
Academy, Maryland, and was then appointed 
professor of belles-lettres in the Hedding Liter¬ 
ary Institute, Ashland, Greene County, N. Y. 


After teaching here for two years, he went to 
Germany, where he studied theology at the uni¬ 
versities of Halle and Heidelberg. In October 
1857, after a tour of the Continent, he returned 
to the United States. The following year he was 
admitted to the Newark Conference of the Meth¬ 
odist Episcopal Church on trial, was ordained 
deacon, Apr. 10, i860, and elder, in 1862. His 
first pastorate was at Irvington, N. J. On Apr. 
28,1859, he was married to Catherine Elizabeth, 
daughter of Dr. William and Anna (Vroman) 
La Monte of Charlotteville, N. Y. After serving 
at Passaic, at Elizabeth, and at Factoryville, 
Staten Island, in 1866 he accepted the appoint¬ 
ment as theological tutor in the Methodist Mis¬ 
sion Institute, at Bremen, Germany. In 1867 it 
was decided to move the Institute to Frankfort- 
on-the-Main, where, in October 1868, it was 
reopened as the Martin Mission Institute. Hurst 
taught in the Institute until the spring of 1871, 
when he returned to the United States to accept 
the chair of historical theology in Drew Theo¬ 
logical Seminary, at Madison, N. J. Bishop 
Randolph S. Foster resigned as president 
in November 1872, and on May 14, 1873, the 
trustees elected Hurst as his successor. Since 
the opening of the Seminary in November 1867, 
the salaries and other current expenses had been 
provided for by the annual interest payments 
accruing on Daniel Drew's personal bond for 
$250,000. In 1876, Drew suffered severe busi¬ 
ness reverses, and the seminary had to look else¬ 
where for necessary funds. Largely through the 
indefatigable efforts of President Hurst it was 
able to continue its work, and an ample endow¬ 
ment was secured. 

On May 12, 1880, at the General Conference 
held in Cincinnati, Hurst was elected bishop, 
and in the autumn of that year he resigned as 
president of Drew. For the next twenty-one 
years his duties as bishop required his presence 
in almost every part of the United States. Dur¬ 
ing this period he presided at 170 Conferences 
and Missions, 157 of these having been held in 
forty-five different states of the Union, and thir¬ 
teen in nine foreign countries. As a leading 
Methodist educator it seemed to Hurst that there 
was a distinct need for a post-graduate univer¬ 
sity to be located in Washington, D. C., under 
the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
In 1890 he purchased a site for such an institu¬ 
tion, of which, on May 28, 1891, he was elected 
chancellor. It was chartered in 1893 as the 
American University, but was not opened until 
1917. During Hurst's tenure of a little more 
than a decade as chancellor he secured a large 
endowment. On Mar. 14, 1890, his wife died, 


426 



Husbands Husbands 


and on Sept. 5, 1892, he was married to Ella 
Agnes Root of Buffalo, N. Y. 

From the very beginning of his ministerial 
career he proved that he had a ready and effec¬ 
tive pen. His first important book was his His¬ 
tory of Rationalism, originally published in 1865, 
but issued in revised form in 1901. It was the 
product of a decade of careful study in Europe 
and in America, and it revealed both breadth of 
scholarship and cogency of expression. Unlike 
Lecky, Hurst endeavored not only to list the 
different phases of rationalism, but also to give 
a discussion of the basic factors involved. In 
1896 he published his Literature of Theology, 
which gave unmistakable evidence of his attain¬ 
ments as a bibliographer, and in 1897-1900, he 
brought out his two-volume History of the 
Christian Church. The prevailing opinion 
among church historians with reference to this 
last work of Hurst was well expressed by S. M. 
Jackson: “It is the fruit of long-continued study 
and the use of the most recent literature. Those 
who may make their acquaintance by means of 
it with church history may rely upon it that they 
will not have to unlearn what they here acquire.” 
Among his other publications are Martyrs to the 
Tract Cause (1872); Life and Literature in the 
Fatherland (1875) ; Theological Encyclopedia 
and Methodology (1884), with G. R. Crooks; 
Indika; the Country and the People of India and 
Ceylon (1891) ; Short History of the Christian 
Church (1893), which was translated into Ger¬ 
man and Spanish; Hist, of Methodism (7 vols., 
1902-04). On Apr. 6, 1902, he suffered a slight 
apoplectic stroke, and on May 4, 1903, after a 
short illness, he died. 

[Albert Osborn, John Fletcher Hurst (1905) ; Univ. 
Courier (Am. Univ.), May 1893, July 1903; Senate 
Report No. 439 , 54 Cong., 1 Sess.; J. W. Hoyt, Memo¬ 
rial in Regard to a National University (1892); Bouck 
White, The Book of Daniel Drew (1910) ; Zion’s Her¬ 
ald, May 6, 1903; Christian Advocate (N. Y.), May 
14,1903; Washington Post, May 4,1903*] C. C.T. 

HUSBANDS, HERMON (Oct. 3, i724-*795)> 
a leader of the North Carolina Regulators, was 
bom probably in Cecil County, Md. The family 
name is spelled both with and without a final 
“s”; Hermon’s given name, in various ways. 
Nothing is known of his parents, William and 
Mary Husbands, beyond the fact that they were 
Anglicans. Hermon became first a Presbyterian 
and later a member of the Society of Friends, a 
circumstance which may have influenced his re¬ 
moval to North Carolina and his choice of a 
home. He lived at East Nottingham, Md., until 
manhood, but in 1751 seems to have been in 
Bladen County, N. C. About 1755, he apparent¬ 
ly went to Corbinton (now Hillsboro), and soon 


settled on Sandy Creek in Orange (now Ran¬ 
dolph) County, where he took up land. Four 
years later he went back to Maryland, returning 
to North Carolina in 1761. In that year appeared 
his first published work, Some Remarks on Re¬ 
ligion. He was an industrious and successful 
farmer and in the course of a few years acquired 
much land. 

Husbands soon gained a place of influence in 
his community. “He was sober, intelligent, in¬ 
dustrious, and prosperous; honest and just in 
his dealings” (Colonial Records, post, VIII, 
xxiv), and, though his education was limited, it 
was probably better than that of his associates. 
In 1764 he was disowned by the Quaker meet¬ 
ing to which he belonged, not for immorality as 
Tryon reported, but either, as his own account 
suggests, for espousing the cause of a member 
under discipline, or, as has been conjectured, 
for marrying outside the Society of Friends. Al¬ 
though he continued to live in a Quaker com¬ 
munity, he did not lose caste by reason of his 
expulsion from meeting. Deeply indoctrinated 
with liberal ideas, a consistent and passionate 
advocate of human rights, by his sympathy for 
the oppressed combined with his energy, his 
ready eloquence, and his capacity to write effec¬ 
tively, he attained a place of leadership among a 
people who were full of economic discontent. 

Husbands has been regarded by many as the 
originator and organizer of the Regulation, that 
struggle waged by the people of the back-coun¬ 
try of North Carolina against official extortion 
and corruption, but the movement antedated his 
connection with it In his community, however, 
he was soon a leader in voicing discontent, in 
informing the people of oppression, and in de¬ 
manding a remedy. He was the author of most 
of the resolutions adopted by the Regulators and, 
while he never joined the organization, he was 
undoubtedly one of the most important figures 
connected with the movement. In 1768, though 
he had no part in it, he was arrested for inciting 
a riot, and hut for a popular uprising would 
have been dragged to New Bern, nearly two 
hundred miles away, for trial. He was released 
on bail, according to his own account, on condi¬ 
tion that he would in the future overlook extor¬ 
tion and seek to pacify the public mind. At the 
succeeding court he was acquitted. In 1769 he 
was elected to the Assembly, and reelected in 
1770; but an Dec. 20 of the latter year, under the 
false charge of having written a threatening 
communication for the press, he was expelled for 
being “a principal mover and promoter” of 
“riots and seditions,” for publishing a “false, 
seditious, and Malicious libel” on Maurice 


427 



Husbands 

Moore, for "gross prevarication and falsehood,” 
and for offering "a daring insult” to the Assem¬ 
bly, "tending to intimidate the Members from a 
due discharge of their duty” ( Colonial Records, 
VIII, 331). He was at once arrested and held 
in jail until February 1771, when the grand jury 
failed to indict. 

In September 1770 there had occurred a riot 
in Hillsboro, when the Regulators broke up the 
superior court. Husbands was present, but there 
is no evidence that he took any part. It is un¬ 
likely that he did, for he hated violence and con¬ 
sistently opposed it, hoping through the power 
of organized public opinion to secure justice. 
Thus, when at Alamance, on May 16, 1 77 J > ft 
was clear that peaceful means had failed, he rode 
away before a shot was fired. After Gov. Tryon 
had crushed the Regulators in that battle, how¬ 
ever, Husbands was outlawed, a large price was 
set upon his head, and his fine plantation was 
laid waste. He fled, first to Maryland, where he 
evaded arrest, and thence to Pennsylvania where 
he lived thereafter. Gov. Josiah Martin par¬ 
doned him and he revisited North Carolina 
briefly during the Revolution. He is said to have 
served in the Pennsylvania legislature in 1778 
and in 1794 was a leader in the Whiskey Insur¬ 
rection, serving on the Committee of Safety. 
Captured, he was tried in the United States cir¬ 
cuit court and condemned to death, but Benjamin 
Rush, at the instance of Dr. David Caldwell, in¬ 
terceded for him with Washington, as did Alex¬ 
ander Martin and Timothy Bloodworth, the 
North Carolina senators, and procured his par¬ 
don. Upon his release he was taken ill and died 
on his way home. 

Husbands was three times married. The name 
of his first wife is unknown; on July 3, 1762, he 
married Mary Pugh, and in 1766 Amy (or 
Emmy) Allen, who survived him. The most no¬ 
table writings ascribed to him are An Impartial 
Relation of the First Rise and Cause of the Re¬ 
cent Differences, in Publick Affairs, in the Prov¬ 
ince of North-Carolina (1770) and A Fan for 
Fanning (1771), although his authorship of the 
latter, which is a vindication of the Regulators 
and especially of Husbands himself, has been 
disputed. 

[The Colonial Records of N. C., ed. by W. L, Saun¬ 
ders, vols. VII-X (1890); Some Eighteenth Century 
Tracts Concerning N. C. (1927), with introduction and 
notes by W. K. Boyd; W. D, Cooke, Revolutionary 
Hist of N. C. (1853), pp. 13 ff.; S. B. Weeks, “South¬ 
ern Quakers and Slavery,” Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies 
in Hist . and Pol Set., extra vol. XV (1896) ; E. W. 
Caruthers, A Sketch of the Life and Character of the 
Rev. David Caldwell (1842), pp. 119-22; J. S. Bassett, 
“The Regulators of N. C.,” in Ann. Report Am. Hist 
Asso1894 (1895); sketch by Frank Nash, in S. A. 
Ashe, Biog. Hist of N. C., vol. II (1905) ; J* S, Jones, 


Huse 

A Defence of the Revolutionary Hist, of the State of 
N. C . (1834), pp. 34“56; Pa. Mag . of Hist and Biog., 
Apr. 1886.] J.G.deRH. 

HUSE, CALEB (Feb. n, 1831-Mar. 11,1905), 
soldier, purchasing agent in Europe for the Con¬ 
federate army, was born in Newburyport, Mass., 
the eldest son of Ralph Cross and Caroline 
(Evans) Huse. He was a descendant of Abel 
Huse who was admitted a freeman in Massachu¬ 
setts in 1642 and died at Newbury in 1690. 
Caleb's mother died while he was still very 
young, and he lived for a time with the sisters 
of his first stepmother. In 1847 he entered the 
United States Military Academy, graduating in 
1851 seventh in his class. He was made a brevet 
second lieutenant in the United States army and 
assigned to the first regiment of artillery, serv¬ 
ing for a time at Key West, where in 1852 he 
married Harriet Pinckney, by whom he had thir¬ 
teen children. He was on duty at West Point as 
assistant professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and 
geology from 1852 until 1859, a period which 
included most of the time when Robert E. Lee 
was superintendent of the Academy. On Nov. 4, 
1854, he was promoted to first lieutenant. At a 
time when other young officers were becoming 
restive in the pre-war army, he procured leave 
in order to travel abroad, and on his return in 
i860 he accepted a position as commandant of 
cadets at the University of Alabama, where mili¬ 
tary discipline was being introduced for reasons 
quite apart from politics. 

When his leave was suddenly terminated in 
February i86r, he at once resigned his commis¬ 
sion. His decision to serve the Confederacy, ap¬ 
parently made without hesitation, can be ex¬ 
plained only by his association at West Point 
with Lee and other Southerners, and by his en¬ 
vironment at the critical moment. He entered 
the Confederate army as a captain and was later 
made a major. About the first of April 1861, be¬ 
ing known as an artillery expert, he was sum¬ 
moned to Montgomery and soon left for Europe 
to purchase supplies for the army. Arriving in 
Liverpool on May 10, he found the market ill 
supplied with small arms: "Everything has been 
taken by the agents from the Northern States,” 
he reported, "and the quantity which they have 
secured is very small” ( War of the Rebellion: 
Official Records, Army, 4 ser., I, 344). Huse’s 
first instructions were limited, and until early in 
August he was obliged to watch the Federal 
agents sweep the field. After the battle of Bull 
Run, however, the secretary of war gave him a 
free hand to purchase arms "from whatever 
places and at whatever price” (Ibid., pp. 493 *" 
94), and he plunged into the buying of all sorts 


428 



Husk 

of army supplies, including large amounts of 
clothing and medicines as well as ordnance. 
Among his interesting acquisitions were rifles 
and cannon from the Austrian government. It 
is impossible now to estimate the contribution 
made by this means to the military strength of 
the South. Unquestionably Huse showed much 
energy and was always supported by his im¬ 
mediate chief in Richmond, Col. Josiah Gorgas, 
chief of ordnance, who wrote: “He succeeded, 
with very little money, in buying a good supply, 
and in running my department in debt for nearly 
half a million sterling, the very best proof of his 
fitness for his place” (Rowland, post, VIII, 311). 
Captain Bulloch gives as his opinion that Huse’s 
efforts were of great importance in enabling the 
South to check McClellan's advance on Rich¬ 
mond in 1862 (J. D. Bulloch, The Secret Service 
of the Confederate States in Europe , 1884, 1 , 53). 
As a Northerner, Huse was suspected of dis¬ 
loyalty by some Southerners and suffered from 
the constant bickerings and charges of financial 
malpractice so rife among the Confederates 
abroad. There seems no reason to question his 
loyalty and business honesty, however. At the 
end of the war he was left practically penniless 
with a large family. 

Huse returned to the United States about 1868. 
After being concerned in several business en¬ 
terprises, he started in 1876 a school at Sing 
Sing, N. Y., to prepare candidates for the Mili¬ 
tary Academy at West Point. In 1879 the school 
was moved to Highland Falls, where for some 
twenty years it was successfully carried on, 
among those preparing there being men who 
have risen to the highest rank in the army. Huse 
died at Highland Falls at the age of seventy- 
four. 

[Huse’s very brief reminiscences, The Supplies for 
the Confederate Army (1904), are those of an old man, 
and though helpful are incomplete and not always ac¬ 
curate. His son, Admiral Harry P. Huse, has furnished 
information regarding certain facts.^ An interesting let¬ 
ter from Huse appears in John Bigelow’s Retrospec¬ 
tions of an Active Life, II (1909), 452 & See also 
G. W. Cullum, Blog. Reg. of the Officers and Grads . U. 
S, Mil. Acad , (3rd ed., 1891); Thirty-Seventh Ann. 
Reunion Asso . Grads. U. S . Mil. Acad . (1906); War 
of the Rebellion; Official Records {Army), 4 ser., vols. 
I, II, (Navy) 2 ser., vols. II, III ; Dunbar Rowland, 
Jefferson Davis t Constitutionalist (1933), vols. VIII, 
X; Confed . Veteran (Nashville), Feb., May 1905? -V* 
Y. Times , Mar. 13,1905 ; and for genealogy, Eben Put¬ 
nam, Lieut. Joshua Hewes (1913) supplemented by 
Vital Records of Newbury port, Mass. (1911).] 

H.D.J. 

HUSK, CHARLES ELLSWORTH (Dec 
19, 1872-Mar. 20,1916), physician, was bom in 
Shabbona, DeKalb County, Ill., to William Husk, 
a village merchant and Celia (Norton) Husk. 
That his first name frequently appears as Carlos 
is accounted for by his career in Mexico. He 


Husk 

was educated in the grade school of his native 
town and in the Aurora i III.) High School, 
taught in the public schools of Aurora, and be¬ 
came principal of the Western High School of 
that city. He resigned this position in 1895 to 
stud}* medicine at the College of Physicians and 
Surgeons in Chicago, from which he was grad¬ 
uated in 1898. Immediately after graduation he 
married Corona B. Kirkpatrick of Waterman, 
III., in his native county, and accepted a position 
in Mexico where a classmate had preceded him. 
His first employment was as company surgeon 
for the American Smelting and Refining Com¬ 
pany at Tepezala, Aguascalientes. He after¬ 
ward was transferred to Santa Barbara, Chi¬ 
huahua, and in 19 n he became surgeon-in-chief 
of all the company's interests in Mexico. Though 
a citizen of the United States, he was appointed 
municipal health officer of Santa Barbara, a po¬ 
sition in which he achieved a wide reputation 
despite drastic measures foreign to Mexican ex¬ 
perience. He inaugurated a local vaccination 
campaign which practically stamped out small¬ 
pox where it had formerly been regarded as so 
inevitable that children were purposely exposed 
in order to insure a milder attack. So successful 
was this campaign that Husk’s authority in sani¬ 
tary matters was unquestioned thereafter. Ty¬ 
phus fever, locally called tabardillo, is endemic 
throughout Mexico. In 19x5, however, its in¬ 
cidence had assumed epidemic proportions and 
it became a public-health problem for the world 
at large. Among other agencies. Mount Sinai 
Hospital of New York organized a commission, 
headed by Dr. Peter Olitsky, for the investiga¬ 
tion of the disease in Mexico and enlisted Husk’s 
services in their work. A hospital was established 
at Matehuala, San Luis Potosi, in the center of 
the affected zone. Though the method of trans¬ 
mission of typhus by lice had been previously 
well established, the specific cause of die disease 
was still unknown. While studies of the bac¬ 
teriology and serology of the disease were being 
carried on, a sanitary campaign against the in¬ 
sect carrier was vigorously prosecuted. This was 
the mission assigned to Husk and he pursued it 
with his usual judgment and vigor. In addition, 
an effort at prophylaxis by an anti-typhus vac¬ 
cine was being employed. In the midst of this 
work Husk contracted the disease* He died in 
a hospital at Laredo, Tex., thus adding another 
name to the list of martyrs to medical progress, 
of whom typhus has exacted more than its share. 

Husk was a man of inexhaustible enthusiasm 
and energy. To good judgment he added a 
never-failing fund of good nature, an ideal com¬ 
bination in one who was dealing with a primitive 


429 



Husmann 

people. He gave to the problems of the peon the 
same keen interest as to those of the upper classes. 
Though at the time of his death relations be¬ 
tween the United States and Mexican govern¬ 
ments were strained, and feeling against the 
United States was high, a popular movement 
was inaugurated for the erection of a monument 
to his memory. Physically he was short and 
heavy-set He was an all-around athlete who 
had been the star quarter-back of his college foot¬ 
ball team. He had a ruddy face, with irregular 
features and laughing blue eyes, topped by a 
mass of red hair. Husk contributed a number 
of articles to medical periodicals dealing with 
the medical and sanitary problems of the Mexican 
people. 

[H. W. Jackson, in H. A. Kelly and W. L. Barrage, 
Am. Medic. Biogs. (1920); N. Y. Times, Mar. 21, 
1916; personal acquaintance.] J. M. P. 

HUSMANN, GEORGE (Nov. 4, 1827-Nov. 

5, 1902), viticulturist and author, was born at 
Meyenburg, Prussia, son of J. H. Martin and 
Louise Charlotte (Wesselhoeft) Husmann. He 
attended school at Meyenburg, where his father 
was a village schoolmaster, and was inspired by 
him with a love of nature and of horticultural 
pursuits. The family emigrated in 1837, took 
shares in the Ansiedlungs-Gesellschaft of Phila¬ 
delphia, and in the winter of 1838-39 joined the 
company's settlement at Hermann, Mo. George 
received instruction in German, English, and 
French from his elder brother, Frederick. His 
first vineyard was planted on his father's farm 
in 1847. 1850 went t° California, tried 

mining, but returned two years later to look af¬ 
ter the farm of a widowed sister. Here he plant¬ 
ed extensive vineyards and orchards, which be¬ 
came known as the model fruit-farm of Missouri. 
He married Louise Caroline Kielmann in 1854. 
During the Civil War he was quartermaster of 
the 4th Infantry, Missouri Volunteers, 1862-63. 

In 1869 he moved to Bluff ton, Mo., as president 
of the Bluffton Wine Company. Following a 
ruinous decline in the prices of grapes and wines, 
which caused his company to fail, he moved in 
1872 to Sedalia, Mo., and started a nursery. 
From 1870 to 1875 he shipped millions of cut¬ 
tings of phylloxera-resistant vines to reestablish 
French vineyards. In 1878 he went to Columbia, 
Mo., as professor and superintendent of pomol¬ 
ogy and forestry at the state university. Inde¬ 
fatigable, he taught, made extensive plantings, 
converted the campus into an arboretum, warred 
against itinerant pedlers of nursery stock, plead¬ 
ed for recognition and financial support from the 
legislature. Three of his children attended the 
university. In 1881 he moved to Napa, CaL, 


Hussey 

where he managed the Talcoa Vineyards, grew 
vinifera grapes, and made prize wines. He was 
United States statistical agent for California 
from 1885 to 1900, and was a member of the first 
Viticultural Congress at Washington, D. C. He 
died at Napa. 

Husmann was a small man with sparkling 
eyes full of humor, and a bearded, German coun¬ 
tenance. He was energetic, keen, outspoken but 
unobtrusive. He enjoyed a reputation as viti¬ 
culturist and wine-maker second only to that of 
Nicholas Longworth Active in public af¬ 

fairs, he served sixteen years on the Missouri 
State Board of Agriculture, of which he was 
vice-president, 1867-68; was a member of the 
convention of 1865 to revise the Missouri con¬ 
stitution ; was presidential elector for Grant; and 
member of the board of curators of the Univer¬ 
sity of Missouri, 1869-72. An unselfish pro¬ 
moter of horticulture, he helped found and was 
a charter member of many organizations. By 
invitation he contributed many essays to jour¬ 
nals and society reports. He published the Grape 
Culturist from 1869 to 1873, and was the author 
of An Essay on the Culture of the Grape in the 
Great West (1862), The Cultivation of the Na¬ 
tive Grape and Manufacture of American Wines 
(1866), American Grape Growing and Wine- 
Making (1880), Grape Cidture and Wine-Mak¬ 
ing in California (1888). 

[Annual Reports Mo. State Hort. Soc 1839-81; 
Ann. Reports Mo. State Board of Agric. t 1865-81; 
Univ. of Mo. catalogues, 1869—72, 1878-81; Hist, of 
Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford and Gas¬ 
conade Counties, Mo. (1888); In Memoriam, Prof. 
George Husmann (1902) ; Mo. Hist. Rev., Oct. 1929; 
personal information from C. B. Rollins and G. C. 
Husmann.] H. D. H-k-r. 

HUSSEY, CURTIS GRUBB (Aug. 11,1802- 
Apr. 25, 1893), miner and manufacturer, was 
bom on a farm near York, Pa., the son of Chris¬ 
topher and Lydia (Grubb) Hussey. Soon after 
his birth, the family moved to Ohio, where he 
grew up, attending the district school in the in¬ 
tervals when he could be spared from the work 
of the farm. When he was about eighteen he en¬ 
tered the office of a physician at Mount Pleasant, 
Ohio. In 1825 he qualified to practise medicine 
and moved to Morgan County, Ind., where he 
quickly built up a lucrative practice. Within four 
years he had accumulated a capital of several 
thousand dollars with which he purchased gen¬ 
eral stores in the territory which he covered in 
his practice. The stores, bought as an invest¬ 
ment, grew so rapidly that soon he devoted his 
entire time to their management and finally went 
into the business of dealing in pork, an impor¬ 
tant product of the section. 

Since Pittsburgh was the center through 



Hussey Hussey 

which his goods passed to the East, Hussey went <tS6r); Standard Hist, of Pittsburgh , Pa . fiSgS); 
there in 1840 to supervise more closely the mar- ^ 1 Pittsburgh Dispatch t 

keting phase of his business. Here in 1842 ru- pf - 2 ’ 1 93 ‘ j F.A.T. 

mors of rich copper deposits in the Lake Supe- HUSSEY, OBED (1792-Aug. 4, i860), inven- 
rior region stirred his interest, and the follow- tor, was born in Maine of Quaker stock, and at 
ing year he^ sent John Hays, an associate, to a very early age moved with his parents to Nan- 
make investigations. Hays was impressed by tucket, Mass. It is conjectured that in his early 
what he learned and purchased for Hussey a life he was a sailor, probably by necessity rather 
sixth share in each of the first three permits to than choice, for, as shown by his later actions, 
mine copper in that district granted by the he was moody and impatient, a theorist and me- 
United States government. Hussey then organ- chanica! genius, determined and intolerant of op- 
ized the Pittsburgh & Boston Mining Company, position, and yet extremely modest and scnsi- 
which opened the first of the Lake Superior cop- tive. At such times as he was engaged in the 
per mines (the Cliff) and demonstrated that the perfection of some mechanical device he worked 
metal was there in paying quantities. A rush of brilliantly; at other times he was inclined to lazi- 
miners to the region followed. The Cliff mine is ness. He had already devised a corn-grinding 
reputed to have returned profits of $2,280,000 machine, a sugar-cane crusher, and a machine 
on an original investment of $110,000. In 1849 for grinding hooks and eyes, and was at work in 
Hussey and Thomas M. Howe, a partner in the Cincinnati, Ohio, on an improvement for a can¬ 
mining company, organized C. G. Hussey & die mould, when, about 1830, the suggestion of 
Company, copper manufacturers, for the rolling devising a machine to cut grain was made to 
and marketing of copper. This company, later him. The idea apparently appealed to him, and 
known as the Pittsburgh Copper & Brass Roll- in his characteristic way he began the construc- 
ing Mills, soon came into the sole ownership of tion of experimental models without either de- 
Hussey. Its mill was the earliest of its kind termining what had already been attempted by 
west of the Alleghanies, and one of the first in others or caring whether a perfected machine 
the country to supply American copper in large was needed. He must have left Cincinnati short- 
quantities to manufacturers. In 1859 Hussey ly after beginning this work, for it is known 
and Howe bought the old steel plant of Blair & that in 1831 he was Jiving alone and working on 
Company and began the manufacture of crucible his reaper models in the loft of the agricultural 
steel by the “direct process.” Hussey spent implement factory of Richard B. Chenoweth, in 
much time and money to perfect this process, Baltimore, Md. For some eighteen months Hus- 
with the result that his success led to its sub- sey lived there rent free, and had such encour- 
stitution for the English cementation process aging results that he returned to Cincinnati in 
both in the United States and abroad. Hussey, the winter of 1832-33 and began the construc- 
Howe & Company was the outcome of this en- tion of a full-size reaper. This was completed 
terprise. In addition to the management of his in time for the harvest of 1833, and the first pub- 
own businesses, Hussey acted in the capacity of He trial was held before the Hamilton County 
adviser to mining developments in every part of Agricultural Society near Carthage, Ohio, on 
the country. July 2, 1833. Its success was attested by nine 

He served one term in the Indiana legislature witnesses. After making several minor improve- 
(1829). His views on the subject of religion, ments he applied for a patent, which was grant- 
war, slavery, and temperance were in agreement ed Dec. 31,1833. The invention embodied a re- 
with those of the Society of Friends, of which ciprocating saw tooth cutter sliding between 
he was a member. A hobby of his was the pro- upper and lower guard fingers. The cutter was 
motion of the influence of women in industry driven by a pitman from a crankshaft operated 
and business, an outcome of which was his es- . through gear wheels from the main drive wheds. 
tablishment of the School of Design for Women The machine was horse-drawn from the front, 
in Pittsburgh. He was also a founder and pres- with the cutter set off to one side, bade of which 
ident of the Allegheny Observatory, which later was a platform to catch the cut grain, 'Hie pat- 
was combined with Western University of Penn- ent specification provided for the locking and 
sylvania (now the University of Pittsburgh), of unlocking of the drive wheels and also for hing- 
which he was a trustee (1864-93). In 1839 ^ ing the platform, and stated that the operator 
married Rebecca, daughter of James and Su- might ride on the machine, 
sanna (Jackson) Updegraff of Jefferson Coun- After obtaining the patent Hussey began to 
ty, Ohio. manufacture his reaper, and during the years 

[j. L. Bishop, <4 Hist, of Am. Manufactures, voL III 34 to 1838 be introdaced it into Illinois, N«r 

43 * 



Hussey 

York, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. His ma¬ 
chines sold well and he established a factory in 
Baltimore* Six months after Hussey obtained 
his first patent, Cyrus McCormick [q.v.~\ pat¬ 
ented a reaper and began to manufacture it. A 
keen, at times bitter, rivalry developed between 
the two men, which continued for many years 
both in the United States and in England, and 
probably had much to do with the subsequent de¬ 
velopment of the reaper. Hussey, for example, 
took out a second patent, No. 5227 (Aug. 7, 
1847) open to P anc * slotted finger bar, 

which is an important part of all successful cut¬ 
ter bars; and McCormick, a third patent, for 
gearing changes and raker's seat. Both Hussey 
and McCormick asked for extensions to their 
patents but failed to get them. They exhibited 
their machines at the London Exhibition in 
1851, and subsequently entered into competitive 
trials in England, both men receiving high hon¬ 
ors. The successes of these two pioneers nat¬ 
urally spurred others to devise improvements 
in the reaper, which McCormick was quick to 
acquire, but which Hussey, with his character¬ 
istic obstinacy, refused to adopt. As a result, his 
business gradually declined and he sold out in 
1858. He then turned to the invention of a steam 
plow, on which he was at work when, during 
a visit to New England, he fell beneath a railway 
train and was killed. He was survived by his 
wife, Eunice B. (Starbuck) Hussey, and a 
daughter. 

[E. W. Byrn, The Progress of Invention in the Nine¬ 
teenth Century (1900); W. B. Kaempffert, A Popular 
Hist of Am. Invention {1924); F. L. Greeno, Ohed 
Hussey (1912); Farm Implement News (Chicago), 
Jan. 1886; Edward Stabler, A Brief Narrative of the 
Invention of Reaping Machines (1854), and A Review 
of the Pamphlet of W . N. P. Fitzgerald (1855) ; R. B. 
Swift, Who Invented the Reaperf (1897J; M. F. Mil¬ 
ler, The Evolution of Reaping Machines (1902) ; Cyrus 
McCormick, The Century of the Reaper (1931) ; the 
Sun (Baltimore), Aug. 6, i860.] C. W.M. 

HUSSEY, WILLIAM JOSEPH (Aug. 10, 
1862-Oct 28,1926), astronomer, was bom on a 
farm in Mendon, Ohio. He was the son of John 
Milton and Mary Catherine (Sevems) Hussey. 
Funds could not be spared from the proceeds of 
the farm for a college education, but he taught 
school and ran a printing press, and finally en¬ 
tered the University of Michigan in 1882. By 
the end of his sophomore year his savings were 
all used up and he took a position with a party of 
raSroad surveyors. Reentering college, he grad¬ 
uated in 1889 civil engineering, and after a 
part of a year in the Nautical Almanac Office at 
Washington, returned to Michigan as an instruc¬ 
tor. During 1891-92 he was acting director of 
the observatory. He was then called to Leland 


Hussey* 

Stanford Junior University as assistant profes¬ 
sor of astronomy and was soon promoted to a 
full professorship. 

While at Stanford he was often a volunteer 
assistant at the Lick Observatory, and in 1896 
he accepted a position as astronomer there. His 
chief interest lay in micrometrical observation; 
he was a master of the technique of exact meas¬ 
urement and his early observations of comets, 
satellites, and double stars at once established 
his reputation as an observer. In the years 
1898-1900 he remeasured the double stars dis¬ 
covered by Otto Struve. All previous measures 
of these stars were collected and discussed, and 
the results brought together in Volume V (1901) 
of the Publications of the Lick Observatory. In 
July 1899 he joined R. G. Aitken in a scrutiny 
of all stars brighter than the ninth magnitude 
between the north pole and -22° declination. 
Hussey's share of the discoveries of double stars 
numbered 1,327. In 1905 he was called to the 
directorship of the observatory in Ann Arbor. 
Here he developed and carried out plans for the 
extension of the observatory, including build¬ 
ings, equipment, and an instrument shop in 
which was built the mounting for the 37^-inch 
reflector. 

With astronomical research and an enviable 
reputation for astronomical instruction well es¬ 
tablished at Michigan, he was ready to turn to 
the realization of his long cherished plan to carry 
the search for double stars into the southern 
hemisphere, a search he had begun in 1903, when 
he had studied the “seeing” in southern Califor¬ 
nia, Arizona, and Australia for the Carnegie In¬ 
stitution of Washington. R. P. Lamont of Chi¬ 
cago, a college classmate, stood ready to finance 
the project. Drawings for a large telescope 
were made in 1910 and the lenses ordered, but 
there were serious delays in obtaining the glass 
disks. Finally, in 1922, an opportunity came to 
purchase 27-inch disks in Jena, and the lenses 
were finished in 1925. In the meantime, how¬ 
ever, much else had happened. In 1911 Hussey 
was offered the directorship of the observatory 
at La Plata, in the Argentine Republic. Ar¬ 
rangements were soon made whereby he should 
divide his time about equally between the ob¬ 
servatories at Ann Arbor and La Plata. On his 
arrival in South America in July 1911 he en¬ 
countered many unexpected difficulties and dis¬ 
couragements, but when he left again in Janu¬ 
ary 1912 the reorganization was well under 
way, plans had been matured and initiated, and 
nearly one hundred more southern double stars 
discovered. This arrangement continued for six 
years. The staff was increased, an observatory 


43 2 



Husting 

publication launched, and an activity started 
which continues after twenty years. When the 
lenses ordered in 1910 were finished, the tele¬ 
scope was started on its way to South Africa, 
and in 1926 Hussey, accompanied by Mrs. Hus¬ 
sey, sailed for London on his way to Bloemfon¬ 
tein* A few evenings later, while seated at din¬ 
ner with English friends, he died. 

Hussey received the Lalande Medal of the 
Paris Academy of Sciences with R. G. Aitken 
in 1906. He was a foreign associate of the 
Royal Astronomical Society and member of 
many other societies. He was president of the 
Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 1897 and 
secretary of the American Astronomical Society 
from 1908 to 1912. In 1895 he married Ethel 
Fountain, who died in 1915. He was survived 
by Mary McNeal (Reed) Hussey, whom he mar¬ 
ried in 1917, and by one son and one daughter, 

[R. G. Aitken, in Astron. Soc. of the Pacific Pubs,, 
Dec. 1926; R. H. Curtiss, in Pop. Astron., Dec. 1926, 
and another notice in the same issue; Nature (Lon¬ 
don), Nov. 20, 1926; Tour . Brit. Astron. Asso Oct. 
1926; Observatory, Nov. 1926; Who's Who in Amer¬ 
ica, 1926-27; the Times (London), Oct 30, 1926.] 

R. S.D. 

HUSTING, PAUL OSCAR (Apr. 25, 1866- 
Oct 21, 1917), politician, was born in Fond du 
Lac, Wis., son of Jean Pierre Husting, a native 
of Luxemburg, and his wife, Mary Magdelena 
Juneau, the daughter of Solomon Laurent Ju¬ 
neau [ q.v .]. His family soon moved to May- 
ville, which became his established residence. 
Forced to stop school to work at the age of six¬ 
teen, he did not continue his formal education 
until he entered the law school in Madison, in 
January 1895, when he was in the employ of the 
secretary of state. After passing the bar exami¬ 
nations in the following December he took up 
the practice of law in Mayville, where from 1902 
to 1906 he held the position of district attorney 
for Dodge County. For the next eight years he 
represented the 13th district in the state Senate. 
Although a Democrat, he worked with the La 
Follette Progressives in putting through much 
of the legislation fostered by that group. He was 
responsible for the two-cent railroad passage 
fare, advocated labor laws, worked for the state 
income tax and the resolution ratifying the na¬ 
tional income tax amendment, was prominent in 
the investigation of the election of 1908 which 
resulted in the enactment of the Corrupt Prac¬ 
tices Act, and favored the popular election of 
senators and the initiative and referendum. His 
chief activities were in connection with measures 
looking to the conservation of natural resources, 
of which committee in the Senate he was chair¬ 
man for two years. He represented the Senate 
on the special committee on waterpower, for- 


Huston 

estry, and drainage which carried on an investi¬ 
gation leading to the Husting Waterpower Bill, 
one of his most valuable contributions. By 1912 
he had become an outstanding Democrat in Wis¬ 
consin and was instrumental in carrying the 
state for Wilson in the election of that year. He 
was the first man from Wisconsin elected di¬ 
rectly by the people to the United States Senate 
(1914), and the first Democrat elected to that 
position after 1893* Because of his opposition 
to the Shield’s Waterpower Bill he gained some 
notice during his first session in Congress. He 
also received publicity because of his exposure 
of the propaganda plot of the American Em¬ 
bargo Conference of Chicago. He was well 
started on what might have been a noteworthy 
Senatorial career when he was accidentally shot 
and killed by his brother. He never married. 

[Hustings private papers are preserved in the li¬ 
brary of the State Hist Soe. of Wis. For brief bio¬ 
graphical sketches see H. B. Hubbell, Dodge County, 
Wis., Past and Present (1913), vol. II ; Who's Who in 
America, 1916-17; Wisconsin Blue Books, 1907-11; 
the Wis. Mag. of Hist., June 1918; and notices m the 
N. Y . Times, tne Wis . State Journal, the Madison 
Democrat, and the Milwaukee Sentinel at the time of 
his death.] 33 

HUSTON, CHARLES (July 23, 1822-Jan. 5, 
1897), physician, iron manufacturer, was bom 
at Philadelphia, Pa., the son of Dr. Robert Men¬ 
denhall and Hannah (West) Huston. His fa¬ 
ther was a prominent physician and later a mem¬ 
ber of the faculty of Jefferson Medical College 
in Philadelphia. His preliminary education was 
received in the public schools of Philadelphia 
and in 1836 he entered the University of Penn¬ 
sylvania, graduating with the degree of A.B. 
in 1840. Following his father in the medical 
profession, he entered the Jefferson Medical 
College where he received the degree of M.D. in 
1842. He then went abroad to continue his medi¬ 
cal training at Heidelberg and Paris and upon 
his return began the practice of medicine in 
Philadelphia. In April 1848 he married Isa¬ 
bella Pennock Lukens of Coatesville, Pa. Soon 
afterward it became apparent that his health 
would not stand the strain of medical practice 
and he removed to the former home of his wife 
and became a partner in the iron business with 
his mother-in-law, Rebecca W. Lukens, and his 
brother-in-law, Abraham Gibbons. Upon the 
death of Mrs. Lukens and the retirement of Gib¬ 
bons, Huston and his partner, Charles Penrose, 
became the owners of the Lukens Iron and Sted 
Mills. The company manufactured a special 
brand of charcoal iron boiler-plate. Huston’s 
scientific turn of mind and progressive spirit 
gave the company a leading position in the trade. 
He was one of the first to study the properties of 


433 



Hutchins 

iron and steel by physical and chemical tests and 
was also responsible for the improvement of 
many of the mechanical processes pertaining to 
the trade. Two articles which he wrote, bear¬ 
ing upon the effect of heat and stress upon iron 
and steel, were published in the Journal of the 
Franklin Institute (February 1878, January 
1879). In 1895 he was selected by Chauncey M. 
Depew to contribute the article on the iron and 
steel industry to One Hundred Years of Ameri¬ 
can Commerce (2 vols., 1895). In 1877 he had 
been made chairman of the committee of manu¬ 
facturers of boiler-plate called by the United 
States Treasury Department to cooperate with 
the board of supervising steamboat inspectors 
in forming a proper standard of tests for boiler¬ 
plate. His recommendations were adopted by 
the board and in following years his advice was 
frequently sought by government officials and 
by the leading steam-boiler inspection and in¬ 
surance companies of the United States. Aside 
from his manufacturing interests he took a lead¬ 
ing part in the promotion of community interests 
and was president of the Coatesville Gas Com¬ 
pany, which he aided in organizing in 1871. He 
died at Coatesville after a long illness. 

[E. R. Huston, Hist, of the Huston Families and 
Their Descendants (1912) ; Gilbert Cope and H. G. 
Ashmead, Hist. Homes and Institutions ... of Chester 
and Delaware Counties , Pa. (1904), vol. I; Univ. of 
Pa.: Biog. Cat. of the Matriculates of the Coll1749- 
1893 (1894); Public Ledger (Philadelphia), Jan. 6 , 
i8 97*I J.H.F. 

HUTCHINS, HARRY BURNS (Apr. 8, 
1847-Jan. 25, 1930), lawyer, educator, president 
of the University of Michigan, was born at Lis¬ 
bon, N. H., the son of Carlton B. and Nancy 
Walker (Merrill) Hutchins. His early educa¬ 
tion, received in seminaries at Tilton, N. H., 
and Newbury, Vt., was followed by his enroll¬ 
ment in 1866 in Wesleyan University, Middle- 
town, Conn. Ill health, however, prevented his 
pursuing the course there, though he spent some 
months in pre-medical studies at Vermont and 
Dartmouth. The following year, despite the dis¬ 
tance from his native New England hills, he en¬ 
tered the University of Michigan, attracted by 
the presence on the faculty of a number of the 
authors of textbooks he had been studying. Fol¬ 
lowing an undergraduate career of some distinc¬ 
tion he received his diploma in 1871 on the occa¬ 
sion when President James B. Angell [q.vJ] was 
inaugurated. After a year in charge of the pub¬ 
lic schools of Owosso, Mich., he returned to the 
University in 1872 to become an instructor, and, 
the foBowing year, assistant professor of history 
and rhetoric. Meanwhile he was studying law 
and in 1876 he resigned to become the partner 


Hutchins 

of Thomas M. Crocker, of Mount Clemens, 
Mich., whose daughter, Mary Louise, had be¬ 
come his wife on Dec. 26, 1872. 

Again recalled to the University in 1884, as 
Jay Professor of Law, Hutchins finally entered 
upon his long and distinguished career as an 
educator and administrator. Within three years 
he accepted an appointment as the first dean of 
the newly established law school at Cornell Uni¬ 
versity. Legal education was entering a new 
phase; and when the position of dean of the law 
school at Michigan became vacant in 1895, he 
returned once more to Ann Arbor, charged with 
the inauguration of a three-year law course and 
the development of the case system of instruc¬ 
tion. His achievements during the following 
fifteen years were such that he was twice called 
to serve as acting president of the University : 
once, in 1897-98, while President Angell was 
absent as minister to Turkey; and again, in 1909. 
When a permanent successor to Angell was 
sought in 1910, Hutchins proved the unanimous 
choice. He accepted with the understanding that 
he was to serve for five years, but was prevailed 
upon to continue in office until July 1,1920, when 
he finally resigned. He passed his last years 
quietly in Ann Arbor. 

The value of Hutchins' long administrative 
experience was immediately demonstrated when 
he became president, and the sound and con¬ 
structive expansion of his administration marks 
an important period in Michigan's development. 
Despite some opposition, requirements were 
raised, special courses such as those in public 
health, aeronautics, and municipal administra¬ 
tion, were established, and curricula in sanitary, 
automobile, and highway engineering, fine arts, 
and business administration were inaugurated. 
Advanced studies and research were encouraged 
through his strong support of the graduate 
school, which during these years became a sep¬ 
arate administrative unit; his concern for stu¬ 
dent welfare led to the organization of a univer¬ 
sity health service; and the institution's educa¬ 
tional obligation to the state was recognized in 
the development of extension courses. In his re¬ 
lations with the people of Michigan upon whom 
the financial support of the University as a state 
institution rests, he was most fortunate; funds 
for many new buildings were appropriated; and 
the student enrollment was almost doubled. His 
emphasis upon the need of alumni cooperation as 
a supplement to the support derived from the 
state, has given Michigan a unique place among 
state institutions. Such benefactions as the 
Michigan Union, five women's dormitories, and 
the gifts to the law school by the late W. W. 


434 



Hutchins 

Cook were the direct results of his policy in this 
respect 

Professional and administrative labors left 
him small time for scholarly investigation. He 
published in 1894, however, an American edi¬ 
tion of Joshua Williams’ Principles of the Law 
of Reed Property and, in 1895, Cases on Equity 
Jurisprudence , annotated five volumes of the re¬ 
ports of the Michigan Supreme Court, wrote a 
biography of Thomas M. Cooley (W. D. Lewis, 
Great American Lawyers, vol. VII, 1909), and 
was the author of many articles in legal journals. 
His public service also included the chairman¬ 
ship of the committee on legal education of 
the American Bar Association, and membership 
as the American representative on the United 
States-Uruguay Treaty Commission. 

Throughout his life he retained many charac¬ 
teristics of his New England background. He 
was a strong, reliant, self-respecting personal¬ 
ity, and his impressive bearing was sometimes 
the subject of affectionate undergraduate humor. 
To favored students and intimate associates, he 
revealed unaffected kindliness, tolerance, and 
human sympathy, illuminated by endearing 
flashes of shrewd Yankee humor. 

EB. A. Hinsdale, Hist, of the Univ . of Mich. (1906) ; 
Wilfred Shaw, The Univ. of Mick . (1920) ; “In Me- 
moriam, Harry Burns Hutchins,” Univ. of Mich . Official 
Pubs., vol. XXXII, no, 22 (1930) ; Mich. Alumnus, 
Feb. 1, Feb. 8, 1930; Who*s Who in America , 1928- 
2 9; Mich. State Bar Jour., Sept. 1930; Detroit Free 
Press, Jan. 26, 1930.] W—d. B. S. 

HUTCHINS, THOMAS (1730-Apr. 28, 
1789), military engineer, geographer, was bom 
in Monmouth County, N. J. Left an orphan be¬ 
fore he was sixteen, he spent his youth in the 
“Western country,” served as an officer of Penn¬ 
sylvania colonial troops from 1757 to 1759, and 
later entered the regular British service, in which 
he remained until 1780. He took part in the 
French and Indian War and was commended for 
bravery. He had acquired a knowledge of en¬ 
gineering, and laid out the plans for military 
works at Fort Pitt and at Pensacola, Fla. He 
kept journals of his travels while under military 
orders, and illustrated them with maps. Among 
these are: “Journal of a March from Fort Pitt 
to Venango and from Thence to Presqu* Isle,” 
1760 ( Pennsylvania Magazine of History and 
Biography, II, 1878, 149 - 53 )» An Historical 
Account of the Expedition Against the Ohio 
Indians in the Year 1764 (1765), probably by 
Hutchins, but attributed also to Dr. William 
Smith; a “Journal from Fort Pitt to the Mouth 
of the Ohio, in the Year 1768” ( Indiana Histor¬ 
ical Society Publications, II, 1895, 4*7-2i), 
and “Remarks on the Country of the Illinois” 


Hutchins 

(manuscript, Pennsylvania Historical Society). 
Larger works are A Topographical Description 
of Virginia , Pennsylvania, Maryland and Xorth 
Carolina (London, 1778), and An Historical 
Narrative and Topographical Description of 
Louisiana and WesUFlorida (Philadelphia, 
1784). In recognition of his scientific work he 
was elected Apr. 17, 1772, to membership in the 
American Philosophical Society. 

When the American Revolution broke out, 
Hutchins, then a captain and engineer, was in 
London. Being unwilling to bear arms against 
his countrymen, he asked, but was refused, per¬ 
mission to sell his captaincy. He declined to ac¬ 
cept a majority in a new regiment, and was then, 
in August 1779, taken into custody charged with 
high treason for having communicated informa¬ 
tion to the friends of the United States in France. 
On Feb. 11, 1780, having been released from 
prison, he resigned his commission, and “in a 
private manner” went to France, where he pre¬ 
sented himself to Franklin. The latter recom¬ 
mended him to Congress, and he sailed from 
L’Orient for Charleston where he joined the 
southern army under General Greene. By reso¬ 
lution, on May 4, 1781, Congress appointed him 
geographer to the southern army. On July 11, 
the title was changed to “geographer to the 
United States ” 

At the conclusion of the war, Hutchins re¬ 
tained his office as civil geographer, but was 
permitted to accept commissions from the states. 
In 1783 he was employed by Pennsylvania to 
view the roads leading from Susquehanna to 
Reading and Philadelphia, and to select sites for 
towns. In the same year he was appointed to 
serve as a Pennsylvania commissioner to run 
the western end of the boundary line between 
Virginia and Pennsylvania. The astronomical 
observations by which the southwestern point 
of Pennsylvania was determined were finished 
on Sept 20, 1784. He reported to Congress on 
Mar. 7,1785, and later asked leave of absence to 
continue the work. His services were now re¬ 
quired, however, for duties specified by the Or¬ 
dinance of May 20, 1785, which provided a 
method of survey and sale of lands in the west- 
tern territory ceded to Congress by the states. 
The geographer of the United States was given 
entire charge of the survey, and was instructed 
personally to run the east and west line, upon 
which the survey of the whole territory depend¬ 
ed. Hutchins was continued in office for three 
years from May 27,1785, and was then reelected 
for two years. Four, and part of the fifth, of the 
“seven ranges” which were the beginning of the 
present system of platting public lands in the 


435 



Hutchinson Hutchinson 


United States, were run under his direction. 
His first expedition, beginning in September 
1785, had to be abandoned on account of “the 
uncertain state of the Indians.” His second ex¬ 
pedition, from May 23, 1786, to Feb. 21, 1787, 
was carried out under the protection of a mili¬ 
tary escort. The plats of four ranges (now in 
the drafting division of the United States Gen¬ 
eral Land Office) were submitted to Congress on 
Apr. 18,1787. In that year he ran the boundary 
line between New York and Massachusetts. On 
Sept 2, 1788, he began his third expedition to 
complete the seven ranges. When he had pro¬ 
ceeded beyond Pittsburgh, illness forced him to 
return thither, where he died on Apr. 28, 1789. 
The Gazette of the United States concluded a 
commendatory memorial notice by the remark, 
“he has measured much earth, but a small space 
now contains him.” 

[F. C. Hicks, Thomas Hutchins . A Topographical 
Description of Va., PaMd., and N. C. (1904) ; West¬ 
ern Reserve and Northern Ohio Hist Soc., Tract No. 
22 (Aug. 1874 ); N. Y. Daily Gazette, May 20, 1789.] 

F C H 

HUTCHINSON, ANNE (1591-1643), ban¬ 
ished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony be¬ 
cause of her religious beliefs, was born in Alford, 
Lincolnshire, England, and was baptized on July 
20, 1591. Her father, Francis Marbury, a spir¬ 
ited English divine, was known for his Puritan 
leanings and more than once received the cen¬ 
sure of the Established Church. Her mother, 
Bridget Dryden, was Marbury’s second wife and 
the daughter of John Dryden of Canon’s Ashby 
in Northamptonshire. In 1605 the family moved 
to London. Reared in a household which at once 
represented breeding and intelligence, Anne was 
exposed from her birth to the religious discus¬ 
sions of the time and must have absorbed some 
of her father’s liberal beliefs at an early age. 
On Aug. 9, 1612, she was married to William 
Hutchinson, the son of a well-to-do merchant, 
and went to his home in Alford to live. There 
she spent the next twenty-two years of her life 
and bore her husband fourteen children. In 1633 
their eldest son, Edward, emigrated to Massa¬ 
chusetts Bay with John Cotton Iq.vJ], previ¬ 
ously vicar of St Botolph’s in old Boston, whose 
preaching had inclined Anne Hutchinson to at¬ 
tend his church. The following year, with her 
husband and family, she emigrated to Massa¬ 
chusetts on the Griffin , arriving in September. 
In the new colony she won respect for her vigor¬ 
ous intellect and was loved for her kindliness. 
She was a thorough student of the Bible and 
soon her restless and inquiring mind led her to 
take a strong part in the religious life of the 
community. At first she held informal meet¬ 


ings of women at her house and on these occa¬ 
sions she would discuss the sermons of the pre¬ 
vious Sunday. She then ventured to expound 
her own religious beliefs and advocated the 
preaching of a “covenant of grace”—a religion 
based upon the individual’s direct intuition of 
God’s grace and love—as opposed to the preach¬ 
ing of a “covenant of works’—a religion based 
upon obedience to the laws of church and state. 
Inasmuch as the polity of the Massachusetts 
church was based upon the latter, her criticisms 
of the clergy and assertions of her own doctrine 
soon stirred the colony to its foundations. She 
was labeled an antinomian by her opponents and 
was accused of advocating a religion which ab¬ 
solved its adherents from obedience to moral 
law. At first the Rev. John Cotton agreed with 
her views and was of her party, as were her 
brother-in-law, the Rev. John Wheelwright, 
and Henry Vane [qq.#.], but in time her support 
diminished. Early in August 1637 Vane sailed 
for England. Shortly afterward a synod of the 
churches was called in which her views were 
denounced. Cotton acquiesced to the pronounce¬ 
ments of the synod, leaving Wheelwright her 
strongest ally. In the following session of the 
General Court Wheelwright was banished and 
Anne Hutchinson was summoned to trial “for 
traducing the ministers and their ministry.” 
After proceedings which were a legal travesty 
she was sentenced to banishment When asked 
on what grounds, the governor, John Winthrop 
[q.v.] replied: “Say no more, the court knows 
wherefore and is satisfied.” Sentence of banish¬ 
ment was stayed—it was then winter and her 
health was delicate—and Anne was committed 
to the charge of Joseph Weld of Roxbury, the 
marshal. Subsequently she was placed in the 
home of John Cotton in Boston, where Cotton 
and the Rev. John Davenport labored to con¬ 
vince her of her errors. Twice brought before 
the church at Boston, she was at length induced 
to recant in public, but when she finally admit¬ 
ted that her judgment remained unaltered she 
was accused of lying and was formally excom¬ 
municated. In casting her out of the church 
John Wilson delivered her up to Satan and or¬ 
dered her “as a leper” to withdraw herself from 
the congregation. Thus in the early spring of 
1638 she emigrated with her family to the colony 
which William Coddington, Dr. John Clarke, 
and others had established on the island of 
Aquidneck (Rhode Island). In 1642 William 
Hutchinson died and Anne removed with some 
of her family to Long Island, later establishing 
a home on the mainland, on the shore of what is 
now Pelham Bay. Here in August or September 


43 6 



Hutchinson 

1643 she an d all but one of her household were 
massacred by the Indians. Of her children, Ed¬ 
ward was the great-grandfather of Thomas 
Hutchinson [ q.vJ ]. Her daughter Faith was the 
wife of Thomas Savage, commander-in-chief of 
the Massachusetts forces during King Philip’s 
War. Her youngest daughter, Susanna, born in 
1633, was carried away by the Indians at the 
time of the massacre but was ransomed by the 
Dutch and in 1651 she was married to John Cole 
of Boston. 

[There is a biography of Anne Hutchinson, with 
bibliography, in the Diet, of Nat. Biog. See also Winni- 
fred King Rugg, Unafraid: A Life of Anne Hutchin¬ 
son (1930); R. P. Bolton, A Woman Misunderstood: 
Anne, Wife of Wm. Hutchinson (1931); Edith Curtis, 
Anne Hutchinson (1930) ; Helen Augur, An Am. Jeze¬ 
bel: The Life of Anne Hutchinson (1930) ; J. L. Ches¬ 
ter, “The Hutchinson Family of England and New 
England, and Its Connection with the Marburys and 
Drydens,” New-Eng. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct. 
1866; C. F. Adams,. Three Episodes of Mass. Hist. 
(1892), and Antinomianism in the Colony of Mass. Bay 
(1894); J. K. Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal (2 
vols., 1908) ; G. E. Ellis, The Puritan Age and Rule 
(1888), and J. T. Adams, The Founding of New Eng¬ 
land (1921).] J. T.A. 

HUTCHINSON, BENJAMIN PETERS 

(July 24, 1829-Mar. 16, 1899), Chicago packer, 
grain trader, and speculator, was born in Mid¬ 
dleton, Mass., the son of Ira and Hannah (Wil¬ 
son) Hutchinson. He was descended from Rich¬ 
ard Hutchinson, of Arnold, England, who set¬ 
tled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. 
Before he was twenty-one he went to Lynn to 
enter the shoe business. In this he failed, but 
while in Lynn, in 1853, he was married to Sarah 
M. Ingalls of that city. For a time he lived in 
Boston, then he decided to go west. Arriving in 
Milwaukee in 1856, he went to work in Plankin- 
ton’s meat-packing plant. Two years later he 
moved to Chicago where he began to pack meats 
in a small way on his own account. The Civil 
War stimulated the demand for pork and he en¬ 
larged his operations, entering the firm of Burt, 
Hutchinson & Snow. This was the first firm 
to move to the Union Stock Yards when they 
were opened in 1866. The firm later dissolved 
and in 1872 the Chicago Packing & Provision 
Company was organized by Hutchinson and S. 
A. Kent. This company operated successfully 
until 1885. It was said,of Hutchinson that “he 
inaugurated the system which now saves and 
turns into money everything then termed waste 
by the packers.” 

He had become a member of the Chicago 
Board of Trade soon after his arrival in the city 
and in 1870 had organized the Com Exchange 
Bank to make loans to members of the Board 
dealing in grain and provisions. Up to this time 
his speculative trading on the Board was mainly 


Hutchinson 

in provisions and in corn, without any of the 
spectacular features which marked his later 
trading in grain. His interest in pure specula¬ 
tion dates from 1876 when he took the lead in 
organizing the “call market” for dealing in “puts 
and calls.” This method of dealing consists in 
the sale by one operator to another of the option 
of buying from or selling to the person giving 
the option a future contract in grain or provi¬ 
sions within a range of prices and over the pe¬ 
riod intervening between the close and opening 
of the market. In this doubly hazardous form 
of speculative trading Hutchinson excelled and 
he dominated the call market from 1880 until it 
was temporarily abolished by the Boa.rd in 1884. 
From 1887 to 1890 he was the most powerful 
single trader on the Board of Trade. This was 
a period of repeated corners and attempted “cor¬ 
ners” and “Old Hutch,” as he was now familiar¬ 
ly called, was matching wits with traders such 
as Armour, Cudahy, Ream, and Pardridge, His 
great coup came in 1888, the year in which his 
son Charles L. Hutchinson \_q.vJ] was president 
of the Board, when he cornered September 
wheat. 

Although he was sixty years old and had just 
suffered a bad fall, he directed buying operations 
from his bed. He began buying September fu¬ 
tures and cash wheat in July, and aided by un¬ 
usual frost damage during September, he ran 
wheat up from 87H cents in August to $1.50 on 
September 28. When the “shorts” refused to 
settle at this price, he put the price up to $2.00 
and held it there. He was implacable with those 
who had tried to crush him, but so great was he 
in the market, says the historian of the Board, 
that “whenever the old gentleman became en¬ 
gaged in conversation with any one, business in 
the pit stopped.” From this time on he engaged 
in a frenzy of speculation. The partnership 
which he had formed with his son Charles in 
the commission business in 1875 was dissolved 
and he gave all his time to trading. In the fall 
of 1889 he dominated the markets for wheat and 
com as well as pork. He suffered heavy losses 
in the financial panic brought on by the failure 
of Baring Brothers in 1890 and, like other spec¬ 
ulators of his type, found his early fortune great¬ 
ly diminished. Early in 1891 he disappeared 
from the floor of the exchange and was next 
heard from in New York, where he carried on 
some sporadic trading. In 1893 withdrew 
from active membership on the Chicago Board 
of Trade. His business career was ended and 
he died in 1899 after a period of failing health. 
He was a born trader with all the shrewdness 
but with none of the conservatism of his New 


437 



Hutchinson 

England forebears. In his day he was the Na¬ 
poleon of commodity speculation. 

[C. H. Taylor, Hist, of the Board of Trade of the 
City of Chicago (3 vols., 1917) i Paul Gilbert and L. C. 
Bryson, Chicago and Its Makers (1929) *. Perley Derby, 
The Hutchinson Family (1870) ; Vital Records of Mid¬ 
dleton, Mass. (1904) ; Chicago News, Chicago Tribune, 
and Chicago Chronicle, Mar. 17, 1899.] E. A. D. 

HUTCHINSON, CHARLES LAWRENCE 

(Mar. 7, 1854-Oct. 7, 1924), Chicago merchant 
and banker, was bom in Lynn, Mass., the son of 
Benjamin P. Hutchinson [ q.v .] and Sarah M. 
Ingalls. He was educated in the Chicago public 
schools and graduated from high school in 1873. 
He then entered his father's office as a clerk and 
in 1875 the firm of B. P. Hutchinson & Son, com¬ 
mission merchants, was organized. The firm 
continued to operate until 1889. Charles learned 
the grain and provision business, was a member 
of the Board of Trade, and at the age of thirty- 
four became president of the organization. He 
was not, however, inclined toward speculation, 
and his business life was most closely identified 
with the Corn Exchange Bank which his father 
had established in 1870. He acquired a one- 
fourth interest in the bank in 1880, and after 
serving as assistant cashier, became president 
in 1886. In this position he remained until 
1898, when he voluntarily retired to become vice- 
president. The principal business of the bank 
was in the financing of the grain and meat-pack¬ 
ing business of the city. He had married, on 
May 26, 1881, Frances Kinsley of Chicago. 

Hutchinson seems to have developed early in 
life a love for cultural and civic pursuits. At the 
age of fourteen he began by raising more than 
a hundred dollars for a newsboys' home. Hav¬ 
ing a natural love of the beautiful, he cultivated 
a taste for fine art in painting and architecture. 
As a young man in 1879, he met with others to 
initiate the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts 
which was shortly to become the Art Institute. 
With one other he raised the $60,000 necessary 
to start the Academy on its way. In 1882 he 
was made president of the Art Institute and re¬ 
mained in this office until his death, a period of 
forty-two years. He was active in adding to the 
institute's collection of paintings; donated addi¬ 
tional space and endowment; and at his death 
bequeathed to it his valuable personal collection 
of works of art. He acted as chairman of the 
fine arts committee of the World's Columbian 
Exposition and was chiefly responsible for the 
building of the new art museum. He was also 
actively interested in a hundred or more differ¬ 
ent organizations the aim of which was the ad¬ 
vancement of human welfare. He regularly gave 


Hutchinson 

away half of his personal income and collected 
additional funds from his friends to support the 
enterprises in which he was interested. As a 
member of the Board of South Park Commis¬ 
sioners, 1907-22, he was active in planning and 
carrying out the improvement of the lake front 
of Chicago, and in building small parks in con¬ 
gested residence districts. His service to educa¬ 
tion was identified most closely with the Uni¬ 
versity of Chicago. He served as treasurer and 
member of the board of trustees from the incep¬ 
tion of the new university in 1893 until his death. 
The fine Gothic architecture of the buildings 
owes much to his influence as chairman of the 
committee on buildings. At a time when suc¬ 
cessful accomplishment was measured largely by 
the accumulation of material wealth, Hutchin¬ 
son made an important contribution to the social, 
artistic, and educational life of Chicago. 

[The Art Inst, of Chicago: Forty-Sixth Ann. Report 
(1924); Univ. of Chicago Record, Jan. 1923; Who’s 
Who in America, 1924-25; Perley Derby, The Hutch¬ 
inson Family (1870) ; Chicago Tribune and Chicago 
News, Oct. 8, 1924.] E.A. D. 

HUTCHINSON, JAMES (Jan. 29, 1752- 
Sept. 5, 1793), physician, was born in Wake¬ 
field Township, Bucks County, Pa., the son of 
Randall and Catherine (Rickey) Hutchinson. 
His father was a prosperous farmer and James 
received an unusually good education for the 
times. He attended an academy in Burlington, 
N. J., continued at a school in Virginia, and is 
said to have attended the College of Philadel¬ 
phia. After studying medicine in Philadelphia, 
in 1775 he went to England to study under Dr. 
John Fothergill of London. His return home 
two years later was hastened by the Revolution. 
He came by way of France and was the bearer 
of important dispatches from Benjamin Frank¬ 
lin to the Congress of the United States. On his 
arrival in Philadelphia he immediately joined the 
army as a surgeon and later became surgeon- 
general of Pennsylvania, serving as such from 
the latter part of 1778 until 1784. After the 
evacuation of Philadelphia by the British army, 
he was appointed a member of the Committee of 
Safety. He built up a large medical practice and 
with Benjamin Rush held the office of physician 
to the Port of Philadelphia. In 1779 he was ap¬ 
pointed one of the trustees of the University of 
Pennsylvania, by the act under which the insti¬ 
tution was incorporated, and served as such until 
1781. In 1783 he declined the chair of materia 
medica and chemistry at the university, but in 
1789 he accepted the appointment and in 1791 
was appointed professor of chemistry, which 
position he held until his death. He was a mem- 


43 8 



Hutchinson 

ber of the American Philosophical Society and 
a fellow as well as one of the incorporators of 
the College of Physicians. He also served two 
terms on the medical staff of the Pennsylvania 
Hospital (1777-78, I 779 - 93 )- He was twice 
married: first to Lydia Biddle and after her 
death to Sidney Evans Howell. In 1793 Phila¬ 
delphia experienced a severe epidemic of yellow 
fever. Hutchinson's exertions in this emergency 
were beyond his strength and he fell a victim to 
the disease himself. His abilities as a physician 
and teacher were universally acknowledged and 
he was one of the outstanding citizens of his 
time in Philadelphia. He took an active part in 
local politics to the end of his life, was an influ¬ 
ential member of the Whig party, and several 
times refused election to office. 

ITrans. of the Coll, of Physicians of Phila., 3 ser., 
vol. IX (1887) ; Henry Simpson, The Lives of Emir 
nent Philadelphians (1859); J* T. Scharf and T. 
Westcott, Hist . of Phila. (1884), vol. II; T. G. Morton 
and F. Woodbury, The Hist, of the Pa. Hospital (1895) ; 
G. W. Norris, The Early Hist . of Medicine in Phila. 
(1886); J. L. Chamberlain, ed., Universities and Their 
Sons, vol. I (1901) ; Pa. Archives, vols. VII-X (1853- 
54) ; Minutes of the Supreme Executive Council of Pa., 
vols. XI-XVI (1852-53); J. S. Howell, A Memorial 
Hist, and Geneal . Record of the John Howell and Jacob 
Stutsman Families (19 22) ; F. A. Virkus, The Abridged 
Compendium of Am. Geneal vol. I (1925).] 

J.H.F. 

HUTCHINSON, THOMAS (Sept. 9, 1711- 

June 3, 1780), royal governor of Massachusetts 
Bay Colony, was bom in Boston, the son of 
Thomas and Sarah (Foster) Hutchinson, and 
the great-great-grandson of William and Anne 
(Marbury) Hutchinson [q.v.] who came from 
Lincolnshire to Massachusetts in 1634. From 
the North Grammar School he entered Harvard 
at the age of twelve, graduated in 1727, and three 
years later received the degree of M.A. for a 
"thesis” entitled "Is a College Education of 
Service to One Who Travels?” Upon gradua¬ 
tion he entered his father's commercial house. 
His assertion that until about twenty-two he 
“spent too much of his time with gay company," 
may well be doubted, since during these years 
he studied Latin and French sufficiently to be¬ 
come “well versed” in both, and carried on that 
systematic and serious reading which gave him 
in time an unusually wide and exact knowledge 
of British and colonial history and literature. 
Besides, even in these early years he exhibited 
those traits of thrifty and cautious conscien¬ 
tiousness that were so characteristic of the man. 
“All the time he was in college [this is his own 
account] he carried on a little trade by sending 
ventures in his father's vessel, and kept a little 
paper Journal.. . and entered in it every dinner, 
supper, breakfast, and every article of expense, 


Hutchinson 

even of a shilling, which practise soon became 
pleasant; and he found it of great use all his 
life, as so exact a knowledge of his cash kept 
him from involvement, of which he would have 
been in great danger” (Diary and Letters, 1 ,46). 
Little wonder that at the age of twenty-one he 
had amassed four or five hundred pounds and 
was part owner of a ship. At all events, the “gay 
company,” whatever it was, ceased in 1734, when 
on May 16 he married Margaret, the second 
daughter of “Mr. Sanford, a gentleman of New¬ 
port,” R. I. To them were bom three sons, 
Thomas, Elisha, and William (Billy), and two 
daughters, Sarah and Margaret (Peggy). The 
union was a singularly happy one: the prema¬ 
ture death of his wife in 1753 was “the loss of 
more than dimidiam animae suae, and the re¬ 
membrance of her alone was sufficient to pre¬ 
vent him from all thoughts of another marriage” 
(Diary and Letters, I, 54). Throughout his life 
Hutchinson devoted himself with meticulous 
care to the welfare and comfort of his family, 
and to amassing a fortune adequate to provide 
his children with that competence suitable to 
those whose station was among the “better sort.” 

With his wealth, abilities, and family connec¬ 
tions it was a matter of course that Hutchinson 
should enter public life. His grandfather had 
been a member of the Council and judge of com¬ 
mon pleas; his father was a member of the Coun¬ 
cil (1719-39). He himself was chosen select¬ 
man of Boston in 1737, and in the same year 
elected to the House of Representatives, of 
which he was continuously (save for the year 
1739) a member until 1749, serving as speaker 
for three years (1746-48). During these years 
his name was associated chiefly with two 
questions, the boundary controversy with New 
Hampshire and the paper-money dispute. In 
1740 he was sent to England to represent the 
claims of the province against New Hampshire. 
Accomplishing nothing, owing to the failure of 
certain persons to furnish evidence, he remained 
in England, “longing to return to his native 
country, and to his family," until 1741. At that 
time the question of paper money had long been 
an issue. Since 1690 the government had issued 
bills of credit, which had depreciated in value to 
the advantage of debtors and the disadvantage 
of creditors and persons living on fixed in¬ 
comes. As early as 1736 Hutchinson had pub¬ 
lished a pamphlet in which he argued with abil¬ 
ity the cause of “hard money.” Like most men 
of “good estates," he was strongly opposed to 
the unsound private Land Bank (established in 
1740, dissolved by Parliament in 1741) of which 
one of the directors suffering heavy losses was 


439 



Hutchinson 

Samuel Adams whose son became the bitterest 
of Hutchinson’s political enemies. Meantime 
the bills of credit increased in number and de¬ 
creased in value, and no solution seemed pos¬ 
sible until 1748, when Hutchinson proposed to 
use the money (£183,649. 2s . yd,), sent over by 
the British government to reimburse Massachu¬ 
setts for the expenses incurred in the Louisburg 
campaign, to call in the major part of the out¬ 
standing bills of credit at eleven to one. The 
proposal was at first regarded as Utopian, but 
in spite of opposition and largely owing to 
Hutchinson’s persistence the measure was car¬ 
ried in 1749. Thereafter he always regarded 
himself, rightly enough, as “the father of the 
present fixed medium.” 

This achievement gave Hutchinson a leading 
position among the conservative classes. Fail¬ 
ing of reelection to the House in 1749, he was at 
once chosen to the Council, and thereafter con¬ 
tinuously until 1766. In 1752 he was appointed 
judge of probate, and justice of common pleas 
in Suffolk County. In 1754 he represented the 
province at the Albany Congress, and there sup¬ 
ported Franklin’s plan of union. In 1758 he be¬ 
came lieutenant-governor, serving in that ca¬ 
pacity until he received the commission as gov¬ 
ernor in 1771. In 1760, upon the death of Sew- 
all, he accepted somewhat reluctantly, after 
warning Governor Bernard that James Otis 
[q.v.] might resent the appointment, the office of 
chief justice. In 1761 he opposed the issue of 
general search warrants by the governor, claim¬ 
ing that only the courts had authority to issue 
them. His interest in commerce, which involved 
much technically illegal trading, disposed him to 
oppose general warrants by whomsoever issued; 
but when, upon inquiry, it was found that such 
warrants were commonly issued in England, 
he recognized their legality, and insisted only 
that the form used should follow that employed 
in England. By 1763 Hutchinson was the most 
influential man in Massachusetts politics. Of¬ 
fices, unsolicited on his part but not undesired, 
had been conferred upon him because of his rec¬ 
ognized ability and integrity. As lieutenant- 
governor, chief justice, president of the Council, 
judge of probate, and until recently justice of 
common pleas, he could, with some appearance 
of justice, be charged with having appropriated 
offices and salaries. Already a rich man, his of¬ 
ficial salaries netted him annually perhaps £300 
at a time when a family of the “common sort” 
could live comfortably on £40 a year. His oppo¬ 
sition to the Land Bank had injured Samuel 
Adams [q.v,']; his appointment as chief justice 
and his support of general writs had offended 


Hutchinson 

the Otises. “This trial (the Writs of Assistance) 
and my pernicious principles about the cur¬ 
rency,” he writes in 1763, “have taken away a 
great number of friends” (Hosmer, post , p. 70). 
At the opening of the controversy with Parlia¬ 
ment on the question of taxation Hutchinson 
was a strongly marked “prerogative man,” the 
outstanding leader of the “court party.” 

Nevertheless, in February 1764, both houses 
(eight members only dissenting) voted to send 
Hutchinson to England to protest against the 
proposed sugar duties (Hutchinson Correspon¬ 
dence, II, 76). Unable to leave his “family and 
business upon ten days notice,” he asked permis¬ 
sion (which was denied) to postpone the jour¬ 
ney three or four months. The truth is that 
Hutchinson was too much enamored of hierarch¬ 
ical authority to like the role of protesting 
against measures proposed by his superiors: he 
desired to go to England chiefly to get his His¬ 
tory of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay , the 
first volume of which was already published in 
Boston (1764), republished in London. To both 
the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act Hutchinson 
was opposed on the ground that they would in¬ 
jure both British and colonial trade, but the 
right of Parliament to govern and tax the col¬ 
onies as it saw fit he never denied (Hutchinson 
Correspondence, II, 89; George Bancroft, His¬ 
tory of the United States , 1866, V, 206); and 
“as a servant of the Crown” he used all his in¬ 
fluence to get both acts enforced and to “dis¬ 
countenance . . . violent opposition” (Diary and 
Letters, II, 58). This attitude on his part, to¬ 
gether with the fact that his brother-in-law, An¬ 
drew Oliver, was stamp distributor, convinced 
the popular leaders (notably Samuel Adams, at 
this time rising to the height of his influence) 
that Hutchinson was for personal reason sub¬ 
servient to “ministerial measures”; and on the 
night of Aug. 26, 1765, the mob, led chiefly by 
the shoemaker Mackintosh (Adams had nothing 
to do with it), entered and destroyed his splen¬ 
did mansion in Garden Court Street, and “cast 
into the street, or carried away all his money, 
plate, and furniture ... his apparel, books, pa¬ 
pers” (Diary and Letters , I, 67; Hosmer, pp. 
91-92).. Hutchinson barely escaped with his 
life, and the next morning, appearing in court 
to make a quorum, he apologized for his dress. 
“Indeed I had no other. Destitute of everything 
—no other shirt; no other garment but what I 
have on; and not one of my family in a better 
situation” (Hosmer, p. 95). He estimated his 
losses at about £3,000, and was later idemnified 
(£3,194.17s. 6d.). But for a man who with such 
loving care cherished and catalogued his pos- 


440 



Hutchinson 


Hutchinson 


sessions (see inventory of losses, Hosmer, p. 
351) nothing could ever make good so senseless 
an act of vandalism. The experience left him 
embittered, accentuated his inborn, traditional 
distrust of the “common sort,” and convinced 
him that a more strenuous rather than a more 
lenient policy was necessary. Hitherto he had 
taken the position that whereas Parliament had 
the right to govern the colonies as it pleased it 
would be wise not to insist on it (Hutchinson 
Correspondence, II, 89-91). Henceforth he was 
convinced that the colonies must be forced to 
recognize their subjection; and as early as 1766 
he suggested that “to familiarize us” with the 
principle, no session should pass without “one 
or more acts of Parliament” intended to estab¬ 
lish its supremacy (Ibid., II, 228). 

In 1766 Hutchinson was dropped from the 
Council. Opposed to the Townshend duties 
(1767), he felt that, once passed, they should 
be strictly enforced. In the absence of Bernard 
(1769-71) he acted as governor, received his 
commission (made out in 1770) as governor in 
1771, and served in that office until 1774. He 
did his duty scrupulously by following his in¬ 
structions without question. As his responsibili¬ 
ties increased and he became more unpopular, he 
became less the statesman and more the person¬ 
ally injured bureaucrat: colonial opposition he 
attributed largely to the disturbed state of Bos¬ 
ton, and the recalcitrance of Boston largely to 
the personal enmity of a few men, especially Otis 
and Samuel Adams. He twice asked the Coun¬ 
cil to call out the troops to suppress the disturb¬ 
ances caused by their presence, and later regret¬ 
ted that he had not done so on his own authority, 
believing that the “massacre” might thereby 
have been prevented. He welcomed the repeal 
of the major part of the Townshend duties, and 
regretted that the duty on tea was retained. The 
modification of the non-importation agreements 
(1:770) pleased him, and he recognized that the 
controversy had quieted down. “We have not 
been so quiet these five years . . he writes in 
1771; “if it were not for two or three Adamses 
we should do well enough” (Hosmer, p. 192). 
Samuel Adams himself was discouraged by the 
general apathy, affirming that the real danger 
was that the people would think there was no 
danger. A wise governor would have made the 
most of so favorable a situation; in fact Hutchin¬ 
son was the chief ally of Adams in' reviving the 
waning controversy. For two years (1770-72) 
he engaged in an irritating and futile contro¬ 
versy with the House over its place of meeting, 
and other technical points of no importance. He 
was more Tory than the ministers, constantly 


complained to his friends in England that “his 
Majesty’s servants” were not adequately sup¬ 
ported, and insisted that the “great thing now is 
to keep up the sense of our constitutional depen¬ 
dence and an opinion that Parliament will main¬ 
tain its supreme authority (Hutchinson Corre¬ 
spondence, III, 112). When Adams labored al¬ 
most alone to keep the dying controversy alive 
by writing embittered articles in the journals, 
the governor took “much pains to procure writ¬ 
ers to answer the pieces in the newspapers 
which do so much mischief” (Hosmer, p. 224). 
When Adams organized the correspondence 
committees in November 1772 and initiated the 
movement by publishing the “Rights of the Col¬ 
onists,” Hutchinson gave life to the movement 
by delivering before the General Court, on Jan. 
6, I773> an elaborately argued address designed 
to prove that since “no line can be drawn be¬ 
tween the supreme authority of Parliament and 
the total independence of the colonies,” the Par¬ 
liamentary supremacy must be admitted; and 
“if the supremacy of Parliament shall no longer 
be denied, it will follow that the mere exercise 
of its authority can be no grievance” (Hosmer, 
pp. 367-68). Learning that Dartmouth, who 
understood that the government of Massachu¬ 
setts called for something more than an exercise 
in dialectic, disapproved of his action, Hutchin¬ 
son was as much astonished as he was distressed, 
having really believed that his address would 
accomplish much towards ending the controversy 
(Hutchinson Correspondence, III, 443, 498). 
His position, already precarious, became unten¬ 
able after the publication of the “Hutchinson 
Letters,” procured in England and sent to Bos¬ 
ton by Benjamin Franklin [q.v.]. The letters, 
six of which were written by Hutchinson to 
friends in England during the years 1768-69, 
expressed no views not already publicly ex¬ 
pressed, but they revealed the fact, which later 
letters would have revealed far more clearly, that 
Hutchinson was secretly urging the British gov¬ 
ernment to exert its authority over the colonies 
more vigorously. In any case, as Hutchinson 
said, had the letters “been Chevy Chase,” the 
people would have believed them “full of evil 
and treason” (Hosmer, p. 278). Meantime the 
East India Company had been permitted by Par¬ 
liament to import tea directly into America in 
the expectation that by reducing the price the 
people would buy English rather than Dutch 
tea; and Hutchinson had unwisely used his in¬ 
fluence to obtain consignments for his sons, 
Thomas and Elisha, whose tea business he ap¬ 
pears to have largely directed. When the tea 
ships arrived, in December 1773, Hutchinson 



Hutchinson 


Hutchinson 


played into the hands of Samuel Adams by re¬ 
fusing the ships clearance papers until the tea 
was landed, the result of which was that under 
Adams' lead the tea was thrown into the harbor. 
This, the last important executive act of Hutch¬ 
inson, contributed to bring about the very crisis 
which he wished to avert 

In 1774 he was permitted to go to England “if 
he should judge it necessary” ( Diary and Let¬ 
ters, I, 104). Meantime, the Lieutenant-Gov¬ 
ernor having died, General Gage was appointed 
governor with the understanding that Hutchin¬ 
son should be reinstated “as soon as General 
Gage's continuance should be judged no longer 
necessary” (Ibid., I, 105). Hutchinson arrived 
in England on June 29, and on July 1 gave to 
the King, in a two-hour interview, an account of 
the situation in America (Ibid., I, 157 ff.). He 
was quite unaware of the gravity of the situa¬ 
tion, and expected to return shortly as governor. 
He urged upon those in authority that concilia¬ 
tory policy (Ibid., I, 214) which as governor he 
had urged them to avoid. He wrote a reply to 
the Declaration of Independence, and the third 
volume of his History of the Colony of Massa¬ 
chusetts Bay, a work still useful for its accuracy, 
judgment, and quoted documents not now else¬ 
where available. He had many friends in Eng¬ 
land, was most civilly treated, and received from 
Oxford the degree of D.C.L. Nevertheless, 
from the first he was homesick, liked England 
less than he had expected to, was irked by the 
necessity (after the confiscation of his property) 
of living on the King's bounty, and as the years 
dragged out, longed desperately to return to his 
native country. Had he to live in England, he 
would have preferred Bristol, where “the man¬ 
ners and customs of the people are very like 
those of the people of New England”; from any 
of the churches “you might pick out a set of Bos¬ 
ton Selectmen” (Ibid., II, 148). To the last he 
never quite despaired of laying his “bones in 
New England.” He died in England June 3, 
1780, and was buried at Croydon. 

Thomas Hutchinson was a man of character 
and ability, one of the finest representatives of 
colonial America, with the virtues and limita¬ 
tions of those to the manner bom. Honorable 
and gracious to his equals, benevolent and kindly 
to his inferiors, he had to an unusual degree the 
instinct that founds and perpetuates families, 
and the love of property that often goes with it. 
Scrupulously honest in the performance of all 
obligations, both private and public, Hutchin¬ 
son was unfortunate in that, like so many eigh¬ 
teenth-century aristocrats, he was compelled by 
circumstances to pay the penalty of a divided 


allegiance. No one loved America or New Eng¬ 
land with a more profound or generous affec¬ 
tion ; no one was more deeply committed to that 
“loyalty to the prince” which for the eighteenth- 
century aristocracy was a form of patriotism. 
He could conceive of no higher honor than to 
be one of “his Majesty's servants”; nothing 
could have pleased him more than that his cher¬ 
ished New England should have shown its eman¬ 
cipation from provincialism by meriting the 
good will of the King. He loved Massachusetts 
too well to be a good royal governor in time of 
conflict with the Crown. His profound irrita¬ 
tion with America in general and with Boston 
in particular was the irritation of a proud and 
possessive father with a beloved but wayward 
child who fails to do him credit in high places. 
It was essential to his peace of mind, such was 
his sense of provincial inferiority, that Ameri¬ 
cans should be more loyal than the English, and 
royal governors more correct than British min¬ 
isters. That New England, that Massachusetts, 
that Boston above all, should needlessly obstruct 
administration and end by denying allegiance 
to the King was beyond his comprehension; he 
could only suppose that a worthy people had 
been unaccountably corrupted and led astray by 
a few men of perverse minds and malignant 
hearts. 

The published writings of Hutchinson include: 
A Letter to . a Member of the Honorable House 
of Representatives, on the Present State of the 
Bills of Credit (1736 ); A Brief State of the Ti¬ 
tles of the Province of Massachusetts Bay to the 
Country between the Kennebec and St. Croix 
(1762); The Case of the Provinces of Massa¬ 
chusetts-Bay and New-York, Respecting the 
Boundary Lines between the Two Provinces 
(1764); The History of the Colony of Massa¬ 
chusetts Bay (3 vols., Boston, 1764-1828; Lon¬ 
don, 1765-1828 ); A Collection of Original Pa¬ 
pers Relative to the History of the Colony of 
Massachusetts Bay (1769); Copy of Letters 
Sent to Great-Britain, by His Excellency Thom¬ 
as Hutchinson, the Hon . Andrew Oliver, and 
Several other Persons (1773); The Speeches 
of His Excellency Governor Hutchinson to 
the General Assembly of Massachusetts-Bay 
(1773) ; Strictures upon the Declaration of the 
Congress at Philadelphia: in a Letter to a Noble 
Lord (London, 1776); The Witchcraft Delu¬ 
sion of 1692 (1870). 

[The Hutchinson MSS., except those still in private 
hands, are in the archives of the State House, Boston. 
These include the Hutchinson Papers (3 vols.), docu¬ 
ments collected by him relating to the history of Mas¬ 
sachusetts and the Hutchinson family in lie seven¬ 
teenth century; and the Hutchinson Correspondence 
(3 vols.), chiefly letters from him, 1741-74. The chief 


442 



Hutchinson 

biographies are: P. O. Hutchinson, The Diary and 
Letters of Thos. Hutchinson (2 vols., 1883-86) ; and 
J. K. Hosmer, The Life of Thos. Hutchinson (1896). 
See also E. A. Jones, The Loyalists of Mass. (1930).] 

C.L.B. 

HUTCHINSON, WOODS (Jan. 3, 1862- 
Apr. 26, 1930), physician and author, was born 
of Quaker stock at Selby, Yorkshire, England* 
His father was Charles Hutchinson, his mother 
Elizabeth Woods. Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, the 
eminent surgeon, was his uncle. His family emi¬ 
grated to Iowa while Woods was a boy. He at¬ 
tended private schools, both in Yorkshire and 
Iowa, and in 1880 he received the degree of A.B. 
from Penn College, a Quaker institution at Oska- 
loosa, Iowa. Four years later he received a de¬ 
gree in medicine at the University of Michigan. 
He then settled in Des Moines, Iowa, and except 
for two years spent in travel and study abroad he 
practised there until 1896. In 1891 he was made 
professor of anatomy at the State University of 
Iowa and for a time he edited a medical journal, 
Vis Medicatrix. From 1896 to 1899 he held the 
professorship of comparative pathology at the 
University of Buffalo, then in the year 1899- 
1900 he lectured on comparative pathology at 
the London Medical Graduates' College and on 
biology at the extension department of the Uni¬ 
versity of London. Returning to America he 
settled in Oregon and from 1903 to 1905 served 
as state health officer. Up to this time he had 
published The Gospel According to Darwin 
(1898) and Studies in Human and Comparative 
Pathology (1901). About 1905 he determined 
to devote himself to writing and removed to 
New York City, presumably to take advantage 
of its library facilities. The metropolis became 
his home until shortly before his death. From 
1907 to 1909 he was professor of clinical medi¬ 
cine at the New York Polyclinic, but he held no 
other teaching position. In 1908 he published 
Instinct and Health, followed in 1909 by Health 
and Common Sense, and in 1910 by The Con¬ 
quest of Consumption . In 1911 he published 
three volumes: We and Our Children ,, A Hand¬ 
book of Health , and Exercise and Health. Later 
came The Child's Day (1912), Common Dis¬ 
eases (1913), Civilization and Health (1914), 
and Community Hygiene (1916), In 1918 he 
published The Doctor in War. The volume of 
his literary output in book form, however, was 
exceeded by his contributions to periodical and 
newspaper literature. In addition to his numer¬ 
ous popular articles in standard American and 
British reviews and magazines, he contributed 
syndicated articles to the daily press, so that in 
time his name became familiar to millions of 
readers, and he held a unique place as an inter- 


Hutson 

preter of medical information to the layman. He 
also lectured extensively and championed his 
profession in public debates and before legisla¬ 
tive committees. Although he wrote on a great 
variety of topics, his chief interest was preven¬ 
tive medicine. In fact, his self-constituted mis¬ 
sion in life seems to have been to impart a 
knowledge of this subject to the greatest possi¬ 
ble number of people. In 1915-16 Hutchinson 
served as president of the American Academy 
of Medicine. During the World War he acted 
as unofficial observer on the Western and Ital¬ 
ian fronts, and after the United States entered 
the war, he endeavored to enlist in the Medical 
Corps, but he was rejected on account of age. 
His last years were spent largely in travel. He 
was abroad from 1922 to 1924 and again from 
1926 to 1928. After the latter trip he lived in 
Hollywood for a time, but in 1929 he removed 
to Brookline, Mass. His death, caused by cere¬ 
bral apoplexy, occurred after a brief illness. He 
had married, in 1893, Cornelia Williams of Des 
Moines. 

[Who's Who in America, 1926-27; Univ. of Mich. 
Cat. of Grads., Non-Grads., Officers, and Members of 
the Faculties (1923); N. Y. Times, N. Y. Herald Trib¬ 
une, Apr. 27, 1930.] E.P. 

HUTSON, RICHARD (July 9,1748-Apr. 12, 
1795), jurist, was the son of Rev. William and 
Mary (Woodward) Hutson, the widow of Isaac 
Chardon. His father, an English law student 
turned actor, was converted by Whitefield, and 
served from 1743 to 1757 as the minister of the 
Independent Church at Stoney Creek, in what 
was later Beaufort District, S. C. In the latter 
year he was called to the Independent Congre¬ 
gational Church in Charleston. Richard was 
graduated from Princeton in 1765, and for a 
time was uncertain what to do with himself. 
When he studied law is not known. At the out¬ 
set of the Revolution he was on his plantation 
on Stono River, St. Andrew's Parish. He had 
rejoiced in the resistance to the Stamp Act, and 
remained throughout the war one of the uncom¬ 
promising Revolutionists. He served in the mi¬ 
litia during the British attack on Charleston in 
1776. In the same year he was elected to the As¬ 
sembly, and by that body in turn to the legisla¬ 
tive council. True to his upbringing, he took an 
active part in the disestablishment of the Angli¬ 
can Church. From January 1778 to February 
1779 he was delegate to the Continental Con¬ 
gress, though not actually present until Apr. 13, 
and signed the Articles of Confederation. Re¬ 
turned to the lower house of the Assembly in the 
election of December 1779, he was made a mem¬ 
ber of the privy council. After the fall of 


443 



Hutton 

Charleston, he was one of the political leaders 
arrested and was imprisoned at St. Augustine 
from September 1780 to July 1781. While there 
he is said to have added Spanish to the list of 
languages in which he was proficient. He was 
elected to the Assembly which met in January 
1782 at Jacksonborough, and in that month 
became lieutenant-governor. The next year he 
was chosen as the first intendant of the city of 
Charleston. On the organization of the chan¬ 
cery or equity court in 1784 he, John Rutledge, 
and John Mathews [qq.v.’] were elected the first 
chancellors. He became senior judge of this 
court in 1791, and resigned in 1793. He sat as a 
member for St. Andrew's in the state convention 
which ratified the United States Constitution in 
1787, and in the House of Representatives in 
1789. In both his votes were with the conserva¬ 
tive dominant class of the low country. Family 
tradition claims that he was ruined by his pa¬ 
triotism in voluntarily taking paper money at 
the close of the Revolution; but he continued to 
live on his plantation and in 1790 had seventeen 
slaves. He died in Charleston, unmarried. His 
will and his few extant letters indicate that he 
was quiet, religious, much interested in charity, 
and strongly attached to his family. As an offi¬ 
cial he evidently enjoyed to an unusual degree 
the confidence of the public. 

[Material on Hutson’s life further than the bare of¬ 
ficial record of his public service is of the scantiest. 
There is a sketch in a genealogy of the Hutson family 
in the .S'. C. Hist, and Geneal. Mag. f July 1908. See 
also George Howe, Hist, of the Presbyt. Ch. in S. C., 
I (1870), 247-49, 264; Year Book — 1884; City of 
Charleston, S. C. (1884), p. 163, 1895> PP* 313-25; 
Journal of House of Representatives of S. C. (MS.), 
1789, esp. minutes of Jan. 23, Feb. 2 , and 20; E. C. 
Burnett, Letters of Members of the Continental Cong., 
vols. Ill (1926), IV (1928) ; Journal of Convention of 
S. C. (1928); Edward McCrady, The Hist, of S. C. in 
the Revolution , 1775-1780 (1901), 1780-1783 (1902) ; 
Gazette of S. C., Dec. 8,1779; Heads of Families , First 
Census of the U. S.; 1790: State of S. C. (1908), p. 
34; J. B. O’Neall, Blog. Sketches of the Bench and 
Bar of S. C . (1859), vol. I.] r.l. M—r. 

HUTTON, FREDERICK REMSEN (May 
28, 1853-May 14, 1918), engineer, was born in 
New York City, the son of Mancius Smedes and 
Gertrude (Holmes) Hutton. His father, a prom¬ 
inent pastor of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch 
Church, was descended from Dominie Wilhelmes 
Mancius who came to America from Holland in 
1642 and established a church at Kingston, N. Y. 
Frederick was sent to a private school in New 
York, where he was prepared for Columbia Uni¬ 
versity. He graduated from Columbia in 1873, 
and then entered the School of Mines, from 
which he received the degree of E.M, in 1876. 
The following year he became an assistant in 
civil and mechanical engineering at the Univer- 


Hutton 

sity and in 1877, instructor in mechanical en¬ 
gineering, in that field the first to be appointed 
at Columbia. In 1881 he received the degree of 
Ph.D., and the same year became adjunct pro¬ 
fessor of mechanical engineering. He was made 
full professor in 1891 and from 1892 to 1907 was 
head of the department As mechanical engi¬ 
neering progressed he found it necessary to de¬ 
velop courses and methods of instruction, and to 
write the textbooks that he needed. The Me¬ 
chanical Engineering of Power Plants (1897), 
Heat and Heat-Engines (1899), and The Gas- 
Engine (1903), written for his own courses at 
Columbia, enjoyed a widespread use in universi¬ 
ties throughout the country. As head of the de¬ 
partment he was responsible for the design and 
development of the extensive mechanical en¬ 
gineering laboratories at Columbia. From 1899 
to 1905 he was dean of the faculty of applied sci¬ 
ences. In 1907 he became professor emeritus and 
the next year wrote The Mechanical Engineering 
of Steam Power Plants , an enlargement of the 
earlier book of similar title, and revised The Gas- 
Engine. Hutton became secretary of the Amer¬ 
ican Society of Mechanical Engineers in the 
third year of its existence, a critical time in its 
history, at a salary of $1,000 a year, from which 
he paid office rent and expenses. By wise man¬ 
agement and by virtue of a cheerful, courteous 
personality, he was able to build up the prestige 
of the society and establish it in the command¬ 
ing position it now holds in the field of engineer¬ 
ing. In recognition of his successful efforts for 
the profession, he was elected president of the 
society for the year 1906-07, and the next year, 
honorary secretary for life. He was secretary 
of the joint conference and building committee 
appointed to carry out the plans to provide a 
building for the use of the several engineering 
societies and the Engineers' Club, under the 
terms of the gift by Andrew Carnegie for this 
purpose; and also secretary of the board of trus¬ 
tees of the United Engineering Society. He 
wrote A History of the American Society of 
Mechanical Engineers , which was published in 
1915, was an associate editor of the Engineering 
Magazine (1892), and an editor of Johnson’s 
Universal Cyclopaedia (1893), The Century 
Dictionary (1904), and the New International 
Encyclopaedia (1913). He served as consulting 
engineer to the Department of Water, Gas, and 
Electricity of New York City (1911), and to the 
Automobile Club of America, and as chairman 
of its technical committee (1912). In 1880 he 
was employed as a special agent to write a mono¬ 
graph on machine tools for the tenth census of 
the United States. On May 28, 1878, he mar- 


444 



Hutton Hutton 


ried Grace Lefferts of New York City by whom 
he had two children. He died in New York City. 

[Trans. Am. Soc. of Mech. Engineers, vol. XL 
(1919); Jour. Am. Soc. of Mech. Engineers, June 
1918; Am. Machinist, Apr. 5, 1906; Who's Who in 
America, 1916-17; J. L. Chamberlain, Universities and 
Their Sons, vol. II (1899) ; Cat. of Officers and Grads, 
of Columbia Univ. (1906) ; N. Y. Times, May 15, 
1918.] F.A.T. 

HUTTON, LAURENCE (Aug. 8,1843-June 
10, 1904), bibliophile, editor, author, was the 
son of a New York business man, John Hutton, 
and his wife Eliza Ann. He was educated in a 
private school in his native city, and, according 
to his own report, was dull at mathematics and 
indolent in general. The result was that at eigh¬ 
teen he was challenged by his father as to 
his fairness in neglecting rather expensive ad¬ 
vantages. He became self-supporting at once, 
though there was no estrangement, and for the 
next nine years was engaged in a hop business 
until the firm with which he was connected 
failed. 

On his father's death he was left with a mod¬ 
est competence which set him free to range in 
literary fields without the necessity of earning 
a livelihood. His first consecutive activity as a 
writer was as contributor of dramatic criticisms 
to the New York Mail in an informal connection 
which began about 1872. This led to the com¬ 
pilation of his Plays and Players (1875), Curi¬ 
osities of the American Stage (1891), and, sub¬ 
sequently, to his Edwin Booth (1893), to the 
publications of the Dunlap Society, Opening 
Addresses (1887), and Occasional Addresses 
(1890) with William Carey as collaborator, and 
to Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and the 
United States from the Days of David Garrick 
to the Present Time (1886) in collaboration with 
Brander Matthews [g.z/.]. Financial independ¬ 
ence and freedom for travel gave him leisure 
and material to write his Literary Landmarks 
of London (1885), which was followed by sim¬ 
ilar books on Edinburgh (1891), Jerusalem 
(1895), Venice (1896), Rome (1897), Flor¬ 
ence (1897), Oxford (1903), and the Scottish 
Universities (1904). In the course of events 
he became a collector in several fields; rare 
books, autographs and autograph letters, extra¬ 
illustrated works, and portrait masks. His inter-’ 
est in masks resulted in his volume entitled Por¬ 
traits in Plaster (1894); and the miscellany of 
his interests and contacts, in the further variety 
of his publications, including his collaboration 
with Clara Erskine Clement Waters in the writ¬ 
ing of Artists of the Nineteenth Century (1879), 
Talks in a Library (1905), recorded by Isabel 
Moore, his collection of essays for collectors 


From the Books of Laurence Hutton (1892), 
and his reminiscent volumes, Other Times and 
Other Seasons (1895), and A Boy I Knew 
(1898, 8th edition 1900). His complete bibli¬ 
ography runs to forty-eight titles. 

From 1886 to 1898 he served as literary editor 
of Harper's Magazine, conducting the depart¬ 
ment of “Literary Notes,” a combination of book 
talk and more specific reviewing. During this 
period he received honorary degrees of M.A., 
from Yale in 1892 and from Princeton in 1897. 
From 1901 to 1904 he was lecturer in English 
literature at the latter university. He was a New 
Yorker who inevitably enjoyed membership in 
the Century Club, and charter membership in 
The Players, the Authors Club and the Ameri¬ 
can Copyright League. In his career as a whole 
he represented a vanishing order, the patrons of 
literature. His writings are all gossippy, cir¬ 
cumstantial, and superficial. He had no creative 
gift and he left no incisive criticism; his literary 
knowledge did not reach beyond his own cen¬ 
tury or his own language. On the other hand, 
in contrast with many another collector, he 
knew what he had acquired and how to enjoy it. 
He possessed the social gifts of a Samuel Rog¬ 
ers and a Crabbe Robinson, and the miscellane¬ 
ous literary curiosity of a Disraeli. He was 
thoroughly representative of a generation which 
was at its height before the turn of the century, 
which he survived by only four years. On Apr, 
7, 1885, he married Eleanor Varnum Mitchell. 

[Very little exact information has been brought to¬ 
gether about Hutton in any one book or article. The 
personal information can be culled from his autobio¬ 
graphical A Boy I Knew, and from the series of remi¬ 
niscent articles, “The Literary Life/’ which appeared 
in the Critic, Sept. 1904-Mar. 1905. See also Who's 
Who in America, 1903-05; Outlook, June 18, 1904; 
N. V. Times, June 11, 1904; Daily True American 
(Trenton, N. J,), June 11, 1904J P.H.B—n. 

HUTTON, LEVI WILLIAM (Oct. 22,186a- 
Nov. 3,1928), mine operator and philanthropist, 
was born in Batavia, Iowa, the son of Levi and 
Nancy (Holsinger) Hutton and the youngest of 
their six children. When he was only three 
months old his father died, and at the age of six 
he lost his mother. Until he was eighteen, ex¬ 
cept for two weeks when, as a fifteen-year-old 
boy, he ran away to fight Indians in the Black 
Hills, he lived on a farm with an aunt and 
unde who provided meager opportunities for his 
schooling. He then set out for the West After 
a year or more in and about Salem, Ore., and 
in northern California, he was offered in 1881 
the chance to drive a four-horse team from Port¬ 
land to the shores of Lake Pend d’Oreille in 
northern Idaho. Here he obtained employment 
on a lake steamer. Quitting after about a year 


445 



Hutton 

to become a fireman on the Northern Pacific 
Railroad, he removed to Missoula, Mont. In less 
than three years he had advanced to the posi¬ 
tion of locomotive engineer and in 1887 was 
transferred to Wallace, Idaho, where he had the 
run from Wallace up the much-prospected can¬ 
yon to Burke. The same year he married Mary 
Arkwright of Cleveland, Ohio, who died in 1915. 
At Wallace he was in the very center of the 
lead-silver mining district of the Coeur d’Alenes, 
and, like most men in the region, he became in¬ 
terested in several mining properties. The Her¬ 
cules mine on which he and his impecunious as¬ 
sociates continued for years to do assessment 
work was considered among the least promising, 
but the ore which was finally struck in 1901 
proved to be so rich that it was carried out in 
sacks on the men’s backs. The Hercules devel¬ 
oped into one of the great mining properties of 
that section, and eventually Hutton realized 
nearly two million dollars from it 
Moving to Spokane, Wash., in 1906, he more 
than doubled his initial fortune by wise invest¬ 
ments in real estate in that city. Taunted at an 
early age with being only an orphan, he had fre¬ 
quently declared his intention of establishing a 
home for this class of under-privileged children. 
Accordingly, on Aug. 28,1917, he announced his 
program for what was to be called The Hutton 
Settlement. It was originally planned to cost 
$250,000, but Hutton eventually spent $850,000 
on the institution’s land, buildings, and equip¬ 
ment. In addition he contributed $35,000 a year 
to its maintenance as long as he lived, making 
provisions in his will for the continuance of even 
more generous support. The Settlement con¬ 
sists of 320 acres, four cottage buildings, and a 
large administration hall. It was Hutton’s idea 
to minimize as much as possible the usual insti¬ 
tutional atmosphere. The eighty children which 
the Settlement accommodates are cared for in 
small groups, and boys and girls alike are not 
only taught farming, housekeeping, and other 
useful arts, but are given a sense of actual pro¬ 
prietorship in the products of the farm, the 
kitchen, and the shop. All the work is done by 
the children under die direction of trained su¬ 
pervisors and assistants. Hutton was preparing 
an annual report to be presented to the board of 
trustees when he suddenly died, Nov. 3, 1928. 
Both he and his wife were interested in other 
charities and enjoyed a reputation for excep¬ 
tionally generous giving to many philanthropic 
causes. They were also active in local Demo¬ 
cratic politics, Mrs. Hutton serving as the first 
national committee-woman from Washington, 
In June 1928, Whitman College, Walla Walla, 


Hyatt 

conferred on Hutton the honorary degree of 
master of arts, for his service to children. 

[N. W. Durham, Hist, of the City of Spokane and 
Spokane County, Washington (1912), vol. II; Sunset, 
Dec. 1919; Spokesman-Review (Spokane), Nov. 4, 
1928; N. Y. Times, Nov. 4, 1928; Mining and Metal¬ 
lurgy, Jan. 1929.] h. C. D. 

HYATT, ALPHEUS (Apr. 5, 1838-Jan. 15, 
1902), zoologist and palaeontologist, a descend¬ 
ant of Charles Hyatt who was a resident of 
Maryland in 1694, was the son of Alpheus and 
Harriet R. (King) Hyatt. He was born in Wash¬ 
ington, D. C., but was brought up at the family 
homestead “Wansbeck” near Baltimore, where 
his father was a leading merchant. As a boy he 
was interested in natural history and under the 
influence of an early teacher he was attracted to 
the study of fossils. His father’s abundant means 
made it possible for him to receive every educa¬ 
tional advantage. Studying at first under tutors 
and then at the Maryland Military Academy at 
Oxford, Md., he prepared for Yale College and 
entered in 1856, but after a year his mother, who 
desired him to become a Roman Catholic priest, 
sent him to Rome, hoping that the influence of 
friends there and proximity to the Papal Court 
would serve her purpose. During this year, how¬ 
ever, he determined to devote his life to science, 
and returning to America in 1858, he entered the 
Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard Univer¬ 
sity to study engineering. Coming under the 
influence of Louis Agassiz, he was soon drawn 
into the study of natural history and began life¬ 
long friendships with S. H. Scudder, A. S. 
Packard, Jr., A. E. Verrill [qq.z/.] and others 
who subsequently became leaders in zoological 
work in America. This congenial group were 
enthusiastic devotees of Agassiz, and Hyatt’s 
admiration went so far that he is said to have 
learned his master’s famous “Essay on Classifi¬ 
cation” by heart. In 1861, with two companions, 
he made a trip to the island of Anticosti in the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence to collect fossils and ma¬ 
rine animals. The following year he graduated 
from Harvard with the degree of B.S. Feeling 
it Iiis duty to serve the cause of the Union in the 
Civil War, he raised a militia company in Cam¬ 
bridge, enlisting as a private himself, but he was 
soon made a lieutenant and later a captain in the 
47th Massachusetts. Receiving an honorable 
discharge at the close of the war, he returned to 
Cambridge and again took up scientific work, 
being placed in charge of the fossil cephalopods 
in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, a re¬ 
sponsibility which he continued to carry as long 
as he lived. 

In 1867, Hyatt, in company with several others 


446 



Hyatt 

of Agassiz's students, left Cambridge and took 
up work with the Essex Institute at Salem, 
Mass., where, among other activities, he assisted 
in establishing the Peabody Academy of Sci¬ 
ences and in founding the American Naturalist, 
the first American journal devoted to biological 
sciences. He was one of its editors, 1867-71. In 
this journal (April-June 1867) and in the Pro¬ 
ceedings of the Essex Institute (vols. IV-V, 
1866-68), he published his first important con¬ 
tribution to zoology, a series of papers dealing 
with “the moss-animals or fresh-water Polyzoa.” 
He also began his study on sponges, which cul¬ 
minated years later in a monograph, “Revision 
of the North American Poriferae” ( Memoirs of 
the Boston Society of Natural History, vol. II, 
pt. IV, nos. 2 and 5,1875-77). 

In 1870 Hyatt left Salem to become custodian 
of the Boston Society of Natural History. In 
1881, he was made curator, and he remained 
the scientific head of the Society until his death. 
After 1873 he lived in Cambridge, in order to 
be near the great collection of cephalopods at the 
Museum of Comparative Zoology; a large pro¬ 
portion of the research work of the last twenty- 
five years of his career was devoted to this col¬ 
lection. In 1880, however, he published a very 
important monograph, “The Genesis of the Ter¬ 
tiary Species of Planorbis at Steinheim" (Anni¬ 
versary Memoirs of the Boston Society of Nat¬ 
ural History, 1880). In 1889 appeared his great 
memoir dealing with cephalopods, entitled “Gen¬ 
esis of the Arietidae” (Smithsonian Contribu¬ 
tions to Knowledge, vol. XXVI, 1889) ; his last 
contribution to the study of the same group ap¬ 
peared after his death, as a joint monograph 
with J. P. Smith, Triassic Cephalopod Genera 
of America (1905), being Professional Paper 
No. 40 of the United States Geological Survey. 
Hyatt's main interest in all his work was based 
on his desire to discover the laws which gov¬ 
erned the development of the individual and the 
evolution of groups. He elaborated the idea of 
stages in development, and of the laws associated 
with such stages. While his terminology was 
technical and sometimes made his writings hard 
for a beginner to read, his ideas were stimulating 
to a notable degree. The importance and value 
of the principles which he elaborated have been 
demonstrated by his leading students in their 
investigations on various groups of animals 
other than those with which Hyatt worked. In 
1893, Hyatt made his chief contribution to the 
discussion of stages and their controlling laws 
in a paper called “Phylogeny of an Acquired 
Characteristic" (Proceedings of the American 
Philosophical Society, vol. XXXII, 1894). 


Hyatt 

He loved to teach and accepted every oppor¬ 
tunity to do so. He was professor of zoology 
and palaeontology at Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology for eighteen years (1870-88) and 
he taught the same subjects at Boston Univer¬ 
sity for twenty-five years (1877-1902). In ad¬ 
dition he carried on at the Boston Society of 
Natural History for over thirty years (1870- 
1902) the Teachers School of Science, where 
he gave courses of lectures on biology to the 
public-school teachers of Boston. Recognizing 
the great value of first-hand contact in the lab¬ 
oratory with animal forms, he established a ma¬ 
rine laboratory in 1879 at Annisquam, Mass., 
but as the location proved to be unsuitable, this 
laboratory was abandoned and Hyatt joined with 
others in the foundation at Woods Hole, Mass., 
of what is now the chief marine biological lab¬ 
oratory in America. He was first president of 
the board of trustees of this now famous insti¬ 
tution. 

On Jan. 7,1867, Hyatt married Ardella Beebe 
of Kinderhook, N. Y., and the hospitality of their 
home in Cambridge was notable. There were 
three children, one son and two daughters. Both 
of the daughters became sculptors—one, Anna 
Hyatt Huntington, achieving a national reputa¬ 
tion for work characterized by scientific accu¬ 
racy as well as artistic merit. As a man Hyatt in¬ 
spired the love and devotion of his students to 
a marked degree. The fertility of his imagina¬ 
tion was controlled by his high-minded scien¬ 
tific integrity, while his enthusiasm was notably 
contagious. He was always approachable and* 
kindly, unpretentious and open-minded. He was 
constantly busy with either his researches or his 
curatorial duties but always found time to help 
teachers or students who needed aid. He was 
keenly interested in the natural beauty of New 
England and was one of the original members 
of the Appalachian Mountain Club, of which he 
later served as president (1887). Death came 
to him suddenly from heart failure as he was on 
his way to attend a meeting of the Boston So¬ 
ciety of Natural History. 

[W. K. Brooks, “Biographical Memoir of Alpheus 
Hyatt, 1838-1902/' Nat. Acad . Sci. Biog. Memoirs, 
vol. VI (1909); “Alpheus Hyatt, 1838-1902,” by his 
son-in-law, Alfred Goldsborough Mayor [g.z/.], Pop. 
Sci. Monthly, Feb. 1911 ,* R. T. Jackson, “Alpheus 
Hyatt and His Principles of Research,” Am. Natural¬ 
ist, Apr. 1913; Proc. Boston Soc. of Nat. Hist., vol. 
XXX, no. 4 (June 1902) ; A. S. Packard, in Proc. Am. 
Acad. Arts and Sci., vol. XXXVIII (1903); L. W. 
Welsh, Ancestral Colonial Families: Geneal. of the 
Welsh and Hyatt Families of Md. and Their Kin 
(1928) ; Boston Transcript, Jan. 16, 1902.] 

H.L.C. 

HYATT, JOHN WESLEY (Nov. 28, 1837- 
May 10, 1920), inventor, was born at Starkey, 


447 



Hyatt 

N. Y., the son of John Wesley Hyatt, a black¬ 
smith, and Anne (Gleason) Hyatt. His great¬ 
grandfather, Stephen Hyatt, was a native of 
England. Young John’s common-school educa¬ 
tion was supplemented by a year at Eddytown 
Seminary, where he excelled in mathematics. At 
the age of sixteen he went to Illinois and became 
a printer—a trade that he followed for ten years. 
Early in life, however, his mechanical and in¬ 
ventive ability became apparent. At the age of 
twenty-four he patented a device for sharpening 
kitchen-knives, which involved a new method 
for making solid emery wheels. While at Al¬ 
bany, N. Y., working as a journeyman printer, 
he saw an offer of $10,000 by Phelan & Col- 
lander of New York for a substitute for ivory 
suitable for billiard-balls. Experimenting nights 
and Sundays in the hope of gaining the reward 
—scarcely a proper Sunday pursuit for a youth 
christened John Wesley—he obtained several 
plastic compositions none of which was good 
enough for billiard-balls, but out of pressed 
wood he began to make checkers and dominoes. 
To manufacture these he and his two brothers 
established the Embossing Company of Albany, 
a successful corporation, under the mechanical 
direction of the youngest brother, C. M. Hyatt. 
In 1868-69 J°hti Hyatt continued to seek a sub¬ 
stance suitable for billiard-balls and achieved 
success with a combination of paper flock, shel¬ 
lac, and collodion. The ball he produced has 
been widely adopted. Having noticed the dried 
“artificial skin” left after evaporation of liquid 
collodion, he continued experimenting with ni¬ 
trocellulose as a foundation for plastics, despite 
his scant knowledge of chemistry. Although 
heating a substance similar to guncotton under 
pressure is a dangerous practice, and he was 
ignorant of the efforts of Alexander Parkes, 
Daniel Spill, and others to utilize soluble pyroxy¬ 
lin in the making of plastics, he nevertheless dis¬ 
covered the important fact on which the inven¬ 
tion of celluloid is based, namely, that a mixture 
of nitrocellulose, camphor, and a small amount 
of alcohol can be made soft enough by heat to 
mold, but becomes hard again under atmospheric 
conditions. His experiments differed from those 
of Parkes in that he made a hard mass soft by 
heat and pressure, whereas Parkes tried to hard¬ 
en liquids and doughs. Hyatt’s experiments were 
begun in Albany with the help of his brother, 
Isaiah Smith Hyatt, who later interested New 
York capitalists to invest in a celluloid factory 
in Newark; whither the Hyatts removed during 
the winter of 1872-73. John developed the com¬ 
plicated technique of celluloid and designed the 
special machinery for its manufacture and tna- 


Hyatt 

nipulation. Something of a revolution in indus¬ 
try was brought about by this successful utili¬ 
zation of a cheap synthetic substitute for costly 
natural substances. The prior rights of the in¬ 
vention of celluloid were disputed by the Eng¬ 
lishman Spill, who had invented xylonite before 
the date of the Hyatts’ patent, No. 105,338, July 
12, 1870 (House Executive Document No. 89 , 
41 Cong., 3 Sess., II, 567), but the latter was sus¬ 
tained by the courts. Hyatt also obtained many 
patents on machinery for manufacturing com¬ 
mercial articles and novelties from celluloid. 

In 1881-82, he and his brother Isaiah took up 
the problem of filtration and purification of wa¬ 
ter and started the Hyatt Pure Water Company. 
Coagulants had previously been used to purify 
water, but it had been necessary to put the chem¬ 
ical into a large tank or reservoir, agitate the 
water, and allow it to stand for twelve to twenty- 
four hours in order that the impurities might 
settle to the bottom. The Hyatts patented a 
process by which a coagulant is added to the 
water while it is on the way to the filter, so that 
no large settling basin is required and no time 
is lost. The Hyatt filters can be washed by sim¬ 
ply reversing the current. Many paper and 
woolen mills, as well as many cities, adopted 
them, and in 1887 Hyatt introduced them in Eu¬ 
rope. In 1891-92 he devised a type of roller- 
bearings to reduce friction on machinery and 
moving parts. The important Hyatt Roller 
Bearing Company, at Harrison, N. J., was a re¬ 
sult Like others of his inventions, these roller- 
bearings show mechanical advantages which only 
a practical and ingenious technician would fore¬ 
see. His versatility is further shown by his in¬ 
vention of a sugar-cane mill, on which he worked 
between 1891 and 1901. It obtained a higher ex¬ 
traction of juice from the cane by a smaller ex¬ 
penditure of power, and it used a lighter and 
cheaper machine than others and had various 
mechanical advantages typical of Hyatt’s de¬ 
signs, such as ease of separation and of clean¬ 
ing. The pressed cane from this mill was dry 
enough to use as fuel—an economical achieve¬ 
ment. Other Hyatt inventions include: in 1900, 
a sewing-machine capable of sewing fifty lock¬ 
stitches at once and suitable for making machine- 
belting; in 1901, a machine for cold rolling and 
straightening steel shafting; in 1875, machinery 
for making a slate for school use; in 1878, a sub¬ 
stance containing bone and silica, called “boni- 
slate,” suitable for billiard-balls, buttons, knife- 
handles, etc.; in later years, a method of solidify¬ 
ing American hard woods to make bowling 
balls, golf heads, mallets, etc.; in 1870, a ma¬ 
chine for turning out billiard-balls. The Society 


448 



Hyde 

of Chemical Industry (London) in 1914 awarded 
Hyatt its Perkin medal, a distinguished honor, 
particularly as he was never a chemist in the 
sense that he understood chemical theory. He 
was married on July 21, 1869, to Anna E., 
daughter of Edward Taft, and they had two sons. 
His death occurred at Short Hills, N. J. 

[Jour, of the Soc. of Chemical Industry (London), 
Mar. 16, 1914; Jour, of Industrial and Engineering 
Chemistry (Easton, Pa.), Feb., May, July 1914; Nitro¬ 
cellulose Industry (1911); Who's Who in America, 
1920-21; Newark Evening News K May 11, 1920; Chem¬ 
ical and Metallurgical Engineering (N. Y.), May 19, 
1920.] P.B.M. 

HYDE, EDWARD (c . 1650-Sept. 8, 1712), 
colonial governor of North Carolina, was bom 
in England. His name suggests kinship with 
Edward Hyde, first earl of Clarendon and one 
of the original Lords Proprietors of Carolina, 
and, through him, with Queen Anne. What this 
connection was is uncertain, but in the colony 
it was believed to be very close, and Hyde en¬ 
couraged the belief to advance his political for¬ 
tunes. In 1709 he was designated by the Lords 
Proprietors as deputy governor of North Caro¬ 
lina, and Gov. Edward Tynte of Carolina, resi¬ 
dent at Charlestown, was instructed to commis¬ 
sion him. Upon arriving in Virginia in August 
1710, Hyde learned that Tynte had died, leaving 
him without a commission and with no evidence 
of his appointment except some private letters in 
his possession. He found the colony tom by dis¬ 
sensions between an Anglican faction led by 
William Glover and a Quaker faction led by 
Thomas Cary, both of whom claimed the presi¬ 
dency of the Council. Cary had triumphed and 
Glover had fled to Virginia. The Glover faction, 
therefore, welcomed Hyde and proposed to set¬ 
tle the dispute by electing him president of the 
Council. Under the pressure of public sentiment 
inspired by the “aweful respect” for Hyde’s sup¬ 
posed relationship to the Queen, Cary finally 
joined in the petition to Hyde to accept and he 
was elected, thus becoming acting governor until 
the further pleasure of the proprietors could be 
ascertained. His first Assembly, controlled by 
the Gloverites, passed such severe punitive meas¬ 
ures against the Cary faction that the latter rose 
in rebellion and were suppressed only when Vir¬ 
ginia, at Hyde’s urgent request, dispatched ma¬ 
rines from the guardships to his aid. Cary, “im- 
peathed [sic'] of high crimes and misdemean¬ 
ours” (Records, post, I, p. 806) by the Assem¬ 
bly, fled to Virginia, but was arrested and sent 
to England for trial. His case was finally dis¬ 
missed because Hyde failed to furnish any evi¬ 
dence against him. On July 31, 1712, Hyde is¬ 
sued a proclamation pardoning all the rebels ex¬ 
cept Cary and four others. 


Hyde 

On Dec. 7, 1710, the Lords Proprietors re¬ 
solved that “a Govemour be made for North 
Carolina Independent of the Governour of South 
Carolina” ( Records, I, 750) and selected Hyde 
for the place; on July 30, 1711, the Privy Coun¬ 
cil approved the choice. Hyde’s commission was 
issued Jan. 24, 1711/12 and on May 9 he quali¬ 
fied before his Council at Edenton. During his 
brief administration, he justified the Lords Pro¬ 
prietors' estimate of him as “a Person of integ¬ 
rity and Capacity.” He was a stanch Anglican 
and in him the missionaries of the Society for 
the Propagation of the Gospel found a strong 
supporter. Baron de Graffenried acknowledged 
the value of Hyde’s aid in the settlement of his 
colony of Palatines on the Neuse River. His ju¬ 
dicious course in the long-standing Carol ina- 
Virginia boundary dispute won the confidence of 
both parties, but his “precarious footing” in 
North Carolina prevented a settlement during 
his administration. Encouraged by the divisions 
in the colony, the Tuscarora Indians along the 
Neuse declared war on the whites, and on the 
morning of Sept. 22, 1711, practically wiped out 
De Graffenried’s colony. In this crisis Hyde 
acted with great energy, but before the Indians 
could be subdued he contracted a fever from 
which he died. In the colony he enjoyed a repu¬ 
tation as “a great and good character.” His name 
is commemorated in the name of one of the oldest 
counties in the state. He was survived by his 
wife, Catherine, who left North Carolina shortly 
after his death, presumably to return to England. 

[W. L. Saunders, Colonial Records of N. C., vols. 
I—III (1886) ; V. H. Todd, Christoph von Graffenried's 
Account of the Founding of New Bern (1920); M. DeL. 
Haywood, in S. A. Ashe, Biog. Hist . of N . C., I (1905)1 
329-31-] R.D.W.C. 

HYDE, EDWARD [See Cornbury, Edward 
Hyde, Viscount, 1661-1723]. 

HYDE, HELEN (Apr. 6 , 1868-May 13, 1919), 
artist, was of English ancestry. Her grandfather 
crossed the continent with his family by covered 
wagon from Maryland in 1851. Her father, 
William Bierlie Hyde, became an inventor, civil 
engineer, and clever draftsman. He married in 
1865 the daughter of a physician of New York 
state, Marietta Butler, who had gone to San 
Francisco as a teacher. While he was away on 
an engineering expedition, his wife returned to 
visit her parents in Lima, N. Y., where Helen 
Hyde was born. Her early life was spent in San 
Francisco, where she studied art. The children 
of the Chinese quarter of the city especially at¬ 
tracted her, for their picturesqueness gave her 
an opportunity for illustration. Her first work 
was in color etching, though later she was a pio¬ 
neer in the United States in the making of wood- 


449 



Hyde 

block prints after the Japanese manner. She 
studied in New York at the Art Students' 
League, in Berlin with Skarbina, three years in 
Paris with Raphael Collin and Albert Sterner, 
in Holland and England, consuming ten years 
in hard intensive work. Returning to San Fran¬ 
cisco, she decided to go to Japan, intending to 
remain only a few months. Her interest in Japa¬ 
nese art had been stimulated by her association 
with Felix Regamey, with whom she had also 
studied in Paris. She stayed fifteen years, es¬ 
tablishing herself in Tokio in a charming house, 
soon acquiring proficiency in the intricate art 
of wood-block painting, cutting, and printing. 
She received a first prize in the annual exhibi¬ 
tion of the Tokio artists for a print of a lovely 
Japanese mother and child entitled “A Monarch 
of Japan.” Two of her illustrated books for chil¬ 
dren are Moon Babies (1900) by G. Orr Clark, 
and Jingles from Japan (1901), by Mabel Hyde. 
She brought to her perfection of line and color 
the western feeling for, and appreciation of, the 
dainty pictures made by the women and children 
in their gardens, on their bridges, and under 
their gorgeous umbrellas. She returned to Amer¬ 
ica in 1912 and later settled in Chicago, but she 
took trips to South Carolina, Mexico, and India 
—parts of the world which presented different 
phases of life and beautiful material for prints. 
During the World War she worked tirelessly for 
the soldiers. Her works have been exhibited in 
almost every city from New York to California, 
and they include, beside woodcuts and etchings, 
lithographs and aquatints. Large collections are 
in the National Library, the Carnegie Library, 
Pittsburgh, and the California State Library. 
She is also represented in many galleries and 
museums. She was a member of the leading art 
societies in America and of the Societe de la 
Gravure Originale en Couleur, Paris. Among 
her awards were a gold medal, Alaska-Yukon 
Exposition, 1909 ; honorable mention, Paris Sa¬ 
lon, 1913; and a bronze medal, Panama-Pacific 
International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915. 
She died in Pasadena, having moved to Califor¬ 
nia shortly before her death. She possessed orig¬ 
inality, artistic skill, and a keen appreciation of 
beauty in nature and life. 

[Bertha E. Jacques, Helen Hyde and Her Work 
(i 922); Brush and Pencil, Jan. 1903; Internet. Studio, 
Jan. 1905, Nov. 1911; Harper’s Bazar, Jan. 1906; the 
Craftsman, Nov. 1908; Am. Mag. of Art, Sept. 1916; 
July 1919; Am. Art Ann., 1915; Who's Who in Amer¬ 
ica, 1918-19; Chicago Tribune, Times (Los Angeles), 
May 14, H.W—t. 

HYDE, HENRY BALDWIN (Feb. 15,1834- 
May % 1899), founder of the Equitable Life As¬ 
surance Society of the United States, was bom 


Hyde 

at Catskill, N. Y., the descendant of William 
Hyde who emigrated from England probably in 
1633 and three years afterward moved to Hart¬ 
ford with Thomas Hooker. He was the son of 
Lucy Baldwin (Beach) and Henry Hazen Hyde, 
a local merchant who later became a successful 
life insurance solicitor, executive, and broker 
with an extensive business in Boston, Mass. 
With only the meager school training afforded by 
the village school in Catskill, young Hyde, at the 
age of sixteen, sought the larger business oppor¬ 
tunities in New York City, where, in 1852, he 
obtained a minor clerkship with the Mutual Life 
Insurance Company, advanced to the position of 
cashier, and absorbed the insurance methods and 
standards common in the fifties. 

In 1859, on disclosing his plan to form a rival 
organization, he was summarily dismissed from 
the older company and succeeded in launching 
the Equitable Life Assurance Society. With 
youthful audacity and keen business sense he 
rented a room, on the second floor, above the 
offices of the Mutual Life Insurance Company, 
borrowed office furniture, erected a sign so large 
as to obscure that of the Mutual Life beneath it, 
raised the one hundred thousand dollars neces¬ 
sary capital, and began to write life insurance. 
Owing to his own youth he arranged that he 
should be called vice-president and manager 
while the title of president was given to William 
C. Alexander, a brother of James W. Alexander, 
pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, 
with which Hyde had already connected himself. 
For forty years he devoted all his exceptional 
energy and business ability to the Equitable So¬ 
ciety. Before his death the company reported 
assets of over two hundred and fifty million dol¬ 
lars, a surplus of over sixty millions, and out¬ 
standing insurance of over a billion dollars. He 
not only determined all questions of policy but 
devoted himself to the supervision and encour¬ 
agement of the active field force, to details of ad¬ 
vertising, and to the careful management of the 
growing branches in the United States and 
abroad. 

In 1865 the company paid the first dividend to 
its policy holders but three years later announced 
the Tontine plan, by which it could avoid the 
financial drain of paying annual dividends out of 
a surplus small on account of the company's 
youth and high expense rate. When this form 
of insurance proved very popular the business 
of the company increased rapidly, and the sur¬ 
plus grew from seven millions in 1868 to ten mil¬ 
lions the next year, thirteen millions the year 
after, and twenty-six millions by 1874. The per¬ 
sonal profit to the founder of the company in- 


45 ° 



Hyde 

creased correspondingly because, besides his sal¬ 
ary, he enjoyed, until 1875, an additional annual 
compensation of two and a half per cent, of the 
surplus (own testimony before the investigation 
committee of 1877, post, no. 93, p. 36), Since, 
under the Tontine, and, later, under the deferred 
dividend policies, no accounting was required 
of the funds accumulated to pay the deferred 
dividend, the large surplus provided money for 
a wasteful enlargement of the company and for 
such other abuses as were common in the early 
stages of corporation development in the United 
States (brought out in the investigation conduct¬ 
ed by Charles E. Hughes, see report of the com¬ 
mittee in 1905-06, post, pp. 421-24, 102-08, 117, 
122, 129, 140). Under competitive conditions 
other companies adopted the system with some 
modifications. In 1877 the state of New York 
undertook an investigation looking to the con¬ 
trol of such practices, but it was not until the 
eighties that the public began to realize the dis¬ 
crepancy between estimated returns on maturing 
Tontine policies and the sums actually paid, and 
also the increasing dissatisfaction on the part 
of lapsing policy holders (for figures estimated 
and paid see Ibid., p. 148). 

Gradually Hyde had acquired a majority of 
the shares of the Equitable and controlled abso¬ 
lutely the company, of which he had become pres¬ 
ident in 1874 for a salary of $37,500 with cer¬ 
tain additional sums not clearly specified. In 
1886 it was agreed that after his death the com¬ 
pany should pay an annuity of $25,000 to his 
wife, Annie (Fitch) Hyde, whom he had mar¬ 
ried in 1864 (report of committee of 1905-06, 
post, p. 101). Four years before his death he 
sought to provide for the continued family con¬ 
trol of his majority interest by creating a trust 
of 502 shares in favor of his son, who, however, 
lost control in the course of the struggle that 
brought about the New York investigation of 

1905 by the Armstrong committee. 

[Henry Baldwin Hyde, prepared tinder supervision 
of J. W. Alexander, J. H. Hyde, and Wm. Alexander 
(1901) ; The Proc. at the Convention to Commemorate 
the Fortieth Anniversary of the Equitable Life Assur¬ 
ance Soc. (1899 ?) ; The First Fifty Years of the Equi¬ 
table Life Assurance Soc. (1909) ; Mark Sullivan, Our 
Times, III (1930) ; investigations of 1877 in Docs, of 
the Assembly of the State of N. Y., 1877 (1877), nos. 
93> 103; report of the committee in 1905-06, Ibid., 

1906 (1906), no. 41, pp. 90-150; Testimony Taken 
Before the Joint Committee of the Senate and Assem¬ 
bly of the State of N. Y. to Investigate . . . Life Insur¬ 
ance Companies (10 vols. and index, 1905-06); R. H. 
Walworth, Hyde Geneal. (1864), vol. I; N. Y. Times, 
May 3, 1899; World (N. Y.), May 3, 1899.] 

C.E. P. 

HYDE, JAMES NEVINS (June 21, 1840- 
Sept. 6, 1910), physician, was born in Norwich, 
Conn., the son of Edward Goodrich and Hannah 


Hyde 

Huntington (Thomas) Hyde. He was a descend¬ 
ant of William Hyde who emigrated from Eng¬ 
land to Massachusetts probably in 1633 anc * 
joined the company of Thomas Hooker which 
founded Hartford, Conn. James prepared for 
college at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., 
afterward entering Yale College, from which he 
received the degree of A.B. in 1861. That same 
year he began the study of medicine in the Col¬ 
lege of Physicians and Surgeons of New York, 
but in the following summer he joined the Army 
of the Potomac, then engaged in the Peninsular 
campaign. He assisted in caring for the wound¬ 
ed from the battles of Malvern Hill and Fair 
Oaks, and accompanied a convoy of wounded 
to Washington hospitals, where he remained on 
duty for nearly a year. In July 1863, he was 
appointed an acting assistant surgeon in the 
navy and ordered to the North Atlantic block¬ 
ading squadron. Later, he was placed in charge 
of the naval hospital at New Bern, N. C. In Oc¬ 
tober 1863 he was commissioned as assistant 
surgeon in the regular naval service and assigned 
to the San Jacinto in the Gulf of Mexico. Fol¬ 
lowing hospital duty at Key West, he joined the 
Ticonderoga of Admiral Farragut’s squadron, 
then making a round of European ports. He re¬ 
signed from the navy on Feb. 27,1869, and after 
a course of lectures at the University of Penn¬ 
sylvania he received the degree of M.D. in 1869. 
After his graduation, he went to Chicago and 
took up the practice of dermatology. He held the 
position of lecturer on dermatology in Rush 
Medical College from 1873 t0 1876, when he 
was made professor of the same at Northwestern 
University. In 1879 was appointed professor 
of skin, genito-urinary, and venereal diseases at 
Rush Medical College, and this position he held 
for the remainder of his life. For many years 
he was also secretary of the faculty. From 1902 
to 1910 he was professorial lecturer at the Uni¬ 
versity of Chicago. 

He made dermatology his specialty when that 
science was in a chaotic condition, and did pio¬ 
neer work in his field. He was one of the found¬ 
ers of the American Dermatological Associa¬ 
tion in 1876, and was twice its president. He at¬ 
tended its meetings regularly, served on com¬ 
mittees, and invariably contributed a paper at 
its gatherings and took part in the discussions. 
His special articles number over a hundred, all 
prepared with patience and care, but marred by 
an exuberant style and involved construction. 
His Practical Treatise on Diseases of the Skin, 
a notable work, was first published in 1883, and 
ran through eight editions. He was also the au¬ 
thor of Early Medical Chicago (1879). He held 


451 



Hyde 

office in many of the American and foreign med- 
ical societies to which he belonged and in 1905 
was secretary for America of the Fifth Interna¬ 
tional Dermatological Congress. He was at¬ 
tending dermatologist at the Presbyterian, Mi¬ 
chael Reese, Augustana, and Children's Memo¬ 
rial Hospitals and to the Orphan Asylum of the 
City of Chicago. 

Aside from his professional activities, he was 
one of Chicago's most prominent citizens, tak¬ 
ing an active part in all movements having for 
their object the social or economic improvement 
of the community. He was particularly inter¬ 
ested in the affairs of Christ Church, whose rec¬ 
tor, Charles E. Cheney [q.v.], was his wife's 
brother-in-law; for years he acted as a chorister 
there and a teacher in the Sunday school. He 
was also one of the directors of the Reformed 
Episcopal Synod of Chicago and a contributor 
to the Evangelical Episcopalian. He had an en¬ 
gaging personality characterized by the dignity, 
the courtesy, and the manners of generations 
past. On July 31,1872, he was married to Alice 
Louise Griswold of Chicago. They had two sons. 
He died suddenly at his summer home at Prouts 
Neck, Me* 

[R. H. Walworth, Hyde Geneal. (1864), vol. I; 0 . 
S. Ormsby, in Chicago Medic. Recorder, Sept. 15,1910 ; 
Jour. Am. Medic . Asso., Sept. 17, 1910; H. A. Kelly 
and W. L. Burrage, Am. Medic. Biogs. (1920); Obit. 
Record Grads. Yale Univ., 1911; Who's Who in Amer¬ 
ica, 1908-09; Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 8, 19x0; 
personal acquaintance.] J.M. P. 

HYDE, WILLIAM DeWITT (Sept 23, 
1858-June 29,1917), educator, author, was bom 
in Winchendon, Mass., the second and only sur¬ 
viving child of Joel and Eliza (DeWitt) Hyde. 
His first ancestor in America was Jonathan 
Hyde, who emigrated from London in 1647 and 
settled at Newton, Mass. William's mother died 
shortly after her son's birth; and his father, a 
farmer and maker of wooden ware, died seven 
years later, leaving the son an inheritance suf¬ 
ficient, with frugality, to provide for his educa¬ 
tion. Puritanism charged the atmosphere in 
which he grew. Brought up by relatives in 
Keene, N. H., and later in Southbridge, Mass., 
he was graduated from Phillips Academy, Exe¬ 
ter, N. H., in 1875, an d entered Harvard, from 
which he was graduated in 1879. His letters of 
this period reveal a deeply religious youth, reli¬ 
ant on reason and bent upon service. After a 
year at Union Theological Seminary, he com¬ 
pleted his course at Andover in 1882. Here he 
came under the growing influence of the socially 
motivated "new theology," and of a profoundly 
religious local physician, Dr. James Howarth. 
A post-graduate year was chiefly notable for 


Hyde 

Hyde's renewed contacts with George Herbert 
Palmer of Harvard, his spiritual father, whose 
Hegel seminar he attended; and for his own 
meditations. He was ordained to the Congrega¬ 
tional ministry on Sept. 27, 1883, and became 
pastor of a church in Paterson, N. J. On Nov. 
6, 1883, he married Prudence Phillips of South- 
bridge, Mass. Of this union twins, soon de¬ 
ceased, were born in 1884, an d, in 1887, one son. 
Meanwhile he had shown his intellectual vigor 
by publishing two technical articles on theology, 
"The Metaphysical Basis of Belief in God" ( New 
Englander, September 1883), and "An Analysis 
of Consciousness in Its Relation to Eschatology" 
{Ibid., November 1884); and his Andover teach¬ 
er, Egbert C. Smyth [g.z\], an influential trus¬ 
tee of Bowdoin College, was considering him as 
a possibility for the chair of philosophy and the 
presidency of the institution. In June 1885, the 
offer was made and accepted. 

Hyde was then, at the age of twenty-six, un¬ 
commonly mature in most of the powers that 
were to carry him swiftly to leadership. He had 
attained his fundamental concepts in philosophy, 
ethics, and religion. He had a finished literary 
style. As a public speaker he had skill, vigor, 
charm, trenchancy, enforced by good temper— 
although a leaning toward the rhetorical some¬ 
times led him into overstatement—a pleasing 
voice, and athletic bearing. For thirty-two years 
he was a prophet, interpreting to thinking peo¬ 
ple a rational social theology of Divine imma¬ 
nence, Greek virtues supplemented by Christian¬ 
ity, philosophical idealism, liberalism, and evo¬ 
lutionary progress; the principles and applica¬ 
tions of which he set forth in a stream of bril¬ 
liant books and articles. He could interpret pub¬ 
lic issues in phrases of pregnant contrast, as in 
his last address, Patriot's Day 1917, on "The 
Cause for Which We Fight." His most popular 
books were Practical Ethics (1892), translated 
into Japanese (1909) and into Gujarati, a dia¬ 
lect of India (1923) ; From Epicurus to Christ 
(1904), republished as The Five Great Philos - 
ophiesofLife (1911) ; Self-Measurement { 1908), 
translated into Japanese (1910). Important 
among his other works are, Outlines of Social 
Theology (1895), Practical Idealism (1897), 
God's Education of Man (1899), Jesus’ Way 
(1902), translated into French (1904). 

In the political campaign of 1888 he estab¬ 
lished a reputation for courageous independence 
by a speech in Republican Maine for Cleveland 
and tariff reform. In the same spirit, at the 
Second International Council of Congregational 
Churches, held at Boston in 1899, he urged the 
rejuvenation of theological education with a 


452 



Hyde 

trenchancy that evoked sharp disagreement but 
made the subject the one most discussed at the 
gathering. The following year, he attacked Mc¬ 
Kinley on his record, yet supported him against 
Bryan. Working constructively in other fields, 
he promoted church unity by taking the lead 
in 1890 in founding the Maine Interdenomina¬ 
tional Commission, the purpose of which was to 
bring about combinations of weak rural churches 
and prevent the competitive establishment of 
new ones. Of this, the first inter-church state 
federation, he was president as long as he lived. 
Through its success, by his advocacy of church 
unity in a series of articles in the Forum (June 
1892, March, April 1893, December 1895) i and 
by active cooperation, he contributed important¬ 
ly to the evolution of the Federal Council of the 
Churches of Christ in America, a leading ex¬ 
ponent of the federal principle of church union 
as against that of organic unity. 

As a preacher and lecturer at the leading uni¬ 
versities and colleges of the country, at reli¬ 
gious and educational conferences, and in city 
churches and clubs, he was in great demand. In 
1904 he was chosen to give the address on “The 
College” at the International Congress of Arts 
and Sciences held in connection with the Loui¬ 
siana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis (pub¬ 
lished in the Educational Review , December 
1904). From 1898 he was trustee of Phillips 
Exeter Academy. In 1911 he declined to con¬ 
sider an ad interim appointment to the United 
States Senate. In 1915 he became an overseer 
of Harvard. 

He was everywhere known as Hyde of Bow- 
doin. There, at the outset, his youth, intellectual 
distinction, athletic vigor, remarkable power as 
a teacher, sympathetic comprehension of the col¬ 
lege student, loyalty to the established excel¬ 
lences of the college, and growing public pres¬ 
tige, drew to him the appreciative regard of stu¬ 
dents and faculty alike. In choosing teachers 
he always emphasized personality equally with 
scholarship, and he maintained continuous har¬ 
mony among them by the freedom and considera¬ 
tion which he accorded to each. Under his wise 
administration the college made notable prog¬ 
ress in numbers and equipment. The entrance 
requirements were liberalized, the curriculum 
was greatly broadened and made largely elec¬ 
tive, though subject to concentration require¬ 
ments in chosen fields, and instruction by con¬ 
ference in small groups was introduced. He had 
many calls to other institutions, but he could 
never be persuaded that they offered greater op¬ 
portunities for public service. 

[Scrap-books in the library of Bowdoin College; 


Hyer 

Class of 1879 Harvard Coll.; Secretary’s Report 
(1879-1914); Harvard Grads. Mag., Sept. 1917; Me¬ 
morial Addresses, Bowdoin Coll. Bull., n.s., no. 79 
(1917) ; C. T. Burnett, Hyde of Bowdoin; a Biog. of 
William DeWitt Hyde (1931) ; C. H. Patton and W. T. 
Field, Eight O’Clock Chapel (1927); C. F. Thwing, 
Guides, Philosophers and Friends (1927) ; L. C. Hatch, 
The Hist, of Bowdoin Colt. (1927) ; Bangor Daily News, 
June 30, 1917; N. Y. Times, June 30, 1917.] 

C.T.B. 

HYER, ROBERT STEWART (Oct. 18, 
1860-May 29, 1929), scientist, university presi¬ 
dent, was born at Oxford, Ga., the eldest of the 
four children of William L. Hyer, a locomotive 
engineer, and Laura (Stewart) Hyer, a daugh¬ 
ter of a Methodist minister. He was of Hugue¬ 
not and Scotch-Irish ancestry. As his mother 
was an invalid, her sister, Miss Ray Stewart, 
cared for the boy until 1874, while he attended 
school in Atlanta. Then, until 1881, he made his 
home at Oxford with an uncle, Joseph S. Stew¬ 
art, whose assistance made possible the com¬ 
pletion of his course at Emory College. He 
was graduated with first honors in the class of 
1881. He was a reticent youth, had few intimate 
friends, and took little interest in college sports 
and pastimes. His interest in science appears to 
have been awakened by Darwin’s On the Origin 
of Species , which he considered the greatest sci¬ 
entific work in English. At the age of twenty- 
two he became professor of sciences in South¬ 
western University at Georgetown, Tex., a 
Methodist institution then nine years old. His 
going to Texas may be said to mark the begin¬ 
ning of education in the physical sciences in the 
state. A decade after his arrival he began a se¬ 
ries of experiments in the X-ray and ether waves 
which promised significant results; but the de¬ 
mands of the presidency, which he reluctantly 
added to his professorial duties in 1898, left him 
little time for research. A report in the Trans¬ 
actions of the Texas Academy of Science, vol¬ 
ume II (1899), would indicate that his experi¬ 
ments in ether waves antedated those of Mar¬ 
coni. In 1904 he designed the first wireless sta¬ 
tion in Texas, which transmitted messages for 
the distance of a mile. He was also a pioneer in 
X-ray work in the Southwest 
When, at the age of thirty-seven, he became 
president of Southwestern, it was without en¬ 
dowment, its enrolment was 425, and its physical 
plant wholly inadequate. During his thirteen- 
year tenure in the presidency, the number of 
students increased to 1,123, new buildings were 
erected—one of them designed by Hyer, an en¬ 
dowment of $300,000 was obtained, and a med¬ 
ical college was established in Dallas (1903). 
After an effort to move the University to North 
Texas had failed, Hyer resigned his connection 


453 



Hyrne 

with the Georgetown institution to become pres¬ 
ident and professor of physics at Southern Meth¬ 
odist University, founded at Dallas in April 1911 
by five Texas Conferences, and made the “con- 
nectional” university of the Church west of the 
Mississippi three years later. Hyer planned the 
campus, determined the architectural design, su¬ 
pervised the erection of the first five buildings, 
and obtained an endowment of about $300,000. 
The initial enrolment of the university (1915- 
16) was 706, and when Hyer became president 
emeritus, in February 1920, the enrolment had 
grown to 1,118. He retained his professorship 
until his death and during these years began ex¬ 
periments to determine the location and charac¬ 
ter of petroleum deposits by the use of electrical 
instruments. He was twice married: in 1881 
to Madge Jordan, of Savannah, Ga., who died 
in 1883; and in 1887 to Margaret Lee Hudgins, 
of Georgetown. His air of innate distinction 
was heightened by his reserve and dignity. He 
was primarily a student, and although he was 
for twenty-three years a college president, he re¬ 
garded administrative functions as secondary to 
the calling of a teacher. He was a charming 
conversationalist, a delightful essayist, and a 
singularly effective public speaker. His chief 
relaxations were gardening and wood-carving. 
In addition to miscellaneous contributions, he 
published papers in the Transactions of the 
Texas Academy of Science and in the Methodist 
Quarterly Review . He was a delegate to the 
Ecumenical Conference at London (1902) and 
Toronto (1912), and represented the Methodist 
Church, South, on the Joint Commission on Uni¬ 
fication. He was a man of quiet, unostentatious 
piety, and for many years a critical student of 
the Bible. 

[Who’s Who in America, 1906-07, 1926-27; A. F. 
Henning, “The Story of Southern Meth. Univ.,” in 
manuscript; catalogues of Southwestern Univ., 1882- 
1911; Southern Meth. Univ. Bulletin, I (1915), 3-8, 
V (1920), 168, X (192s), 131, XVI (1931), 8; M. E. 
Ch. South, Minutes of the North Tex. Conference, 1884, 
1896; Dallas Morning News, Houston Post-Dispatch, 
May 30, 1929; information as to certain facts from 
Hyer’s family and friends.] jj P. G. 

HYRNE, EDMUND MASSINGBERD 

(Jan. 14, 1748-Dec. 1783), soldier, was of Eng¬ 
lish ancestry, the son of Col. Henry Hyrne and 
the grandson of Edward Hyrne who emigrated 
to America and settled in that section of South 
Carolina later known as the Parish of St. James. 
Captain in the 1st South Carolina Continental 
Regiment in 1775, he was promoted to the rank 
of major in 1779 and served as deputy adjutant- 
general of the Southern Department from 1778 
to the end of the Revolution. He was wounded 
in the engagement near Gibbes's Farm, Mar. 30, 


Hyslop 

1780, which was connected with the siege of 
Charleston. For his valuable service and cour¬ 
ageous conduct during the Battle of Eutaw 
Springs, S. G, he received the thanks of Con¬ 
gress through Maj.-Gen. Nathanael Greene. 
After the Battle of Cowpens, Jan. 17, 1781, he 
marched six hundred British prisoners to the 
prison camp at Charlottesville, Va. He was aide- 
de-camp to Greene in 1781-82 and rendered no¬ 
table service as liaison officer between him and 
Gen. Thomas Sumter during the campaigns of 
1781 in South Carolina, though his efforts to in¬ 
duce the latter to cooperate more fully were not 
entirely successful. In the exchange of prison¬ 
ers, in the Southern Department, at the end of 
the war, Hyrne served as American commissary 
and met at Charleston the British commissary, 
Major Fraser. Regarding his fitness for the po¬ 
sition it has been said: “A man better qualified 
for so important a commission, could not have 
been selected. He was liberal in all his ideas; 
and where reason would justify concession, will¬ 
ing to yield and conciliate; but against the en¬ 
croachments of arrogance and injustice, firm as 
adamant” (McCrady, The History of South Car¬ 
olina in the Revolution , 1780 - 83 , p. 362). Soon 
after his military services had ended he was 
elected a member of the Assembly known as the 
Jacksonborough legislature, which met Jan. 18, 
1782, at Jacksonborough, about thirty-five miles 
from Charleston. He died in the winter of 1783 
on his plantation, “Ormsbyin St. Bartholo¬ 
mew's Parish. He seems to have left no children. 

[S. C. Hist. and Geneal. Mag., Oct. 1921; Edward 
McCrady, The Hist, of S. C. in the Revolution, 1775- 
80 (1901), 1780-83 (1902) ; Alexander Garden, Anec¬ 
dotes of the Revolutionary War in America (1822); 
Mag. of Hist, with Notes and Queries, vol. XXXV, 
No. 3 (1928), Extra No., No. 139.] P.S.F. 

HYSLOP, JAMES HERVEY (Aug. 18, 
1854-June 17, 1920), philosopher, psychologist, 
was born at Xenia, Ohio. He was the survivor 
of twins and one of a family of ten children. His 
father, Robert, was bom at Xenia and became a 
farmer there. His mother was Martha Ann 
(Boyle) Hyslop, daughter of James Boyle. The 
first eighteen years of James's life were spent on 
his father's farm and in the public schools of 
Xenia. His parents were “Associate Presbyter¬ 
ians” who observed a very strict and strenuous 
religious regime. When James was ten years 
old he was deeply impressed by the deaths of a 
brother and a sister and by a warning of tuber¬ 
culosis. These events, coupled with the intense 
religious atmosphere of his home, gave him per¬ 
manently what he himself called his “serious 
half-melancholy disposition.” At the age of 
twenty he went to a Reformed Presbyterian 





Hyslop 

College at Northwood, Ohio (West Geneva 
College), but soon transferred to Wooster Uni¬ 
versity, where he graduated in 1877. Profes¬ 
sor Samuel S. Gregory taught him philosophy, 
broadened his religious beliefs, and stimulated 
his interest in speculative problems. After teach¬ 
ing a district school for two years he accepted 
a position in McCorkle College at Sago, Ohio, an 
institution sponsored by his parents’ sect, but he 
left after five months and went to the Academy 
of Lake Forest University, where he taught from 
1880 to 1882. Here he first came under liberal 
influences, and even came to favor the Unitarian 
Church. He sailed for England with the inten¬ 
tion of pursuing graduate studies at Edinburgh, 
but instead he went into business at London until 
he had saved enough money to enable him to go 
to the University of Leipzig, where he studied 
under Wundt. In 1884 he returned, taught for 
a year in Lake Forest University, then in 1885 
he was called by H. N. Gardiner to teach philos¬ 
ophy at Smith College. In 1887 he received the 
degree of Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University. 
After several months on the staff of the Asso¬ 
ciated Press he taught at Bucknell University in 
Pennsylvania. In 1889 he was called to Colum¬ 
bia College as tutor in philosophy, ethics, and 
psychology. Three years later he became in¬ 
structor in ethics, and in 1894 he became pro¬ 
fessor of logic and ethics. He held this chair 
until 1902, when tuberculosis forced him to give 
up his work. 

After three years of almost complete inac¬ 
tivity Hyslop - recovered sufficiently to enable 
him to do intensive work on psychical research, 
a subject in which he had become interested 
through Richard Hodgson as early as 1889 and 
which became increasingly his chief preoccu¬ 
pation. In 1906, after the death of Hodgson, sec¬ 
retary of the American branch of the Society for 
Psychical Research, certain disputes about the 
“Piper case,” as well as certain more general 
differences between the London Society and the 
American Branch, led Hyslop to found the 
American Institute for Scientific Research. This 
was to be organized into two sections: Section A 
was to be devoted to abnormal psychology and 
was to be headed by French authorities in this 
field, but this plan failed to materialize; Sec¬ 
tion B became the American Society for Psy¬ 
chical Research. For years Hyslop worked al¬ 
most single-handed in this organization. His 
evident honesty and his scientific zeal for get¬ 
ting all the facts available gained for him the 
respect and encouragement of many psychol¬ 
ogists and scientists; but his increasing hospi¬ 
tality to some form of spiritualistic belief served 


Iberville 

to isolate him intellectually from most of his 
fellow-scientists. His supposed messages from 
Hodgson through the mediumship of Mrs. Piper 
were severely criticized by Miinsterberg, and 
his defense of what he called the “pictographic 
process” of spirit communication met with com¬ 
paratively slight acceptance among academic 
psychologists. Nevertheless the Proceedings 
and publications of his Psychical Research So¬ 
ciety became the center for much serious discus¬ 
sion and for the reporting of numerous “phe¬ 
nomena.” And his work in this field was car¬ 
ried on after his death by an enthusiastic and 
devoted group of collaborators. 

Though Hyslop’s fame rests undoubtedly on 
his contributions in the field of psychical re¬ 
search, he was also influential as a teacher of 
philosophy. He was among the first to champion 
the revolt in America against idealism, against 
speculative methods, and Transcendental doc¬ 
trines in philosophy, and he tried to lay the foun¬ 
dations for a scientific procedure in moral and 
logical problems. In this he borrowed largely 
from others, notably from Lotze. His numerous 
texts lack originality, but they were widely used 
during his lifetime. His largest philosophical 
work, Problems of Philosophy (1905), contains 
much careful criticism, especially of Kant, but 
it suffers from a subordination of all issues to 
his own dominant interest in spiritualistic meta¬ 
physics. Besides many articles in Mind, the An¬ 
dover Review, Philosophical Review, the Nation, 
the Yale Review, and other periodicals, and his 
numerous contributions to the proceedings of 
both the English and the American Societies 
for Psychical Research, his published works in¬ 
clude: The Elements of Logic (1892); Hume's 
Treatise of Morals (1893); The Elements of 
Ethics (1895) ; Elements of Psychology (1895); 
Syllabus of Psychology (1899); Logic and 
Argument (1899); Democracy ; A Study of 
Government (1899); Problems of Philosophy 
(1905) ,* Science and a Future Life (1905); 
Borderland of Psychical Research (1906); Psy¬ 
chical Research and Survival (1913); and Life 
after Death (1918). Hyslop was married, on 
Oct. 1,1891, to Mary Fry Hall, the daughter of 
George W. Hall of Philadelphia. He died in 
Upper Montclair, N. J. 

[Jour, of the Am. Soc. for Psychical Research, Sept., 
Oct., Nov. 1920; G. O. Tubby, Jas. H. Hyslop — X. His 
Book. A Cross Reference Record (1929) ; Who’s Who 
in America, 1920-21; N. Y. Times, Feb. 14, 1900, June 
18,1920.} H.W. S-d-r. 

IBERVILLE, PIERRE LE MOYNE, Sieur 

d* (July 1661-July 9,1706), explorer, third son 
of Charles le Moyne, Sieur de Longueuil, and 
Catherine Tierry, named Primot from an adop- 


455 



Iberville Iberville 

live father, has been called the first great Cana- his men. In this raid he lost one of his brothers, 
dian. He may also be called the Canadian "Cid," and Bienville [q.v.~\, his younger brother, was 
since his career was compounded of daring, ro- severely wounded. 

mantic enterprise, and heroic feats. His train- Notwithstanding these exploits and the hardi- 
ing was in the royal navy, which he entered at hood and dangers endured in their furtherance, 
the age of fourteen. His field of action was the France did not finally control Hudson Bay. Nor 
entire North American continent from which he were Iberville's other war enterprises more use- 
attempted to expel the English in the interest of ful to his beloved country. In 1690 he accom- 
the French empire. His greatest feats were per- panied as a volunteer the overland expedition 
formed in Hudson Bay; his greatest service was which sacked Schenectady and destroyed the set¬ 
laying the foundations of Louisiana in the Gulf tlement with fire and sword. In 1692 he failed 
of Mexico. After a decade of service at sea, in an attack on Fort Pemaquid on the Maine 
where Louis XIV was endeavoring to build up coast, showing in the face of superior force pru- 
a royal navy, Iberville returned to his native dence rather than rashness. Four years later he 
Canada imbued with ideas of expansion and im- successfully attacked the same post and razed 
perialism. His father having died in 1685, he it to the ground. The same year, 1696, he cap- 
with two of his brothers joined the expedition tured the British fort St. John's in Newfound- 
of Chevalier de Troyes, which early in 1686 left land. He advocated and nearly succeeded in 
Montreal to drive the British from the James taking New York City from the English. 

Bay extension of Hudson Bay, The two nations His career seemed ended when in 1697 the 
were temporarily at peace, but the Hudson's Bay peace of Ryswick was signed between France 
Company, founded in 1670 by the advice of the and England. It proved, however, to be the 
French explorer Radisson, was demoralizing the opening for a greater success, the one on which 
fur trade of the interior on which rested the pros- his title to fame is based. In 1698 he sailed from 
perity of New France. The expedition left Mon- France to found a colony in Louisiana at the 
treal in March and on snow shoes followed the mouth of the Mississippi and there succeeded 
Ottawa River to its source, six hundred miles where La Salle, thirteen years earlier, had failed, 
distant. There the adventurers built canoes and "If the duration of a man's existence," wrote 
dropped down Moose River for three hundred Gayarre, historian of Louisiana, "is to be mea- 
miles more—a journey unparalleled even in sured by the merits of his deeds, then Iberville 
Canada for hardship and peril. Upon reaching had lived long, before reaching the meridian of 
their goal Iberville led the storming parties that life, and he was old in fame, if not in years when 
carried by impetuous assault three British posts he undertook to establish a colony in Louisiana" 
in James Bay and took fifty thousand crowns' (post, 1 , go). In this enterprise Iberville showed 
worth of furs, the harvest of the Hudson's Bay ability and courage of a new sort—the ability to 
Company for the year. With this booty the raid- overcome obstacles, the courage to await events, 
ers returned in triumph to Quebec. He also'developed administrative ability, and the 

Thus was begun a duel on a vast scale between colony made notable progress until his untimely 
Iberville with his devoted followers and the death at Havana of yellow fever. Before this, 
British company's officials. When the French however, France and England were again at 
officer was absent the British recaptured the war, and Iberville in his old dashing fashion cap- 
posts and the trade. Then Iberville would muster tured two West India islands for his crown. The 
his forces and again raid the Bay posts. After infant colony of Louisiana, which he had found- 
France declared war on England in 1689 the ed, was left to the care of his brother Bienville, 
contest was intensified, Iberville having the sup- For his courage, his daring, his resource, he was 
port of the navy as well as of the Canadians. In idolized by his men and acclaimed by all Cana- 
1689, 1691, 1694, and 1697 he made expeditions dians. His broader vision of a continent for 
to the north, which demanded more and more France was not appreciated by many; he pene- 
daring and courage as the struggle progressed, trated the purposes of English colonization as 
The last raid is especially noteworthy. In one did few other Canadians of his day. "As mili- 
small man of war, the Pelican , Iberville encoun- tary as his sword," "hardened to the water as a 
tered three British warships, sank the Hamp- fish," he attracted attention rather for his phys- 
shire with all its crew, and captured the two ical prowess than for his ideals of empire. He 
others. Then when the Pelican was wrecked by planned to give a continent to France and nearly 
a storm on a hostile coast, Iberville with his succeeded. His cruelty and ruthlessness in giv- 
starving crew led an assault on the strongest ing no quarter were defects of his age. Iberville 
British post, Fort Nelson, captured it, and saved was married in Quebec on Oct. 8,1693, to Marie 

456 



Iddings 

Therese Pollet de la Comte Pocatiere, who bore 
him two children. 

[Iberville’s campaigns were described by P. F. X. 
Charlevoix, Hist* and Gen. Description of New France 
(6 vols., 1866-72), tr. by J. G.Shea. Claude Chas. Le 
Roy Bacqueville de la Potherie, Hist, de I’Amerique 
Septentrionale (4 vols., 1722), describes the expedi¬ 
tion of 1697 of which he was a member. Pierre Margry, 
Decouvertes et ttablissements des Frangais dans 
VAmerique Septentrionale, vols. IV-VI (1880-86), 
gives the documents relating to the founding of Louisi¬ 
ana. C. B. Reed, The First Great Canadian (1910) is 
the best modern biography. An excellent sketch is in 
T. J. Campbell, Pioneer Laymen of North America 
(1915), vol. II. See also A. C. G. Desmazures, Hist, 
du Chevalier dTberville, 1663-1706 (1890); Chas. E. 
A. Gayarre, Hist, of La. (1854), vol. I; “Voyage 
D’Iberville,” Quebec Lit. and Hist. Soc. Manuscripts, 
3 ser. (1871).] L.P.K. 

IDDINGS, JOSEPH PAXON (Jan. 21,1857- 
Sept. 8, 1920), geologist, petrologist, son of Wil¬ 
liam Penn and Almira (Gillet) Iddings, was 
born in Baltimore, Md. The Iddings family de¬ 
scended from Richard Iddings, a Quaker who 
came to America late in the seventeenth century 
and died in Chester County, Pa., in 1726. When 
Joseph was about ten years of age, his parents 
moved to Orange, N. J., where he was taught in 
a select private school. He manifested a fond¬ 
ness for natural history subjects at an early age 
and when about twelve formed with his class¬ 
mates a “natural history society.” He gradu¬ 
ated in 1877 with the degree of Ph.B. from the 
Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University. 
His early interests were in the direction of min¬ 
ing, but fie turned naturally to petrology through 
his association with George W. Hawes, then an 
instructor in determinative mineralogy in the 
scientific school and engaged in the study of the 
rocks of New Hampshire. The Yale atmosphere 
with George J. Brush, James Dwight Dana, and 
other scholars was also favorable to the devel¬ 
opment of his interest in geology. He passed the 
winter of 1878-79, however, in fitting himself 
for the duties of a mining engineer, under the 
instruction of J. S. Newberry at Columbia, N. Y. 
While he was there, a bill was passed by Con¬ 
gress abolishing all existing governmental sur¬ 
veys and creating a new and independent or¬ 
ganization to be known as the United States Geo¬ 
logical Survey, which was placed under the di¬ 
rection of Clarence King. Iddings thereupon 
applied for a position, which later received fa¬ 
vorable action and turned him definitely from 
the calling of a mining engineer in the direction 
which led to his becoming one of America's 
foremost petrologists. 

While awaiting this decision, acting on the rec¬ 
ommendation of Professors Brush and Hawes, 
he went to Europe in 1879 and placed himself 
under the tuition of Professor Harry Rosenbusch 


Iddings 

at Heidelberg, Germany, where he remained un¬ 
til the spring of 1880. After a short tour in 
Switzerland he returned to New York, in com¬ 
pany with Arnold Hague [g.z/.], an American 
student whose acquaintance he had made at Hei¬ 
delberg, and with whom he was afterward for 
a time closely associated. Pending the organi¬ 
zation of King's forces, Iddings and Hague 
spent several months in New York arranging 
the collection of rocks collected by the Fortieth 
Parallel Survey, and studied by Zirkel of Leip¬ 
zig. His first field duties were to assist Hague 
in the making of studies of the Eureka district 
of Nevada, which were begun in the summer of 
1880. The close of the field season found Iddings 
again in New York awaiting the development of 
a change in administration incidental to the res¬ 
ignation of King and the appointment of J. W. 
Powell [q.v.']. Here he was brought into contact 
with G. F. Becker [g.z/.], with whom there arose 
a series of differences of opinion on petrographic 
subjects, which, without serious detriment to 
either, lasted for the rest of their lives. 

The summer of 1883 found Iddings a member 
of a party under the direction of Arnold Hague, 
entering upon a survey of the Yellowstone Na¬ 
tional Park. The work occupied them for seven 
subsequent summers, and is the basis upon which 
Iddings' scientific reputation largely depends. 
In 1895, owing to a failure of appropriations 
for a continuance of work on the survey, he 
withdrew and accepted the position of profes¬ 
sor of petrology in the University of Chicago 
where he remained until 1908. He then resigned 
and withdrew to private life, living thereafter 
at his country home in Brinklow, Md. Freed 
from the confinement of university work, he was 
now enabled to undertake somewhat prolonged 
geological trips, including one to the islands of 
the South Pacific and Indian Ocean where he 
made important observations and collected in¬ 
teresting materials which, unfortunately, were 
not completely worked up. He quickly estab¬ 
lished himself as a leader in American petrology. 
He did not merely describe rock structures but 
entered deeply into the theories of igneous mag¬ 
mas and the whole subject of petrogenesis. As 
a coworker in the preparation of the epoch- 
making Quantitative Classification of Igneous 
Rocks (1903) he was one of the most alert. His 
technical papers were carefully and accurately 
prepared and never published “subject to revi¬ 
sion.” Of those published by the government, 
mention can here be made only of his “Micro¬ 
scopical Petrography of the Eruptive Rocks of 
the Eureka District, Nevada” (an appendix to 


457 



Ide Ide 


Hague’s Geology of the Eureka District , Ne¬ 
vada, 1892) and Geology of the Yellowstone Na¬ 
tional Park (1899) in which he collaborated with 
Hague and others. Of his private publications, 
aside from his Microscopical Physiography of 
the Rock-making Minerals (1888), translated 
from the German of Rosenbusch, there remain 
his volumes on Rock Minerals (1906, 1911); 
Igneous Rocks (2 vols., 1909-13); and The 
Problem of Volcanism (1914), containing the 
substance of his Silliman Lectures delivered at 
Yale University in 1914. Iddings was distinctly 
scholarly, a man of broad culture and gentle¬ 
manly bearing. Somewhat reserved, he never¬ 
theless made friends among those of his kind and 
calling. He never married. He died at the 
Montgomery County (Maryland) Hospital on 
Sept 8, 1920, through heart failure, incidental 
to a severe surgical operation. 

[Am. Jour, of Sci., Oct. 1920; Class of 187/, Shef¬ 
field Sci. School , 1877-1921 (n.d.); Obit. Record of 
Yale Grads., 1920-21 (1921) ; Report on the Progress 
... of the U. S. Nat . Museum for the Year Ending 
June 30, 1921 (1921); Evening Star (Washington, 
D. C.), Sept 10, 1920; personal information.] 

G.P.M. 

IDE, HENRY CLAY (Sept. 18, 1844-June 
13, 1921), lawyer, statesman, diplomat, was the 
son of a farmer in Barnet, Vt His parents, Ja¬ 
cob and Lodoska (Knights) Ide, struggled hard 
that Henry might have an education. After 
graduating from Dartmouth College in 1866 he 
served two years as principal of the St Johns- 
bury (Vermont) Academy and one year as prin¬ 
cipal of the Cotting high school at Arlington, 
Mass. He then took up the study of law and 
was admitted to the Vermont bar in 1871. On 
Oct 26, 1871, he married Mary M. Melcher of 
Stoughton, Mass., who died Apr. 13, 1892. He 
was state’s attorney for Caledonia County in 
1876 and 1877 and state senator from 1882 to 
1885. In 1884 he was president of the Republi¬ 
can State Convention and four years later a 
Vermont delegate to the Republican National 
Convention. 

On Mar. 3,1891, President Harrison appoint¬ 
ed Ide “Land Commissioner in Samoa,” a position 
created by the treaty of 1889 between the United 
States, Great Britain, and Germany, which pro¬ 
vided that each signatory should name a repre¬ 
sentative to adjust claims by aliens of titles to 
land in the Samoan Islands. He reached Apia 
May 16 but resigned six months later because 
of serious illness in his family. On Nov. 10, 
two days before Ide left Samoa, Robert Louis 
Stevenson wrote him: “I hear with great re¬ 
gret of your departure. They say there are as 
good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, but I 


doubt if they will come to our hook. It is not 
only that you have shown so much capacity, 
moderation, tact, and temper; but you have had 
the talent to make these gifts recognized and ap¬ 
preciated among our very captious population. 
For my part, I always thought your presence 
the best thing that the treaty had brought us.” 

The treaty of 1889 provided that the three sig¬ 
natories in common accord should name a chief 
justice of Samoa. Ide accepted the offer of this 
position in August 1893 and sailed for Samoa 
two months later. His position was difficult in 
that he had to try cases not only of nationals of 
the three treaty powers but also of native Sa¬ 
moans and other natives of the South Sea Isl¬ 
ands. In addition, he was given authority to rec¬ 
ommend to the government of Samoa the pas¬ 
sage of laws for the prevention and punishment 
of crime and for the collection of taxes. After 
serving three years he submitted his resignation, 
but owing to the delayed arrival of his successor, 
he remained on duty until May 13, 1897. Upon 
his departure the Samoa Weekly Herald com¬ 
mented on his clean record as a just and able 
judge, and King Malietoa stated: “You will not 
be forgotten in Samoa, you will be remembered 
as the good Chief Justice who knew our ways 
and laws and customs and was kind and just to 
us.” Ide felt that his work had been made more 
difficult because the Democratic administration 
was not in sympathy with the continuance of the 
treaty of 1889. 

In March 1900 Ide was appointed by Presi¬ 
dent McKinley to serve on the Philippine Com¬ 
mission delegated “to continue and perfect the 
work of organizing and establishing civil gov¬ 
ernment already commenced by the military au¬ 
thorities.” When the members of the Commis¬ 
sion were made heads of four executive depart¬ 
ments in 1901, Ide became secretary of finance 
and justice. In this capacity he had much to do 
with the framing of a large amount of legislation 
which was adopted, notably the Code of Civil 
Procedure of 1901 and the Internal Revenue 
Law of 1904; and he was largely responsible 
for the effective reform of the Philippine cur¬ 
rency. He was made vice-governor, Feb. 1, 
1904, acting governor, Nov. 4, 1905, and gov¬ 
ernor-general, Apr. 2, 1906. Wien he resigned 
in September 1906 he had completed six years 
of most valuable service during the constructive 
period of the government established in the Isl¬ 
ands by the United States. On Apr. 1, 1909, 
President Taft appointed him envoy extraor¬ 
dinary and minister plenipotentiary to Spain. 
As minister, he served ably for four years, un¬ 
eventful years in the relations between the 


45 8 



Ik Marvel — Ilpendam — Imber 

United States and Spain. He returned to his 
home in St. Johnsbury, Vt., in August 1913, and 
there spent the last years of his life. In addition 
to his political activities, he served as director 
of various banks, and of manufacturing and rail¬ 
road companies. At the time of his death he 
was president of the board of trustees of the St. 
Johnsbury Academy. 

[A biography of Ide by Arthur F. Stone is in prepa¬ 
ration. Further sources for this sketch include: Who's 
Who in America , ig20-21 ; U. S. Dept, of State, Papers 
Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U. S ., 1894- 
97; annual reports of the Philippine Commission, 1901- 
06; D. P. Barrows, Hist, of the Philippines (ed. 1924) ; 
J. H. Blount, The Am. Occupation of the Philippines , 
1898-1912 (1912); E. T. Fairbanks, The Town of St. 
Johnsbury , Vt. (1914); Burlington Free Press, June 
14, 1921; the archives of the Dept, of State, and per¬ 
sonal recollections of Wm. Howard Taft.] q 

IK MARVEL [See Mitchell, Donald 
Grant, 1822-1908.] 

ILPENDAM, JAN JANSEN VAN [See 
Van Ilpendam, Jan Jansen, c. 1595-1647]. 

IMBER, NAPHTALI HERZ (Dec. 27,1856- 
Oct. 8,1909), Hebrew poet, son of Samuel Jacob 
Imber, was horn in Zloczow (Galicia), Poland, 
of poor, orthodox parents. His childhood was 
spent in extreme poverty amidst a religiously 
fanatical environment. His education was re¬ 
stricted to Hebrew and the Talmud. At the age 
of ten he was already composing poems in He¬ 
brew, and one of them, dedicated to the Emperor 
Franz Josef on the occasion of the annexation 
of Bukowina to the Austrian Empire, won im¬ 
perial recognition and a gift of money for the 
young author. At the age of fifteen, he began 
a life of wandering which was to cease only with 
his death. He visited the city of Brody, then pro¬ 
ceeded to Lemberg, where Rabbi Dr. Bernhard 
Lowenstein, perceiving his unusual talents, took 
him under his care and provided him with excel¬ 
lent teachers. The restless youth remained only 
half a year, however, after which he went to 
Vienna. During the next few years he wan¬ 
dered through Hungary, Servia, and Rumania, 
remaining in the latter country for a lengthy pe¬ 
riod and supporting himself by giving private 
lessons. At the end of the Russo-Turkish war 
he arrived in Constantinople. Here he met Mr. 
and Mrs. Laurence Oliphant, who were attempt¬ 
ing to obtain permission from the sultan to 
found a Jewish settlement in Palestine. Imber 
became their secretary, and settled down with 
them at Haifa, near Mount Carmel, until Oli¬ 
phant died in 1888. During this period he wrote 
frequently for Hazebi and Habazeleth , the two 
Hebrew periodicals in Jerusalem. After Oli- 
phant’s death he resumed his wandering through 


Imber 

Europe, finally turning up in London. Here he 
struck up a friendship with Israel Zangwill, 
whom he undertook to teach Hebrew in return 
for lessons in English. Imber was soon able to 
contribute articles to the Jewish Standard then 
edited by Zangwill, while the latter translated 
into English one of Imber’s poems entitled “The 
Watch on the Jordan” ( Mishmar ha-Yarden ). 
It is claimed that the comic poet Melchizedek 
Pinchas whom Zangwill introduced into his 
Children of the Ghetto is a portrait drawn from 
Imber. Imber remained only about four years 
in England. In 1892 he left for the United 
States. 

Here he continued his vagrant existence. He 
went to Boston (where he edited a journal, 
Uriel), Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, 
and other cities, everywhere seeking to make the 
acquaintance of persons interested in mysticism, 
on which subject he afterwards wrote several 
treatises. Later he returned to the East Side 
of New York, in whose saloons and cafes he 
soon became known as a popular and eccentric 
figure. His contemporaries describe him as a 
brilliant and fascinating personality, blood- 
brother to the troubadours or minnesingers, with 
the careless virtues and indulgent excesses of a 
Franqois Villon. His addiction to strong drink, 
his inordinate vanity and other weaknesses were 
the current gossip of New York’s East Side, but 
the price of a drink was little enough recom¬ 
pense for the stream of wit and wisdom which 
the poet would always turn on upon request. 
His total inability to make any financial provi¬ 
sion for himself would have left him absolutely 
destitute had it not been for Judge Mayer Sulz¬ 
berger, who allotted him a monthly stipend. At 
the age of forty-four he married Dr. Amanda 
Katie Davidson, a highly cultured woman, but 
the union did not last. 

Naphtali Herz Imber won recognition in mod¬ 
ern Hebrew literature as a national poet. His 
poems express the hope of Zion and sound a bat¬ 
tle-cry in the struggle for a new Jerusalem. His 
stirring poem Hatikvah (“The Hope”), which 
has been adopted as the national anthem of the 
Zionists, is said to have been composed in Ru¬ 
mania in 1878, long before the advent of Theo¬ 
dor Herzl and political Zionism. A fiery na¬ 
tionalism was not Imber’s only mood, however. 
His mastery of Hebrew verse is equally well dis¬ 
played in his skillful light compositions. He said 
that he wished to do away with the lamentations 
in the spirit of Jeremiah, which occupied so 
large a place in Hebrew poetry, and introduce 
the pagan spirit of love and wine. His Hebrew 
national poems are contained in Barkai (1886), 


459 



Imbert 

Barhai he-hadash (1900), and Barkai ha-shlishi 
(1904). A collection of selected writings was 
published under the title Mivhar kithve Naph - 
tali Hers briber (Tel Aviv, 1929). He trans¬ 
lated into Hebrew Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of 
Omar Khayyam under the title Ha-kos (New 
York, 1905). His writings in English include 
two treatises, “Education and the Talmud” and 
“The Alphabet of Rabbi Akiba,” which appeared 
in the Report of the United States commissioner 
of education for the years 1894-95 and 1895-96. 

[Biography in Mivhar kithve N. H. Imber Jigzg) ; 
Jewish Encyc . (new ed., 1925), vol. VI; Jewish Com¬ 
ment (Baltimore), Oct 15, 1909; Hutchins Hapgood, 
The Spirit of the Ghetto (1902); Rebekah Kohut, As 
I Know Them (1929) ; W. Wininger, Grosse Jildische 
National Biographie, vol. Ill (1929); Georg Herlitz 
and Bruno Kirschner, Judisches Lexikon , vol. Ill 
(1929); N. Y. Times, Oct. 9, 11, 1909.] i.s. 

IMBERT, ANTOINE (d. c. 1835), marine 
artist, lithographer, was a native of Calais, 
France. During the Napoleonic wars he be¬ 
came an officer in the French navy and on Feb. 
23, 1810, was serving as first lieutenant on the 
Prince Eugene, a privateer, when that vessel 
was captured off Dover by the British Royalist. 
He was confined as a prisoner at Chatham for 
more than four years, and during the tedium of 
this captivity devoted himself to drawing and 
painting. He was released May 20, 1814 and 
came to New York about ten years later, perhaps 
on the same ship that brought Lafayette in 1824 
At any rate the familiar “Landing of Gen. Laf¬ 
ayette at Castle Garden, New York, 16th August 
1824” (reproduced as PI. 94-b in Stokes, post 3 
vol. Ill) bears Imbert's name as the artist. It 
was a drawing which “captured the popular 
fancy and came to be reproduced on every imag¬ 
inable object of use from Staffordshire plates 
to Germantown handkerchiefs” (Keyes, post, p. 
205). Imbert's name appears in the New York 
Directory of 1825-26, as a “painter” at 146 Ful¬ 
ton St. In the two years that followed he had a 
“lithographic office” at 79 Murray St. This, 
says Dunlap (post, III, 267, footnote), was “the 
first lithographic establishment [in New York] 
of which I have any knowledge” and was started 
“amidst many difficulties.” Although this early 
work with the “grease crayon” was crude, Keyes 
calls Imbert “a man of special mark, for he was 
not only an artist but a publisher who contrib¬ 
uted largely to the progress of lithography in 
this country” (p. 204). It was Imbert who pro¬ 
duced the lithographic drawings for Cadwallader 
D. Colden’s Memoir Prepared at the Request of 
the Committee of the Common Council of the 
City of New York and Presented to the Mayor 
of the City at the Celebration of the Completion 


Imboden 

of the New York Canals (1825), a copy of which 
was sent by the city government “as a tribute of 
respect to the. Sovereign and People of Bavaria,” 
the birthplace of lithography (Minutes of the 
Common Council, 1784-1831 , 1917, XVI, 515). 
The Alexander J. Davis “Views of Public Build¬ 
ings, Edifices and Monuments. In the Principal 
Cities of the United States, Correctly Drawn on 
Stone” (1826-28) were “Printed and Published 
by Imbert” and subscriptions to the same were 
received at his office. The series was never fin¬ 
ished, but Stokes (op. cit. } A. PI. 12-b, vol. Ill) 
reproduces the view of the Branch Bank of the 
United States on Wall Street and lists eleven 
other New York views (III, 603-04). Frank 
Weitenkampf ( American Graphic Art, 1912, 
182-86) mentions artists other than Davis who 
drew for Imbert, including Robertson, Catlin, 
Johnston, Balch, and the two Frenchmen, Du- 
ponchel and Barincou. “A new Map of the 
United States, with the additional Territories on 
an improved Plan. Exhibiting a View of the 
Rockey Mountains surveyed by a Company of 
Winnebago Indians in 1828,” from Imbert's es¬ 
tablishment, “is perhaps one of the earliest ex¬ 
amples of the entrance into caricature of the lith¬ 
ographic art” (Ibid., p. 253). Imbert left a 
widow who in 1838 was keeping a boy's cloth¬ 
ing shop on Canal Street (Directory, 1838-39). 

[See Admiralty Registers of Prisoners of War (MS.), 
Public Records Office, London; I, N. P, Stokes, The 
Iconography of Manhattan Island (6 vols., 1915-28) ; 
Wm. Dunlap, A Hist, of the Rise and Progress of the 
Arts of Design in the U. S. (rev. ed., 3 vols., 1918), ed. 
by F. W. Bayley and C. E. Goodspeed; H. E. Keyes, in 
Antiques , Oct. 1925; and the other works cited above. 
The N. Y. Hist. Soc. has the A. J. Davis “Views/ 1 in¬ 
cluding one of the original brown wrappers.] E. P. 

IMBODEN, JOHN DANIEL (Feb. 16,1823- 
Aug. 15, 1895), Confederate soldier, promoter 
of mining interests, was born on the Christian 
farm in Augusta County, Va., near Staunton, 
the son of George William and Isabella (Wun¬ 
derlich) Imboden. His grandfather is said to 
have served in the Revolution, and his father in 
the War of 1812. He attended country school 
until his sixteenth year and then went to old 
Washington College for two terms, 1841-42. He 
taught school, studied and practised law in Staun¬ 
ton, represented his district twice in the state 
legislature, and was a defeated candidate for a 
seat in the convention which passed the ordi¬ 
nance of secession. He organized the Staunton 
Artillery, and later commanded it at the capture 
of Harper's Ferry by the Confederate forces. 
He took an important part in the battle of Manas¬ 
sas, July 21, 1861, supporting Bee's brigade. In 
1862, as a colonel under “Stonewall” Jackson, 
he organized the 1st Partisan Rangers, and par- 


460 



Imboden 

ticipated in the battles of Cross Keys and Port 
Republic. Promoted brigadier-general (1863), 
he conducted the “Imboden Raid ” April-May 

1863, in northwest Virginia and West Virginia, 
cutting the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and sup¬ 
plying Lee's army with thousands of cattle and 
horses in preparation for the contemplated Get¬ 
tysburg campaign. During Lee's advance north¬ 
ward, Imboden protected the Confederate left 
flank, destroying enemy communications. When 
he reached the field of Gettysburg at noon, July 
3, 1863, Lee assigned him the highly important 
duty of covering the Confederate retreat In this 
undertaking, Imboden engaged in a spirited 
fight at Williamsport, holding out against great¬ 
ly superior numbers, and saving the trains and 
wounded of the Confederate army (E. P. Alex¬ 
ander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate, 1907, 
pp. 436-39). During the Bristoe campaign, he 
captured the Federal garrison at Charleston, 
West Va., for which exploit he received written 
commendation from General Lee. Later, he took 
part in the battles of Piedmont and New Mar¬ 
ket, and in the series of engagements which 
marked Early's campaign against Sheridan. 
Falling ill of typhoid fever in the autumn of 

1864, he was detailed on prison duty at Aiken, 
S. C. ( Southern Historical Society Papers, I, 
187). After the war, he engaged in law prac¬ 
tice in Richmond for a time, but for the last 
twenty years of his life made his home in Wash¬ 
ington County, Va. He was a pioneer in encour¬ 
aging foreign and domestic capital to develop 
Virginia's natural resources. In 1872, he pub¬ 
lished The Coal and Iron Resources of Virginia, 
and he was a commissioner to the Centennial 
Exhibition of 1876, and the Columbian Exposi¬ 
tion of 1893. His death came suddenly of intes¬ 
tinal complications at Damascus, Va., a little city 
which he had founded and developed, and where 
his body was temporarily interred. Later, it was 
removed to Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond. 
Imboden was married first, to Eliza McCue; 
second, to Mary Wilson McPhail; third, to Edna 
Porter; and fourth, to Anna Lockett. His fifth 
wife, Mrs. Florence Crockett of Chattanooga, 
Tenn., and five children survived him. He was 
an eloquent and forceful speaker and a versatile 
writer, contributing many articles on the Civil 
War to current periodicals. For Battles and 
Leaders of the Civil War (4 vols., 1887-88), he 
wrote “Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah 
Valley/' “Jackson at Harper's Ferry/' “Inci¬ 
dents of the First Bull Run," “The Confederate 
Retreat from Gettysburg," and “The Battle of 
New Market.” 

[For biographical sketches, see Richmond Times, 


Imlay 

Sept. 2 9, 1895; Richmond Dispatch, Aug. 17, 1895; 
Confederate Veteran (Nashville), Sept. 1895, and Nov.- 
Dee. 1921; Confed. Mil . Hist. (1899), voL III. The 
Southern Historical Society Papers, vols. I (1876), 
XXXI (1903), XXXIV (1906) contain references. See 
also War of the Rebellion, Official Records (Army).] 

C.D.R. 

IMLAY, GILBERT (c. 1754-Nov. 20,1828?), 
author and political adventurer, was bom prob¬ 
ably in Monmouth County, N. J,, where the 
family was established as early as the first dec¬ 
ade of the eighteenth century. During the Revo¬ 
lution he served in the American army as first 
lieutenant (1777-78), and, though there is ap¬ 
parently no further record, it is possible that he 
later attained the rank of captain, by which he 
came to be known. The war over, he turned to¬ 
ward the West. As early as March 1783 he had 
purchased a tract of land in Kentucky; and by 
April of the following year he had arrived in 
that district, where he presently became a deputy 
surveyor and engaged in further and extensive 
speculations in land. Soon, however, he was in 
financial and legal difficulties. In November or 
December 1785 he left Kentucky; and before the 
end of the following year, if we may believe ap¬ 
parently competent testimony given in a Ken¬ 
tucky court (see Rusk, post, p. 11), Imlay had 
left the continent of North America. At any 
rate the Kentucky courts, in spite of repeated 
endeavors during a number of years, were unable 
to locate him; and nothing more is definitely 
known of his activities until 1792, when he pub¬ 
lished in London A Topographical Description 
of the Western Territory of North America . 
This well-known work, certainly not completed 
before November 1791, purports to have been 
written from Kentucky; but both the biograph¬ 
ical facts already cited and internal evidence are 
against this claim. Similar reasons lead to the 
conclusion that Imlay's novel. The Emigrants 
(1793), was actually written after his arrival in 
Europe. 

As early as March 1793 he had become a fig¬ 
ure of some importance in French political af¬ 
fairs. The man who in his Kentucky days had 
had dealings with James Wilkinson [q.v.'] and 
Benjamin Sebastian, both later involved in in¬ 
trigues with the Spanish authorities, was now 
allied with Brissot and his associates who were 
scheming to seize Louisiana from Spain. In the 
character of an American well acquainted with 
the Western country, he addressed at least two 
communications regarding this project to the 
Committee of Public Safety— Observations du 
Cap . Imlay (translated in Annual Report of the 
American Historical Association for 1896, I, 
953-54) and the much longer Mimoire sur la 


461 



Ingalls 

Louisiane (translated in American Historical 
Review, April 1898), the latter of which pre¬ 
sents a carefully prepared argument in favor of 
the expedition to capture Louisiana. It is clear 
from extant correspondence that Imlay himself 
expected to take an active part in this expedi¬ 
tion, which, however, was delayed until the 
downfall of the Brissotins effectually ended their 
intrigues. When his political power was appar¬ 
ently at an end, he turned to commercial ventures 
the exact nature of which remains unknown but 
which soon involved him again in serious finan¬ 
cial difficulties. 

A liaison with Mary Wollstonecraft, begun 
early in 1793, was later continued by him ap¬ 
parently only for the sake of her faithful aid in 
straightening out his business affairs in the 
Scandinavian countries, to which she made a 
voyage in his behalf, armed with a power of at¬ 
torney describing her as “his best friend and 
wife.” There was, however, no formal marriage; 
and Mary, who had borne him a daughter, Fan¬ 
ny, in 1794, strove in vain to retain his affec¬ 
tions. The story of Imlay’s ungenerous conduct, 
resulting in Mary’s two attempts to take her own 
life, is told partly in her letters and partly in 
the Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of 
the Rights of Woman (1798), written after her 
death by William Godwin. She saw Imlay for 
the last time in the Spring of 1796. Thereafter 
we hear no more of him from any source until 
1828, For that year, the parochial register of 
St. Brelade’s in the Island of Jersey records the 
burial of a Gilbert Imlay, who was, in all prob¬ 
ability, the American adventurer. 

[Tie account given above is based entirely upon R. 
L. Rusk, “The Adventures of Gilbert Imlay,” Indiana 
Vniv . Studies , vol. X, no. 57 (Mar. 1923), where some¬ 
what full citations of source materials and earlier stud¬ 
ies of Imlay are to be found. See also Posthumous 
Works of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights 
of Woman (4 vols., 1798), ed. by Wm. Godwin; Mary 
Wollstonecraft, Letters to Imlay (1879), with preface 
by C. K. Paul; The Love Letters of Mary Wollstone¬ 
craft to Gilbert Imlay (1908), with preface by Roger 
Ingpen; 0 . F. Emerson, “Notes on Gilbert Imlay, 
Early American Writer,” Pubs, of the Modem Lang . 
Asso. of America, June 1924, which includes interest¬ 
ing suggestions regarding Imlay’s literary relations. 
A more recent account, throwing some light on the ac¬ 
tivities of one of Imlay’s business connections, is that 
by W. Clark Durant, in his edition of Godwin's Mem¬ 
oirs of Mary Wollstonecraft (1927).] R.L.R, 

INGALLS, JOHN JAMES (Dec. 29, 1833- 
Aug. 16, 1900), senator from Kansas, was born 
in Middleton, Mass., the oldest child of Elias 
Theodore Ingalls, a business man of Haverhill, 
later a shoe manufacturer, and of Eliza (Chase) 
Ingalls. Both parents were of old New England 
stock, and Ingalls subsequently traced his ances¬ 
try eight generations back to Edmund Ingalls 


Ingalls 

who, coming to Salem in 1628, founded Lynn, 
Mass., the following year. John James pre¬ 
pared for college at the Haverhill high school 
and with tutors. In 1851 he entered Williams 
College at Williamstown, then under Mark Hop¬ 
kins [ q.v .], and was graduated in 1855. His re¬ 
actions he summed up in his Commencement 
oration, “Mummy Life,” the delivery of which 
trenchant criticism of the faculty almost cost 
him his diploma. For two years after college he 
studied law and at twenty-four was admitted to 
the Massachusetts bar. 

In 1858 he was attracted to the boom town of 
Sumner, Kan.; in i860 he moved to Atchison, 
which was his home for forty years. In 1859 he 
was a member of the Wyandotte constitutional 
convention and the next year was secretary of 
the Territorial Council; in 1861 he was secre¬ 
tary of the first state Senate, and in 1862 was 
state senator. During the Civil War he served 
as judge advocate in the Kansas militia and was 
in the field at the time of Price’s raid, but ap¬ 
parently saw little action. For more than a year, 
in the absence of Col. John A. Martin, he served 
as editor of the Atchison Freedom's Champion . 
In 1865 he married Anna Louisa Cheseborough, 
who had recently come to Atchison from New 
York. Seven of their eleven children lived to 
maturity. Their home in Atchison was modest, 
for Ingalls was not a signally successful lawyer 
and never achieved wealth, but his letters reveal 
strong family ties. 

He was affiliated with the Republican party, 
and was a member of the convention to choose 
delegates to the Chicago convention of i860. In 
1862, however, defeated for his party nomina¬ 
tion as lieutenant-governor, he accepted the 
nomination of the bolting faction which, with its 
Democratic allies, was known locally as the 
Union party. In this campaign and again in 
1864 he was defeated for this office. In 1872, 
when Senator S. C. Pomeroy [g.z/.J, whose term 
expired in 1873, was a candidate for reelection, 
Ingalls was announced in opposition, seemingly 
hopeless until A. M. York, a member of the Kan¬ 
sas legislature, made sensational charges of brib¬ 
ery against Pomeroy and produced seven thou¬ 
sand dollars which he declared he had received 
in bargain for his vote ( Senate Journal ... State 
of Kansas, 1873, pp. 566 ff.). Asa result of this 
disclosure, Ingalls was elected, in January 1873, 
by the joint convention of the legislature. In 
1878, charges were presented concerning the 
methods used in his reelection, but the Senate 
investigation did not substantiate them. His 
third election was almost uncontested and dur¬ 
ing part of his last term he was president pro 


462. 



Ingalls 

At her death Thongze was a busy town, with a 
strong native church and a Christian school. 
She was buried where she had done her work. 

[Baptist Missionary Mag., Feb. and July 1903 ; Mis¬ 
sionary Review of the World f Sept. 1903; Spectator, 
London, Aug. 22, 1903; information from the Ameri¬ 
can Baptist Foreign Mission Society.] H.E. S. 

INGALLS, MELVILLE EZRA (Sept. 6, 
1842-July 11, 1914), railroad executive, the third 
son and third child of Ezra Thoms Ingalls and 
Louisa M. (Mayberry) Ingalls, was 'born at 
Harrison, Me. His ancestor, Edmund Ingalls, 
came originally from England, and settled at 
Lynn, Mass., in 1629. Ingalls spent his boyhood 
on a farm, receiving his early education in the 
local district school and at Bridgton Academy 
where he prepared himself for Bowdoin College. 
His lack of sufficient funds compelled him to 
forego his college course, however, and he en¬ 
tered the law office of A. A. Stront of Harrison 
to study for the legal profession. In 1862 he ma¬ 
triculated in the Harvard Law School. The fol¬ 
lowing year he graduated from this institution, 
receiving one of the prizes offered for a disser¬ 
tation. He began the practice of law in Gray, 
Me., but in 1864 removed to Boston where he 
entered the law office of Judge Charles Levi 
Woodbury, a distinguished member of the Mas¬ 
sachusetts bar. He then began to specialize in 
corporation law, particularly in its application 
to transportation lines. In 1867 he was elected 
to the Massachusetts legislature from the sixth 
senatorial district. He served one term in the 
state Senate and declined a renomination. 

In 1870 he began his career as a railroad exec¬ 
utive, becoming president of the Indianapolis, 
Cincinnati & Lafayette Railroad, which was in 
dire financial straits as the heavy traffic incident 
to the Civil War declined and competition in¬ 
creased from the construction of other roads. 
The stock of this company was held principally 
by Bostonians, and in 1871 they requested In¬ 
galls to assume complete charge as receiver. 
Under his management a reorganization was 
possible in 1873 and he was elected president of 
the new corporation. The organization was 
premature, however, and in 1876 he was again 
appointed receiver. It was in this trying posi¬ 
tion that he clearly demonstrated his financial 
ability. He secured voluntary subscriptions 
from the stockholders and with these funds paid 
off the indebtedness and freed the company from 
litigation. By 1880 he had consolidated the Law- 
renceburg line with the Indianapolis, Cincinnati 
& Lafayette Railroad and organized a new com¬ 
pany under the name of the Cincinnati, Indian¬ 
apolis, St. Louis & Chicago Railway, of which 


Ingals 

he became president. Meanwhile his skill as a 
railroad reorganizer had attracted the attention 
of the Vanderbilts, who controlled the Cleveland, 
Columbus, Cincinnati, & Indianapolis Railway, 
popularly known as the Bee Line. In 1889 the 
Ingalls and Vanderbilt interests were consoli¬ 
dated and the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & 
St. Louis Railway Company was organized Of 
the new system, known as the Big Four, Ingalls 
was elected president. He held this position until 
the New York Central in 1905 assumed con¬ 
trol of the various properties under his direc¬ 
tion ; he then became chairman of the board of 
directors, an office he retained until his resigna¬ 
tion, Nov. 14, 1912. He was also president of the 
Kentucky Central Railroad from 1881 to 1883 
and president of the Chesapeake & Ohio Rail¬ 
way Company from 1888 to 1900. 

Ingalls took an active interest in the political, 
cultural, and business life of his adopted home, 
Cincinnati. He was one of the founders of the 
Cincinnati Art Museum and president of its 
board of directors from 1884 to his death. In 
1880 he was chosen president of the Cincinnati 
Exposition and at one time was president of the 
Merchants' National Bank of Cincinnati. He 
was one of the founders of the Cincinnati Tech¬ 
nical School and a life member of the Ohio Me¬ 
chanics Institute. A firm believer in “physical 
culture as a mental stimulant,” he was one of 
the pioneers in the modern playground move¬ 
ment, advocating more baseball and athletic 
fields for the city's children. In 1903 he was 
Democratic candidate for mayor of Cincinnati 
but was defeated. In 1905 he was chosen presi¬ 
dent of the National Civic Federation. He erect¬ 
ed in Cincinnati the first concrete skyscraper in 
that city. On Jan. 19, 1867, he married Abbie 
M. Stimson of Gray, Me. Of their six children, 
five survived him. 

In politics Ingalls was a “sound money Demo¬ 
crat.” He supported McKinley in 1896 and 1900 
but voted for Bryan in 1908. His associates and 
employees found him approachable and affable 
but a rigorous disciplinarian. That he typified 
the era of the pioneer railroad builders is evi¬ 
denced by his vigorous denunciation of exces¬ 
sive legislation regulating corporations. His 
death occurred at Hot Springs, Va. 

[Who*s Who in America, 1914-15 ; C. T. Greve, Cen¬ 
tennial Hist, of Cincinnati (1904), vol. II; Charles 
Burleigh, The Geneal, and Hist . of the Ingalls Family 
in America (1903) ; N . 7 . Times , July 12, 1914; Cin¬ 
cinnati Enquirer, Feb. 26, 1903, and July 12, 1914.] 

R. C. McG. 

INGALS, EPHRAIM FLETCHER (Sept. 
29, i84&-Apr. 30,1918), physician, was descend¬ 
ed from that Edmund Ingalls, who, coming from 


464 



Ingals 

Lincolnshire, England, landed at Salem, Mass., 
in 1628 with the party headed by Governor En- 
decott. He was born at Lee Center, Lee Coun¬ 
ty, Ill., to Charles Francis and Sarah (Haw¬ 
kins) Ingals. Following a course at the Rock 
River Seminary, Mount Morris, Ill., he joined 
the family of his uncle, Dr. Ephraim Ingals, in 
Chicago and began the study of medicine in Rush 
Medical College, graduating in 1871. After an 
interneship in the Cook County Hospital he en¬ 
tered upon a teaching career in Rush Medical 
College which continued throughout his life. 
First appointed assistant professor of materia 
medica, he was made lecturer on diseases of the 
chest and physical diagnosis in 1874, professor 
of laryngology in 1883, and professor of prac¬ 
tice of medicine in 1890. After 1898 he was 
also comptroller of the college. From 1879 to 
1898 he held the chair of diseases of the throat 
and chest in the Woman’s Medical School of 
Northwestern University. Beginning in 1890 
he was professor of laryngology and rhinology 
at the Chicago Polyclinic, and he was lecturer 
on medicine at the University of Chicago after 
1901. In his capacity of comptroller he was 
largely instrumental in bringing about the af¬ 
filiation of Rush Medical College with the Uni¬ 
versity of Chicago, and played an important part 
in raising the endowment required to complete 
the merger. Active in local and national medi¬ 
cal societies, he was a charter member of 
the American Laryngological Association and 
served it as president in 1887. He was also a 
charter member and one-time president of the 
American Climatological Association, as well 
as a member of the American Laryngological, 
Rhinological and Otological Society. Notable 
among his medical society activities was the part 
which he took in organizing the Institute of 
Medicine of Chicago. In 1914 he called a meet¬ 
ing at the University Club of the leading medi¬ 
cal men of the city, which resulted in the found¬ 
ing of the Institute. As a practitioner he was 
an original investigator of both medical and sur¬ 
gical phases of his specialty. He was a pioneer 
in bronchoscopy, for which he modified instru¬ 
ments in use and devised new ones. In the sur¬ 
gery of the accessory sinuses of the nose he was 
particularly interested in the intranasal drain¬ 
age of frontal sinusitis. He wrote a number of 
papers upon the subject, usually provocative of 
discussion and criticism which drew from him 
further defense of his point of view. Other sub¬ 
jects which claimed his attention and which fur¬ 
nished material for his writings were the treat¬ 
ment of fibrous tumors of the nasopharynx, in¬ 
tubation, laryngeal tuberculosis, and the immu- 


Ingersoll 

nization treatment of hay fever. A sufferer for 
several years from attacks of angina pectoris, he 
wrote his last article, which was on that subject, 
while he lay in bed with the malady. The paper 
was read at a meeting of the Institute of Medi¬ 
cine, Mar. 28,1918, and he died of the disease on 
Apr. 30, a month later. In addition to more than 
a hundred journal articles he wrote a textbook 
on Diseases of the Chest, Throat and Nasal Cav¬ 
ities , published in 1881, with a second and much 
enlarged edition in 1892. Ingals’ impatient man¬ 
ner and querulous speech detracted much from 
his value as an instructor of undergraduate stu¬ 
dents. He was married on Sept. 5, 1876, to his 
cousin, Lucy S. Ingals, daughter of Dr. Ephraim 
Ingals of Chicago, who, together with four chil¬ 
dren, survived him. 

[Norman Bridge, “Ephraim Fletcher Ingals, the 
Man,” in Mental Therapeutics and Other Papers 
(1922); C. J. Whalen, in Trans. Am. Laryngol. Asso 
vol. XL (1918); III. Medic. Jour. } May 1918; Proc. 
Inst, of Med. (Chicago), vol. II (1919); H. A. Kelly 
and W. L. Burrage, Am. Medic. Biogs. (1920) ; Charles 
Burleigh, The Geneal. and Hist, of the Ingalls Family 
in America (1903) ; Who's Who in America, 1918-19.] 

J.M.P. 

INGERSOLL, CHARLES JARED (Oct. 3, 
1782-May 14, 1862), lawyer, author, congress¬ 
man, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., the eldest 
son of Jared Ingersoll, Jr. [q.z/.] and Elizabeth 
(Pettit) Ingersoll. He was the brother of Jo¬ 
seph Reed Ingersoll and the father of Edward 
Ingersoll He spent his early years amid 

the stirring scenes of federal union, formation of 
parties, and impassioned controversies between 
the pro-French and anti-French groups when 
Philadelphia was the nation’s capital. These 
conditions and the examples of his father and 
grandfather naturally turned his mind toward 
politics and law. In 1796 he entered Princeton, 
but political debate and affairs dictated by youth¬ 
ful exuberance prevailed over the routine and 
discipline of college life and his college career 
ended in its third year. He then resumed his 
studies with tutors, published a poem in the 
Portfolio, and wrote a tragedy, Edwy and El - 
giva, which was successfully staged at Philadel¬ 
phia’s leading theatre in April 1801. He also 
found time to read law and was admitted to the 
bar in 1802, when less than twenty years old, 
but before attempting extensive legal practice 
he traveled abroad. On Oct. 18, 1804, he was 
married to Mary Wilcocks. 

Ingersoil’s View of the Rights and Wrongs, 
Power and Policy, of the United States of Amer¬ 
ica appeared in 1808. In this book he broke away 
from the anti-French attitude prevailing among 
his associates and assumed an anti-British and 
anti-Federalist view of foreign relations. Soon 


465 



Ingersoll 

afterward, in 1810, tinder the preposterous title 
of Inchiqum, the Jesuit’s Letters, appeared an¬ 
other pamphlet indicating the intellectual bold¬ 
ness of the young Philadelphian. Both pam¬ 
phlets were widely read in America and abroad 
and were influential in stimulating a sense of 
national self-sufficiency. They constituted “a 
declaration of literary, social, and moral inde¬ 
pendence” at a time when “the United States 
were yet British in almost everything except 
government” ( United States Magazine and 
De'inocratic Review, October 1839, p. 342). His 
tendencies away from the Loyalist ideas of his 
grandfather and the Federalist views of his fa¬ 
ther were recognized in 1811 in his nomination 
by the Republicans for the post of state assembly- 
man. He was defeated, but in 1812 he was elect¬ 
ed to Congress. He at once attained an influen¬ 
tial position, becoming chairman of the judiciary 
committee and a member of the foreign rela¬ 
tions committee. Military reverses led to po¬ 
litical reverses for the Republicans, whose posi¬ 
tion in Philadelphia was precarious at best, and 
Ingersoll was not reelected. 

Upon his retirement from Congress he re¬ 
turned to Philadelphia and acquired a varied 
and lucrative practice at the bar. He was ap¬ 
pointed to the post of United States district at¬ 
torney, which he retained for fourteen years 
(1815-29). In 1825 he was a member of a con¬ 
vention on canals and public improvements meet¬ 
ing at Harrisburg. With typical initiative he 
advocated railroad transportation by means of 
steam locomotives, but he was defeated by the 
proponents of canals. Two years later, at the 
so-called Harrisburg Convention, representing 
proponents of protective tariff legislation, he 
was chairman of the committee which prepared 
a memorial to Congress. Although generally in 
favor of protection, he was inclined toward mod¬ 
erating the more extreme demands, and toward 
conciliating Southern opponents. Meanwhile he 
reverted to literary activities. In 1823 he had 
addressed the American Philosophical Society 
on “The Influence of America on the Mind,” a 
paper published and read extensively abroad as 
well as in America. Soon afterward he wrote 
a play, Julian: a Tragedy , which was published 
in 1831, 

In 1830-31 Ingersoll served for one term as 
a state assemblyman. In the nominations for 
United States senator he received a plurality 
vote in each house but was unable to command 
a majority in the election. In the early thir¬ 
ties he was active politically in connection with 
fee Bank of the United States. He first favored 
renewal of the charter, but the bank’s entry 


Ingersoll 

into politics occasioned his reversal of attitude 
and his avowal of Jackson’s cause— a course 
at that time hardly popular in Philadelphia, the 
home of the bank. He was one of the authors 
of the sub-treasury plan. In Pennsylvania poli¬ 
tics he participated in the revision of the con¬ 
stitution, and in the convention of 1837 he was 
chairman of a special committee on currency and 
corporations. He proposed the limiting of the 
powers of corporations and the rejection of the 
contract doctrine of charters as enunciated in 
the noted Dartmouth case. His ideas, though in 
large part later incorporated into law, were at 
the time so unpopular that the minority report 
of his committee, written by himself, was denied 
publication by the convention. The intensity of 
feeling and the significance of his views can be 
appreciated only in the light of the conflict over 
the Bank of the United States and of the finan¬ 
cial crisis of the year of the convention. 

Upon his defeat for reelection to Congress in 
1814, Ingersoll had decided “to be a mere law¬ 
yer, jurisconsultus merits, for the next fifteen 
years.” But after he had attained an independent 
income, apparently he desired to resume his ca¬ 
reer in national affairs. He therefore welcomed 
the nomination in 1837 by the Jacksonian Dem¬ 
ocrats, heirs of the Jeffersonian Republicans, 
for a seat in Congress. At the ensuing special 
election he and his ticket were defeated. Nor 
was he successful in the regular election of 1838, 
but in 1840 he won the election and continued 
in office until 1849. When his party acquired a 
majority in Congress he was given the post of 
chairman of the committee on foreign affairs. 
It was during his chairmanship and partly as a 
result of his influence that the joint resolution for 
the annexation of Texas was adopted (Meigs, 
post, pp. 259-68). He was an energetic and ef¬ 
fective debater on most of the outstanding issues 
before Congress and was particularly active in 
connection with the sectional and group contro¬ 
versies of the time. He consistently opposed the 
extremists among the anti-slavery group in the 
north and held that the vital function of those 
who represented the central states, “the temper¬ 
ate zone of American republican continental 
union,” was to arbitrate the differences between 
“the slave-holding southwest and the slave-hat¬ 
ing northeast.” As a result of his views he in¬ 
curred the intense antagonism of John Quincy 
Adams and others. His career in Congress was 
marked also by an acrimonious controversy with 
Daniel Webster concerning the latter’s handling 
of public funds, one result of which was the re¬ 
fusal of the Senate, under Webster’s influence, 
to confirm his appointment by President Polk 


466 



Ingersoll 

as minister to France. At the end of his fourth 
consecutive term in Congress he retired, at the 
age of sixty-seven, and spent his remaining 
years in literary activities. His four-volume his¬ 
tory of the War of 1812 appeared under two ti¬ 
tles : Historical Sketch of the Second War Be¬ 
tween the United States of America, and Great 
Britain (2 vols., 1845-49), and History of the 
Second War. Between the United States of 
America and Great Britain (2 vols., 1852). In 
1861 he published his memoirs in a two-volume 
work entitled Recollections . In politics as in lit¬ 
erature he had considerable talent, but he viewed 
both of these fields as avocations and never ac¬ 
quired the mastery of technique and the per¬ 
sistence requisite for a commanding position 
either as author or as statesman. He was a man 
of vivid personality, outstanding ability as a 
lawyer, and fascinating gifts as an orator. His 
career is mainly interesting because of his cour¬ 
age and vigor in championing causes and groups 
which were unpopular in his own social environ¬ 
ment. 

[W. M. Meigs, The Life of Chas . Jared Ingersoli 
(189;), is a sympathetic but not uncritical biography 
with extensive quotations from sources and with ample 
bibliographical data. Other sources include: Jour, of 
the Convention of the State of Pa. (2 vols., 1837-38) ; 
Proc. and Debates of the Convention of the Common¬ 
wealth of Pa. (14 vols., 1837-39); L. D. Avery, A 
Geneal. of the Ingersoll Family in America (1926); 
Phila. Daily News, May 16, 1862; Ingersoll letters 
in the library of the Pa. Hist. Soc.] W.B. 

INGERSOLL, EDWARD (Apr. 2, 1817- 
Feb. 19, 1893), lawyer, author, was born in 
Philadelphia, Pa. He came of a family distin¬ 
guished in American politics, being the great- 
grandson of Jared Ingersoll, Loyalist, the grand¬ 
son of Jared Ingersoll, Jr., and the son of Charles 
Jared Ingersoll [qq.v.']. His mother was Mary 
Wilcocks. He entered the University of Penn¬ 
sylvania at the age of fourteen and was gradu¬ 
ated with the class of 1835. I* 1 1838 be was a ^“ 
mitted to the practice of law, and for more than 
fifty years he was a member of the Philadelphia 
bar, though at no time did he engage very ac¬ 
tively in practice. A recognized exponent of 
radical democracy, he published in 1849 The 
History and Law of the Writ of Habeas Corpus , 
with an Essay on the Law of Grand Juries, fol¬ 
lowed in 1862 by Personal Liberty and Martial 
Law. On constitutional grounds he was sympa¬ 
thetic with the cause of the Southern Confeder¬ 
acy. His strong convictions caused him some 
mortification, when, on Apr. 13,1865, on the oc¬ 
casion of celebrating Jefferson's birthday in 
New York City, in answer to a toast, he made 
a speech criticizing certain war measures of the 
federal government. During the early years of 


Ingersoll 

the war he had been arrested for his use of “free 
speech,” but he had been discharged on habeas 
corpus proceedings. This time he was attacked 
by the Philadelphia press, and on Apr. 27, 1865, 
while repulsing a mob, he was seized and im¬ 
prisoned. The next day he was released on bail. 
Subsequent to the war, he devoted himself to 
literature, without, however, producing anything 
of importance. In the field of law he published 
The History of the Pleas of the Crown (1847), 
an edition of the work of Sir Matthew Kent; An 
Essay on Uses and Trusts (1855), an annotated 
edition of the work of F. W. Sanders; and A 
Treatise on the Law of Contracts (1857), from 
the original by C. G. Addison. On June 5, 1850, 
he married Anne C. Warren of Troy, N. Y,, 
who bore him seven children. He died at “Fern- 
hill,” Germantown, Pa., in his seventy-sixth 
year. 

UJniv. of Pa. Biog . Cat, of the Matriculates of the 
Coll. (1894); Chas. P. Keith, The Provincial Coun¬ 
cillors of Pa. (1883) ; John A. Marshall, Am. Bastile 
(1869) ; L. D. Avery, A Geneal . of the Ingersoll Fam¬ 
ily in America (1926); Public Ledger (Phila.), Feb. 
21, 1893; Phila. Inquirer, Feb. 22, 1893.] 

H. W. S-g-r. 

INGERSOLL, JARED (1722-Aug. 25,1781), 
lawyer, public official, the son of Jonathan and 
Sarah (Miles) Ingersoll, was born at Milford, 
Conn., and was baptized on June 3, 1722. He 
was a grandson of John Ingersoll who emi¬ 
grated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. 
Prepared for college at home, he entered Yale 
College from which institution he secured his 
bachelor's degree in 1742 and upon receiving a 
Berkeley scholarship remained at his alma mater 
for an additional year, reading law. He began 
practice in New Haven and before many years 
was at the top of the profession in the colony of 
Connecticut In 1751 he was appointed king's 
attorney for the county of New Haven and in 
1758 was commissioned by the Connecticut gov¬ 
ernment to act as their London agent with the 
chief responsibility of securing for the colony 
reimbursement of money spent in the course of 
the war then going on between England and 
France. In this he was successful. During the 
three years spent in London he made many 
friends among whom were Benjamin Franklin, 
representing the Pennsylvania legislature, and 
Thomas Whately, who later became a secretary 
to the Treasury in England. Upon his return to 
Connecticut in 1761 he set himself to work to 
exploit the resources of the white pine woods on 
the upper Connecticut, having secured from the 
admiralty board a contract for ship masts. In 
this activity he was bitterly opposed by the Went¬ 
worth interests of New Hampshire, which for 
some time had enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the 


467 



Ingersoll 

masting business so far as America was con¬ 
cerned, but he was supported by the Connecticut 
Assembly which sought to protect Ingersoirs in¬ 
terests by securing a separate vice-admiralty 
court for the colony. 

In the fall of 1764 Ingersoll returned to Eng¬ 
land to secure another contract but found the 
Wentworth group in such high influence that he 
no longer pressed the project Soon after his ar¬ 
rival he received notice from the Connecticut 
government that he had been appointed for a sec¬ 
ond time their London agent. He was instructed 
to oppose the stamp tax bill which Grenville had 
notified the colonies he was planning to bring 
into Parliament Ingersoll thereupon joined with 
the other colonial agents in London to prevail 
upon the minister not to push the plan. The 
arguments of the latter apparently convinced In¬ 
gersoll of the justice of the measure and he set to 
work to influence the shaping of the bill at the 
Treasury office in such a way as to eliminate 
whatever features were especially disadvanta¬ 
geous to the colonials. When the bill passed Par¬ 
liament Grenville decided to appoint prominent 
Americans, rather than Englishmen, as distrib¬ 
utors or stamp masters for the different colonies, 
and Ingersoll was offered the post for Connecti¬ 
cut It is said that he accepted on the advice of 
Franklin, but instead of being commended by the 
people of that colony for his services in their be¬ 
half and especially for assuming the responsi¬ 
bility of administering an office which in the 
hands of a stranger might become oppressive, he 
soon found himself upon his return to Connecti¬ 
cut, early in August 1765, the object of a furious 
attack in the papers of New Haven and Hart¬ 
ford. He stoutly maintained, however, that he 
would resign his commission only when called 
upon to do so by the Connecticut Assembly. In 
September Governor Fitch issued a call for the 
legislature to meet on the 19th of the month. At¬ 
tempting to go to the Assembly, Ingersoll was 
met by a band of men from the eastern counties 
who escorted him to Wethersfield where after a 
prolonged struggle he was forced to write out 
a resignation. From Wethersfield the cavalcade, 
swollen now to about a thousand horsemen, pro¬ 
ceeded to Hartford, where in the presence of the 
members of the Assembly gathered In "front of 
the State House, Ingersoll read his resignation. 
When later a proclamation had been issued 
against the rioters by the Governor, Ingersoll 
felt impelled to recall the resignation, but in the 
following January, in the face of renewed threats 
from the men of the eastern counties, he finally 
went before a justice of the peace and took an 
oath never to exercise his office. 


Ingersoll 

After this Ingersoll retired to the post of local 
justice of the peace in New Haven, although in 
1766 he was appointed a member of the New 
York-New Jersey boundary commission. During 
this period most of his efforts were given to his 
law practice and it is interesting to note that in 
1766 he defended Benedict Arnold when he was 
indicted for whipping the informer Boles who 
sought to disclose Arnold’s smuggling activities. 
He also acted as the agent for Lord Stirling’s 
settlement project on the Penobscot River. Mean¬ 
while he was seeking preferment at the court 
and in 1768 he was rewarded with the appoint¬ 
ment as judge of one of the four new courts of 
vice-admiralty created for America in that year, 
with Philadelphia as the permanent seat. In the 
spring of 1771 he moved to Philadelphia where 
he presided over his court without serious mo¬ 
lestation until the outbreak of hostilities between 
the mother country and her colonies. For the 
first two years of the war he lived in seclusion 
in Philadelphia. With the approach of General 
Howe, however, the patriotic party took active 
measures against the Loyalists, and Ingersoll 
was called upon to leave Philadelphia and return 
to New Haven. He went there on parole in Sep¬ 
tember 1777 and remained until his death in Au¬ 
gust 1781. He was twice married: in 1743 to 
Hannah Whiting by whom he had a son, Jared 
[#.#.], and in 1780 to Hannah Miles, the widow 
of Enos Ailing. 

[F. B. Dexter, Biog. Sketches of the Grads, of Yale 
Coll., 1701-45 (1885), and Jared Ingersoll Papers 
(1918), reprinted from the Papers of the New Haven 
Colony Hist. Soc., vol. IX (1918); Mr. IngersoVs Let¬ 
ters Relating to the Stamp Act (1766) ; L. H. Gipson, 
Jared Ingersoil: A Study of Am. Loyalism in Relation 
to British Colonial Government (1920) ; L. D. Avery, A 
Geneal . of the Ingersoll Family in America (1926).] 

L.H.G. 

INGERSOLL, JARED (Oct. 27, 1749-Oct. 
31, 1822), lawyer, was bom at New Haven, 
Conn. His parents were Jared Ingersoll [q.v.], 
Loyalist, and Hannah (Whiting) Ingersoll. He 
graduated from Yale College in 1766, and upon 
his father’s removal to Philadelphia to organize 
a vice-admiralty court, he was left in charge of 
the elder Ingersoll’s affairs. Later he removed to 
Philadelphia, where he studied law. His father, 
in the midst of the controversies preceding the 
Revolution, advised him to go to England for 
the further study of law, and on July 16, 1773, 
he was admitted to the Middle Temple. During 
these years he abandoned the Loyalist views of 
his father. He went to the Continent in 1776, 
and two years later he secured passage from 
Paris to America. Soon after his return to Phil¬ 
adelphia, on Dec. 6, 1781, he married Elizabeth, 
daughter of Col. Charles Pettit. He had been 


468 



Ingersoll 

admitted to the bar in Philadelphia in 1773. 
After his return to America, a friend of the fam¬ 
ily, Joseph Reed, president of the newly created 
supreme executive council of Pennsylvania, in¬ 
vited him to look after the interest of Reed’s 
clients at Philadelphia. With this auspicious be¬ 
ginning as a member of the Philadelphia bar, he 
soon became one of the most distinguished law¬ 
yers of the city in an age when Philadelphia 
boasted the finest legal talent of the country. He 
was attorney for Stephen Girard, merchant, and 
Senator William Blount, against whom impeach¬ 
ment proceedings were brought in 1797. He was 
admitted in 1791 to the bar of the Supreme Court 
of the United States. During the next year he 
was counsel for Georgia in the case of Chisholm 
vs. Georgia (2 Dallas } 419), the first of a num¬ 
ber of cases argued by him involving various 
phases of federal relations. In opposition to 
Alexander Hamilton, in 1796 he was an attorney 
in the first case involving the question of the 
constitutionality of an act of Congress (Hylton 
vs. United States, 3 Dallas, 171). He was also 
counsel in cases connected with foreign relations 
as affected by constitutional law and the juris¬ 
diction of the courts, notably Mcllvaine vs. 
Coxe’s Lessee (2 Cranch , 280, and 4 Cranch, 
209). 

Meanwhile Ingersoll had held many public of¬ 
fices. In 1780 he was elected a member of the 
Continental Congress and by 1785 he was taking 
an active part in the agitation for revising or 
supplanting the Articles of Confederation. He 
was a delegate to the Federal Convention of 
1787, but took little part in its deliberations. 
William Pierce said of him: “Mr. Ingersol speaks 
well, and comprehends his subject fully. There 
is a modesty in his character that keeps him 
back” (Max Farrand, The Records of the Fed¬ 
eral Convention of 1787 , 1911, III, 91). In local 
politics he was a member of the Philadelphia 
Common Council in 1789 and from 1798 to 1801 
he was city solicitor. From 1790 to 1799 and 
again from 1811 to 1817 he was attorney general 
of Pennsylvania; for a short time (1800-01) he 
was United States district attorney for Pennsyl¬ 
vania; and in 1811 he was nominated by Penn¬ 
sylvania Federalists for the vice-presidency. 
From March 1821 until his death in 1822 he was 
presiding judge of the district court for the city 
and county of Philadelphia. In politics he was 
at first inclined toward democratic views but 
the events of 1801 seem to have been considered 
by him “the great subversion,” and thereafter in 
so far as he took part in politics it was as a Fed¬ 
eralist. His main interest, however, was always 
the law. Of his three surviving children, one 


Ingersoll 


was Charles Jared Ingersoll [q.v 7 \. Another son, 
Joseph Reed Ingersoll, well known at the Phila¬ 
delphia bar, was briefly minister to England in 
Fillmore’s administration. 


L^or the early life of Jared Ingersoll, see the life of 
his tather, L. H. Gipson, Jared Ingersoll: A Study of 
Am. Loyahsm in Relation to British Colonial Govern¬ 
ment (1920). t There are good accounts of the impor- 
tant constitutional cases with which he was connected 
m Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in U. S. Hist 
(1922), vol. I. See also : W. M. Meigs, The Life of 
thus. Jared Ingersoll (1897); [Horace Binney], Lead¬ 
ers of the Old Bar of Philo. (1859); Vital Records of 
New Haven, 1649-1850, pt. I (1917), p. 295: F. B. 
Dexter, Biog. Sketches of the Grads of Yale Coll., vol. 
ill (1903) J L* p. Avery, A Geneal. of the Ingersoll 
Family m America (1926) ; J. T. Scharf and T. West- 
cott, Hist, of Phila . (1884), vol. II.] w ^ 

INGERSOLL-, ROBERT GREEN (Aug. 11, 
I 833~July 21, 1899), lawyer and lecturer, was 
best known to his contemporaries as “the great 
agnostic.” He was descended from Richard In¬ 
gersoll, who settled in Salem, Mass., in 1629. 
His father, John Ingersoll, born in Vermont and 


a graduate of Middlebury College, was a clergy¬ 
man who served in turn many Congregational 
and Presbyterian churches; in the manse of one 
of these, at Dresden, 1ST. Y., Robert Green Inger¬ 
soll was born. His mother, Mary, daughter of 
Judge Robert Livingston, was no more than an 
ideal of sentiment to Robert, since she died in 
his infancy. John Ingersoll, orthodox in his be¬ 
lief, was unable to steer his son into the channels 
of mental regularity. While the latter was yet 
a boy the family moved to Ohio, to Wisconsin, 
and then to Illinois, where at the age of twenty- 
one he was admitted to the bar at Shawneetown. 
He spoke often in terms of respect for his father 
and veneration for his mother, but he rarely re¬ 
lated the details of a childhood that seems to 
have been harsh and narrow. He was essentially 
a self-made man, finding companionship in his 
brother, Ebon Clark Ingersoll, with whom he 
practised law, later a representative in Congress 
from Illinois (1864-71), and in his wife, Eva 
Amelia Parker, as free a thinker as himself, 
whom he married on Feb. 13, 1862. He had two 
daughters who, with grand-children and rela¬ 
tives, made him in his later years the center of 
a patriarchal group. 

Ingersoll moved from Shawneetown to Peoria 
in 1857 and soon became a leader at the bar and 
a distinguished pleader before juries. His talents 
brought him the post of attorney-general of Illi¬ 
nois, 1867-69; but before he reached that dignity 
his career was interrupted by military service. 
He assisted in raising and became colonel of the 
nth Illinois volunteer cavalry regiment, which 
was mustered into Federal service on Dec. 20, 
1861. His command saw duty in the Tennessee 
Valley campaign, at Shiloh and at Corinth, and 


469 



Ingersoll 

was stationed in Tennessee in 1862 when on Dec. 
18 the Confederate raider, Gen. Nathan B. For¬ 
rest, captured its colonel and some hundreds of 
its men (J. A. Wyeth, Life of Gen . N. B. For¬ 
rest, 1899, P- IX 3 )- Ingersoll was soon paroled, 
and, having no hope of exchange, took his dis¬ 
charge from the army on June 30, 1863. 

He was already marked as one who questioned 
the bases of the Christian religion. The scientific 
and theological storm that broke upon the United 
States in the decade after the publication of the 
Origin of Species found Ingersoll ready to wel¬ 
come it as justifying his doubts. His personal 
charm and the correct demeanor of his life pro¬ 
tected him from antipathies that might otherwise 
have pushed him outside the ranks of respectable 
society, but there were many social hazards in 
his position. He took to himself the word “ag¬ 
nostic” as soon as Huxley coined it, and assumed 
an aggressive free-lance against those who at¬ 
tacked him. His skill with juries made him a 
deadly debater. Soon he was on the platform ex¬ 
plaining agnosticism, and here he developed a 
skill that attracted huge audiences, whether they 
accepted his teachings or not. “Splendidly en¬ 
dowed as he was he could have won great dis¬ 
tinction in the field of politics had he so chosen. 
But he was determined to enlighten the world 
concerning the 'Mistakes of Moses/ That threw 
him out of the race” (Chicago Tribune, July 22, 
1899). His friends believed that after his service 
as attorney-general he might have become gov¬ 
ernor of Illinois except for his heresy. He con¬ 
tinued to practise law in Peoria, and to lecture 
on religion. 

In politics Ingersoll was a Democrat until the 
call for troops in 1861. He was as unable to ac¬ 
cept dogmatic orthodoxy in politics as in re¬ 
ligion. As candidate for Congress from the 4th 
Illinois district in i860, he was overridden by a 
Republican opponent who gained strength from 
the fact that Ingersoll attacked the dogmas of his 
own party on slavery and the Dred Scott de¬ 
cision. He came out of the army a Republican 
and a nationalist, unable to draw any sharp line 
between his party and the natioa A delegate to 
the Republican convention at Cincinnati in 1876, 
Ingersoll was selected to present the name of 
James G. Blaine. His nominating speech (Works, 
IX, 55-6°) was the triumph of the convention. 
It failed to procure the selection of Blaine as 
candidate, for the forces of opposition were too 
powerful for any eloquence to override, but it 
fastened upon Blaine for life the epithet of 
“plumed knight.” It brought Ingersoll recogni¬ 
tion as one of the greatest of American orators 
and made him a national figure overnight. He 


Ingersoll 

performed an exhausting service speaking for 
Hayes during the campaign and was thereafter 
in constant demand at public celebrations and 
party rallies. 

In 1879 he moved his home to Washington, 
and transferred his legal practice to the larger 
field of federal litigation. He received great fees 
and spent them; careless in accumulation, he 
was generous in the remission of obligations to 
himself. The most notorious of his cases ended 
in triumph for him, if not in the vindication of 
his clients. As chief counsel for former Senator 
Stephen W. Dorsey \_q.v.] and others charged 
with conspiracy in connection with the “star 
routes” [see Garfield, James Abram], he pro¬ 
cured, first a mistrial, and finally, on June 14, 
1883, the acquittal of the two chief defendants. 
In 1885 he moved his home to New York, nearer 
to the great clients and the enthusiastic audiences 
from whom he drew his living and his repute. 

Typical of his once-famous lectures on re¬ 
ligious subjects were: “The Gods” (1872); 
“Some Mistakes of Moses” (1879); “What Must 
We Do to Be Saved” (1880); “About the 
Holy Bible” (1894); “Why I Am an Agnostic” 
(1896); “Superstition” (1898); “The Devil” 
(1899). Often engaged in religious controversy, 
he was commonly more clever than his oppo¬ 
nents. He lectured also, among others, on Bums, 
Shakespeare, Humboldt, Lincoln, Thomas Paine, 
and Voltaire. In the campaign of 1896 he spoke 
often and effectively for the gold standard, but 
broke down partially in the late autumn and soon 
thereafter retired from practice, if not from the 
platform. Less than three years later he died at 
Dobbs Ferry, N. Y., of an affection of the heart. 

[Ingersoll is fully displayed in the Dresden edition of 
The Works of Robert G . Ingersoll (12 vols., 1900, re¬ 
printed 190 2, 1909, 1910). Here are his addresses, his 
lectures, and even many of the interviews which he 
gave freely to the press wherever he went. H. E. Kit- 
tredge, Ingersoll, A Biog . Appreciation (1911) is lauda¬ 
tory and inaccurate. There are excellent obituaries and 
editorials in N. Y. Times, and Chicago Tribune, July 
22, 1899. See also L. D. Avery, A Genealogy of the 
Ingersoll Family in America (1956).] jr. l. p. 

INGERSOLL, ROBERT HAWLEY (Dec. 
26, 1859-Sept 4,1928), merchant and manufac¬ 
turer, the son of Orville Boudinot and Mary 
Elizabeth (Beers) Ingersoll, was born at Delta, 
Eaton County, Mich., the eighth child of a fam¬ 
ily of nine. He was descended from John Inger¬ 
soll, a native of England, who emigrated with 
his brother Richard to America in 1629 and set¬ 
tled first at Salem, Mass. He was sent to com¬ 
mon school until he was ten but then his help 
was needed on the farm and except for three 
terms scattered over as many years after this, his 
schooling was ended. He worked the farm with 


470 



Ingersoll 

his father until he was twenty and then followed 
the example of his oldest brother and went east. 
After a few profitless months of farming in Con¬ 
necticut, he joined his brother, Howard S. In¬ 
gersoll, in New York City. By the end of a year 
he had saved $j6o which he used to establish 
himself in the manufacture and sale of rubber 
stamps. The business prospered and he was able 
to send to Michigan for his younger brother, 
Charles H. Ingersoll. Together the brothers de¬ 
vised a toy typewriter employing rubber type 
which had a successful sale and became the first 
of a long line of novelties that they began to man¬ 
ufacture and sell. These notions included patent 
pencils, a dollar sewing machine, a patent key 
ring, and many other articles. When the sales of 
the business outgrew the capacity of their small 
factory in Brooklyn, the Ingersolls added the 
products of other manufacturers to their selling 
list Robert became the director of the sales and 
promotion of the business, while Charles man¬ 
aged the manufacturing. The business grew from 
a wholesale and jobbing concern to a mail-order 
enterprise and finally into a chain-store system. 
In both of these fields the Ingersolls were pio¬ 
neers. After establishing his business upon nov¬ 
elties Robert Ingersoll was wise enough to see 
the desirability of introducing into his lists a 
staple article of universal and steady demand, 
upon which to concentrate his powers of produc¬ 
tion and marketing and to focus the buying power 
of the public. A cheap timepiece had the quali¬ 
ties of the article needed and he purchased 1,000 
“clock-watches” from the Waterbury Clock Com¬ 
pany, makers of a small cheap watch. These 
were introduced in 1892 to sell for one dollar. 
The experiment was successful, the watches sold 
rapidly, and Ingersoll adopted die watch. He en¬ 
tered into a contract with the Waterbury Com¬ 
pany to supply the watches according to his 
specifications under the name “Universal.” He 
then developed the famous selling plan of com¬ 
mon terms, common prices, and the well-known 
guarantee. To combat unscrupulous competition 
it was necessary to put the Ingersoll name on the 
watch, and thus he established “the watch that 
made the dollar famous.” As the sales of the 
watch increased the contract with the Waterbury 
Company was continued and the factories of the 
Trenton (N. J.) Watch Company and the New 
England Watch Company (Waterbury, Conn.) 
were purchased by the Ingersolls. It is estimated 
that by 1919 over 70,000,000 watches had been 
sold. In December 1921 the firm of Robert H. 
Ingersoll & Brother went into the hands of re¬ 
ceivers and in March 1922 the assets of the firm 
were sold to the Waterbury Clock Company. In 


Ingersoll 

an attempt to regain his place in business Inger¬ 
soll introduced in 1924 the Ingersoll Dollar 
Razor Strop, which, though successful as a busi¬ 
ness enterprise, did not attain the proportions of 
the watch manufacture. As a hobby he collected 
modern works of art. He was married to Rob¬ 
erta Maria Bannister on June 22,1904, at Mus¬ 
kegon, Mich. She committed suicide on Dec. 19, 
1926. At the time of his death in Denver, Colo., 
Ingersoll had not been actively engaged in busi¬ 
ness for some time. 

[Who’s Who in America, 1920-21; H. C. Brearley, 
Time Telling Through the Ages (1919) ; L. D. Avery, A 
Geneal. of the Ingersoll Family in America (1926) ; 
the Jewelers* Circular (N. Y.), Sept. 13,1928; the Am. 
Jeweler (Chicago), Sept. 1928; Watchman, Jeweler , 
Silversmith and Optician (London), Oct. 1928; N. Y. 
Times, Dec. 20,1926, Sept. 6,1928.] F.A.T. 

INGERSOLL, ROYAL RODNEY (Dec. 4, 
1847-Apr. 21, 1931), naval officer, was bom at 
Niles, Mich., son of Rebecca A. (Deniston) and 
Harmon Wadsworth Ingersoll and a descendant 
of John Ingersoll who came to Salem, Mass., in 
1629. His father was a wagon maker, at one time 
superintendent of the Studebaker Wagon Works, 
South Bend, Ind. The son was appointed mid¬ 
shipman in 1864, graduated from the Naval (Acad¬ 
emy in 1868, and subsequently spent five years 
chiefly in the European Squadron and two years 
on the China station, 1875-76. From then until 
the Spanish-American War his naval service in¬ 
cluded the usual sea duty in many parts of the 
world and shore duty principally at the Naval 
Academy, where he was instructor in mathe¬ 
matics, 1876-79, ordnance instructor, 1883-87, 
and head of die ordnance department, 1890-93, 
1897-98, 1899-1901. He was author of three 
works on ordnance: Text-book of Ordnance and 
Gunnery (1884), written in collaboration with 
Lieut. J. F. Meigs; Exterior Ballistics (1891), 
and The Elastic Strength of Guns (1891). After 
promotion to lieutenant-commander, 1893, an <l 
service as executive officer of the flagship Phila¬ 
delphia of the Asiatic Squadron, 1894-97, he 
commanded the refrigerator ship Supply during 
the war with Spain, and, with die rank of com¬ 
mander, 1899, the gunboat Helena and later the 
cruiser New Orleans on the Asiatic station, 1901- 
03. The Helena was Robley D. Evans* flagship 
on a cruise 1,100 miles up die Yangtse River to 
Ichang, September-October, 1902. In An Ad¬ 
miral's Log (1910, p. 180), Evans said of In¬ 
gersoll that he was “an officer of marked ability” 
who had spent much time on the river and knew 
the conditions better than any other officer under 
his command. Regarding him also as “firm, of 
excellent judgment, and, above all, well versed 
in treaty rights and obligations** (Ibid., p. 191), 


471 



Ingersoll 

Evans subsequently placed him in charge at 
Nanking during a troubled period at that port. 
With his special knowledge and interest in ord¬ 
nance, Ingersoll took a prominent part in the 
rejuvenation of naval gunnery begun in Evans’ 
squadron at this time. After study at the Naval 
War College and service on the General Board 
of the navy, he commanded the cruiser Mary¬ 
land, 1905-07, and was then selected as Admiral 
Evans’ chief of staff for the world cruise of the 
American fleet. This involved unusual responsi¬ 
bilities, for Evans because of illness was on deck 
only twice after the fleet left Trinidad. Upon 
Evans’ giving up the command at San Francisco, 
July 1908, Ingersoll also went ashore. He was 
made rear admiral July 11, 1908, and was on the 
General Board until his retirement on Dec. 4, 
1909. Afterward he lived at La Porte, Ind., a 
genial and beloved figure, honorary life-com¬ 
mander of the American Legion post, and a fre¬ 
quent speaker on civic occasions. He was slight¬ 
ly below medium height, erect of carriage, an 
unassuming man but of marked attainments in 
his profession. As an expert in ordnance he was 
recalled to active service in the World War, 
July 1917-January 1919, as president of the 
Special Naval Ordnance Board which passed 
upon thousands of inventions submitted during 
the war. Ingersoll’s wife was Cynthia Eason, 
daughter of Seth Eason, whom he married at 
La Porte on Aug. 26,1873. He had one son, Capt. 
Royal Eason Ingersoll, U. S. N. 

{Who's Who in America, 1928-29; L. R. Hamersly, 
The Records of Living Officers of the U. S. Navy and 
Marine Corps (7th ed., 1902); L. D. Avery, A Geneal. 
of the Ingersoll Family in America (1926); obituary 
notices in the La Porte Herald-Argus, Apr. 21,1931, and 
the N. Y. Times, Apr. 22, 1931.] A. W. 

INGERSOLL, SIMON (Mar. 3, 1818-July 
24, 1894), inventor, son of Alexander S. and 
Caroline (Carll) Ingersoll, was born on his fa¬ 
ther’s farm at Stanwich, Conn. Until he was 
twenty-one years old he lived at home, obtained 
a country-school education, helped in the farm 
work, and came to be recognized as an “all 
around” ingenious mechanic. He was called upon 
locally to do all sorts of jobs but inasmuch as 
the income from such work was insufficient to 
support a wife, upon his marriage in 1839 to 
Sarah B. Smith in Stanwich, he moved across 
Long Island Sound to Astoria, L. I., and en¬ 
gaged in truck-gardening. Nothing definite is 
known of him for the succeeding twenty years. 
Presumably he spent much of his time in me¬ 
chanical experimentation, for soon after return¬ 
ing to Connecticut in 1858 he applied for and 
received patent No. 20,800 for a special type of 
^rotating shaft for a steam engine (House Execu- 


Ingersoll 

five Document 105 , 35 Cong., 2 Sess., II, 320). 
About this time, too, he built and demonstrated 
on the streets of Stamford, where he resided, a 
steam wagon which was greatly ridiculed. He 
obtained a number of patents in the sixties, in¬ 
cluding a friction clutch, a gate latch, and a 
spring scale. All of these patents were assigned 
to others, in return, apparently, for money to 
carry on his work and to support his family. 
About 1870 he again returned to truck farming 
on Long Island for he could not obtain any fur¬ 
ther advancements on his future inventions, nor 
had he derived any money from his earlier pat¬ 
ents. By selling the patent rights to one of his 
latest inventions he obtained sufficient capital to 
buy a stall in Fulton Market, New York, where 
he sold his garden produce. There in a conversa¬ 
tion with several strangers about his inventions, 
he was urged by one of them, a contractor, to 
devise a machine to drill rocks. The upshot of 
this chance conversation was that the contractor 
gave Ingersoll fifty dollars to design such a ma¬ 
chine. Securing working space in a small ma¬ 
chine shop in New York owned by Jose F. 
Navarro and managed by Sergeant and Culling- 
worth, Ingersoll built several experimental mod¬ 
els and a full-size drilling machine. He devoted 
approximately a year to this work and finally 
secured patent No. 112,254 on Mar. 7, 1871 
(House Executive Document 86 , 42 Cong., 2 
Sess., p. 131). This is the basic patent of the 
Ingersoll rock drill. That same year he patented 
several improvements for the drill and then sold 
all of his patent rights to Navarro for a nominal 
sum. The latter then organized the Ingersoll 
Rock Drill Company which after many years of 
successful operation was merged into the Inger- 
soll-Rand Company. With the proceeds of this 
sale and $400 from the sale of his market stall, 
Ingersoll returned to Stamford and bought an 
interest in a machine shop, the firm being known 
as Ingersoll, Betts, & Cox, where he continued 
his inventive work. Between 1873 an d 1893 he 
was granted sixteen patents, most of which per¬ 
tained to rock drills and accessories. In addition 
he secured four patents for a gun and projectile 
for throwing life lines. None of his inventions 
yielded any appreciable financial return and at 
his death he was practically penniless. His first 
wife died in 1859 leaving five children, and he 
later married Frances Hoyt of Stamford who 
survived him. 

# [W. B. Kaempffert, A Popular Hist, of Am. Inven¬ 
tion (1924) ; E. W. Byrn, The Progress of Invention in 
the Nineteenth Century (1900); G. D. Hiscox, Ctim¬ 
pressed Air, Its Production, Uses, and Applications 
(1901) ; Bncyc. of Conn, Biog. (19x7), vol. IX; W. L. 
Saunders, “The Hist, of the Rodk Brill and of the In- 
gersoll-Rand Company,” Compressed Air Mag*, June 


472 



Ingham 

iqio; L. D. Avery, A Geneal. of the Ingersoll Family 
in America (1926); N. Y. Tribune, July 25 , 1894; 
Patent Office records; records of the Ingersoll-Rand 
Company.] C.W.M. 

INGHAM, CHARLES CROMWELL (1796- 
Dec . 10, 1863), portrait painter, was born in 
Dublin, Ireland, the descendant of an English 
officer serving under Cromwell in that country. 
Ingham is said to have recalled his childish pleas¬ 
ure in examining at his grandfather’s house the 
portraits of his forebears clad in the decorative 
costume of the period. As a child in petticoats 
he sat for his own portrait, and from this experi¬ 
ence he dated his interest in drawing and paint¬ 
ing. At thirteen he began the study of drawing 
at the Royal Dublin Society, where he remained 
for one year. Then for several years he was a 
pupil of William Cuming (1769-1852), a painter 
of women’s portraits in Dublin. While still a 
student, Ingham painted a picture in oils entitled 
“Death of Cleopatra,” for which he received a 
prize. This painting was later shown at the first 
exhibition of the American Academy of Fine 
Arts in New York, where it was generally re¬ 
garded as a marvelous piece of work for so 
young an artist. At the age of twenty, Ingham 
accompanied his family to New York, where in 
time he became a successful painter, specializing 
in portraits of women and children. Besides 
paintings in oil he executed miniatures in water 
colors on ivory. 

He was painstaking and deliberate in his paint¬ 
ing, with the natural result that he wearied his 
sitters. Besides the fashionable beauties of New 
York, distinguished men also sat for him, among 
whom were the Marquis de Lafayette (1825), 
the scholar and publicist, Gulian C. Verplanck 
(1830), and Gov. DeWitt Clinton. These three 
portraits are in the collection of the New York 
Historical Society. That of Lafayette is the orig¬ 
inal head from which was painted the full-length 
portrait for the State of New York now in the 
State Department in Albany. The portrait of 
William Dunlap in the collection of the National 
Academy of Design should also be mentioned. 
Among the early popular works of the artist 
were his Young Girl Laughing” and “The 
Black Plume” ( Catalogue of the Gallery of Art 
of the New York Historical Society, 1915). In 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 
are a portrait of Miss Frances Wilkes (1830) 
and a “Flower Girl” (1846). The latter, hung 
with a group of paintings by the Romanticists 
of the Victorian period, shows a young girl with 
yellow hair wearing a black veil and a tan 
dress, against an enveloppee background. The 
eyes are staring and there is little life-likeness 
in expression. The flowers in the girl’s basket 


Ingham 

are painted with meticulous accuracy. Ing¬ 
ham’s style may be broadly characterized as 
highly detailed and over-elaborated. His paint¬ 
ings of miniatures on ivory probably influenced 
his method in oils. The flesh portions were 
painted in successive layers which gave them a 
hard finish like that of ivory. Refinement of 
detail to a minute degree and lack of strength 
are the outstanding marks of his style, yet his 
rich and brilliant coloring atones in part for 
the weakness in composition and lack of feel¬ 
ing for line. 

The few letters written by Ingham which are 
now available and a contribution to The Crayon 
(November 1858), entitled “Public Monuments 
to Great Men,” reveal that he had a considerable 
background of culture, and was an “accom¬ 
plished gentleman” of the day as well as an 
artist. He was one of the original members of 
the National Academy of Design (1826), a 
professor in its school, and one of the founders 
of the Sketch Club in 1847. He died in New 
York City. 

[Wm. Dunlap, Hist, of the Rise and Progress of the 
Arts of Design in the U. S . (1834), rev. ed. (3 vols., 
1918), ed. by F. W. Bayley and C. E. Goodspeed; H. T. 
Tuckerman, Book of the Artists (1867) ; T. S. Cum¬ 
mings^ in The Nat. Acad, of Design: Ceremonies on the 
Occasion of Laying the Corner-Stone (1865); Ulrich 
Thieme and Felix Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der 
Bildenden Kiinstler vol. XVIII (1925) ; Samuel Isham, 
The Hist . of Am. Painting (1905) ; A. H. Wharton, 
Heirlooms in Miniatures (1898); W. G. Strickland, A 
Diet. of Irish Artists (1913) ; Applet ons’ Ann. Cyc., 
1863; Evening Post (N. Y.), Dec. 11, 1863.] A.B.B. 

INGHAM, SAMUEL DELUCENNA (Sept. 
16, 1779-June 5, i860), manufacturer, congress¬ 
man, secretary of the treasury under Jackson, 
was born at Great Spring near New Hope, 
Bucks County, Pa., the son of Dr. Jonathan and 
Ann (Welding) Ingham. His father, a farmer as 
well as a physician, undertook his early educa¬ 
tion, but sent him at ten years of age to a school 
at some distance from home. Before he attained 
his fourteenth year, the death of his father made 
further attendance at school impossible. He was 
then apprenticed to a paper maker on Penny- 
packer Creek about fifteen miles from Philadel¬ 
phia, but was able to continue his studies in 
his spare time. At the age of nineteen he was 
released from his indenture and returned to the 
farm, where he assisted his mother for a year. 
He then became manager of a paper mill near 
Bloomfield, N. J. There he became acquainted 
with Rebecca Dodd, whom he married in 1800. 
The same year he returned to Pennsylvania and 
built a paper mill at New Hope. He took an 
active interest in local politics and was elected 
from Bucks County to the state House of Repre¬ 
sentatives in 1806, serving until 1808 when he 


473 



Ingham 

declined reelection because of the pressure of his 
business affairs. In this year, however, he re¬ 
ceived an unsolicited commission from the gov¬ 
ernor of Pennsylvania as justice of the peace. 
After the declaration of war in 1812 he was 
elected as a Jeffersonian Democrat to the Thir¬ 
teenth Congress, taking his seat at the March 
session of 1813. He was elected to the Four¬ 
teenth Congress by an increased majority and 
reelected to the Fifteenth Congress without op¬ 
position, but on July 6, 1818, resigned his seat, 
largely because of his wife’s health. In that 
year he became prothonotary of the court of 
common pleas of Bucks County and the follow¬ 
ing year, secretary of the Commonwealth of 
Pennsylvania. His wife died in 1819 and he 
spent the next two years busied with his farm¬ 
ing and manufacturing interests. In 1822 he 
married Deborah Kay Hall of Salem, N. J., and 
in October of that year was elected to the Sev¬ 
enteenth Congress. He remained in Congress, 
being reelected each time without opposition, 
until he resigned his seat, Mar. 4, 1829, to ac¬ 
cept a position in Jackson’s cabinet. In 1824 he 
incurred the personal enmity of John Quincy 
Adams through the publication of a pamphlet 
on Adams 5 life and character which is alleged to 
have had great influence in the presidential cam¬ 
paign of 1828. Adams never forgave him for 
this attack and recorded much gossip and scan¬ 
dal regarding Ingham in his diary. Ingham was 
appointed secretary of the treasury by Presi¬ 
dent Jackson, and served for a little more than 
two years. On Apr. 19, 1831, he resigned— 
though he continued in office till June 20— 
ostensibly because he refused to recognize so¬ 
cially Mrs. John H. Eaton [Margaret H. 
O’Neill, q.z>.], the wife of Secretary of War 
John Henry Eaton and a great friend of 
President Jackson. 

After he resigned his cabinet post, Ingham 
retired from politics and devoted himself to busi¬ 
ness, becoming greatly interested in the devel¬ 
opment of the anthracite coal fields of Pennsyl¬ 
vania. He helped found the Beaver Meadow 
Railroad Company and was president for a time, 
assisted in forming the Hazelton Coal Company, 
and at the same time became interested in the 
Lehigh Navigation and Delaware Division ca¬ 
nals. He spent much time at the state capitol 
m advocating the improvement of inland wa¬ 
terways. In 1849 he moved his headquarters 
from New Hope, Pa,, to Trenton, N. J., where 
he became interested in the Mechanics Bank of 
that city. During his later years he was an in¬ 
valid. He died in Trenton. He had five chil- 


Ingle 

dren by his first marriage and three by his sec¬ 
ond. 

[Pamphlet by Ingham's son, Wm, A. Ingham, Samuel 
Delucenna Ingham (privately printed, 1910); Biog.Dir. 
Am. Cong. (1928) ; Exec. Reg. of the U. S., 1789-1902 
(1905) ; Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, vols. VII, 
VIII (1875-76); Daily True American (Trenton), 
June 6, i860.] J.H.F. 

INGLE, RICHARD (1609-c. 1653), Mary¬ 
land rebel and pirate, first came to the colonies 
in 1631 or 1632 as a tobacco merchant. As mas¬ 
ter of the ship Eleanor of London he appeared 
in Maryland in March 1641/2, bringing with 
him Thomas Cornwallis, an important figure in 
the province. The following year he was again 
in the colony, suing for debts. On Jan. 18, 
1643/4 a warrant charging him with high trea¬ 
son was issued. He was arrested and his ship, 
the Reformation , was seized with its cargo. 
Through the connivance of Cornwallis and the 
sheriff, Parker, Ingle and his ship were released. 
Various juries repeatedly refused to convict 
Ingle of treasonable utterances against the King. 
An indictment for piracy also failed. Having 
deposited powder and shot to guarantee his ap¬ 
pearance in court the following year, he re¬ 
sumed his trading in the province and was 
granted a small island upon which he put hogs 
“to inhabit it.” After his departure for London 
it was discovered that he had failed to pay the 
customs and other dues, and his goods in Mary¬ 
land were sequestered. Cornwallis was found 
guilty as an accessory to Ingle’s escape and was 
fined one thousand pounds of tobacco, a fine 
from which he was temporarily respited. 

In February 1644/5 Ingle, armed with letters 
of marque from the Lord High Admiral under 
authority of Parliament, appeared off the Vir¬ 
ginia coast He proposed to the crew to change 
to a “man of war cruize” to Maryland and of¬ 
fered them a sixth of all plunder. Sailing to the 
mouth of St. Ignatius Creek he attacked and 
captured the Speagle , a Dutch ship loading for 
Holland. With two armed ships, he had the 
province in his possession. He took St. Thomas’ 
Fort and forced Governor Calvert to flee into 
Virginia. He burned houses, seized tobacco, 
guns, and other goods, and scattered the inhabi¬ 
tants. While professing to represent Parliament 
and to protect Protestants he plundered the 
province. Against Cornwallis he now bore a 
deep hatred, and pillaged his estate. Nor did 
he forget those who had been active in his ar¬ 
rest the previous year. When he sailed to Lon¬ 
don with the Speagle and the Reformation he 
carried off three of them as prisoners. Once 
again in England he sued to have the Speagle 
as a prize, but there is no record of a decision. 


474 



Inglis 

A long series of suits and counter-suits be¬ 
tween Cornwallis and Ingle were settled after 
several years when Ingle transferred certain 
bills to Cornwallis and empowered him to collect 
them. Meanwhile Ingle had carried on a long 
struggle to deprive Lord Baltimore of legal title 
to Maryland, and various petitions in regard to 
the matter were presented to Parliament. At 
length, in December 1649, he sent a long petition 
to the Council of State, but after many post¬ 
ponements he was found “unprovided to prove 
his charges” and his petition was dismissed. 
In February 1649/50 he informed the Council 
that enemies of the Commonwealth were about 
to sail to Virginia. In April the Council awarded 
him £30 for his services in the keeping of Cap¬ 
tain Gardner, arrested for treason. The last 
record of him is in November 1653, when he 
several times wrote Edward Marston for a settle¬ 
ment of prize money due him, since, “having 
been sick, my need of money is great.” 

[Edward Ingle, Capt. Richard Ingle . . . 1642—1653 
(1884); B. C. Steiner, Maryland During the English 
Civil Wars (1906-07) ; being Johns Hopkins Univ. 
Studies in Hist, and Pol. Sci., ser. XXIV, XXV (1906- 
07) Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Ser. 1653-54 
(1879); Archives of Maryland: vols. IV (1887), X 
(1891) ; H. F. Thompson, in Md. Hist. Mag., June 
1906; L. C. Wroth, Ibid., Mar. 1916.] F,M—n. 

INGLIS, ALEXANDER JAMES (Nov. 24, 
1879-Apr. 12, 1924), teacher, educational sur¬ 
veyor, and author, was born in Middletown, 
Conn. Here also was born his father, William 
Grey Inglis, of Scotch parents. His mother, 
Susan (Byers) Inglis, was of Scotch-Irish de¬ 
scent. He prepared for college in the Middle- 
town High School and largely earned his way 
through Wesleyan University, where he won 
distinction both on the athletic field and in the 
classroom. After his graduation in 1902, a Wes¬ 
leyan fellowship enabled him to study a year in 
Rome at the American School of Classical Stud¬ 
ies. The following eight years he taught private 
secondary schools, chiefly in the Horace Mann 
School in New York City. Here he soon achieved 
a reputation as a teacher of Latin. Teaching 
alone, however, failed to exhaust his energy; he 
prepared three Latin textbooks, two jointly with 
other authors, which came quickly into wide use: 
First Book in Latin (1906) with Virgil Pretty- 
man; Exercise Book in Latin Composition 
(1908); and High School Course in Latin Com¬ 
position (1909) with C. McC. Baker. Even the 
combination of teaching and textbook writing 
left unused such an abundance of energy that 
he became a graduate student in Teachers Col¬ 
lege, Columbia University. Here he devoted him¬ 
self to a study of the larger problems of Ameri¬ 
can education, so successfully that he was granted 


Inglis 

the degrees of M.A. (1909) and Ph.D. (1911). 
In this latter year he married Antoinette Clark, 
of Cortland, N. Y. 

A year in the headmastership of the Belmont 
School in California completed Inglis’s prepara¬ 
tion for the work which was to give him lasting 
distinction. His interests now took him from 
secondary school teaching to the university field. 
He was professor of education at Rutgers Col¬ 
lege (1912-14), then assistant professor (1914- 
19) and finally professor of education at Harvard 
University until his death in 1924. As an in¬ 
structor, dealing especially with the new prob¬ 
lems of educational reorganization in the sec¬ 
ondary field, he speedily took front rank. The 
survey movement, which was destined in the 
next few years to spare no type of school, school 
system, or educational activity, was beginning 
in 1912. Into this movement Inglis threw him¬ 
self at once with characteristic vigor and en¬ 
thusiasm, tempered, however, by calm judgment. 
Chief among the surveys in which he took promi¬ 
nent part, indicated by titles and dates of pub¬ 
lished reports, are the following: A Survey of 
the Educational Institutions of the State of 
Washington (1916); The Educational System 
of South Dakota (1918); Public Education in 
Indiana (1923). He himself directed the survey 
of Virginia, and was wholly responsible for the 
report published by the state in 1919 under the 
title Virginia Public Schools , which was almost 
entirely his own production. This report at once 
took rank as a classic in survey literature. 

Inglis was an active, influential member of the 
leading educational organizations of his time. 
Most noteworthy was his service as a member 
of the reviewing committee appointed by the 
National Education Association to pass upon the 
work of the association's commission on the 
reorganization of secondary education. As a 
member of this committee he contributed largely 
to its chief publication. Cardinal Principles of 
Secondary Education , issued by the United 
States Bureau of Education in 1918, a pamphlet 
which probably exerted more definite and far- 
reaching influence on the reconstruction of sec¬ 
ondary school curricula than any other publica¬ 
tion of the period. He was the author of several 
standard tests, most of them in Latin, and nu¬ 
merous articles in the leading educational jour¬ 
nals. His initial important publication in the 
professional field was his doctoral thesis, The 
Rise of the High School in Massachusetts 
(1911). Chief of all his publications was his 
book, Principles of Secondary Education (1918), 
a comprehensive, scholarly, and constructive 
treatise. 



Inglis 


Ingraham 


{Alexander Inglis, 1879-1924 (1925), a memorial 
volume to which colleagues contributed; the Wesleyan 
University Alumnus, May 1924; "Minute on the Life 
and Services of Professor Alexander James Inglis,” in 
the unpublished records of the Harvard Graduate School 
of Education; Harvard Grads. Mag., June 1924; Bos¬ 
ton Transcript, Apr. 12, 1924; N. Y. Times, Apr. 13, 
1924; Who’s Who in America, 1924-25 ; correspondence 
with Mrs. Antoinette Clark Inglis and personal ac¬ 
quaintance.] p. g. g. 

INGLIS, CHARLES (1734-Feb. 24, 1816), 
Anglican clergyman, Loyalist, first bishop of 
Nova Scotia, was born in Ireland, youngest of 
the three sons of Rev. Archibald Inglis of Glen 
and Kilcar, Donegal. He emigrated to America 
about 1755 and taught in the Free School at 
Lancaster, Pa. Three years later, in London, he 
was ordained deacon and priest and assigned 
with a salary of £50 a year to the Anglican mis¬ 
sion at Dover, Del., with jurisdiction over the 
whole county of Kent. After about six years 
(1759-65) of “unwearied diligence” in this field, 
he departed reluctantly to become assistant to 
Rev. Samuel Auchmuty [g.z/.], rector of Trinity 
Church in New York City. Then began his in¬ 
timacy with Rev. Thomas Bradbury Chandler 
[<?. v.] of Elizabethtown, N. J., and “together 
they labored earnestly for the establishment of 
the Episcopate in America” (Heeney, post, p. 7) 
without much encouragement from the home au¬ 
thorities. Inglis was also greatly interested in 
the conversion of the Indians. He visited the 
Mohawk Valley in 1770 and corresponded with 
Sir William Johnson [q.v .], whose practical sug¬ 
gestions regardingthe character and needs of the 
Indians he incorporated (1771) in a memorial to 
Lord Hillsborough and the Society for the Propa¬ 
gation of the Gospel, sent to England by the hand 
of Myles Cooper \_q.v.~\, which stressed the politi¬ 
cal effect of establishing the Church of England 
in the wilderness. Temperamentally Inglis was “a 
quiet student and scholar who loved to spend his 
scanty leisure in literary and intellectual pur¬ 
suits” (Rayson, post, p. 176); Oxford recognized 
his merits with the degree of D.D. in 1778. The 
Anglican clergy were nurtured in an atmosphere 
of devotion to the king and Parliament and Inglis 
was a true disciple. He once expressed dissatis¬ 
faction that the church pews should ever be “held 
in common, and where men, perhaps of the 
worst character, might come and sit themselves 
down by the side of the most religious and re¬ 
spectable characters in the parish” {Ibid., p. 
174). His prayers for the king were as fervent 
as ever when the storm of Revolution broke. 
When Paine published his Common Sense in 
*776> Inglis replied with The True Interest of 
America Impartially Stated (1776), in which he 
declared that Common Sense was filled “with 


much uncommon phrenzy,” and was “an insidi¬ 
ous attempt to poison their minds and seduce 
them [Americans] from their loyalty and truest 
interest.” With independence declared and 
Washington’s army in possession of the city, 
Trinity Church closed its doors, the aged Auch¬ 
muty retired to New Jersey, and Inglis to nearby 
Flushing. As soon as the British army began 
to force Washington northward, Inglis came 
back and was present to help personally in sav¬ 
ing St. Paul’s from the great fire (Sept. 21, 
1776) which destroyed the mother church. The 
next year Dr. Auchmuty died and Inglis was 
appointed to succeed him. During the rest of the 
war his pen from time to time vigorously de¬ 
plored the attitude of many people in England 
“who feel great Sympathy and Tenderness for 
the Distresses of the Rebels, but are callous to 
the Sufferings and Miseries of the Loyalists” 
(letter to Galloway, in Historical Magazine, Oc¬ 
tober 1861). At other times, in open letters un¬ 
der the pen name of “Papinian” (published in 
Rivington’s Royal Gazette and Gaines’s New 
York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, and collected 
in pamphlet form in 1779), he tried to convince 
the patriots of the error of their ways. Neverthe¬ 
less, when his cause was lost and he was about 
to sail for England (1783) as an impoverished 
exile, he said, “When I go from America, I do 
not leave behind me an individual, against whom 
I have the smallest degree of resentment or ill- 
will” (Rayson, op. cit, p. 168). Four years later, 
Aug. 12,1787, at Lambeth, he was consecrated as 
bishop of Nova Scotia, the first colonial bishop 
of the Anglican communion. In 1809 he became 
a member of the council of Nova Scotia. He died 
in Halifax. Inglis was twice married: first at 
Dover, Del., in February 1764, to Mary Vining, 
who died a few months later; second, at New 
York,. May 31, 1773, to Margaret Crooke, who 
died in 1783. Of this second marriage there 
were two daughters and two sons, one of whom, 
John, in 1825 became third bishop of Nova 
Scotia* 


[C. H. Mockridge, The Bishops of the Church of 
England in Canada and Newfoundland (1896) ; W. B. 
Heeney, Leaders of the Canadian Church (1920), with 
portrait; A. W. H. Eaton, The Church of England in 
Nova Scotia { 1892) ; R. S. Rayson, "Charles Inglis, a 
Uiapter in Beginnings,” Queen’s Quart., Oct.-Nov.- 
Dec., 1925 ; Morgan Dix, A Hist, of the Parish of Trin¬ 
ity Church, vol. I (1898), with portrait; E. B. O’Cal- 
la /J an » n Th , e n Do ?' Hut- of the State of N. Y. (quarto 
ed.), HI (1850)^ 637-46, IV (1851), 266-69, 276-77, 
P 3 ?» Calendar of the Sir Wm . Johnson 
MSS. m the N. Y. State Library (1909) ; A. W. H. 
Eaton, Bishop Charles Inglis and his Descendants,” 
Acadiensis, July 1908; N. Y. Evening Post, Mar. 19, 
1816; Quebec Gazette , Apr. n, 1816.] A.E.P. 

INGRAHAM, DUNCAN NATHANIEL 
(Dec. 6,1802-Oct. 16,1891), naval officer, came 


476 



Ingraham 

of a Scotch family which settled at Concord, 
Mass., prior to 1715. His grandfather, Duncan 
Ingraham, his unde Joseph Ingraham [q.v.~\, and 
his father, Nathaniel, were sea-captains, the last- 
named fighting as a volunteer on board the Bon~ 
hormne Richard in its engagement with the Sera- 
pis, Ingraham’s mother was Louisa, daughter 
of George A. Hall, first collector of the port of 
Charleston, S. C., where her son was born. He 
became a midshipman at nine, June 18, 1812; 
served in the War of 1812 in the Congress and 
then on Lake Ontario in the Madison; rose to 
lieutenant, 1825; to commander, 1838; and in 
the Mexican War was on Commodore Conner’s 
staff at the capture of Tampico. His chief dis¬ 
tinction came in the celebrated Koszta affair of 
1853. He was then commanding the sloop of 
war St. Louis in the Mediterranean. Entering 
Smyrna on June 23, he was informed that Mar¬ 
tin Koszta, a Hungarian follower of Kossuth in 
the uprising of 1848-49, who had come to New 
York in 1851, declared there his intention of be¬ 
coming an American citizen, and, after two 
years’ residence, gone to Turkey on supposedly 
private business, had been violently seized at 
Smyrna by Austrian hirelings and imprisoned 
aboard the Austrian brig Hussar. Ingraham se¬ 
cured an interview with the prisoner and later 
threatened force to prevent his removal from 
the harbor pending instructions from John Por¬ 
ter Brown [ q.v .], the American charge at Con¬ 
stantinople. On July 2, upon advice from Brown 
that Koszta was entitled to protection, Ingraham 
cleared for action, anchored within half cable’s 
length of the Austrian vessel, and at eight in the 
morning demanded Koszta’s release before four 
that afternoon. Fighting appeared inevitable. 
The vessels were of about equal armament, but 
the Hussar was supported by a 12-gun schooner 
and two mail vessels. At the last moment, the 
consuls ashore arranged a compromise by which 
Koszta was turned over to the French consul 
general pending diplomatic settlement, which re¬ 
sulted in his ultimate release. Ingraham’s reso¬ 
lute action was quite in harmony with American 
sympathies at the time, and aroused great en¬ 
thusiasm both in Europe and America. He was 
fully upheld by his government, and upon his 
return in 1854 he was welcomed by mass meet¬ 
ings in New York and other cities, and awarded 
a gold medal by Congress. From March 1856 to 
August i860 he was chief of the Bureau of Ord¬ 
nance, and then went again to the Mediterranean 
in command of the Richmond. In January 1861, 
he resigned, and on Mar. 26 entered the Confed¬ 
erate navy. He was chief of ordnance at Rich¬ 
mond until November 1861, when he was given 


Ingraham 

charge of naval forces on the coast of South Car¬ 
olina. At Charleston he supervised the construc¬ 
tion of the ironclads Palmetto State and Chicora, 
and on the night of Jan. 30-31,1863, commanded 
the two in an attack on the Union blockaders. 
His flagship, the Palmetto State , rammed the 
Merc edit a and then with the Chicora attacked 
and severely injured the Keystone State. Both 
Union vessels escaped, and the other blockaders 
withdrew to avoid the slow but dangerous rams. 
A proclamation on the 31st, signed by General 
Beauregard and Ingraham, declared the block¬ 
ade “raised”; but the rams retired into the har¬ 
bor and the blockaders were back on their sta¬ 
tions within a few hours. In March 1863 In¬ 
graham relinquished command of the flotilla, 
while retaining the station ashore. After the war 
he retired to private life in Charleston, where 
he died in his eighty-ninth year. In 1827 he was 
married to Harriott Horry Laurens, grand¬ 
daughter of the statesmen Henry Laurens and 
John Rutledge of South Carolina. To them were 
born three sons and five daughters. The general 
estimate of Ingraham’s character is expressed in 
the statement of Commander W. H. Parker, who 
served under him, that he was a “man of intelli¬ 
gence and culture, and bore the reputation of 
being a brave and good officer” ( Recollections of 
a Naval Officer, 184 - 1-65 , 1883, p. 293). 

[F. B. C. Bradlee, A Forgotten Chapter in Our Naval 
History: A Sketch of the Career of Duncan Nathaniel 
Ingraham (1923); J. T. Scharf, Hist, of the Confed. 
States Navy (1887); War of the Rebellion: Official 
Records (Navy) ; Charleston News and Courier, Oct 
17, 1891; W. R. Langdon, in Mag. of Hist., Dec. 1911J 
R. C. Parker, in Proc. U. S. Naval Inst., Mar. 19 27; 
G. S. Dickerman, The House of Plant of Macon, Go. 
(1900); Senate Ex. Doc. No. 40 and No. 53> a- n <l 
House Ex. Doc. No. 1 and No. 91, 33 Cong., 1 Sess.] 

A.W. 

INGRAHAM, EDWARD DUFFIELD 

(Feb. 12,1793-Nov. 5,1854), lawyer and author, 
the son of Francis and Elizabeth (Dufifield) In¬ 
graham and "a grandson of Edward Duffield, 
Benjamin Franklin’s executor, was born at Phil¬ 
adelphia. He studied law from 1811 to 1813 with 
Alexander J. Dallas [q.v.], United States at¬ 
torney for the eastern district of Pennsylvania. 
Called to the bar at twenty, an ardent Democrat 
with a taste for politics, he found the strongly 
Federalist, Quaker city a difficult field for his 
political activity. Although he frequently sacri¬ 
ficed himself as his party’s candidate for elective 
office he was never chosen, and did not attain 
even an appointive office until after nearly a 
score of years. A delegate to the Free Trade 
Convention at his native city in 1831, he became, 
three years later, secretary of the congressional 
committee investigating the United States Bank 
and, later in the same year, one of the bank’s di« 


477 



Ingraham 

rectors, continuing to serve as such until the 
expiration of its charter. He was a strong sup¬ 
porter of the Mexican War, and his address in 
its behalf before the “town meeting’* at Phila¬ 
delphia was notably effective. Warmly espousing 
the cause of General Cass as his party’s candidate 
for the presidency in 1848, Ingraham was un¬ 
daunted by the defeat which followed and, after 
passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, he 
was appointed a commissioner thereunder. 

Barred by his party affiliations from a success¬ 
ful political career in his native city and state, 
he turned his activities to the literary side of his 
profession. He had acquired a working knowl¬ 
edge of Spanish and French and became especial¬ 
ly familiar with French literature. In 1819 he 
published a translation, from the French edition 
of Voltaire, of Beccaria’s Dei delitti e delle pene . 
It was not the first translation of that famous 
work into English nor even the first published 
in America; but, as Ingraham explained in his 
preface, the previous edition, whose translator 
he had “never been able to ascertain/* appeared 
“to be a studied attempt to burlesque the style 
and misrepresent the sense of that celebrated 
writer.** Hence, the new translation was offered 
“with the hope that... I might render M. de Vol¬ 
taire intelligible to the American reader.** He 
further declined to “offer any apology for an at¬ 
tempt to render more intelligible any subject 
connected with the study or improvement of 
law.’* 

The program thus indicated he proceeded to 
carry out by publishing American editions, with 
notes, of the following standard legal treatises: 
E. B. Sugden, A Practical Treatise of the Law 
of Vendors and Purchasers of Estates, in 1820; 
E. B. Sugden, A Practical Treatise of Powers, 
in 1823; William Cruise, A Digest of the Laws 
of England Respecting Real Property, in 1823; 
Thomas Starkie, A Treatise on the Law of 
Slander, Libel, etc., 1826; Sir Samuel Toller, 
The Law of Executors and Administrators, 
1829; Thomas Starkie, A Practical Treatise on 
the Law of Evidence, 1832; Thomas Wentworth, 
The Office and Duty of Executors, 1832; Joseph 
Chitty, A Treatise on the Parties to Actions, the 
Forms of Actions, and on Pleading, 1833; Niel 
Gow, A Practiced Treatise on the Law of Part¬ 
nership, 1837; Joseph Chitty, A Practical Trea¬ 
tise on Bills of Exchange, 1849; E. de Vattel, 
The Law of Nations, based on Chitty*s transla¬ 
tion, 1857. While these publications may have 
required no great originality, they did afford a 
real contribution to the equipment of the Amer¬ 
ican bench and bar; for the originals were scarce 
in' the United States and lacked adaptation to 


Ingraham 

American usage. Moreover, Ingraham had pub¬ 
lished an original work entitled A Sketch of the 
Insolvent Laws of Pennsylvania (1822; 2nd ed., 
A View on the Insolvent Laws of Pennsylvania, 
1827). He also produced several essays in the 
field of American history, notably A Sketch of 
the Events which Preceded the Capture of 
Washington by the British (1849). He was 
twice married: first, to Mary Wilson of Snow 
Hill, Md, and second, to Caroline Barney of 
Baltimore. 

[Ingraham’s middle name is given both as Duncan 
and Duffield; only the initial appears on his tombstone, 
but it seems probable that he was named Duffield after 
his grandfather, and this is the form in which his name 
appears in J. H. Martin, Martin's Bench and Bar of 
Phila. (1883). The best contemporary account of him 
is found in the U. S. Mag. and Democratic Review, July 
1849, published five years before his death. See also 
J. T. Scharf and Thompson Westcott, Hist, of Phila. 
(1884) ; Henry Simpson, The Lives of Eminent Phila¬ 
delphians (1859) J D* P- Brown, The Phila. Bar (1868 ); 
J. C. Martindale, The Gilbert Family, the Carver Fam¬ 
ily, and the Duffield Family (1911); Public Ledger, 
Pennsylvanian, and North American and U. S. Gazette 
all of Phila., Nov. 7, 1854.] q ^ l 

INGRAHAM, JOSEPH (1762-1800), navi¬ 
gator, trader, and discoverer, was born in Bos¬ 
ton and baptized on Apr. 4, 1762, in New Brick 
Church. He was the son of Duncan and Susan¬ 
nah (Blake) Ingraham; his brother Nathaniel 
was the father of Duncan Nathaniel Ingraham 
[q.v. ], a distinguished naval officer. It is prob¬ 
able that Joseph Ingraham was in the naval serv¬ 
ice during the Revolutionary War; subsequent¬ 
ly, it appears from his manuscript journal, he 
voyaged to Asiatic waters. On Oct. ir, 1785, he 
married Jane Salter of Boston, by whom he had 
three sons. On October 1787, he sailed under 
Capt. John Kendrick [q.vJ] as second mate of 
the Columbia, the pioneer of the Boston trade to 
the Northwest Coast; at the Cape Verde Islands 
he was promoted to chief officer, a position he 
held during the remainder of the voyage. He 
wrote an account of the expedition, but it has 
since disappeared. Soon after the return of the 
Columbia, Aug. 9,1790, now under the command 
of Capt. Robert Gray [q.v.], Thomas Handasyd 
Perkins \_q*vJ\ of Boston determined to enter the 
Northwest trade. He outfitted the Hope, a brig¬ 
antine of seventy tons, and placed Ingraham in 
command. On the outward voyage Ingraham 
called at the Marquesas Islands, and sailing 
thence soon discovered six islands which he 
called Washington Islands. They are now re¬ 
garded as a part of the Marquesas group. Reach¬ 
ing the Northwest Coast in June 1791, he found 
the natives well supplied with clothing and im¬ 
plements, but by his resourceful invention of 
iron collars he introduced a fashion that brought 


478 



Ingraham 

him 1,400 skins in forty-nine days. The embargo 
placed by the Chinese upon the importation of 
furs caused him much trouble in disposing of his 
cargo. He returned to the coast in July 1792, 
but, owing to excessive competition and the 
fickleness of the natives, that year’s trade was not 
a success. The net result was a loss of about 
$40,000. 

The Hope reached Boston in 1793. Ingraham 
then disappears from view for five years. He 
next appears in the United States navy, in which 
on June 14, 1799, he was commissioned a lieu¬ 
tenant. He was a lieutenant on the ill-fated 
United States brig Pickering, which sailed from 
Newcastle, Del., on Aug. 20,1800, and was never 
heard of again. It is presumed that she was lost 
in the terrible equinoctial gales of that year. 

[Materials for the life of Joseph Ingraham are ex¬ 
tremely scanty and care must be taken to distinguish 
the numerous persons bearing that name. The follow¬ 
ing volumes may be consulted: L. V. Briggs, Hist, and 
Geneal. of the Cabot Family (1927); G. S. Dickerman, 
The House of Plant of Macon, Ga. (1900) ; New-Eng. 
Hist, and Geneal. Reg., Oct. 1864, p. 344; Ingraham’s 
“Account of a Recent Discovery of Seven Islands in 
the South Pacific Ocean” in Mass. Hist. Soc. Colls. 1 ser. 
II (1793), and his manuscript journal of the Hope in 
Lib. of Cong.; Robert Greenhow, “Memoir Historical 
and Political on the Northwest Coast of North America,” 
Sen. Doc. No. 174, 26 Cong., 1 Sess., and Hist, of Ore. 
and Cal. (1844)-] F.W.H. 

INGRAHAM, JOSEPH HOLT (Jan, 25 or 
26,1809-Dec. 18, i860), author, Protestant Epis¬ 
copal clergyman, was born in Portland, Me., a 
grandson of one of the city’s chief benefactors, 
for whom he was named, and the son of James 
Milk and Elizabeth (Thurston) Ingraham. His 
grandfather’s shipping interests and his own love 
of adventure were responsible for his becoming 
a sailor in his youth. The Bowdoin College rec¬ 
ords do not bear out the statement sometimes 
made that he graduated there. He seems, how¬ 
ever, to have become a teacher in Jefferson Col¬ 
lege at Washington, Miss., now a military school, 
which he described in The South-West, by a 
Yankee (2 vols., 1835); and thereafter the title 
“professor” was used frequently on his numer¬ 
ous publications. His Lafitte (2 vols., 1836), the 
most elaborate of the fictitious chronicles of the 
Pirate of the Gulf, is typical of his work in that 
it makes of an impossible series of events pegs on 
which to hang a luxurious fabric of Spanish 
treasure troves and Byronic ravings. His Bur¬ 
ton; or the Sieges (2 vols., 1838), inscribed to 
S. S. Prentiss the famous Mississippi 

lawyer for whom his son was named, is a sensa¬ 
tional defamation of the early career of Aaron 
Burr; The Quadroone; or, St. Michael's Day (2 
vols., 1841), an even more absurd romanticiza- 
tion of history. The American Lounger (1839) 


Ingraham 

shows the literary influence of Nathaniel Parker 
Willis, and in the story “The Kelpie Rock,” the 
effect of Joseph Rodman Drake’s and Washing¬ 
ton Irving’s pioneer work in putting the Hud¬ 
son River into legend. 

For a period after the publication of these 
books Ingraham wrote so rapidly that it is no 
longer possible to trace all of his works. Accord¬ 
ing to the entry in Longfellow’s journal for Apr. 
6, 1846, “In the afternoon Ingraham the novel¬ 
ist called. A young, dark man, with soft voice. 
He says he has written eighty novels, and of these 
twenty during the last year; till it has grown 
to be merely mechanical with him. These novels 
are published in the newspapers. They pay him 
something more than three thousand dollars a 
year.” (Samuel Longfellow, Life of Henry Wads¬ 
worth Longfellow, 1886-87, H, 35.) Typical 
works of Ingraham at this period were Frank 
Rivers; or, The Dangers of the Town (1843); 
Rafael; or. The Twice Condemned (1845) J Scar¬ 
let Feather, or The Young Chief of the Abena- 
quies (1845) J Ringold Griffitt; or, The Rafts¬ 
man of the Susquehannah (1847). The tales were 
short, running between fifty and a hundred pages 
as a rule, and were chiefly of the blood-and-thun- 
der school. While writing them Ingraham seems 
to have lived alternately in the North and in the 
South. 

His marriage to Mary Brooks, daughter of a 
wealthy Mississippi planter, apparently deter¬ 
mined him to make his permanent home in the 
South. About 1849 he established a school for 
young ladies at Nashville, Tenn., and in addition 
to his teaching, pursued theological studies. In 
1847 he had been confirmed in the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. He was ordained deacon on 
Mar. 9, 1851, at Natchez, Miss., and priest the 
following year, at Jackson. From 1852 to 1854 
he was a missionary at Aberdeen, Miss.; in 1855 
became rector of St. Johns, Mobile, Ala.; in 
1858, was in Riverside, Tenn., and in 1859 be¬ 
came rector of Christ Church, Holly Springs, 
Miss., where the following year he died. Mean¬ 
time through “midnight hours, stolen from paro¬ 
chial labors,” he produced three religious ro¬ 
mances, all immensely popular. The Prince of 
the House of David (1855) describes the advent 
of Christ; The Pillar of Fire (1859), Israel in 
Egyptian bondage; and The Throne of David 
(i860), events in the Land of Canaan down to 
the rebellion of Prince Absalom. These stories 
are told in letters, a somewhat monotonous de¬ 
vice, and are weakened by the author’s fondness 
for ornate description. Nevertheless they show 
careful study and they aided in popularizing the 
novel form in America and in liberalizing the 


479 



Ingraham 

attitude toward religion. Just before his untime¬ 
ly death Ingraham had been negotiating in the 
North for the publication of a new work to be 
entitled “St. Paul, the Roman Citizen/' 

As a rector, he suffered from the popularity 
of his earlier, more sensational books. Accord¬ 
ing to his grandson, the income from his religious 
novels was used largely to buy up and destroy the 
copyrights of some of his early romances. A 
somewhat different type of work, which reveals 
the author's affiliation with his adopted section, 
was The Sunny South (i860), a collection of let¬ 
ters originally published in the Saturday Courier 
in 1853-54. Ingraham was mortally wounded by 
the accidental discharge of his own gun in the 
vestry-room of Christ Church at Holly Springs, 
Miss. He was survived by his wife, his son Pren¬ 
tiss [g.z/.], and three daughters. He is buried in 
the Hill Crest Cemetery. 

[The facts set forth above have been gleaned from 
family records, a contemporary newspaper, annual pub¬ 
lications of the Prot. Episc. Church, and reminiscences 
furnished by Helen Craft Anderson (Mrs. W. A. Ander¬ 
son) of Holly Springs. See also. Brown Thurston, 
Thurston Gcneals. (1880) ; D. H. Bishop, “Joseph Holt 
Ingraham,” in Lib . of Southern Lit., vol. VI (1909) 1 
Am. Quart. Church Rev., Apr. 1861.] D.A.D. 

INGRAHAM, PRENTISS (Dec. 22, 1843- 
Aug. 16, 1904), author, soldier, was born in 
Adams County, Miss., the son of Joseph Holt 
Ingraham [ q.v .] and Mary (Brooks) Ingraham. 
In his early years, according to a contemporary, 
he was “a dark, handsome, fascinating youth." 
His education was gained by private tutoring, 
attendance at St Timothy's Military Academy, 
Md., Jefferson College, Miss., and Mobile Medi¬ 
cal College, but was interrupted by the Civil 
War. He served in the light artillery, Withers' 
Mississippi Regiment; as a staff officer with the 
rank of lieutenant; and in Ross's brigade, Texas 
cavalary, as commander of scouts. He was once 
captured and twice wounded. Probably no Amer¬ 
ican writer was more truly a soldier of fortune 
than he. Lured on by his love of adventure, after 
the Civil War he served under Juarez in Mexi¬ 
co ; in Austria in the war with Prussia; in Crete; 
in Africa; afloat and ashore in the Cuban ten 
years' war for independence. Extensive travels 
in Eastern lands and thrilling experiences in 
the West also provided material for his more 
than six hundred novels, dozen plays, and nu¬ 
merous short stories and poems. 

The most striking thing about the literary ca¬ 
reer on which he embarked in London in 1870, 
and which he continued in New York and Chi¬ 
cago, was his fecundity. Like his father, he wrote 
for weekly family papers, and he was one of the 
most prolific producers for the Dime and Half- 


Inman 

Dime Libraries published by Beadle & Adams. 
On a hurry order for the firm he once turned off 
a “half-dime," 35,000 words, in a day and a 
night, with a fountain pen. He was an intimate 
friend of Buffalo Bill—William F. Cody [q.v.] 

—about whose career he wrote more than two 
hundred “paper-backs," which are still to be 
found on the news stands. In somewhat similar 
vein is The Girl Rough Riders (1903), a juvenile 
book containing a good deal of description of the 
Grand Canyon, which is said to have been in¬ 
spired by his escort of a party of young women 
across the plains. Among his other titles are: 
The Beautiful Rivals; or, Life at Long Branch 
(1884); Zuleikah: A Story of Crete (1887); 
DarkieDan (1888) ; Cadet Carey, of West Point 
(1890); An American Monte Cristo (1891); 
and Saratoga (1885), which he edited as a result 
of his residence in that city. As far as can be 
judged from the narratives now obtainable, these 
books, although without distinction, are written 
in a surprisingly correct and easy fashion, and 
are wholesome in their general teachings. Monte - 
zuma, the most popular of his plays, ran for sev¬ 
eral years, and Life and Duty is said to have had 
almost equal success. 

Ingraham was married in 1875 t0 Rosa Lang¬ 
ley of New York, who with three children sur¬ 
vived him. His death occurred at the Beauvoir 
Confederate Home, which he had entered a few 
days before in search of rest after having, as he 
said, crowded a hundred and twenty years of 
experience into his sixty years of life. 

[Mildred L. Rutherford, The South in History and 
Literature (1907); E. L. Pearson, Dime Novels (1929) ; 
Who's Who in America, 1903-05; Critic, Oct. 1904; 
Bookman, Oct. 1904; Confederate Veteran (Nashville), 
Nov. 1904; Publishers' Weekly, Aug. 27 ,1904; Evening 
Post (N. Y.), Aug. 17, 1904.] D.A.D. 

INMAN, GEORGE (Dec. 3,1755-c. February 
1789), Loyalist soldier, was the son of Ralph 
and Susanna (Speakman) Inman. Bom in Bos¬ 
ton, Mass., he grew to manhood at his father's 
opulent and generously hospitable home in Cam¬ 
bridge, The family was closely allied with many 
of the provincial leaders who later espoused the 
Loyalist cause. Inman took a degree from Har¬ 
vard in 1772, spent three years in the Boston 
counting-house of the brothers Brimmer; then, 
against the wishes of his father and his Tory 
friends, served with the British troops who 
stormed Bunker Hill. His father clung to Bos¬ 
ton, but in January 1776, in company with his 
brother-in-law, an officer in the Royal Navy, 
George Inman sailed from the city never to re¬ 
turn. Associating himself with the King's Own, 
a regiment of light infantry, he was present at 
the battle of Long Island, where, on the morn- 


480 



Inman 

ing of Aug. 27, 1776, he took part in the capture 
of a patrol of American officers to whom Putnam 
and Sullivan were looking for intelligence of the 
British advance through Jamaica Pass (S. M. 
Gozzaldi in Cambridge Historical Society Pub¬ 
lications, XIX, 1927, 46-79). It has been assert¬ 
ed that this incident, small though it was, turned 
the scales of battle against the Americans (John¬ 
ston, post, pp. 176-78). Inman served on this de¬ 
tail as one of the subordinates of Capt. W. G. 
Evelyn, to whom, it seems, most of the credit 
ought to go (Scull, post, pp. 129, 199; Pennsyl¬ 
vania Magazine of History and Biography, VII, 
238-39), but Inman's share in the capture did 
not go unrecognized, for soon Sir William Howe 
made him ensign in the 17th Regiment, his com¬ 
missionbearing the date of the encounter on Long 
Island. He was slightly wounded at Princeton, 
served at Brandywine and Germantown accept¬ 
ably, and fought at Monmouth, after which bat¬ 
tle Sir Henry Clinton appointed him lieutenant 
in the 26th Regiment. At Philadelphia on Apr. 
23, 1778, he was married to Mary Badger and 
when the officers of his regiment were ordered 
home, he sailed with his wife for England where 
he landed in February 1780. 

As an exile in England, Inman fretted away 
the next eight years. A convivial man, fond of 
the officers' mess and outdoor sports, he was the 
father of an increasing family which he had to do 
his best to maintain on a recruiting officer's small 
pay. Life at Bristol among the other American 
emigres was dull, and with all his heart he longed 
to be able to purchase a captain's commission and 
see active service again. His father had bred 
him up to be a rich man's son, but now grumbled 
at his extravagances, and did but little for him. 
Inman often had to keep an eye out for the ap- 
roaching bailiff. In May 1788, Ralph Inman 
died, and his fortune devolved upon George as 
one of the co-heirs. The news found him at St. 
George, Grenada, whither he had gone with his 
wife and children to take an unimportant post 
in the army in April 1788. It was now too late 
to mend matters, for Inman's young son died of a 
fever, and he himself expired of the same dis¬ 
ease, early in February 1789. His widow and 
her four small daughters returned to Cambridge, 
and claimed their share of the estate. 

[Journal (four vols., MS.), in possession of Cam¬ 
bridge (Mass.) Hist. Soc., on deposit in Harvard Col¬ 
lege Library; Harvard Univ. Quin. Cat . (1925); Pa, 
Mag. of Hist, and Biog vols. II (1878), VII (1883), 
XLIV (1920) ; Letters and Diary of John Rowe (1903L 
ed. by A. R. Cunningham; H. P. Johnston, The Cam¬ 
paign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn (1878); 
The Evelyns in America, 1608-1805 (1881), ed.by G. D. 
Scull; Letters of James Murray, Loyalist (1901), ed. by 
N. M. Tiffany and S. I. Lesley; E. A. Jones, The Loyal- 


Inman 

ists of Mass. (1930) ; L. R. Paige, Hist, of Cambridge, 
Mass. . . . Suppl. to Index by M. I. Goszaldi (1930).] 

F.M—d. 

INMAN, HENRY (Oct. 28, 1801-Jan. 17, 
1846), portrait and genre painter, was born at 
Utica, N. Y., the son of William and Sarah In¬ 
man. His father, born in England, 1762, came 
to America in 1792, settled at Whitestown, near 
Utica, where he had a brewery and speculated in 
real estate. In 1812 he moved to New York 
City and became a merchant, but, meeting with 
reverses, went to Leyden, Lewis County, N. Y., 
where he died in 1843. His wife, born in 1773, 
died in 1829, bore four sons, three of whom made 
their mark in the world—William, the eldest, a 
naval officer who rose to the rank of commo¬ 
dore; Henry, the artist; and John \_q.v.\ who 
was editor of the New York Mirror, the Com¬ 
mercial Advertiser, and the Columbian Lady's 
and Gentleman's Magazine, Henry as a boy in 
Utica had received some elementary instruction 
in drawing, and soon after the family moved to 
New York City he was preparing to enter the 
United States Military Academy at West Point, 
to which he had received an appointment, but 
at that time he chanced to meet John Wesley 
Jarvis, the portrait painter, who, being struck 
by the boy's promise as a draftsman, offered to 
take him on as a pupil. The result was that the 
West Point project was abandoned and Henry 
was bound as an apprentice to Jarvis for a term 
of seven years. 

The experience thus gained gave the young 
man an unusually good training in art. He was 
soon allowed to do some of the work on his 
master's canvases. With Jarvis he traveled far 
and wide, wherever there were portraits to be 
painted—to Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and 
New Orleans. The apprentice, beginning by put¬ 
ting in the drapery and background, shortly be¬ 
gan to paint portraits on his own account. At the 
age of twenty-two, his probationary period being 
over, Inman took a studio in Yesey Street, New 
York, and there began his career as a painter of 
portraits, miniatures, and genre pieces. The early 
years were prosperous and happy; but later there 
were sharp fluctuations of favor and neglect. 
Many eminent sitters came to him. Few Ameri¬ 
can portraitists since Stuart have to their credit 
a more imposing list of distinguished patrons. 
At the top tide of Inman's vogue he was earning 
about $9,000 a year, at that period a handsome 
income. He commanded good prices and would 
make no reductions. Once when he had painted 
a group for a rich client, who paid the fee of 
$500 with some reluctance, he requested his cus- 


481 



Inman 


Inman 


toraer to return the picture, and then he “cut off 
all the legs and sent it back with $200.” 

In 1826 Inman was elected vice-president of 
the newly established National Academy of De¬ 
sign, of which he was one of the founders. He 
served in this office from 1826 to 1830, and again 
from 1838 to 1844. In 1832 he married Jane 
Riker O'Brien, and moved to Philadelphia, where 
he became a director of the Pennsylvania Acad¬ 
emy and was associated with Col. C. G. Childs 
in a lithographic business. His home until 1835 
was at Mount Holly, N. J., near Philadelphia, 
where he bought a country house in pleasant 
surroundings. He was fond of the country, liked 
to paint landscapes when he had the time, and 
complained because his patrons would buy noth¬ 
ing but portraits. He had a taste for natural his¬ 
tory, Buffon being one of his favorite authors. 
After 1835 he returned to New York. For sev¬ 
eral years thereafter he was kept busy, but about 
1840 the tide turned against him, and to add to 
his troubles the asthma, from which he had suf¬ 
fered periodically for years, became more severe, 
and he was deeply depressed. 

In 1844 he was commissioned by three gen¬ 
erous friends—James Lenox, Edward L. Carey, 
and Henry Reed—to go to England for the pur¬ 
pose of painting the portraits of Wordsworth, 
Macaulay, and Dr. Chalmers. This proved a for¬ 
tunate venture, and for a time resulted in Inman's 
improved health, renewed courage, and freedom 
from economic care. He had a very happy so¬ 
journ at Rydal Mount as the guest of Words¬ 
worth whose portrait, now belonging to the 
University of Pennsylvania, was notably suc¬ 
cessful. Wordsworth spoke of him as the most 
decided man of genius he had ever seen from 
America (Dunn, post, p. 250). Inman's daugh¬ 
ter Mary, who accompanied him on this trip, won 
all hearts by her beauty and gracious manners. 
While at Rydal, Inman made some landscape 
studies, including a view of Rydall Falls, and he 
made a drawing of the poet's house and garden 
from which later he painted a picture, now at 
the University of Pennsylvania, in which he in¬ 
troduced two small figures, one of Wordsworth 
and the other of himself. Going up from the 
Lake District to London, he was received with 
open arms by Leslie, Maclise, Mulready, and 
Stanfield, and his portraits of Macaulay and 
Chalmers were considered among his best. He 
also painted the portrait of Lord Chancellor Cot- 
tenham. He was urged to remain in London, 
but domestic duties and the precarious state of 
his health obliged him to return to New Y ork in 
1845. He then began the execution of a commis¬ 
sion from Congress to furnish a series of his¬ 


torical paintings for the Capitol at Washington; 
and he was at work on the first of these, depicting 
the cabin of Daniel Boone in the wilds of Ken¬ 
tucky, when he died of heart disease at the age 
of forty-five. An important memorial exhibi¬ 
tion of 126 of his works was held soon after 
his death in New York. It contained many of 
his best pictures. 

Among his sitters were Chief Justice Marshall, 
President Van Buren, William H. Seward, De- 
Witt Clinton, John James Audubon, Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, Fitz-Greene Halleck, Charles Fenno 
Hoffman, George P. Morris, Peggy O'Neill Ea¬ 
ton, Clara Barton, and Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes 
Smith, advocate of woman's rights. He also 
painted portraits of Lafayette and William Penn. 
His genre pictures and landscapes were popular. 
“Mumble-the-Peg” (in the Pennsylvania Acad¬ 
emy) was engraved for The Gift for 1844. “The 
Boyhood of Washington” was based upon epi¬ 
sodes recounted by Sparks in his biography. Of 
other works of this nature may be mentioned 
“Picnic in the Catskills” (Brooklyn Museum), 
“The Young Fisherman” (Metropolitan Mu¬ 
seum), “Rip Van Winkle's Awakening,” and 
the “Bride of Lammermoor.” His “View of Ry¬ 
dal Water” (Brooklyn Museum) was painted at 
the suggestion of Wordsworth, who was with 
him while he made the sketch. His last painting, 
“An October Afternoon,” a landscape with fig¬ 
ures, shows a rustic schoolhouse on the edge of a 
wood, with children at play. Inman’s work was 
facile and exact in drawing, and it was often 
likened to that of Sir Thomas Lawrence. He 
was unequal, however, and at times meretricious. 
Isham calls him competent but commonplace, 
and finds “more likeness than character” in his 
heads. As a man Inman was likable and so¬ 
cially gifted. He was a good talker, wrote a lit¬ 
tle in prose and verse, and could hold up his 
end of an argument. His likeness shows him to 
have been a rugged person, with a thick wavy 
mane of hair, keen serious eyes, a large mouth, 
strong nose, broad brow, and determined jaw. 
He left five children, one of whom was Henry 
Inman, 1837-1899 [ q.v 

[C. E. Lester, The Artists of America (1846) ; F. B. 
Hough, A Hist, of Lewis County, in the State of N. Y. 
(i860); Esther C. Dunn, “Inman’s Portrait of Words¬ 
worth,” Scribner's Mag., Feb. 1920; Wm. Dunlap, A 
Hist, of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in 
the U. S. (3 vols., 1918); H. T. Tuckerman, Book of 
the Artists (1867) ; Samuel Isham, The Hist, of Am. 
Painting (190?); C. H. Caffin, Story of Am. Painting 
(1907) \ Ehrich Galleries, N. Y., One Hundred Early 
Am. Paintings (1918) ; N. Y. Tribune, Jan. 19, 1846.] 

W.H.D. 

INMAN, HENRY (July 30, 1837-Nov. 13, 
1899), Union soldier, author, was born in New 


482 



Inman Inman 


York City, the son of Henry Inman tq.v.], a 
painter, and his wife, Jane Riker (O’Brien) In¬ 
dian. When Henry was yet a boy his father died 
and his mother moved to a small farm near 
Hempstead, L. I. The youth for a time attended 
the Athenian Academy at Rahway, N. J., and had 
further instruction from private tutors. At twen¬ 
ty he enlisted in the army, and as a private (later 
a corporal) in the 9th Infantry served for four 
years in the Indian disturbances in California 
and Oregon. On the outbreak of the Civil War 
he was transferred to the 17th Infantry, Army 
of the Potomac, becoming a first lieutenant in 
October 1861. In the Peninsular campaign he 
served on the staff of Gen. George Sykes, and 
for gallant conduct at Gaines’s Mills, June 27, 
1862, was brevetted a captain. During the next 
two years he served in the Quartermaster’s De¬ 
partment. At the end of the war he was sent 
to Kansas, where he distinguished himself in 
the Indian campaigns, attaining the brevet of 
lieutenant-colonel in February 1869. On July 24, 
1872, he was cashiered from the army. 

In 1878 Inman took charge of a newspaper, the 
Lamed Enterprise. In 1882 he became manager 
of the Kansas News Agency at Topeka and was 
subsequently employed on various newspapers 
in the state. His interest in the frontier prompted 
the writing of a number of sketches of adven¬ 
ture which in 1881 were published in book form 
under the title Stones of the Old Santa Fe Trail. 
Another collection, In the Van of Empire, fol¬ 
lowed in 1889. The wide circulation of these 
sketches, due in part to the printing of a selec¬ 
tion of them by the Atchison, Topeka 8c Santa 
Fe Railway Company as an advertisement, in¬ 
duced Inman to plan a larger and more compre¬ 
hensive work on the subject. With the financial 
aid of his friend, W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), he 
completed the volume, which was published in 
November 1897 under the title, The Old Santa Fe 
Trail, The Story of a Great Highway . It scored 
an immediate success, bringing him money and 
fame. During the next year he produced Tales 
of the Trail, The Ranche on the Oxhide, and A 
Pioneer from Kentucky, and in collaboration 
with Cody, The Great Salt Lake Trail. In 1899 
he published The Delahoydes and a compilation 
of the frontier experiences of the Hon. Charles 
J. Jones under the title, Buffalo Jonef Forty 
Years of Adventure. 

Inman was married in Portland, Me., Oct. 22, 
1862, to Eunice C. Dyer, the daughter of a 
prominent shipbuilder. In his later years he 
separated from his family, living in a small 
hotel in Topeka. He was a man of many eccen¬ 
tricities. He lived frugally but spent money lav¬ 


ishly on a blind boy whom he had met in a hos¬ 
pital. The large royalties received during his last 
two years were squandered, and at the time of 
his death he was in debt His writings, though 
popular, have little historical value. He died in 
Topeka. 

[F. B. Heitman, Hist. Reg. and Diet . of the U. S. 
Army (1903) ; Appletons* Ann. Cyc., iSgg; Who's Who 
in America, 1899-1900; Kansas City Star, Nov. 13, 
1899; Topeka Daily Capital and Kansas City Jour., 
Nov. 14,1899.] W.J.G. 

INMAN, JOHN (1805-Mar. 30, 1850), jour¬ 
nalist and editor, the son of William and Sarah 
Inman, was bom in Utica, N. Y. (F. B. Hough, 

A History of Lewis County, i860, p. 124). About 
1812 William Inman removed with his family to 
New York City. Although without an adequate 
formal education, John, toward the dose of 1823, 
went to North Carolina, where he taught school 
for two years. After spending a year in Europe, 
he returned to New York and from 1829 to 1833 
practised law. But owing either to a small clien¬ 
tele or to a love of literature, inherited, perhaps, 
from his father, who was a gentleman of educa¬ 
tion and culture, he gradually drifted into jour¬ 
nalistic work. From 1828 to 1831, and later in 
1835 and 1836, Inman served on the editorial 
staff of the New York Mirror, a literary maga¬ 
zine founded in 1823 by George P. Morris. For 
a short time in 1828 he seems also to have had 
an editorial charge in the New York Standard. 
About 1837 he accepted a more important ap¬ 
pointment as an assistant editor of the Commer¬ 
cial Advertiser, and with the death of William 
L. Stone, the editor-in-chief, in 1844, assumed 
its complete editorial control, which he retained 
until shortly before his death. With the estab¬ 
lishment in 1844 of the Columbian Lady’s and 
Gentleman’s Magazine, Inman was appointed 
editor of the periodical, later having as an asso¬ 
ciate Robert A. West. This periodical was for¬ 
tunate in numbering among its contributors such 
writers as H. T. Tuckerman, Mrs. Lydia Sigour¬ 
ney, and Edgar Allan Poe. Duyckinck asserts 
that Inman himself on one occasion wrote an 
entire number of the periodical. Inman’s con¬ 
nection with the magazine ceased in 1848. He 
was also for a time a contributor to the Spirit 
of the Times and the New York Review. 

Thus Inman’s life was largely spent in the 
obscurity of editorial offices, where he passed 
an anonymous literary existence. Still, the pe¬ 
riodicals and miscellanies of his day reveal a 
number of signed articles which aid us in esti¬ 
mating the man’s literary ability. These prose 
tales vary much in subject matter and artistic 
value. “Old Graham the Beggar,” in The Chris¬ 
tian Souvenir (Boston, 1843) j a feeble, senti- 



Inman Inman 


mental effusion in a purely didactic vein. Of 
slightly greater artistic merit is “The Sudden and 
Sharp Doom,” a story published in The Gift for 
1843 (Philadelphia, 1842), which also included 
the first printing of Poe's “Pit and the Pendu¬ 
lum.” In “Early Love and Constancy” (New 
York Mirror, Apr. 2, 1831) Inman presents a 
sentimental tale, tempered, in the early Knicker¬ 
bocker manner, by elements of burlesque. A 
quaint little sketch, in places worthy of Irving 
himself, whose style Inman has obviously sought 
to imitate, is “The Little Old Man of Coblentz,” 
contributed anonymously to The Talisman for 
MDCCCXXIX (New York, 1828). Inman also 
wrote for an edition of Samuel Maunder’s Treas¬ 
ury of History, published in New York in 1845, 
a sketch of American history. 

In 1833 Inman married Miss Fisher, the sis¬ 
ter of several comedians of that name popular 
at the Park Theatre. Although greatly over¬ 
shadowed in reputation by his more accom¬ 
plished brother, Henry Inman, 1801-1846 [q.vf], 
the painter, he yet seems to have been liked by 
his contemporaries. He belonged to the “Sketch 
Club,” which included among its members 
Bryant, Halleck, and Verplanck. “Halleck,” 
says J. G. Wilson, “esteemed him highly as a 
genial companion and an accomplished littera¬ 
teur” 

[Brief sketches of Inman’s life are to be found in 
E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyc. of Am. Lit. (ed. 
i 875)» II, 244, the Internat. Miscellany ( Internal. 
Monthly Mag.), Oct. 1850,and J. G. Wilson, Bryant and 
His Friends (1886), pp. 408-09. Facts regarding some 
of his editorial connections are included in F. L. Mott, 
A Hist, of Am. Magazines, 1741-1850 (1930).] 

N.F.A. 

INMAN, JOHN HAMILTON (Oct. 6,1844- 
Nov. 5, 1896), merchant and financier, was born 
at Dandridge, Jefferson County, Tenn., the 
brother of Samuel Martin Inman [q.v.]. Both 
his parents, Shadrach W. and Jane Martin 
(Hamilton) Inman, were of Revolutionary stock, 
the former of English descent, the latter of north- 
of-Ireland ancestry. The boy spent his early life 
upon his father's plantation, and in his gen¬ 
eral store. After attending a neighborhood acad¬ 
emy, he refused to go to college and worked for 
a year in a bank in Georgia, where he began to 
show the financial ability displayed in later life. 
From 1862 to 1865 he was in the Confederate 
army, though the sentiment of his section of East 
Tennessee was strongly Unionist and he was 
threatened with physical violence on his dis¬ 
charge from the army. In the fall of 1865 he 
went to New York with only a few dollars, since 
his father had. been ruined by the war, and se¬ 
cured em^oyment in a cotton house. Soon he be¬ 


came a partner, but in 1870, organized the new 
firm of Inman, Swann & Company. He was 
one of the organizers of the New York Cotton 
Exchange, and until the end of his life was a 
prominent figure in the cotton trade of the world. 

As he accumulated capital he turned toward 
the industrial development of the Southern states. 
He was one of the organizers, and long a director, 
of the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Com¬ 
pany, later to be absorbed by the United States 
Steel Corporation. He was also interested in the 
Louisville & Nashville Railroad, in the Central 
Railroad & Banking Company of Georgia, and 
became influential in the Richmond & Danville 
Railroad and in the Richmond & West Point 
Terminal Railway & Warehouse Company, 
which was organized first as an adjunct to the 
Richmond & Danville, but later controlled the 
parent corporation and all its leased and sub¬ 
sidiary lines. Inman served as president of both 
these corporations, which were later to be the 
backbone of the Southern Railway system. He 
had interests in various other Southern enter¬ 
prises (though he was a promoter rather than 
a builder), and claimed that he had been instru¬ 
mental in the investment of at least $100,000,000 
of Northern capital in the South. He was also 
a director in various important banks and in¬ 
surance companies in New York, and from its 
organization to his death was a member of the 
New York Rapid Transit Commission which 
was charged with the duty of finding a solution 
of the traffic problems of New York City. 

The financial depression culminating in the 
panic of 1893 precipitated the bankruptcy of most 
Southern railroads and seriously crippled him. 
His attempts to recoup by speculating in cotton 
were disastrous, and his losses led to a nervous 
collapse in 1896. He died at a sanitarium at New 
Canaan, Conn., to which he had been secretly 
removed, and not at a hotel in the Berkshires, as 
is stated in most accounts. Inman was a man of 
abounding energy, undoubted financial ability, 
and considerable personal charm. His enthusi¬ 
astic belief in the possibilities of Southern indus¬ 
trial development had its influence at a time 
when most financiers were skeptical, and his at¬ 
tempts to combine Southern railways laid a 
foundation upon which stronger hands were later 
able to build. He married, in 1870, Margaret 
McKinney Coffin of Monroe County, Tenn. 

[Material upon Inman’s life is fragmentary and is 
to be found chiefly in the newspapers and in the reports 
oTthe various enterprises with which he was connected. 
The New York papers at the time of his death con¬ 
tained sketches of him, see especially N. Y. Tribune, 
gov. 7, 5896; jV. Y. Times , Nov. 6, 1896. See also T. 
H. Martin, Atlanta and its Builders (190 2). and Knox¬ 
ville Jour., Nov. 6, 1896.] tt T—n 


484 



Inman 

INMAN, SAMUEL MARTIN (Feb. 19, 
1843-Jan. 12, 1915), merchant and philanthro¬ 
pist, was born in Jefferson County, Tenn.; he was 
the son of Shadrach W. and Jane Martin (Ham¬ 
ilton) Inman, and the brother of John Hamilton 
Inman [q.v.]. His father was a prosperous mer¬ 
chant and planter, while his mother seems to 
have been a woman of unusual strength of char¬ 
acter. Young Inman’s early life was spent upon 
his father’s plantation until he entered Maryville 
College. In the autumn of i860 he entered the 
sophomore class at Princeton, but left the follow¬ 
ing April to join the Confederate army, enlisting 
as a private in the 1st Tennessee Cavalry, and 
ending as a lieutenant on staff duty. In 1886 he 
received the honorary degree of A.M. from 
Princeton. After the close of the war he worked 
in Augusta, Ga., for a year or more, and, in 1867, 
with his father, opened a cotton office in Atlanta, 
which was to be his home until his death. The 
father returned to Tennessee in 1870, but the busi¬ 
ness was continued as S. M. Inman & Company. 
The firm prospered and became one of the largest 
dealers in cotton in the world, with several 
branch offices in different parts of the South. In 
1896 Inman retired from active direction of the 
business, but he continued to give some attention 
to various financial and industrial enterprises. 
He was one of the organizers and was also a 
director of the Southern Railway, the yards of 
which in Atlanta are named for him. He was a 
director of the Equitable Life Assurance So¬ 
ciety, of the Atlanta Constitution, and of several 
banks. He was a close friend and trusted ad¬ 
viser of President Samuel Spencer of the South¬ 
ern Railway, and of Henry W. Grady [g.^.], the 
gifted editor of the Constitution . Earlier he had 
been financially interested in some of the enter¬ 
prises of his brother, John Hamilton Inman, to 
whom his sound judgment had been valuable. 

While still engaged in active business, he 
found time to work for the welfare of his city 
and section. He was treasurer of the Interna¬ 
tional Cotton Exposition held in Atlanta in 1881, 
and backed it when failure seemed certain. He 
also made possible the opening of the Cotton 
States and International Exposition at Atlanta 
in 1895. After his retirement he gave more and 
more of his time to civic duties, and, though from 
choice he never held any public office, he was 
universally acclaimed the “first citizen of At¬ 
lanta.” He was influential in founding the 
Georgia School of Technology, to which he con¬ 
tributed largely in money and time, serving as 
president of the board of trustees ; he gave lib¬ 
erally to Agnes Scott Institute (now Agnes Scott 
College) and through his example interested 


Innes 

others. He made donations to Oglethorpe and 
Emory universities, and was a member of the 
committee to choose Rhodes scholars for Georgia. 
He was prominent in the agitation which led to 
increased appropriations for public schools and 
the establishment of agricultural high schools. 
In fact, he allowed hardly an appeal for any edu¬ 
cational, religious, or benevolent object to go un¬ 
heeded. He is known to have given away more 
than a million dollars in his lifetime, and the total 
of his benefactions was probably much greater. 
He was for many years an elder in the First 
Presbyterian Church of Atlanta. The Samuel M. 
Inman School in that city, erected in 1893-94, 
was named in his honor. On the day of his fu¬ 
neral courts and schools were closed and busi¬ 
ness was almost suspended. His sister, Jane W. 
Inman, left her property, amounting to about 
to Agnes Scott College as a memorial 
to her brother. Inman was twice married: first, 
Feb. 19,1868, to Jennie Dick of Rome, Ga., who 
died in 1890; and, second, Dec. 12, 1892, to Mil¬ 
dred McPheeters, daughter of Alexander M. Mc- 
Pheeters of Raleigh, N. C., who, with three chil¬ 
dren of the first marriage, survived him. 

[W. P. Reed, Hist, of Atlanta (1889) ; T. H. Martin, 
Atlanta and its Builders (2 vols., 1902) ; Atlanta Con¬ 
stitution, Atlanta Journal, Jan. 13, 1915; information 
from the secretary of Princeton University.] n 

INNES, HARRY (Jan. 4, 1752 o.s.-Sept. 20, 
1816), federal district judge for Kentucky, was 
bom in Caroline County, Va., the son of Robert 
and Catherine (Richards) Innes. His father 
emigrated from Scotland before the middle of the 
eighteenth century and settled in Drysdale parish. 
Harry was educated at Donald Robertson’s 
school along with his brother James Innes [q.v.], 
James Madison, Edmund Pendleton, and other 
sons of Virginia. He was admitted to the bar 
and moved to Bedford County, where he built up 
a successful law practice. In 1776 and 1777 he 
administered powder mills and lead mines in the 
state under the Virginia Committee of Safety. 
In 1779 he was elected by the legislature to de¬ 
termine claims to unpatented lands in the district 
around Abingdon and, in that same year, was 
appointed escheator for his own county, where, 
in 1780, he was able to obtain thousands of pounds 
for the Virginia treasury. As commissioner of 
the specific tax for Bedford County, the next 
year, he collected cattle and produce so success¬ 
fully that, on Mar. 27,1782, he was appointed by 
Benjamin Harrison to be superintendent over 
the commissioners of six counties. In this dif¬ 
ficult post he remained until the end of the war. 

In October 1784 he was elected by the legis¬ 
lature to succeed Walker Daniel as attorney- 


485 



Innes 


Innes 


general for the western district of Virginia and, 
the next spring, moved over the mountains to 
settle in what is now the state of Kentucky. Al¬ 
though he supported Patrick Henry in opposition 
to Virginia's ratification of the federal Consti¬ 
tution, he became United States district judge 
for Kentucky in 1789 and served in that capacity 
until his death. He identified himself thoroughly 
with the life of the new country. The first year 
of his residence in Kentucky he was chosen a 
member of the board of trustees of Transylvania 
University, on which he continued to serve until 
Apr. 11,1792; the second year he was one of that 
group of intellectual men which called itself 
“The Political Club”; and as early as 1789 he 
was a member of the society that was organized 
to promote manufacture and, in 1790, established 
at Danville a cotton factory with machinery 
brought from Philadelphia (Speed, post, p. 159). 
He maintained an interest in the methods and 
economy of agriculture, informed himself of the 
changing prices of commodities in the seaboard 
markets, received seeds of various kinds from 
Europe, and watched with interest the widening 
development of his region. He was the chief 
spokesman of Kentucky's need for protection 
against the outraged Indians and was active in 
the struggle for separate state existence. He sat 
in the first constitutional convention, where he 
supported a resolution to abolish slavery, which 
was defeated after a hard struggle and by a close 
vote (Brown, post, p. 239). 

^ By his intimate association with James Wil¬ 
kinson and Benjamin Sebastian he brought upon 
himself grave suspicions that he had joined them 
in treasonable negotiations with Spain (T. M. 
Green, The Spanish Conspiracy, 1891, esp. p. 85; 
for defense see Brown, post, pp. 160-75). In 
1806 he refused an irregular application of the 
federal district attorney for a warrant to compel 
the appearance in court of Aaron Burr but, upon 
Burr's own insistence, summoned the grand jury, 
which, however, refused to indict (Innes Papers, 
vol 18; R. M. McElroy, Kentucky in the Nation's 
History, 1909, pp. 296-308). The investigation of 
Sebastian's relations with Spain, in that same year, 
seemed to implicate Innes. Humphrey Marshall 
[q.v.] f a Federalist and bitter personal and po¬ 
litical enemy, carried charges, first, to the Ken¬ 
tucky legislature and, then, through a resolution 
of that body, to the federal Congress, which re¬ 
fused to institute impeachment proceedings (An- 

nds of Congress , 10 Cong., 1 Sess., cols. 1885, 
1886, 2198, 2247—50; the Sebastian report, on 
which the charges were based, Ibid., cols. 2760- 
90; the material on Sebastian's trial as well as 
that cm the investigation of charges against Mar¬ 


shall for land frauds in Innes Papers, vol. 18,2nd 
quarter; see also American State Papers, “Mis¬ 
cellaneous Documents,” vol. 1,1834, PP- 933-35). 

Not content with the action of Congress, Innes 
prosecuted two suits for libel. One, begun in 
1806, was against Joseph M. Street, the editor 
of the Federalist Western World, which had 
charged corrupt intrigue with the Spanish gov¬ 
ernment. After several years of litigation the 
courts awarded damages to Innes, and the defend¬ 
ant was forced to beg for some accommodation 
of the matter (letter of Jan. 10, 1813, from 
Charles Wilkins to Thomas Bodley making the 
offer for Street, Innes Papers, vol. 18, almost at 
end). The other suit was against Humphrey 
Marshall, who had anonymously written articles 
in the Western World, and resulted in a divided 
jury with each party paying costs (Ibid., vol. 22, 
pt 2 and vol. 18). Nevertheless the long-stand¬ 
ing quarrel continued to drag along until, on 
Feb. 17,1815, the two men signed a formal agree¬ 
ment not to mention each other disrespectfully 
(Ibid., vol. 22, pt. 2, end of 1st quarter), an 
agreement that was violated after Innes's death 
by Marshall in publishing the second (1824) 
edition of his History of Kentucky. 

Innes was married twice: first, to Elizabeth 
Calloway of Bedford County, Va., who died in 
1791, and, second, to Mrs. Ann Shields, whose 
daughter, Maria Innes, married John J. Critten¬ 
den Iq.v.]. 


ixiairy Innes Papers m Lib. of Cong.; there is some 
authority for the spelling “Hary” (see T. M. Green. 
Hist. Families of Ky., 1889, P- 194) but his own sig- 
natiire in the Innes Papers is “Harry ”; Thomas Speed. 
The Political Club (1894) ; Va. Mag. of Hist., Apr. 
1897; J. M. Brown, Political Beginnings of Ky. (1889), 
esp. pp. 197-219 and 160-75 ,* Lewis and R. H. Collins, 
Hist, of Ky., revised ed. (2 vols., 1874) ; Robert Peter, 
Transylvania University (1896) ; W. H. Perrin, J. H. 

C- KxuEta, Ky.: A Hist, of the State 
en ^ °f Ky* (1872), esp. pp. 
260-61; J. W. Hart, The Callaway Family of Va., MS. 
m Ub. of Cong, dated 1929; Argus (Frankfort, Ky.), 
Sept. 27,1816.) F..W-L 


INNES, JAMES (i754~Aug. 2, 1798), lawyer 
and orator, was bom in Caroline County, Va., 
third and youngest son of Robert Innes, a cul¬ 
tured Scottish clergyman, and his wife Cath¬ 
erine Richards, and was the brother of Harry 
Innes [#.#.]. After receiving a classical training 
from his father, who intended him for the min¬ 
istry, and at Donald Robertson's school in King 
and Queen County, he entered the college of Wil¬ 
liam and Mary in the class of 1771. His activities 
at the outset of the Revolutionary troubles led 
the Loyalist faculty to recall his appointment as 
usher; twelve years later the visitors of the col¬ 
lege elected him their rector. As captain of the 
Williamsburg volunteers he led his command 


486 



Innes Inness 


against Dunmore at Hampton; and, as lieutenant- 
colonel of the 15th Virginia Regiment and some¬ 
time aide to Washington, fought at Trenton, 
Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, and Mon¬ 
mouth before resigning his commission. After 
serving as navy commissioner in 1778, and presi¬ 
dent of the board of war for Virginia in 1779, he 
represented successively James City County and 
Williamsburg in the Assembly from 1780 to 1782 
and from 1783 to 1787, interrupting his legisla¬ 
tive career at Washington’s request to raise a 
home regiment, which he commanded at York- 
town. The Continental Congress elected him 
judge-advocate of the army on July 9, 1782, but 
he did not accept the appointment. He married 
Elizabeth, daughter of James Cocke of Williams¬ 
burg, and left one child, Ann, who married Pey¬ 
ton Randolph of Wilton. 

His courteous address, humor, accurate and 
varied learning, and lofty principle soon com¬ 
bined with his eloquence to carry him to the first 
rank at the Virginia bar, where probably his 
most important suit was the famous British debt 
cause in Richmond from 1791 to 1793, in which 
he was associated with Henry and Marshall for 
the defendant. The effect of his majestic yet 
modulated voice, his occasionally vehement ac¬ 
tion, and his nervous, graceful style was almost 
incredibly moving: in general estimation he was 
more nearly Patrick Henry’s equal in addressing 
popular bodies than any of his contemporaries, 
and some considered Innes the greater orator. 
A man of such colossal stature that he could not 
“ride an ordinary horse or sit in a common chair, 
and usually read or meditated in his bed or on the 
floor” (Grigsby, post , vol. I, 326), his vast size 
imparted dignity to his manner. In the Vir¬ 
ginia Convention of 1788 he was chosen by the 
friends of the Constitution to make the final ap¬ 
peal for its adoption without amendments, and 
produced a profound impression, even Henry, 
the spokesman of the opposition, paying tribute 
to his splendid eloquence as “magnificent... fit 
to shake the human mind” (Ibid., p. 333)- On 
Nov. 23, 1786, he succeeded Edmund Randolph 
as attorney-general of Virginia, defeating John 
Marshall for the office, and was tendered the at¬ 
torney-generalship of the United States by Presi¬ 
dent Washington, but personal reasons caused 
him to decline it, as they doubtless led him to 
neglect Jefferson’s appeal to stand for Congress 
(A. A. Lipscomb, The Writings of Thomas Jef¬ 
ferson, 1903, vol. VIII, 145-46). It is said that 
he would have been sent as envoy to France in 
1797, instead of Marshall, had his health per¬ 
mitted. He was in Philadelphia discharging his 
duties as commissioner under Jay’s treaty when 


he died “of a dropsy of the abdomen” and was 
buried in Christ Church burial-ground, near the 
grave of Franklin. 

Despite His brilliant promise, his substantial 
achievement, and the remarkable esteem in 
which such compeers as Pendleton, Wythe, Taze¬ 
well, Jefferson, and Washington held him, no 
less for his greatness of soul than for his copious 
talents, oblivion overtook Innes’s fame even with 
his generation. Had he been granted longer life, 
free from the ill-health and family cares which 
harassed his last years, it seems improbable that 
any office to which he might have aspired would 
have been denied him. Unfortunately for his 
reputation with posterity he used tongue and 
sword more often than pen; his name appears 
only rarely in accounts of current political con¬ 
troversies, his attendance upon the courts fre¬ 
quently preventing his participation in legis¬ 
lative debate; and, most damaging, his carefully 
formulated speeches were not adequately re¬ 
ported, so that no fair specimen of his oratory 
remains. 

[H. B. Grigsby, “Va. Federal Convention of 1788/' 
Va. Hist. Soc. Colls., n.s. vols. IX, X (1891); Va. Mag. 
of Hist, and Biog., Apr. 1896, Apr. 1897, July 1897, 
July 1905, July 1925, Apr. 1926; Wm. and Mary Coll 
Quart., Jan. 1917; Calendar of Va. State Papers, vols. 
IV (1884), VII (1888), VIII (1890); L. G. Tyler, 
Williamsburg (1907) ; R. M. McElroy, Ky. in the Ndr 
tion’s Hist. (1909); E. G. Swem and J. W. Williams, 
A Reg. of the Gen. Assembly of Va. (1918).] 

A. C. G.,Jr. 

INNESS, GEORGE (May 1, 1825-Aug. 3, 
1894), landscape painter, born on a farm two 
miles from Newburgh, N. Y., was the fifth of a 
family of thirteen children. His father, John 
William Inness (1792-1873), was of Scotch de¬ 
scent, but was bom in America, his forebears 
having crossed the Atlantic soon after the Ameri¬ 
can Revolution. He was an energetic and pros¬ 
perous New York merchant, who, having made a 
competence in the grocery business, retired tem¬ 
porarily for recreation and rest. His wife, Cla¬ 
rissa Baldwin, died in 1841, a year and a day 
after the birth of her thirteenth child. George 
Inness was a delicate child of a nervous tem¬ 
perament, but strong of will and full of ambition. 
The family returned to New York City while he 
was still an infant; but very soon, in 1829, re¬ 
moved to another country home in the outskirts 
of Newark, N. J., where his boyhood was passed. 
His progress at school was often interrupted by 
ill health; moreover his teacher reported that he 
“would not take education.” His father then 
tried to make a grocer of him, but with no suc¬ 
cess, and the experiment was given up after a 
month’s trial. Finally the boy urged his father 
to allow him to study drawing, and accordingly 


487 



Inness Inness 


he was placed under the instruction of one 
Barker, who shortly declared that he had taught 
him all he knew. 

At the age of sixteen George entered the em¬ 
ploy of Sherman & Smith, map engravers, in 
New York, where he remained about a year. 
Then he became the pupil of Regis Gignoux, a 
French landscapist who had set up a studio in 
New York. This was the only technical training 
in painting that he ever had. About 1845 he took 
a studio for himself and began his professional 
career. He boarded at the Astor House and paid 
for his board in pictures. He had already done 
some sketching from nature at Pottsville, Pa., 
where his elder brother James lived. A signifi¬ 
cant remark made by George Inness as to his 
struggle to render the “action of the clouds” de¬ 
notes the seriousness with which as a youth he 
grappled with the difficulties of his vocation. 
Beyond doubt, however, his early productions 
were crude. His first exhibition picture, “Af¬ 
ternoon,” painted in 1846, and shown at the Art 
Union, was tight and niggling, with a little of 
everything in the composition—woods and hills, 
fields and pastures, trees and stream, cattle and 
sheep, horse and rider, red barn and bridge—yet 
it had an air of rustic actuality. 

One of the young painter's first patrons was 
Ogden Haggerty, an auctioneer, who bought 
several of his pictures and supplied him with 
money for his first trip abroad in 1847. Inness 
went to Italy, and spent a year there, painting in 
the vicinity of Rome. Soon after his return he 
married Delia Miller of Newark. She died about 
six months later. In 1850 he married Elizabeth 
Hart of New York. She was then seventeen, 
and he was twenty-five. In 1851 they went to 
Italy in a sailing vessel, and remained there two 
years. Their first child was born in Florence. 
They returned in 1852, lived for a while in 
Brooklyn, then made another visit to Europe in 
*854, going this time to France, and lodging in 
the Latin Quarter of Paris, where their son 
George was bom. The work of Rousseau, Corot, 
and Daubigny made a deep and lasting impres¬ 
sion upon Inness at this time. Returning from 
France, the family again found themselves at 
home in Brooklyn, and there they stayed until 
1859, when they moved to Boston, thence shortly 
going to Medfield, Mass., a quiet suburban town, 
where they lived for five years. Three more 
children were bom. In Medfield Inness painted 
some of his most famous and beautiful canvases 
in an old bam which he had converted into a 
studio. Among the most frequent visitors at this 
period were Mark Fisher, George N. Cass, and 


J. A. S. Monks, ardent admirers and disciples of 
Inness. 

After the close of the Civil War Inness was 
induced to go to Eagleswood, N. J., by Marcus 
Spring, a friend who constituted himself the art¬ 
ist's business agent and sales manager. In 1871 
Inness made another journey abroad, and this 
time he stayed four years, most of the time in or 
near Rome. After his return he spent one year 
in Boston, then he went to New York and took a 
studio in West Fifty-fifth Street. Finally, in 
1878, he removed to an old house in Montclair, 
N. J., where the rest of his life was passed 
happily, with occasional intervals of travel to 
Florida, California, Virginia, Nantucket, and 
elsewhere. He died of heart disease at Bridge 
of Allan, Scotland, while traveling, Aug. 3,1894. 
His body was brought back to the United States, 
and an impressive funeral was held on Aug. 23 
at the National Academy of Design, New York. 
He was survived by his wife, his son George, 
and his daughter Helen, the wife of Jonathan 
Scott Hartley [g.^.]. The winter following his 
death, a sale of his paintings took place in New 
York, and some 240 works, many of them 
sketches, brought a total of $108,670. Up to 
1875, at which time he was fifty years old, the 
sale of his works had brought him no adequate 
income. He had been blissfully indifferent to 
money, economic cares having been shouldered 
for him at various periods by Ogden Haggerty, 
Marcus Spring, his own brothers, and sundry 
picture dealers in Boston and New York. But 
in the seventies a still more valiant guardian 
angel came upon the scene in the person of 
Thomas B. Clarke, who bought thirty-five land¬ 
scapes and set a fashion that was soon followed 
by other rich collectors—Seney, Halsted, Ells¬ 
worth, and many more. Then Inness' income be¬ 
came larger than that of any landscape painter 
living. His conviction that merchants existed 
chiefly for the purpose of supporting artists was 
thus pleasantly confirmed. So long as he could 
be left free to work twelve or more hours a day 
at his easel, nothing else mattered. 

His early work had some of the earmarks of 
the Hudson River school; that is to say, it was 
scenic and literal, with minute detail elaborated 
at the expense of unity and breadth. But as soon 
as he became acquainted with the work of the 
men of 1830 in France, as soon as his own study 
of nature taught him the pictorial value of sug¬ 
gestion as opposed to objective realism, his style 
underwent a steady development in the direction 
of lyricism and individuality. He gave expres¬ 
sion to his strong feeling for the poetic side of 
landscape, for the subtle beauties of tone and of 


488 



Innokenti’I 

light, the harmonies due to atmospheric con¬ 
ditions, and above all to the rich, full, throbbing 
life of the earth and sky. The intensity of his 
temperament made itself more and more mani¬ 
fest in his late work; his magnificent ardor lent 
to his canvases an almost magical power and 
charm which defy all analysis. Among American 
landscapists he came to occupy the first place by 
common consent. His paintings are in the mu¬ 
seums of Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadel¬ 
phia, Washington, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Worces¬ 
ter, and many other cities. The Edward B. But¬ 
ler collection in the Art Institute of Chicago 
.wains more than a score of representative 
canvases. 

Inness was always a mystic and he loved meta¬ 
physical speculation. Beginning as a Baptist, he 
went over to Methodism, and at last became a 
Swedenborgian. His three hobbies were art, re¬ 
ligion, and the single tax. He was, says Van 
Dyke, supertemperamental even for an artist. 
His personal appearance bore out these psycho¬ 
logical qualities. He looked like a fanatic. With 
his piercing gaze, his long hair, the intensity of 
his expression, and the nervous energy that 
marked his action, he was a formidable person¬ 
age. 

[Geo. Inness, Jr., Life, Art and Letters of Geo . Inness 
(1917); Alfred Trumble, Geo. Inness, N.A., A Memorial 
(1895); Masters in Art, June 1908;. Montgomery 
Schuyler, “Geo. Inness: The Man and His Work,” the 
Forum, Nov, 1894; John C. Van Dyke, Am. Painting 
and Its Tradition (1919), and “Geo. Inness/’ Outlook, 
Mar. 7, 1903; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines 
Lexikon der Bildenden Kunstler, vol. XIX (1926); 
Henry Eckford, “George Inness/’ Century Mag., May 
1882; W. H. Downes, Twelve Great Artists (1900); 
Elliott Daingerfield, Fifty Paintings by Geo. Inness 
(1913); Catalogue of the collection of Thomas B, 
Clarke (1899) ; J. J. Jarves, The Art-Idea (1864) ; C. 
C. Baldwin, The Baldwin Geneal., Supp. (1889) ; N. Y. 
Tribune, Aug. 4, 1894; information as to certain facts 
from Inness’grand-daughter.] W.H.D. 

INNOKENTII (Aug. 26,I797-Mar.3i, 1879), 
Russian prelate, missionary to Alaska, had the 
secular name of Ioann Evsieevich Popov-Vem- 
aminov. He was born near Irkutsk, Siberia, in 
the village of Anginskoe, where his father, 
Evsevii Popov, was sexton of the Church of St 
Elias the Prophet. In 1814, while he was a stu¬ 
dent at the Irkutsk ecclesiastical seminary, the 
rector was obliged to change the surnames of 
many of his pupils to avoid confusion on the 
register, and Ioann Popov was given the sur¬ 
name Veniaminov. In 1823 he went as priest 
to Unalaska, the first Russian missionary to en¬ 
ter the dominions of the Russian-American 
Company since the death at sea in 1799 of 
bishop loasaf [q.v.]. His parish included all 
the Fox and Pribilof islands and St. Michaers 
Redoubt While visiting about the islands in a 


Innokentii 

skin boat, he became acquainted with the lan¬ 
guage and the life of his parishioners and with 
the natural phenomena of the surrounding re¬ 
gions. In 1834 he settled in Novo-Arkhangersk 
(the present Sitka), and there, among the 
learned men who at various times accompanied 
the Russian expeditions to Alaska, met F. Liitke, 
the famous geographer (who printed Veni- 
aminov’s meteorological bulletins from Un¬ 
alaska), and Baron F. Wrangel, the director in 
Alaska of the Russian-American Company. 
With their encouragement, he sent to the Im¬ 
perial Academy of Science his works: Zapiski 6b 
ostrovakh Unalashkinskago otdQla —“Notes on 
the islands of the Unalaska district”—(3 vols. in 
2, St. Petersburg, 1840) and Opyt grammatiki 
aleutsko-li$’evskogo iazyka —“Essays toward a 
grammar and dictionary of the Aleutian-Fox 
language” (1846). Going in 1838 to St. Peters¬ 
burg to plead in person with the Russian Holy 
Synod for an extension of missionary work in 
Alaska, he there published stories of far-off 
Alaska and the Aleutian people which opened for 
him not only the social and literary circles of the 
capital, but even the Czar’s palace. At this time 
also were printed under his personal direction his 
translations into the Aleutian-Fox language of a 
catechism, a volume of sermons, and the Gospel 
according to St. Matthew. 

After the death in 1839 of his wife, Ekaterina 
Ivanovna, nee Sharina, he became a monk and 
returned to Alaska in 1841 as Innokentn, bishop 
of Kamchatka and the Kurile and Aleutian 
islands. He now established in Novo-Ar¬ 
khangersk an administration of clerical affairs 
and an ecclesiastical school, which was reor¬ 
ganized in 1845 into a seminary. Not long af¬ 
terward he began making “apostolic” tours 
through his extensive diocese, in the course of 
which he visited all the churches of Kamchatka 
and the Okhotsk coast. Whereas upon its open¬ 
ing in 1841, there were only sixteen churches in 
his diocese, there were twenty-four in 1850, 
when Innokentii became archbishop. His re¬ 
sponsibilities were now increased by the addition 
of more vast territory. For greater convenience 
in his work, he settled in Yakutsk in 1853* At 
this time there was a great movement of Rus¬ 
sians to the Far East, especially to the region of 
the Amur River. Here Innokentii built churches 
and established schools. In 1859 he succeeded in 
getting an assistant bishop for Alaska, and an¬ 
other was granted him for Yakutsk in i860. He 
moved in 1862 to Blagovyeshchensk, on the 
Amur River, and from there in 1868 he was 
called to Moscow, to receive an appointment as 
metropolitan. By his exceptional energy and 


489 



Inshtatheamba — Inskip 

love for his work he had risen from the lowest 
hierarchical rank to the highest at that time in 
the Russian church. When Alaska was trans¬ 
ferred to the United States in 1867, and later, 
he often served as adviser to the government, 
notably at the time of the regulation of the gov¬ 
ernment accounts and of those of the Alaskan 
churches with the Russian-American Company. 
His memory still lives in Alaska, not only as a 
missionary and teacher, but also as a carpenter, 
blacksmith, and watch-maker. American visi¬ 
tors to Sitka find there many objects of his 
handiwork, and legends and stories of his ex¬ 
ploits. 

[Sources include: Ivan Barsukov, Innohentii (Mos¬ 
cow, 1883), Pis’ma Innokentiy (3 vols., St. Peters¬ 
burg, 1897-1901), and Tvorenlta Innokentlia (3 vols., 
Moscow, 1886-88); A. P. Kashevaroff, in Alaska Mag - 
astne (Juneau, Alaska), Feb., Mar., Apr. 1927; papers 
relating to clerical affairs in Alaska, kept since 1927 in 
the Lib. of Cong, (see Report of the Librarian of Cong,, 
1928, pp. 27-28). The dates of birth and death here 
given are according to the Russian calendar (see 
S’PeterburgskUa Viedomostr, Apr. 3/15, 1879).] 

M.Z.V. 

INSHTATHEAMBA [See Bright Eyes, 
1854-1903]. 

INSKIP, JOHN SWANEL (Aug. 10, 1816- 
Mar. 7, 1884), Methodist Episcopal clergyman, 
was one of the fourteen children of Edward and 
Martha (Swanel) Inskip. He was born in Hunt¬ 
ingdon, England, and was brought to the United 
States in 1821, whither the other members of the 
family had migrated the year before. His home 
was first in Wilmington, Del., and later in Ches¬ 
ter County, Pa. Here, when he was sixteen 
years old, he was converted under the preaching 
of Levi Scott, subsequently a bishop of the 
Methodist Church. He at once entered with 
zeal into the Methodist activities of his neigh¬ 
borhood, and soon decided to become a minister. 
His education had been slight, but he had a good 
mind and a natural gift for public speaking. He 
was licensed to preach on May 23, 1835, and the 
following year was admitted to the Philadelphia 
Conference on trial. This same year, Nov. 1, he 
married Martha J. Foster of Cecil County, Md. 
In 1838 he was ordained deacon, and in 1840, 
elder. 

For the first ten years of his ministry his ap¬ 
pointments were to circuits and stations in the 
Philadelphia Conference. He was a man of 
large mould, great physical strength, and in¬ 
tense emotion. His command of language and 
fluency of speech were remarkable, and when he 
was fully aroused he became a veritable whirl¬ 
wind. Notable revivals everywhere accompanied 
his work. In 1845 he was transferred to the 
Ohio Conference, and stationed at the Ninth 


Inskip 

Street Church in Cincinnati, where his parents 
were then living. His subsequent appointments 
in this Conference were to Dayton, Urbana, 
Springfield, and Troy. During this period he 
became embroiled in a controversy over the in¬ 
troduction into Methodist churches of “pro¬ 
miscuous sitting,” which, while common in the 
East, was opposed in the West as a violation of 
the Discipline requirement that men and women 
should sit apart. Inskip favored “promiscuous 
sitting,” and it was introduced into new churches 
built while he was at Dayton and Springfield. 
In 1851 he also published a well-written treatise 
entitled, Methodism Explained and Defended in 
which he interpreted the Discipline rule in ques¬ 
tion as advisory rather than mandatory. At the 
following session of the Conference he was 
charged with violation of a solemn pledge, “con¬ 
tumacious treatment” of the Conference, and “the 
publication of obnoxious matter or doctrine” in 
his book. He was judged not guilty of wilfully 
breaking a pledge, but was admonished for error. 
He appealed to the General Conference held at 
Boston in 1852, where, after a masterly defense 
made by himself, the action of his Conference 
was reversed. Transferred to the New York 
East Conference, he was stationed at the Madi¬ 
son Street Church, New York. Thereafter, all 
but one or two of his charges were in that city or 
Brooklyn. From the beginning of the Civil War 
until his health failed fourteen months later, he 
was chaplain of the 14th Regiment, New York 
State Militia. 

In 1864 he experienced, as he believed, “entire 
sanctification,” and became one of the leaders in 
the “holiness movement.” When, in 1867, the 
National Camp Meeting Association for the 
Promotion of Holiness was formed, he was 
chosen president. Up to the time of his death, 
fifty-two camp meetings had been held in vari¬ 
ous parts of the country, at forty-eight of which 
he presided. After 1871 he gave practically his 
entire time to evangelistic work. That year, in 
company with others he held a notable series of 
meetings on the Pacific coast and in Salt Lake 
City. These were followed by many similar meet¬ 
ings in other sections. In 1880 the campaign 
was carried to England; from there to India; 
and then to Australia. From 1876 until his death 
he also edited the Christian Standard. After his 
return from his tour around the world his health 
failed, and in October 1883 a cerebral hemor¬ 
rhage put an end to his labors. He partially re¬ 
covered, but died at Ocean Grove, N. J., the 
following March. 

[W. McDonald and J. E. Searles, The Life of Rev. 
John S. Inskip (1883); Minutes of the Annual Con - 


490 



Ioasaf 


Ioor 


ferences of the M. E. Church (1884) ; Christian Advo¬ 
cate, N. Y. f Mar. 13,1884; N. F. Times, Mar. 8, 1884.] 


H.E. S. 


Ioasaf (Jan. 22/Feb. 4, 1761-November 
1799), bishop of Kodiak, Alaska, had the sec¬ 
ular name of Ivan Il’ich Bolotov. His father, 
Ilha Bolotov, was the priest of the village of 
Strazhkovo, in the government of Tver, Russia. 
Ivan was educated in Tver and Yaroslav ec¬ 
clesiastical seminaries, taught, and in 1786 be¬ 
came a monk. He later lived in the Valaam 
monastery, on Valaam island, Lake Ladoga, near 
St. Petersburg. His name is connected with the 
first attempt made by the Russians to spread 
Christianity in the Aleutian Islands and in 
Alaska. In 1793, with the rank of archimandrite, 
he was appointed chief of an ecclesiastical mis¬ 
sion to the settlement of the Golikov and She- 
lekhov fur company, which had been established 
ten years before on Kodiak Island after the visit 
of the merchant Shelekhov [q.v.] to that place. 
Leaving St. Petersburg in 1793, the mission 
reached Kodiak Island in September 1794. In 
his first report (May 179s), Archimandrite 
Ioasaf informed Irkutsk and St. Petersburg that 
“To the glory of God, I have baptized more than 
7,000 Americans and solemnized more than 2,000 
marriages/’ achievements resulting from tours 
about the island. Officially the missionaries were 
subordinate to the Bishop of Irkutsk, Siberia, 
and to Holy Synod, but actually, they were 
obliged to be dependent on the Golikov and She- 
lekov company, whose local manager, Alexander 
Andreevich Baranov lq.v.~], was compelled with 
very small means to care for the work of the mis¬ 
sion as well as the company’s affairs. To him 
the monks, who were not acquainted with the 
local language and problems, seemed an unneces¬ 
sary burden, and misunderstanding and enmity 
gradually arose between ecclesiastical and sec¬ 
ular authorities. The hieromonach Makarii, sent 
to Unalaska, baptized more than 1,000 people 
there but after much unpleasantness with the 
company’s administration, joined another com¬ 
pany, and in 1796 left with them for Irkutsk, in¬ 
tending to complain of the actions of his former 
masters. Another hieromonach, ftJvenalii, was 
sent from Kodiak to Nuchek harbor, where he 
baptized more than 7,000 people. Later he 
crossed over Kenai gulf, where he baptized all 
the inhabitants, and in 1796 he moved to Alaska, 
but at Iliamna lake was killed by natives. 
Archimandrite Ioasaf with the hieromonach 
Afanasii continued the work on Kodiak Island 
and organized a small school. 

Meanwhile Golikov was financially ruined and 
in 1795 Shelekhov died. His widow, with her 


sons-in-law Rezanov [q.z;.] and Mikhail Bulda¬ 
kov, united several hitherto hostile, independent 
fur companies into the Russian-American Com¬ 
pany. About this time Archimandrite Ioasaf was 
called to Irkutsk, where in April 1799 he was 
ordained Bishop of Kodiak. Leaving Irkutsk in 
May, he perished at sea, early in November, be¬ 
tween Unalaska and Kodiak. After the loss of 
the Bishop and his company, the attempt to es¬ 
tablish Christianity in Alaska was not renewed 
until a quarter of a century later, when Father 
Ioann Veniaminov, later Innokentii [g.z>.], met¬ 
ropolitan of Moscow, began his successful labors 
on Unalaska. 

While in Irkutsk, Archimandrite Ioasaf com¬ 
posed for the Holy Synod a geographical and 
ethnographical description of Kodiak Island and 
other islands of his diocese, and answered a series 
of questions sent him by the Holy Synod. Later 
these writings were published anonymously as 
an article in the magazine Drug proszneshchenm 
(Moscow, October 1805) and with a few cor¬ 
rections, were issued as an anonymous book un¬ 
der the title: Kratkoe opisame ob amerikanskom 
ostrovw Kad’iakie (Moscow, 1805). This book 
and several letters from Kodiak, printed in vari¬ 
ous publications not long after loasaf’s death, 
were his entire literary legacy. 

[Photostats and transcripts from Alaskan MSS., at 
the Lib. of Cong.; Ocherk is istorii Amerikanskoi 
pravoslavnot dukhovnoi missii (St. Petersburg, 1894) ; 
H. H. Bancroft, Hist of Alaska (1886) ; F. A. Brock- 
haus and I. A, Efron, Entsiklopedicheskn Slovak, vol. 
XIII (St. Petersburg, 1894) ; RusskU biograficheskii 
Slovak, vol. VIII (St. Petersburg, 1897).] M.Z.V. 

IOOR, WILLIAM (fl. 1780-1830),playwright, 
was born in St. George’s Parish, Dorchester, S. 
C., the son of John Ioor and a descendant of fore¬ 
bears who came to South Carolina from Holland 
in 1714. Ioor’s two comedies, both performed in 
Charleston in the first decade of the nineteenth 
century, were among the early examples of pa¬ 
triotic drama and of the comedy of manners in 
America. The first of these, Independence, or. 
Which do you Like Best, the Peer, or the Farmer, 
was an adaptation of an English novel, The In¬ 
dependent, probably by Andrew MacDonald, but 
called by Ioor in his preface “anonimous.” It 
was first performed at the Charleston Theatre, 
Feb. 26, 1805, with Mr. Hardinge playing the 
hero, Charles Woodville, and Mrs. Whitlock, 
sister of Mrs. Siddons, reading S. C. Carpenter’s 
prologue. In the published version, printed later 
in 1805 by G. M. Bonnetheau, the cast of the 
performance of Apr. 1 is given, which included 
John Hodgkinson • in the role of Woodville. 
Ioor’s second play, The Battle of Eutaw Springs, 
and Evacuation of Charleston (1807), was pro- 


49 1 



Iredell 

duced in 1813, probably not for the first time, at 
the Southwark Theatre in Philadelphia, and in 
1817 at the Charleston Theatre. Not so famous 
as the earlier play, it was, however, well re¬ 
ceived in its day. In both of the comedies the 
homely American virtues were eulogized, and 
the sophisticated English vices were deplored, in 
a manner seldom ungraceful, often witty, and 
always theatrical. William Gilmore Simms in 
1870 recalled the Ioor of some forty years earlier 
as a “cheery, humorous old gentleman.” 

[A. H. Quinn, A Hist. of the Am. Drama From the 
Beginning to the Civil War (1923) ; W. G. Simms/Our 
Early Authors/' XIX Century, Sept. 1869, and “Early 
Literary Progress in S. C./' Ibid., Jan. 1870; Yates 
Snowden, S. C. Plays and Playwrights (1909); ma¬ 
terials in the S. C. Hist. Soc.] E. W—s. 

IREDELL, JAMES (Oct. 5, 1751-Oct. 20, 
1799), statesman, jurist, was born in Lewes, 
England. His father, Francis Iredell, was a 
Bristol merchant; his mother was Margaret Mc- 
Culloh. In 1768 he was appointed comptroller of 
customs at Edenton, N. C., and for six years he 
kept all the accounts of the custom-house, carried 
on a considerable business for an uncle in Eng¬ 
land, and entered into the social life of the town. 
He also had time to indulge in wide general 
reading and to study law with Samuel Johnston, 
the leading figure of the community, whose sister 
Hannah he married on July 18, 1773 - He was 
licensed in 1771 and in 1772 he was entering into 
the discussion of the points at issue between the 
colonies and England, taking an advanced Amer¬ 
ican position and writing in lucid style the argu¬ 
ments which others were to use. In 1774 he be¬ 
came collector of the port and held that office 
until the spring of 1776. He then devoted his 
attention to his law practice and to the further¬ 
ance by tongue and pen of the Revolutionary 
cause, although he had no desire for separation 
from England, and, as late as June 1776, he was 
hopeful of reconciliation and peace. Chosen one 
of the commissioners to draft and revise the laws 
necessary to meet the new status of North Caro¬ 
lina in 1776, he drafted the law reestablishing the 
courts which had ceased to operate several years 
earlier. The following year he unwillingly ac¬ 
cepted appointment as a superior court judge but 
resigned at the end of six months. In 1779 he 
was elected attorney-general and served two 
years. He was elected to the Council of State in 
1787 and the same legislature appointed him to 
collect and revise all acts then in force. The re¬ 
sulting “Revisal” appeared in 1791. 

When, with the adoption of the state consti¬ 
tution, party divisions arose, Iredell sided with 
the conservatives. Against the popular tendency 


Iredell 

to magnify legislative power, he constantly op¬ 
posed the doctrine of constitutional restrictions 
enforced by the courts. On this subject he wrote 
a powerful public address to the people in 1786, 
advanced the doctrine to the highest court of the 
state and secured its approval of the principle 
{Bayard vs. Singleton, 1 N. C., 42), and pre¬ 
sented it to the consideration of his contempo¬ 
raries in convincing letters (McRee, post, II, 
145, 172). He was deeply interested in the fed¬ 
eral convention of 1787 and heartily approved of 
the Constitution. After studying it closely he 
published in January 1788, over the signature 
“Marcus,” “Answers to Mr. Mason’s Objections 
to the New Constitution” (Paul Leicester Ford, 
Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United 
States, 1888) which attracted national attention 
and is supposed to have influenced Washington 
in selecting him for the Supreme Court. Perhaps 
of more importance in that connection was his 
work in behalf of the Constitution in the conven¬ 
tion of 1788, where he represented the borough 
of Edenton and was the floor leader of the Fed¬ 
eralists, explaining and defending each section 
of the Constitution. His tact, good temper, and 
singularly charming personality in a bad tem¬ 
pered assembly probably contributed as much to 
his enhanced reputation as his exceedingly able 
arguments. He and William R. Davie [q.z/.] 
had the debates published and their wide circu¬ 
lation gave a powerful impetus to the reaction 
which secured ratification in 1789. 

On Feb. 10, 1790, Washington appointed Ire¬ 
dell associate justice of the Supreme Court. He 
was then only thirty-eight years old, the young¬ 
est member on the bench. The functions of the 
justices at that time included holding the circuit 
courts, and Iredell, assigned to the southern cir¬ 
cuit, led “the life of a post boy in a circuit of vast 
extent, under great difficulties of travel and the 
perils of life in the sickly season.” During his 
relatively brief service, he made an enduring 
reputation. As a constitutional lawyer, he had no 
superior on the court, and his opinions answer 
to the description of them as “lucid, logical, com¬ 
pact, comprehensive.” All of them are notable 
for their force of expression. Two years after 
his appointment, he wrote Washington that in 
his opinion the Act of Congress of Mar. 23,1792, 
requiring the justices to serve as pension com¬ 
missioners, was unconstitutional and therefore 
void. Following the same doctrine in his opin¬ 
ion in Colder vs. Bull (3 Dallas, 386), written 
years before Marbury vs. Madison came to the 
court, he enunciated clearly and convincingly the 
principle that a legislative act, unauthorized by 
the Constitution, or in violation of it, was void. 


492 



Iredell 

and that it was the responsibility of the courts to 
check its execution. His most notable opinions, 
however, were written in dissent. That in Wil¬ 
son vs. Daniel (3 Dallas, 401) dealing with the 
question of the court's jurisdiction over a writ 
of error, was later sustained by a reversal. His 
opinion handed down in the circuit court in 
Ware vs. Hylton (3 Dallas, 199) was later filed 
as a dissent. His most famous opinion was that 
in Chisholm vs. Georgia (2 Dallas, 419) where, 
in holding that a state could not be “haled" into 
court by a citizen of another state, he enunciated, 
either directly or by implication, all the leading 
principles of the state-rights doctrine. It is also 
a splendid legal argument, closely reasoned, and 
confined to the question before the court, whether 
an action of assumpsit could lie against a state. 
He thus expressed his belief in liberal construc¬ 
tion: “If, upon a fair construction of the Con¬ 
stitution of the United States, the power con¬ 
tended for really exists, it undoubtedly may be 
exercised, though it be a power of first impres¬ 
sion. ... If it does not exist, upon that authority, 
ten thousand examples of similar powers would 
not warrant its assumption ” Recalling that such 
an action could not lie against the Crown of 
England, he argued that it could lie against a 
state only by authority of the Constitution and 
declared that in his judgment it could not be 
found there. He opposed Jay's corporation argu¬ 
ment by holding that, while corporations were 
creatures of sovereignty, the states were sover¬ 
eigns themselves, not owing their origin to the 
government of the United States, since they 
were in existence before the national government 
was established. The opinion gives an excellent 
idea of Iredell's political views as a state-rights 
Federalist. His dissent not only met with the 
people's approval, as evidenced by the passage of 
the Eleventh Amendment, but received the al¬ 
most unanimous indorsement of the Supreme 
Court in the case of Hans vs. Louisiana nearly 
a century later (134 U. S., 1). The exhausting 
labor and weary travel on the circuits undermined 
Iredell's health, and within less than ten years 
after he had taken his seat on the bench, he died 
at his home in Edenton. 

[Griffith J. McRee, Life and Correspondence of Jos. 
Iredell (2 vols., 1857); the N. C. Booklet, Apr. 1912; 
Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in U. S. Hist. 
(1922), vol. I; H. L. Carson, The Supreme Court of 
the U. S.: Its Hist. (1892), vol. I; Junius Davis, Al¬ 
fred Moore and las. Iredell, ... An Address . . . 
Apr. 29, 1899; Jonathan Elliott, The Debates, Reso¬ 
lutions, and other Proceedings ... on the Adoption of 
the Fed. Constitution, vol. Ill (1830) ; George Van 
Santvoord, Sketches of the Lives and Judicial Services 
of the Chief-Justices ... of the U. S. (1854).] 

J. G. deR. H. 


Ireland 

IRELAND, JOHN (Jan. 1, 1827-Mar. 15, 
1896), lawyer, Confederate soldier, governor of 
Texas, was born near Millerstown, Ky., the son 
of Patrick and Rachel (Newton) Ireland. He 
received limited formal education at an old-field 
school in Hart County. In 1851, after having 
occupied the positions of constable and deputy 
sheriff, he entered the law office of Murray & 
Wood at Mumfordsville, Ky., and in less than a 
year was admitted to the bar. He soon moved to 
Texas, settling in the town of Seguin in April 
1853* He was elected first mayor of Seguin in 
1858 and in 1861 was sent as a delegate to the 
convention which abrogated the articles of an¬ 
nexation between Texas and the United States, 
where he strongly advocated secession. In the 
spring of 1862 he enlisted as a private in the 
Confederate army. During the war he saw serv¬ 
ice only along the Texas coast, but rose, never¬ 
theless, to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Before 
1861 he had probably been a Know-Nothing, but 
in his post-war activities he was consistently a 
stem Democrat. His prominence in political 
conventions of 1871 brought, in 1872, his elec¬ 
tion to the state House of Representatives. In 
1873 he was elected to the Texas Senate, wherein 
he opposed vigorously the payment of money 
subsidies to railroads. Two years later he was 
appointed an associate justice of the Texas su¬ 
preme court, and served very competently until 
1876, when a reduction in the number of justices 
necessitated his retirement This same year he 
was a candidate for the United States Senate but 
was defeated by Richard Coke [q.v.]. In 1878 
Ireland suffered a second defeat when, in an in¬ 
tense political struggle, he attempted to replace 
Gustave Schleicher in Congress. By 1882, how¬ 
ever, Ireland was a veteran in Texas politics, 
and his ambition, backed by ability and influence, 
had made him head of the Democratic machine. 
Consequently, he was easily nominated and elect¬ 
ed governor in 1882, and reelected in 1884* The 
two serious problems of his administration were 
the fence-cutting and lawlessness which pre¬ 
vailed in 1883, and the strikes of the Knights of 
Labor in 1885 and 1886. In both cases Ireland's 
early tactics were so dilatory and his decisive 
acts so tardy that unnecessary strife and loss of 
life resulted. He deserves credit for his success¬ 
ful insistence on the best of construction for the 
state capitol, and for his efforts in the develop¬ 
ment of state institutions and the protection of 
state lands. As he was retiring from the office 
of governor in January 1887, he sought a coveted 
place in the United States Senate, but lost to 
John H. Regan in a one-sided contest. This de¬ 
feat ended Ireland's political career. He returned 


493 



Ireland Ireland 


to his home at Seguin where he continued his law 
practice and business pursuits for the remainder 
of his life. He was twice married: in 1854, to 
Mrs. Matilda (Wicks) Faircloth, who died in 
1856; and in 1857, to Anna Maria Penn. 

[J. H. Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, 
vol. II (1893); J- D. Lynch, The Bench and Bar of 
Texas (1885) : War of the Rebellion: Official Records 
(Army), 1 ser., vols. IX, XV, XXVI (pts. 1 and 2), 
XXXIV (pt. 4), LIII; D. G. Wooten, Comprehensive 
Hist, of Texas , vol. II (1898) ; Colls. Arch. & Hist. 
Dept., Texas State Lib., Exec. Ser.: Governors? Mes¬ 
sages Coke to Ross (1917); N. G. Kittrell, Governors 
Who Have Been and Other Public Men of Texas 
(1921); L. E. Daniell, Personnel of the Texas State 
Government (1892); Galveston Daily News, Mar. 16, 
1896.] B.F.L. 

IRELAND, JOHN (Sept, n, 1838-Sept. 25, 
1918), Roman Catholic prelate, born at Burn- 
church, Kilkenny, Ireland, was the son of Rich¬ 
ard, a carpenter, and Judith (Naughton) Ire¬ 
land. In 1849, during the post-famine exodus, 
Richard Ireland embarked with his family for 
New York, soon journeying to Boston and to 
Burlington, Vt. Catching the Western fever, the 
Irelands moved to Chicago, where John ob¬ 
tained some schooling. Restless, they traveled 
by prairie schooner to Galena, and by river boat 
to the trading post of St. Paul, arriving in the 
spring of 1853. Here John attended the cathe¬ 
dral school and gave evidence of hunger for 
books and of aptitude for argument with the 
Presbyterian minister on his milk route. Noting 
a vocation in his altar-boy, Bishop Joseph Cretin 
[q.v.] sent him to his own Seminaire de Mexi- 
mieux, France, and later to the Scholasticat a 
Montbel, where he became a student of Bossuet 
and a visitor of the Cure d'Ars. Even in the 
seminary, he argued with pro-Southern class¬ 
mates, and it was as a “unionist” that he received 
his passport and returned to St. Paul for his 
ordination of Dec. 21, 1861. The following May 
he enlisted as a chaplain and was assigned to the 
5th Minnesota Volunteers. As a priest he served 
the Catholic soldiers; as a counselor he minis¬ 
tered to all men; as a fighting chaplain, he won 
renown. Stricken with fever at Vicksburg, he 
was forced to resign, Apr. 3,1863, and returned 
to his curacy in St. Paul. He joined Acker Post, 
Grand Army of the Republic, when it was organ¬ 
ized in St. Paul and was nationally prominent 
in the organization throughout his life. 

As pastor of the Cathedral, which he became 
in 1867, Ireland waged a relentless campaign 
against political corruption and the St. Paul li¬ 
quor interests, and organized total abstinence so¬ 
cieties throughout the Northwest. Of command¬ 
ing appearance, a magnetic speaker, militant and 
yet conciliatory, startlingly frank, he made an 
ideal tribune of the people. As the “Father 


Mathew of the West,” he was eloquent in con¬ 
demnation not merely of the intemperance of the 
lowly but also of the organized liquor trade, 
which he characterized as lawless and reckless. 
Protestant ministers joined the “temperance 
crank” in forcing the legislature to pass a high- 
license act in 1887. With advancement in the 
church, Ireland broadened his field. He stirred 
national conventions of the Catholic Total Ab¬ 
stinence Union and public gatherings with ad¬ 
dresses, some of the most striking of which were 
printed and widely circulated. In answer to crit¬ 
ics, he obtained a papal brief giving approbation 
to the temperance movement. He urged absti¬ 
nence at ordinations and at confirmations and de¬ 
voted columns to the evils of drink in his paper, 
The Catholic Bulletin . Though he never ac¬ 
cepted prohibition, had it been properly safe¬ 
guarded, it is doubtful if he would have con¬ 
demned it in principle. 

A representative of Bishop Grace at the Vati¬ 
can Council, 1870-71, he gained acquaintance in 
ecclesiastical circles. Five years later, he was 
named vicar apostolic of Nebraska by the Pope, 
who, however, conceded to Grace's petition by 
cancelling this appointment and naming him co¬ 
adjutor-bishop with the right of succession. As 
titular bishop of Maronea, Ireland was conse¬ 
crated on Dec. 21, 1875; and a vigorous coadju¬ 
tor he made, until finally, July 31, 1884, he suc¬ 
ceeded to the see. Participating actively in civic 
life, he encouraged his priests and people to do 
likewise. He was not an exclusionist, though 
some of his brethren scoffed at the statement, “I 
am an American citizen,” with which he opened 
more than one lecture. He was a member of the 
American Civic Federation, a president of the 
St Paul Law and Order League, an active mem¬ 
ber of the Minnesota State Historical Society, a 
founder of the St. Paul Catholic Historical So¬ 
ciety, to whose Acta et Dicta (vols. IV, V) he 
was contributing a life of Cretin when death 
halted his pen, and an honorary doctor of laws 
of Yale University (1901). An advocate of a 
clean press, he was on good terms with newspa¬ 
per men. Not apprehensive of lay editorship, he 
supported such local Catholic papers as Der 
Wanderer , The Irish Standard , and The North¬ 
western Chronicle. When Minnesota celebrated 
the Hennepin bicentennial, July 3, 1880, it was 
Ireland who gave the outstanding address (Col¬ 
lections of the Minnesota Historical Society , vol. 
VI, pt. 2, 1891, pp. 65 ff.). Possibly the Bishop 
was secular when he personally closed a lewd 
dance hall and forced a governor to prevent an 
objectionable prize fight. 

Seeing immigrants crowding the slums of 


494 



Ireland 

Eastern cities, Ireland advocated a Westward 
movement. Procuring in 1879 tracts of railroad 
land which colonists could purchase on easy pay¬ 
ments and for which he held himself responsible, 
he established numerous settlements with the 
aid of Dillon O’Brien, whom he appointed head 
of the Catholic Colonization Bureau. It was in 
this connection that Ireland became associated 
with the Canadian railroad magnates. The set¬ 
tlers who survived the northern frontier hard¬ 
ships became prosperous, and Ireland’s towns are 
now thriving rural centers. Incidentally, the 
widely scattered pamphlets of his Bureau aided 
in bringing settlers from Europe and the East. 
Nationally known now, Ireland was a leader in 
the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884), 
where he delivered the oustanding sermon, “The 
Catholic Church and Civil Society,” in which 
he sounded a note of patriotic allegiance which 
reverberated through his later lectures. When 
St. Paul was made an archdiocese, he was named 
archbishop, May 15, 1888, with five, and later 
eight, suffragan bishops. He always dominated 
the whole province, since the bishops appointed 
were invariably priests of his training. 

In 1886-87, Ireland and John J. Keane [ q.v .] 
consulted with Pope Leo concerning the advisa¬ 
bility of a national Catholic University under 
the American hierarchy. Two years later such 
an institution was founded at Washington, and 
Ireland continued its stout supporter. While in 
Rome the two bishops refuted a memorandum 
submitted by Vicar-General P. M. Abbelen of 
Milwaukee, which urged the appointment of Ger¬ 
man bishops and priests and the retention of the 
foreign tongue (La Question Allemande dans 
L’Lglise aux Ltats-Unis, Rome, Dec. 26, 1886). 
At this time, on behalf of Jesse Seligman, Ire¬ 
land procured a petition from Leo XIII asking 
Russia to delay enforcement of the ukase compel¬ 
ling Jews to withdraw from the provinces outside 
the pale (North American Review, September 
1903)- In 1891, Peter Paul Cahensly of the im¬ 
perial reichstadt presented a memorial urging 
the appointment of racial bishops in the United 
States on the basis of the racial strength of vari¬ 
ous Catholic groups, thus bringing to a crisis 
earlier attempts to foster foreignism in America 
for European political reasons. Ireland again 
led the fight in opposition, declaring that the 
Church in America would retain its autonomy 
and that its bishops were able to ward off any 
foreign interference. Furthermore, he insisted 
that parochial schools should teach in English. 
Despite a fierce conflict, Ireland, supported by 
some farsighted bishops, won the day. Not un¬ 
til 1914 were Catholics in agreement on this 


Ireland 

question and non-Catholics appreciative of the 
significance of this struggle. 

Although not deeply concerned about Irish 
politics, he stood with the bishops who success¬ 
fully prevented a condemnation of the Ancient 
Order of Hibernians. When at the request of 
Canadian bishops, the Knights of Labor were 
condemned in Canada, Gibbons, Ireland, Keane, 
and Denis O’Connell, with the aid of Cardinal 
Manning, won for Catholic workingmen the 
right to join such organizations (see Catholic 
American, Mar. 5, 1887). Ireland spoke with 
balance when discussing the clashing interests 
of labor and capital, and he never forgot that un¬ 
skilled labor was left unorganized. When Cleve¬ 
land’s policy in the railroad strike of 1894 was 
violently denounced, he frankly commended the 
President’s action (J. F. Rhodes, History of the 
United States from Hayes to McKinley, 1877 - 
1896 , 1919, p. 428). In an essay on “Personal 
Liberty and Labor Strikes” (North American 
Review, October 1901), he condemned acts of 
violence and picketing and urged individual free¬ 
dom of action, whether that of employer, em¬ 
ployee, or non-unionist He was outspoken in 
opposition to radical demands for the recall of 
judges. 

On the centennial of the establishment of the 
Catholic hierarchy, Ireland delivered in the Bal¬ 
timore Cathedral, Nov. 10, 1889, an address on 
“The Mission of Catholics in America,” which 
rang with loyalty to church and state. He sug¬ 
gested national congresses of laymen, but the 
gatherings of 1889 an d 1893 were too circum¬ 
scribed to accomplish any new departure. In his 
address before the National Education Associ¬ 
ation in St. Paul (1890) he aroused a hornet’s 
nest, when he exclaimed: “I am a friend and 
advocate of the state school. In the circumstances 
of the present time I uphold the parish school” 
(see National Education Association, Journal of 
Proceedings and Addresses, 1890, p. 179). He 
defended religious schools as a necessity when 
religion and morals could not otherwise be 
taught; and he urged a compromise whereby the 
state would pay for secular instruction at in¬ 
spected free parochial schools in which religious 
teaching would be conducted by the denomination 
concerned. A year later, he arranged his experi¬ 
mental plan with the school boards of Faribault 
and Stillwater, by which parochial buildings, on 
a year’s contract, were turned over to the city, 
which would pay running expenses, while reli¬ 
gious devotions and instructions before and after 
school hours would be under local pastors. This 
scheme was not given a fair trial. Aggressive 
Protestants were opposed, and even moderate 


495 



Ireland 

men saw an attack on the public school system. 
The Catholic press was divided. Jesuits scented 
irregularity, as did some churchmen who favored 
Cahenslyism. Certain articles were unfair, in¬ 
sisting that the plan was contrary to the Roman 
instructions and the prescriptions of the Third 
Plenary Council of Baltimore. The plan was not 
new, however, for there had been similar con¬ 
solidations in other dioceses; but not until Ire¬ 
land acted were passionate protests aroused. The 
attacks were silenced when the Propaganda, Apr. 
21, 1892, declared that Ireland's plan could “be 
tolerated in view of all the circumstances, the 
decrees of the Council of Baltimore on parochial 
schools remaining firmly in force.” The Fari¬ 
bault plan was nevertheless abandoned, and Ire¬ 
land built parochial schools almost as rapidly as 
parishes. Without changinghis attitude, he came 
to realize that no compromise would save his 
people from a double school tax (Report of the 
Proceedings of Catholic Education Association, 
I 9 I 5 > P- 3 °“ 44 i Catholic Mind, Apr. 22, 1913, 
July 22, 1915, Aug. 22, 1920). In 1885, he es¬ 
tablished St Thomas Seminary, which in 1894 
became St. Thomas College, a military academy, 
which was awarded first honors by the War De¬ 
partment. In 1894 he opened the St. Paul Semi¬ 
nary, which was endowed by James J. Hill [q.vJ}. 
In 1905, he aided the Sisters of St. Joseph, of 
whom his own sisters were leaders, in their foun¬ 
dation of the College of St. Catherine. 

At the World's Congress Auxiliary, Ireland, 
as a member of the advisory council, spoke on 
“Human Progress,” Oct 21, 1892, and at the 
twenty-fifth anniversary of Cardinal Gibbons' 
consecration, Oct. 18,1893, he preached on “The 
Church and the Age,” eulogizing Leo XIII, Gib¬ 
bons, Manning, Von Kettler, and Lavigerie as 
men who would reconcile the church with the 
age, and dedicated himself to the same cause, re¬ 
minding men that, “The watchwords of the age 
are reason, education, liberty and the ameliora¬ 
tion of the masses.” 

In the early nineties, when Ireland was forced 
to get a Wall Street loan secured by his hold¬ 
ings to clear the diocese of threatening debt, he 
took occasion to condemn the machinations of 
Tammany, to the annoyance of local churchmen. 
Indeed, Ireland's Republican affiliation was 
viewed by some Catholics as a touch of hetero¬ 
doxy. Because of his support of Sylvester Ma¬ 
lone Iq.v.'] for appointment as regent of the 
University of the State of New York in opposi¬ 
tion to the candidacy of Bishop McQuaid and 
his friendship with Fathers Lambert, Burtsell, 
and McGlynn [qq.v.], McQuaid denounced him 
from Ms cathedral and Archbishop Corrigan's 


Ireland 

coolness became marked. In 1896, through Re¬ 
publican leaders, Ireland checkmated J. M. King 
of the National League for the Protection of 
American Institutions, who tried to force a plank 
into the Republican platform relative to the union 
of church and state and the use of public money 
for sectarian purposes. Therewith he was as¬ 
saulted in King's Facing the Twentieth Century 
(1899) as “the most specious and deceptive foe 
of the public schools.” The “A. P. A.” move¬ 
ment, however, caused Ireland little anxiety, 
since he recognized that it was ephemeral. Pro¬ 
tests were bitter when his denunciation of Bryan- 
ism as a form of secession was broadcast by the 
Republican committee. The press, Oct. 2, 1896, 
gave wide circulation to his interview warning 
against Bismarck's suggestion that the United 
States experiment with bimetallism (H. T. Peck, 
Twenty Years of the Republic, 1907, p. 510). An 
admirer of President McKinley, he was also close 
to Roosevelt, to whom he promised support in 
case of a Hanna boom. He was not so stalwart 
a Republican, however, that he could accept 
Roosevelt's Panama diplomacy. F. E. Leupp in 
The Nation (Sept 2, 1915) correctly observed 
that the archbishop “could no more keep out of 
politics than he could turn infidel.” 

Ireland, despite an outcry, sought to prevent 
war between Spain and the United States (J. F. 
Rhodes, The McKinley and Roosevelt Adminis¬ 
trations, 1922, p. 62), but when the war party 
won, he informed Rome that further peace efforts 
would be futile and publicly announced that he 
would support the war. When the war was over, 
he urged Roosevelt to send a mission to Rome to 
negotiate concerning the “friar lands” in the 
Philippines. He held that the final settlement 
was generous, though the religious orders were 
far from satisfied, and urged the gradual replace¬ 
ment of Spanish priests by Americans. McKin- 
ley, John Hay, and Roosevelt (as governor and 
as president) were anxious that Rome under¬ 
stand American esteem for Ireland, in the hope 
that he would be elevated to the cardinalate, but 
the hope was not realized. Ireland's interest in 
the red biretta was not such that he confessed 
disappointment. Protestants agreed with The 
Nation (Sept. 2, 1915) that: “The complaints 
against Ireland, so far as they have reached this 
country, have related to his advanced modernism 
and his independent manner of expressing him¬ 
self,” hardly realizing that his bitterest oppo¬ 
nents were in American and Spanish ecclesias¬ 
tical circles. In 1911, his friends were again 
disappointed when Archbishops Farley [g.z>.] 
and O'Connell were made cardinals. In 1915, it 
was rumored that Benedict XV intended to give 



Ireland 

the greatest American prelate, with the exception 
of Gibbons, the cardinalate, but that no consis¬ 
tory would be held until the war was over—and 
when the war ended Ireland was dead Recog¬ 
nizing Ireland as a forward-looking prelate, non- 
Catholics regarded him as a modernist whose 
views conflicted with their conception of the 
Church's attitude toward democracy. It probably 
vexed some of his Catholic enemies that there 
was not the faintest taint of heresy about him. 
No prelate probably was a stouter supporter of 
the papacy, if one may judge from his written 
word (s tz North American Review, March 1901, 
September 1903, Feb. 1, Apr. 5, 1907, January, 
April 1908, and the controversy with Methodists 
concerning their activities in Rome, Ibid., July, 
September 1910, January 1911). 

In France, Ireland was better known than in 
the British Isles, and he was quite as much at 
home on the Quai d'Orsay as with the hierarchy. 
When Leo XIII counseled French Catholics to 
accept the Republic, he sent Ireland as his unof¬ 
ficial representative. On invitation, he delivered 
an address which was “a veritable hymn to the 
glory of France” and a defense of republican in¬ 
stitutions (La Situation du Catholicisme aux 
1 Stats-Unis, June 18, 1892). Paul Bourget rep¬ 
resented even royalist opinion when he described 
Ireland as “one of the greatest men of our time .” 
Later, he won encomium from radicals for his 
panegyric on Jeanne d'Arc (“Jeanne D’Arc, 
L’Envoyee de Dieu /' delivered in the Basilica of 
Sainte-Croix d'Orleans, May 8, 1899). Again 
Ireland brought a message to the French people 
when as the representative of President McKin¬ 
ley he delivered the address at the presentation of 
the statue of Lafayette given by American school 
children (July 4,1900). During this visit he in¬ 
terpreted America in Italy and in Great Britain. 
On intimate terms with Leopold of Belgium, he 
attempted in 1903 to stem American hostility to 
his Congo policy by fathering notices in the press. 

In spite of all these activities, Ireland man¬ 
aged not to neglect his diocese. He preached on 
all occasions, for he liked to speak whether in 
Latin, French, or English. In 1907, he laid the 
corner-stone of the magnificent St. Paul Cathe¬ 
dral, and read with pride a cable from Rome and 
a telegram from Roosevelt. In 1908, the arch¬ 
bishop laid the corner-stone of the Basilica of St. 
Mary's, the show church of Minneapolis. Two 
years later the “bishopmaker” consecrated at a 
unique ceremony six of his priests as suffragan 
bishops; and they in turn took part in his golden 
jubilee (1911), which could not be confined to 
a local celebration. 

The European War found Ireland pro-French. 


Ireland 

As early as 1908 he had urged preparedness. He 
supported the first loan to the allies at a time 
when the people of the Northwest were pro- 
German and anti-English. In 1917, he received 
the Belgian Commission at St Paul; and six 
weeks later, bade goodbye in a failing voice to 
the first Minnesota contingent, saying, “To de¬ 
fend America is to defend not only the nation 
that protects you, that nurtures you, but the na¬ 
tion that stands in the universe for the highest 
ideals, the noblest principles governing mankind” 
(America, Oct. 5, 1918). In Ireland's diocese 
there was no German problem among the Cath¬ 
olics. Worn out, in September 1918 he fell asleep 
with the request that his body “lie out there with 
my people under the green sod of Calvary.” He 
had lived in a cottage, and his funeral was cor¬ 
respondingly simple, though his death was no¬ 
ticed throughout the American and European 
press. Since he outlived most of his opponents, 
a Jesuit could write in appraisal: “A fearless, 
godly man, keen of intellect, strong of will, a 
relentless yet a chivalrous opponent, he left an 
indelible impression on all he touched, for Arch¬ 
bishop Ireland was a great man among the great¬ 
est men” (America, Oct 5,1918, p. 619). 

[ Cath. World, Nov. 1918; Christian Union (N. Y.), 
May 2i, 1892; La Revue Hebdomadaire, Nov. 2, 1918; 
The Nation, Sept. 2,1915; Educ. Rev., Mar., Apr., May 
1892; Acta et Dicta, July 1909, July 1914, July 1915; 
Reports of the Irish Cath. Colonization Asso., 1880 et 
seq. ; Ferdinand Kittell, Souvenir of Loretto Cente¬ 
nary (1899); Military Order of the Loyal Legion of 
the U . S., Minn. Commandry, In Memoriam (1918); 
Archbishop Ireland ... a Memoir (1918) ; W. W. Fol- 
well, A Hist, of Minn. (4 vols., 1921-30); F. F, Hol¬ 
brook, Minn, in the Spanish Am. War and the Philip¬ 
pine Insurrection (1923); W. B. Hennessy, Past and 
Present of St. Paul, Minn. (1906); H. A. Castle, St. 
Paul and Vicinity (3 vols., 1912); J. G. Pyle, The Life 
of James J . Hill (1917), vol. I; A. S. Will, The Life 
of Cardinal Gibbons (2 vols., 1922) ; F. J. Zwierlein, 
The Life and Letters of Bishop McQuaid (1925-27); 
Ojintjintka, Archbishop Ireland as He Is (n.d.); St. 
Paul Dispatch, Sept. 25, 1918; N. Y . Times, Sept. 26, 
1918.] R.J.P. 

IRELAND, JOSEPH NORTON (Apr. 24, 
1817-Dec. 29,1898), historian of the New York 
stage, was born in New York City, the son of 
Joseph and Sophia (Jones) Ireland. His family 
had been substantial merchants for many gen¬ 
erations, “a race,” he said, “distinguished—with 
rare exceptions—for sterling integrity, easy good 
nature ... and an unambitious contentment with 
a medium rank in life” (Ireland Family, pref¬ 
ace) . One notable exception was also a dramatic 
historian: that William Henry Ireland (see Dic¬ 
tionary of National Biography) who executed 
the notorious Shakespeare forgeries. Thomas 
Ireland, first member of the American branch of 
the family, so far as is known, settled on Long 
Island about 1644, and became proprietor of the 



Ireland 

inn at Hempstead. John Ireland, grandfather of 
the stage historian, was a merchant of Hunt¬ 
ington, L. I., and an ardent British sympathizer; 
during the British army's occupancy of Long 
Island he served as assistant commissary. Jo¬ 
seph Ireland, father of Joseph Norton, moved 
into the city of New York, and established, at 82 
Dey St, the prosperous business which his sons 
inherited. After an education of only an ele¬ 
mentary character, Joseph Norton Ireland suc¬ 
ceeded his father, and retired in 1855. He was 
married, June 10,1845, to Mary Amelia, daugh¬ 
ter of Walter and Mary (Van Nostrand) Titus, 
and adopted daughter of John S. and Amelia 
(Titus) Avery. In 1857, he moved to Bridge¬ 
port, Conn., where he maintained his residence 
during the remainder of his life, although his 
love of the theatre caused him to make frequent 
and extended visits to New York. He had the 
grace of friendliness, and ample leisure and 
means, all of which contributed to his friend¬ 
ships among the theatrical people whose reminis¬ 
cences and records he accumulated. 

At first his collection of documents was a 
hobby; its development into a book he explains 
in the preface to his Records of the New York 
Stage: “The collecting of theatrical memoranda 
has been an amusement of the author since early 
childhood, ... it has been his daily habit to re¬ 
cord the dramatic events of the metropolis. Pos¬ 
sessing a large amount of material, ... in 1853, 
he wrote and contributed to the Evening Mirror 
several theatrical sketches over the signature 
TLN.D.' ” These proved so useful to others that 
he finally was persuaded to attempt an entire 
book. Although he had few graces as a writer, 
he had those qualities of honesty and industry so 
requisite to his task. The result was his Records 
of the New York Stage , from 1750 to 1860 (2 
vols., 1866-67). No one except the pioneer Wil¬ 
liam Dunlap [g.z\] had previously attempted to 
chronicle any extensive portion of American the¬ 
atrical history; and Ireland's book, for almost 
forty years the only reliable book in its field, is 
still regarded as accurate. It identified the au¬ 
thor with the dramatic world of his day. He be¬ 
came an honorary member of The Players and of 
the Dunlap Society. He wrote also two biog¬ 
raphies of actors, marked, in spite of his heavy 
style, by industry and sympathy: Mrs. Duff 
(1882), the first full-length account of that re¬ 
markable woman; and A Memoir of the Profes¬ 
sional Life of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper (Pub¬ 
lications of the Dunlap Society, no. 5, 1888), 
and contributed five chapters, on “Thomas Ab¬ 
thorpe Cooper,” “Mary Ann Duff,” “James H. 
ifaefcett,” “Henry Placide,” and “Clara Fisher,” 


Irene 

to Actors and Actresses of Great Britain and the 
United States (5 vols., 1886) by Brander Mat¬ 
thews and Laurence Hutton. The Charlotte 
Cushman of Lawrence Barrett (Publications of 
the Dunlap Society, no. 9, 1889) bears on the 
title page the sub-title, “With an appendix con¬ 
taining a letter from Joseph N. Ireland.” This 
letter gives a record of all the parts played by 
Charlotte Cushman. In 1880 he published Soyne 
Account of the Ireland Family , Originally of 
Long Island , N . Y., 1644-1880 . After a few 
years spent in retirement he died in his eighty- 
second year at Bridgeport, where he was buried. 

[Some Account of the Ireland Family (1880) ; obit- 
uary notices in N. Y. Herald, Dec. 30, 1898, and N. Y. 
Tribune of the same date; the prefaces to his several 
works; city directories of New York and of Bridge¬ 
port, Conn.] E.S.B—y. 

IRENE, Sister (May 12, 1823-Aug. 14, 1896), 
philanthropist, known in her girlhood as Cath¬ 
erine Fitzgibbon, was born in the Kensington 
district of London, England. At an early age she 
came to the United States with her parents, who 
settled in Brooklyn, N. Y. During a visitation 
of Asiatic cholera in that city she was stricken 
with the disease and after the last rites of the 
Church had been administered she was given up 
for dead. While hearing and understanding what 
was going on about her and yet unable to speak, 
she made a vow that if her life were spared she 
would enter religious work. After recovery she 
joined, in 1850, the Roman Catholic community 
of Sisters of Charity, taking the name of (Mary) 
Irene. While still a novice she was sent to teach 
in St. Peter's School, Barclay Street, New York 
City, where she passed fifteen years, attaining in 
that time a place of unique influence. It was said 
of her in that period of her life that her qualities 
of tact and sympathy made her a trusted coun¬ 
selor of many both within and without the circle 
of her pupils. More and more she formed con¬ 
tacts with the city’s poor and unfortunate. 

Until after the Civil War a foundling hospital 
had never been considered essential in the scheme 
of New York charities. It was the custom of 
the police, after each morning roundup, to con¬ 
sign to the inmates of the almshouses on Black¬ 
well's Island the tiny waifs picked up during the 
night Such care as the paupers could give the 
infants did not avail to save many lives; a large 
percentage of these babies died within the first 
few weeks. Meanwhile the number of abandoned 
children was increasing with the city's growing 
population. Finally, under the leadership of 
Archbishop (afterward Cardinal) McCloskey 
[g.^.], it was proposed that an asylum should be 
opened under the management of the Sisters of 
Charity, and Sister Irene was named as the first 



Irvine 

directress. In October 1869, with two sisters as 
aides, she prepared for the reception of found¬ 
lings at a house on East 12th Street. Within a 
year the capacity of those quarters was exceeded 
and a residence on Washington Square was ob¬ 
tained. The city then granted a site on Lexington 
Avenue at 68th Street and the state legislature 
appropriated $100,000 for a building on condi¬ 
tion that a like amount should be raised by sub¬ 
scription. That sum, large for those days even 
in New York, was secured by means of a com¬ 
munity effort in which many elements of the 
city's population took part and in which Sister 
Irene's personality contributed to the final suc¬ 
cess. The Foundling Hospital, as it was legally 
named, expanded with the growth of the city. In 
Sister Irene's lifetime the buildings and equip¬ 
ment came to represent a value of $1,000,000. On 
the twenty-fifth anniversary, the number of chil¬ 
dren whose lives had been saved was estimated 
at nearly 26,000. 

As a preparation for her task the directress 
had personally visited every like institution of 
any importance in this country and had studied 
the systems then employed abroad. Soon after 
beginning work in New York, however, she 
found that she would have td develop methods 
of her own. Whenever a mother herself brought 
a child to the asylum, Sister Irene tried to per¬ 
suade her to remain at least three months, giving 
the child her own care; rooms were provided for 
such mothers. If children taken to the Hospital 
were not reclaimed by a parent, the institution 
encouraged their adoption by families that had 
been carefully investigated by agents sent for 
the purpose. For children still in the Hospital's 
care, women were employed to act as foster 
mothers in their own homes, and thus some of 
the evils of institutional life were avoided. In 
later years Sister Irene founded a day nursery 
for the children of working women, a branch of 
the Foundling Hospital for delicate or convales¬ 
cent children, and a tuberculosis hospital known 
as the Seton House. 

[Anna T. Sadlier, “The Mother of the Foundlings 1 * 
in Ave Maria (Notre Dame, Ind.), Oct. 10, 1896, pp. 
449“55; The New York Foundling Hospital, biennial 
report for 1896-97 (1898), with portrait ;N.Y. Times, 
N . y. Tribune, N. Y . Herald, Aug. 15,1896.] 

W—m.B.S. 

IRVINE, JAMES (Aug. 4, i735~Apr. 28, 
1819), Revolutionary soldier, son of George and 
Mary (Rush) Irvine, was born in Philadelphia. 
His father, an emigrant from the north of Ire¬ 
land, died when James was five years old. Very 
early he manifested a desire for a military career. 
At the age of twenty-five he was an ensign in 
the first battalion of the Pennsylvania provincial 


Irvine 

regiment (May 2, 1760). On Dec. 30, 1763, he 
was promoted to captain. This period of his mil¬ 
itary service was spent along the northern Penn¬ 
sylvania frontier in Northampton County. In 
1764 he served under Col. Henry Bouquet [q.v,] 
in the expedition against the Indians northwest 
of the Ohio. One of the first to embrace the pa¬ 
triot cause at the outbreak of the Revolution, he 
was a delegate to the provincial conference at 
Philadelphia, Jan. 23, 1775. In the fall of that 
year when the first battalion of Philadelphia As- 
sociators was organized he was chosen captain, 
and on Nov. 25 following, when field officers 
were selected by Congress, he was commissioned 
lieutenant-colonel. On Dec. 4, 1775, he was or¬ 
dered by Congress to lead part of his battalion to 
Virginia against Lord Dunmore. He returned 
early in 1776, in time to accompany his entire bat¬ 
talion to Canada under Col. John Philip de Haas 
to join General Benedict Arnold. He served in 
the Canadian expedition until the fall of 1776, 
when he was given the rank of colonel in charge 
of the 9th Pennsylvania Regiment (Oct. 25, 

1776) . On Mar. 12, 1777, he was transferred to 
the 2nd Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, dissatisfied 
at seeing men younger in the service promoted 
more rapidly, and believing that Congress would 
give him no higher rank, he resigned from the 
Continental Army, June 1, 1777. 

His resignation apparently did not dim his en¬ 
thusiasm for the American cause, for on Aug. 26, 
1777, he accepted the appointment of brigadier- 
general of militia from the Pennsylvania Coun¬ 
cil and was given command of the 2nd Brigade. 
During the battle at the Brandywine, his brigade 
was stationed at Wilmington, and at German¬ 
town he was with General Armstrong on the ex¬ 
treme right of the American army. While Wash¬ 
ington was at Whitemarsh, near Philadelphia, 
with the main army, Irvine was sent (Dec. 5, 

1777) with six hundred men on a skirmishing ex¬ 
pedition against the British. A sharp engage¬ 
ment followed at Chestnut Hill, and in the melee 
his horse fell under him, three fingers were shot 
from his left hand, he suffered a contusion in his 
neck resulting in a wound from which he never 
entirely recovered, and his militiamen fled, leav¬ 
ing him a prisoner in the hands of the British. 
He was taken to Philadelphia, then to New York, 
and finally to Flushing, L. I., where he was con¬ 
fined. During his imprisonment he wrote re¬ 
peatedly to Congress and the Pennsylvania As¬ 
sembly pleading for exchange, and in December 
1780 he was permitted to go to Philadelphia to 
present in person petitions in behalf of himself 
and his fellow prisoners. In spite of his bitter 
complaints, however, he was not exchanged until 


499 



Irvine 


Irvine 


Sept. 3, 1781. Immediately upon his return to 
Philadelphia he was active in recruiting troops 
for the expected attack by the British on that city. 

In October 1782 Irvine was elected to the Su¬ 
preme Executive Council of Pennsylvania as a 
Constitutionalist, serving there for three years. 
From Nov. 6,1784, until his resignation, Oct 10, 
1785, he was vice-president of the Council. Dur¬ 
ing 1785-86 he was a member of the Assembly. 
On May 27, 1782, he was commissioned major- 
general of Pennsylvania militia, which post he 
held until his resignation in 1793. Irvine was ag¬ 
gressive and forceful and was regarded as a val¬ 
iant officer. During much of his later life he 
was an invalid. He died in Philadelphia after a 
lingering illness. 

TJarnes Irvine, "Descendants of John Rush,” in Pa. 
Mag. of Hist, and Biog., XVII (1893), 325-35; Ibid., 
V (1881), 269 f.; XVII, 161, 421; XXVIII (1904), 
120; Pa. Archives , 1 ser., VIII (1853), 660-65; VI 
(1853), 70-72, 85, 100-02; 2 ser., X (1880), 397, 674; 
5 ser., I (1906), 312, 335; Minutes of the Provincial 
Council of Pa., vqls., X, XI, XIII, XIV (1852-53) ; 
Poulsoris Am. Daily Advertiser, Apr. 30, 1819.] 

J.H.P. 

IRVINE, WILLIAM (Nov. 3, 1741-July 29, 
1804), Revolutionary soldier, was born near En¬ 
niskillen, Fermanagh county, Ulster province, 
Ireland. The Irvines were of ancient Scotch ex¬ 
traction; a branch of the family had migrated to 
Ireland and built Castle Irvine in Fermanagh 
under a grant from the Stuarts. William Irvine 
was educated at Enniskillen, and at Trinity Col¬ 
lege, Dublin. After a brief and unfortunate ca¬ 
reer at arms, he studied medicine under the cele¬ 
brated Cleghom. He was appointed surgeon on 
a British ship of war and served in the Seven 
Years’ War. After 1764 he practised his profes¬ 
sion in Carlisle, Pa. Here he married Anne Cal¬ 
lender, daughter of Capt. Robert Callender. Like 
most Scotch Ulstermen, Irvine supported Amer¬ 
ican independence from the outset. He was a 
member of the provincial convention in Phila¬ 
delphia of July 15, 1774, which denounced Brit¬ 
ish tyranny in Boston and declared for Ameri¬ 
can rights. He raised and commanded the 6th 
(later 7th) Pennsylvania Regiment, being ap¬ 
pointed colonel in 1777, to rank from Jan. 9, 
1776. His command participated in the expedi¬ 
tion against Canada, where he was captured in 
the encounter at Trois Rivieres. He was re¬ 
leased on parole soon afterward, but was not ex¬ 
changed until May 6, 1778. Immediately there¬ 
upon, he resumed arms and participated in the 
battle of Monmouth, in which Mary McCauley 
1 %'V-l —“Molly Pitcher”—who had been a serv¬ 
ant in the Irvine family, made a name for her¬ 
self in history. He was a member of the court 
martial which sat in judgment over Gen. Charles 


Lee, declared him guilty, and suspended him from 
his command. 

On May 12,1779, Irvine was promoted to brig¬ 
adier-general in the Continental Army. His bri¬ 
gade was employed in New Jersey around Tren¬ 
ton, took part in Lord Stirling's expedition 
against Staten Island, and in the unsuccessful 
attack of Gen. Anthony Wayne at Bull's Ferry. 
In the fall of 1781, upon the recommendation of 
Washington, Irvine was entrusted with the de¬ 
fense of the northwestern frontier. He was sta¬ 
tioned at Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh), and retained 
command there until the close of the war. His 
troops were poorly trained and inadequately sup¬ 
plied, and his task was aggravated by mutinies 
from within and Indian raids from without. He 
received indispensable assistance during these 
years from his aide-de-camp, a gifted Russian 
who called himself John Rose and after the war 
was identified as Gustavus de Rosenthal of Li¬ 
vonia, a baron of the Empire. 

When peace was declared, Irvine wrote to 
General Washington, to whom he was both per¬ 
sonally and professionally attached, compliment¬ 
ing him on his success. “With great sincerity,” 
the Commander-in-Chief replied, “I return you 
my congratulations.” Pennsylvania rewarded 
Irvine with a generous land grant, and, in 1785, 
he was appointed agent to direct the mode of 
distributing the donation lands promised to the 
troops. In exploring the territory, he became 
convinced of the advisability of the purchase by 
Pennsylvania of a tract of land called the “Tri¬ 
angle,” which would give the state a consider¬ 
able front on Lake Erie. The suggestion was in¬ 
corporated in his report and accepted by the gov¬ 
ernment. On dosing the business of the land 
agency he was elected a delegate to the Conti¬ 
nental Congress of 1786-88. While in New York 
in this capacity, he sat for his portrait to Robert 
Edge Pine, the English artist in America. A 
handsome copy of this painting was later made 
by Bass Otis of Philadelphia. 

In 1790 Irvine was elected to sit in the con¬ 
stitutional convention of his state, which framed 
the organ adopted on Sept. 2 of that year. He 
served .as one of the commissioners who settled 
the financial account between the several states 
and the United States government in 1793, and 
in that year was sent to the Third United States 
Congress by Cumberland district. In 1794 he 
was active both as arbitrator and commanding 
officer of the state troops in quelling the Whiskey 
Rebellion in western Pennsylvania. He was ap¬ 
pointed superintendent of the military stores at 
Philadelphia on Mar. 13, 1800, in which capacity 
he had charge of the arsenals, ordnance, and sup- 


500 



Irvine 

plies of the army, and supervision of Indian af¬ 
fairs. This office he held till he died. His bear¬ 
ing is said to have been austere and somewhat 
forbidding; he was an excellent, if strict, disci¬ 
plinarian. From 1801 to 1804 he was president 
of the Pennsylvania branch of the Society of the 
Cincinnati. He died in Philadelphia. 

[C. W. Butterfield, Washington-Irvine Correspond¬ 
ence (1882) and An Hist. Account of the Expedition 
against Sandusky under Col. Wm. Crawford in 1782 
(1873) ; L. Boyd, The Irvines and Their Kin (1908); 
G. W. Howell, in Proc. N. J. Hist. Soc. r 2 ser. VII 
(1883); scattered material in Pa. Mag. of Hist, and 
Biog., and Pa. Archives ; T. J. Rogers, A Hew Am. 
Biog . Diet. (3rd ed., Easton, Pa., 1824); Aurora 
(Phila.), July 31, 1804; Poutsorts Am. Daily Adver¬ 
tiser (Phila.), Aug. 1, 1804.] C.G.D. 

IRVINE, WILLIAM MANN (Oct 13,1865- 
June 11, 1928), educator, was born in Bedford, 
Pa., the second of ten children of Henry Fetter 
and Emily Elizabeth (Mann) Irvine. He was a 
great-grandson of Peter Mann, Revolutionary 
fighter, and a grandson of the Rev. Matthew Ir¬ 
vine, an early home missionary of the Reformed 
Church. He entered Phillips Exeter Academy in 
1881 and worked his way through that school, 
spending his summers as clerk in a store, selling 
reference books, or working on his uncle’s farm. 
He was graduated from Exeter in 1884 and en¬ 
tered the College of New Jersey (Princeton), 
being graduated in 1888 with the degree of A.B. 
Because of his scholastic record he was awarded 
a fellowship, and took post-graduate work in 
1888-89. 1891 Princeton awarded him the 

degree of Ph.D. He was graduated from the 
Theological Seminary of the Reformed Church, 
Lancaster, Pa., in 1892. 

Irvine was a noted athlete. He had played on 
the Exeter football and baseball teams, and was 
a member of the Princeton ’varsity football team 
for five years, during which time he kept his 
name on the honor roll for scholarship. At Lan¬ 
caster, he was captain and coach of the football 
team, and was instrumental in obtaining the first 
gymnasium. He also founded the first glee club 
there, and had a share in the establishment of the 
weekly college paper. The year following his 
graduation from the seminary he taught polit¬ 
ical economy, logic, English, literature, Anglo- 
Saxon, and rhetoric at Franklin and Marshall 
College, and in addition took part in many col¬ 
lege activities. On Apr. 27, 1893, he was chosen 
headmaster of Mercersburg Academy, Mercers- 
burg,. Pa., where for thirty-five years, with 
amazing energy he built up an institution of large 
influence, adopting the methods of the great Eng¬ 
lish public schools so far as his special studies 
convinced him of their applicability to American 
conditions. He rendered also consecrated and 


distinguished service in the development of char¬ 
acter. . He was president of the Headmasters’ As¬ 
sociation in 1921; president of the Association of 
Schools and Colleges of the Middle States and 
Maryland in 1922; and president of the Head¬ 
masters Club of Philadelphia and Vicinity in 
1923. On Jan. 30, 1924, he was ordained as a 
missionary pastor by a committee of the Mer¬ 
cersburg Classis, so that he might exercise all 
the functions of a minister in connection with his 
duties as headmaster. His death came suddenly 
after six days’ illness. He was survived by his 
wife, Camille Hart of Winchester, Va., whom 
he married in Washington, D. C., on June 26, 
1894, and by two daughters. 

[Personal acquaintance; Irvine's letters and ad¬ 
dresses; articles appearing in the Reformed Church 
Messenger since 1893; J. H. Dubbs, Hist, of Franklin 
and Marshall Coll. (1903) ; Am. Education , Nov. 1918; 
Independent Education, Oct. 1927; Who's Who in 
America, 1928-29; Irvine Memorial Edition of the 
Mercersburg Academy Alumni Quart., Oct. 1928* 
Princeton Alumni Weekly, Feb. 8,1929; records of Kit- 
tochtinny Hist. Soc., Franklin County, Pa.; Bull, of 
Phillips Exeter Acad., Sept. 1928; Quinvicennial Rec¬ 
ord of the Class of Eighty-eight, Princeton Univ., 1888- 
1913 (n.d.); Patriot (Harrisburg, Pa.), and N. Y. Times, 
June 12,1928.] £ jj 

IRVING, JOHN BEAUFAIN (Nov. 26, 
1825-Apr. 20,1877), genre, portrait, and histor¬ 
ical painter, was born in Charleston, S. C., the 
son of Dr. John Beaufain Irving, author of A 
Day on Cooper River (1842) and The South Car¬ 
olina Jockey Club (1857), a history of the turf in 
South Carolina. His mother was Emma Maria 
(Cruger) Irving, daughter of Nicholas and Ann 
(Trezevant) Heyward Cruger. After a period 
of study in his native town, he began to paint por¬ 
traits. In 1851 he went to Diisseldorf, Germany, 
where he became a pupil of Leutze. He returned 
to Charleston after a few years and continued his 
work as a portraitist After the Civil War, he 
removed to New York, where he took up genre 
painting, exhibiting “The Splinter” and “The 
Disclosure” in 1867. Although he did not neglect 
his original interest and executed portraits of 
August Belmont, Mrs. August Belmont, and 
John Jacob Astor, he is best known by his paint¬ 
ings of scenes of every-day life and historical 
subjects. Among his pictures in this class are: 
“Wine-Tasters” (1869), “Musketeer of the Sev¬ 
enteenth Century” (1875), "Cardinal Wolsey 
and His Friends” (1876), and “The End of the 
Game,” which was a great favorite. His “Ban¬ 
quet at Hampton Court in the Sixteenth Cen¬ 
tury” was in the collection of J. J. Astor in New 
York. 

Irving’s earliest paintings cannot be said to 
have any qualities of animation or originality. 
Their most striking characteristic is a theatrical 



Irving 

although effective composition. Nevertheless, his 
art was admired by the critics of his day for the 
qualities of careful painting and rich tone. Tra¬ 
dition has it that he was greatly impressed by 
the style of Meissonier (1815-1891), and, judg¬ 
ing from his love of elaborate detail, his interest 
in costume and brilliant coloring, one may con¬ 
cede that Meissonier may have been his model. 
He was elected an associate of the National Acad¬ 
emy of Design in 1869, and an academician in 
1872. At the Universal Exposition of Paris in 
1878, he exhibited a painting entitled “The Con¬ 
noisseurs, 1 ” which met with considerable ap¬ 
proval. After his death in 1877, an exhibition 
of his work was held at the home of August Bel¬ 
mont for the benefit of the artist's family. 

[Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, Allgemeines Lex- 
ikon der Bildenden Kunstler, vol. XVIII (1925) J 
Bryan’s Diet . of Painters and Engravers, ed. by G. C. 
Williamson, vol. Ill (1904); S. G. W. Benjamin, Art 
in America (18S0) ; C. E. Dement and Laurence Hut¬ 
ton, Artists of the Nineteenth Century (1879) ; Sir 
TEmilius and L. H. Irving, James Irving of Ironshore 
and His Descendants, 1/13-1918 (privately printed, 
Toronto, 1918) ; J. B. Irving, The Irvings, Irwins, Ir¬ 
vines, or Erinveines (Aberdeen, 1907) ; Art Jour., June 
1877.] A.B.B. 

IRVING, JOHN DUER (Aug. 18,1874-JuIy 
20, 1918), mining geologist, the son of Roland 
Duer Irving [q.v.~\ and Abby Louise (McCulloh) 
Irving, was born in Madison, Wis., where his 
father, one of the pioneers of petrography in 
America, was professor of geology, mineralogy, 
and metallurgy in the state university. His for¬ 
mative years were passed in a home where his 
father was preparing the now famous mono¬ 
graphs on the geology of the iron and copper de¬ 
posits of the Lake Superior region. In his four¬ 
teenth year, his father died, and with his mother, 
he removed to the East, resolved to carry for¬ 
ward his father's work. He entered Columbia 
in 1892, receiving the degrees of A.B. in 1896, 
A.M. in 1898 and Ph.D. in 1899. During his 
summer vacations (1895, 1896, 1897) he en¬ 
gaged in geological work in Utah, northern New 
York, and the San Juan district of Colorado. For 
his doctor's dissertation he spent four months 
in field work in the Black Hills of South Dakota. 

Upon graduation he entered the United States 
Geological Survey, being classified successively 
as geologic aid, 1899-1900, assistant geologist, 
1900-06,' and geologist, 1906-07, While he left 
active full-time service with the Survey in 1903, 
he retained his connection for summer work until 
1907. The papers published by the Survey of 
which he was author or co-author include reports 
on the economic geology of the northern Black 
Hills of South Dakota (1904), with S. F. Em¬ 
mons and T, A, Jaggar, Jr,; Needle Mountains 


Irving 

Quadrangle, Colorado (1905), with W. H. Em¬ 
mons; Ouray District, Colorado (1905), the 
Downtown District of Leadville, Colo. (1907), 
with S. F. Emmons; and the Lake City District, 
Colorado (1911), with Howland Bancroft. The 
death of S. F. Emmons in 1911 interfered 
with plans for the revision of the Leadville re¬ 
port. Irving, from a strong sense of loyalty to 
the memory of his former superior, undertook 
the completion of this work. It involved such an 
enormous amount of exacting and detailed work 
as almost to exhaust his great patience and 
strength, and was not completed until shortly 
before his death. 

Meanwhile, still following in his father’s foot¬ 
steps he took up the teacher’s career, first as act¬ 
ing professor of mining and geology at the Uni¬ 
versity of Wyoming, 1902-03, then as assistant 
professor of geology, 1903, and professor of geol¬ 
ogy, 1906, at Lehigh University, and finally as 
professor of economic geology at the Sheffield 
Scientific School (Yale), from 1907. “He was 
a hard and tireless worker and spared neither 
time nor pains to make his teaching effective 
by thorough preparation. . . , Although de¬ 
manding high ideals of work and thoroughness 
in its performance from his students, his sym¬ 
pathy, kindness and justice made him not only 
respected but loved by them” (Pirsson, post, p. 
257). When a group of geologists established 
in 1905 the magazine Economic Geology, Irving 
was the unanimous choice for editor. The thir¬ 
teen volumes published under his supervision 
constitute a record of the world’s best work on 
applied geology and form an enduring monument 
to his memory. For him it was a labor of love, 
an example of unselfish service to his profession. 
To this journal he contributed a paper on “Re¬ 
placement Ore-Bodies and the Criteria for Their 
Recognition” (September, October-November, 
1911) which was recognized as a masterly treat¬ 
ise and attracted attention among geologists all 
over the world. 

Being unmarried, and despite the fact that he 
was past forty years of age, when the United 
States became involved in the World War, he 
entered the service as captain in the nth Regi¬ 
ment of Engineers and in July 1917 sailed for 
France. As instructor in mining at the Army 
Engineers’ School, developing and teaching dug- 
out construction, he rendered invaluable service. 
He worked long hours with a high sense of devo¬ 
tion to duty. His vitality ran low, and pneumonia 
following a bad attack of so-called Spanish grippe 
caused his death. “Captain Irving died as glori¬ 
ously as any man in the service ever did,” wrote a 
superior officer; “he gave all he had.” 


502 



Irving 

[J. F. Kemp, in Engineering and Mining Journal, 
Aug. io, 1918, and in Bull, Am. Inst. Mining Engineers, 
Sept. 1918, with photograph, and bibliography of Ir¬ 
ving's writings; letter from Maj. Evarts Tracy, Ibid., 
Oct. 1918, p. xxv; Waldemar Lindgren, in Econ. Geol., 
Sept. 1918; L. V. Pirsson, in Bull. Mining and Metal¬ 
lurgical Soc. of America, Aug. 31, 1918; Ibid., Oct. 31, 
1918; Who’s Who in America, 1916-17.] B.A.R. 

IRVING, JOHN TREAT (Dec. 2,1812-Feb. 
27, 1906), author, was the son of Judge John 
Treat Irving and Abby Spicer (Furman) Irving, 
and a nephew of Washington Irving [ q.v .]. Born 
in New York, he was graduated from Columbia 
College at sixteen. In 1833 he accompanied 
Henry L. Ellsworth [q.v.], the government com¬ 
missioner whom Washington Irving had accom¬ 
panied the year before on a journey to make 
treaties with the Pawnee Indians. This expedi¬ 
tion resulted in John Treat Irving’s Indian 
Sketches (1835, 1888). After his return to New 
York, he studied law under Daniel Lord; was 
admitted to the New York bar; and was for a 
time a law partner of Gardiner Spring. From 
1835 to 1837 he traveled widely in Europe, and 
on June 5, 1838, he married Helen Schermer- 
horn, whose family name occurs frequently in 
the letters of all the Irvings of this period. He 
began practising law in 1834, when his name 
first appears as attorney in Longworth’s . . . 
New York Directory, and ostensibly continued 
in the profession for many years; but his inter¬ 
est in the law seems to have been nominal, and 
there were brief periods when he conducted a 
brokerage and real-estate business (see Trovfs 
New York City Directory, 1869, 1873, *874). 
Whether or not, as has been said, he retired from 
business in 1887, it is certain that much of his 
life he devoted to his own special interests—the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, the Authors and 
Century clubs, the New York Chess Club, the 
St. Nicholas Society, the Institute for the Blind, 
of which he was president, and literature. 

It is probably through the last-named interest 
that John Treat Irving will retain his slender 
hold on posterity. Although he was excelled by 
more gifted authors, his writings reflect the lit¬ 
erary passions of his age to a degree which 
makes them part of the subsoil of American lit¬ 
erature. Indian Sketches and The Hunters of 
the Prairie, or The Hawk Chief: A Tale of the 
Indian Country (1837) were expressions of that 
gentlemanly and urban concern for the frontier 
which so interested Washington Irving on his 
return from Europe in 1832 and was responsible 
for so many books which, as Philip Hone once 
said, a New Yorker could read comfortably in 
the evening before a fireplace, sitting in bath 
gown and slippers by his astral lamp. It was the 


Irving 

record of an excursion “fraught with novelty and 
pleasurable excitement,” conveying “an idea of 
the habits and customs of the Indian tribes . . . 
who, at that time, lived in their pristine simplic¬ 
ity, uncontaminated by the vices of the lawless 
white men” ( Indian Sketches, Dedication, 1835, 
and Preface, 1888). 

In the same way Irving echoed tastes of his 
epoch in his contributions to magazines and mis¬ 
cellanies (“A Chronicle of Nieuw Amsterdam,” 
United States Magazine and Democratic Review, 
February 1840; “Rulif Van Pelt: A Legend of 
Westchester County,” idem, December 1845, re¬ 
printed in the Van Gelder Papers ; “Zadoc Town: 
A Legend of Dosoris,” Knickerbocker Gallery, 
1855). The Van Gelder Papers, and Other 
Sketches (1887,1895) obviously owe their origin 
to the current enthusiasm for indigenous Amer¬ 
ican subjects through the Dutch tradition, a 
fashion inaugurated by the greater Irving. Some 
of these sketches suggest strongly the influence 
of Part IV of Washington Irving’s Tales of a 
Traveller . Likewise in John Treat Irving’s The 
Attorney (1842), the story of a rascally lawyer, 
and Harry Harson; or the Benevolent Bachelor 
(1844?), both of which appeared originally in 
The Knickerbocker under the heading “The 
Quod Correspondence,” John Quod, a kind of 
Diedrich Knickerbocker, a whimsical old gentle¬ 
man in a haunted house, is alleged to have writ¬ 
ten the novels. Such books, which have now 
chiefly an antiquarian interest, reveal John Treat 
Irving as a minor man of letters borne along on 
the wave of .pre-Civil War literary tastes. 

[Memorial Cyc. of the Twentieth Century (1906) ; 
information from Walter V. Irving, grandson of John 
Treat Irving; obituary notice in Columbia Univ. Quart., 
June igo6; P. M, Irving, The Life and Letters of 
Washington Irving (1863-64), III, 69, 73; The Knick¬ 
erbocker Gallery (1855) ; review of The Attorney in 
The Knickerbocker, Oct. 1842; C. E. Fitch, Encyc. of 
Biog . of N. Y., vol. Ill (1916); Richard Schermer- 
horn, Schermerhorn Geneal. and Family Chronicles 
(1914); N. Y . Times, Feb. 28, 1906.] S T W 

n.f.a! 

IRVING, PETER (Oct. 30, 1771-June 27, 
1838), writer, third surviving son of William 
and Sarah (Sanders) Irving, was born in New 
York. His brothers included William Irving 
[ q.v .], the poet and politician, and Washington 
Irving [q.v.], to whom he was bound through¬ 
out his life by the strongest ties of devotion. He 
was educated in the private schools of the city 
and studied medicine at Columbia, graduating in 
1794, but, like his more distinguished brother, 
early displayed talents for literature. Records 
of the “Calliopean Society’ show him to have 
been an important member, declaiming on one 
occasion the “speech of Coriolanus to the Ro- 



Irving 


Irving 


mans.” His affectionate guidance of Washing¬ 
ton Irving's talents was an important formative 
influence in the younger brother's life. 

During the first years of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury Peter Irving, neglecting the practice of 
medicine, was prominent in New York society, 
and was the first to link the name of his middle- 
class family to writing. Aaron Burr at this time 
referred respectfully to his ability, and William 
Dunlap thought him “a gentleman of the first 
talents.” He was known chiefly, however, as a 
dabbler in politics, and he became, in October 
1802, owner and editor of the Morning Chronicle, 
a Burrite newspaper, which included Washing¬ 
ton Irving among its contributors. In 1804 he 
continued his political badgering through his 
anonymous and almost forgotten newspaper, The 
Corrector, an abusive and somewhat scurrilous 
sheet After Washington Irving's return from 
his first journey abroad in 1806, Peter Irving 
was for a brief time one of the “Worthies” of 
“Cockloft Hall,” the rendezvous in Gouverneur 
Kemble's old mansion in Newark of a group of 
young wits, who later produced Salmagundi: or, 
the Whim-Whams of Launcelot Lang staff Esq. 
and Others, a satire which took the New York of 
1807 and 1808 by storm. He himself was abroad 
from December 1806 to January 1808, but was 
again in New York to plan with his brother 
Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York. 
He returned to Europe, however, at the begin¬ 
ning of 1809 before the completion and publi¬ 
cation of the great comic burlesque, and re¬ 
mained abroad until 1836. 

Here Washington Irving joined him in Liver¬ 
pool in 1815; together in 1818 they bore the 
disaster of the business collapse of the firm of 
P. & E. Irving, which Peter and his brother 
Ebenezer had founded in 1810. From this time 
on Peter Irving's life was nomadic ; he was use¬ 
ful chiefly as companion and adviser to Wash¬ 
ington, with whom he traveled almost constantly 
until the latter's departure for southern Spain in 
1826. His pieds d terre continued to be Caen 
and Havre, the last place a favorite refuge for 
the younger brother during his own wanderings. 
During Washington's stay in Europe, Peter re¬ 
mained in person or by letter the intimate sharer 
of all the former's literary ambitions. He lin¬ 
gered on in France for four years after Wash¬ 
ington's return to America, but, then, at Wash¬ 
ington’s earnest entreaty, he came to “Sunny- 
^ He lived, however, only two years more, 
dying in the summer of 1838. 

Genial, social, but irresolute, and, after 1815, 
a semi-invalid, Peter Irving is chiefly interesting 
as complement and echo of Washington Irving. 


Together, after the success of The Sketch Book 
they mingled in the literary set of Samuel Rogers' 
Thomas Campbell, and Thomas Moore. Together 
they planned A History of New York, and Tales 
of a Traveller. Not unlike in temperament, they 
both recorded carefully their experiences in 
travel, and Peter Irving's journals, of which at 
least three survive, suggest their common inter¬ 
est in their observation of romantic scenery and 
places. At the same time these manuscripts of 
Peter's suggest his deficiency: whereas those of 
his younger brother include countless suggestions 
for tale and sketch, Peter Irving's are merely 
objective records of an American's travels dur¬ 
ing the first twenty years of the century. Ap¬ 
preciative of literature, he lacked the creative 
gift. His one novel, Giovanni Sbogarro: A Ve¬ 
netian Tale, a story of historical adventure, pub¬ 
lished in New York in 1820, was a failure. 

. [Facts concerning Peter Irving may be derived from 
incidental mention in P. M. Irving, The Life and Let¬ 
ters of Washington Irving (4 vols., 1862-64) ; The 
Journals of Washington Irving (1919), ed. by G. S. 
Heilman; from Journal of Washington Irving, 1823I 
1824 (1931), ed. by S. T. Williams; from the collections 
of Irving MSS. in the N. Y. Pub. Lib. and at Yale 
Univ.; and from the three surviving journals by Peter 
Irving, at Yale Univ., at the Univ. of Tex., and in the 
possession of Dr. Roderick Terry of Newport, R. I. 
See also E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyc. of Am. Lit . 
(rev. ed., 2 vols., 1876).] S T W 

IRVING, PIERRE MUNRO (1803-18 76)" 
lawyer and writer, was the son of William Irving 
iq.v.l and Julia (Paulding) Irving, and the 
nephew of Washington Irving [q.v.\ whose first 
biographer he became. He was graduated from 
Columbia College in 1821, and studied law, but, 
like most of the Irvings, he early manifested 
strong literary tastes, and coming to manhood 
during the first successes of his uncle, idealized 
him, and devoted much of his life to him. An in¬ 
teresting glimpse of Pierre as a young and at¬ 
tractive wanderer is afforded in the letters of 
Washington Irving written from Spain in 1827. 
The older man, then engaged upon his life of 
Columbus, was lonely, and confided to his nephew 
his unhappiness at his estrangement from Ameri¬ 
cans by. reason of his long absence in Europe. 
The intimacy here commenced continued, and, 
after Irving's return to the United States in 
1832, found expression in literary collabora¬ 
tion. Washington Irving's Astoria (1836) owed 
its existence chiefly to Pierre Irving's industry 
in collecting and collating materials regarding 
John Jacob Astor's famous expedition. After his 
uncle's ambassadorship to Spain, which ended 
in 1846, Pierre managed both the financial and 
literary affairs of the author, and during his last 
illness kept an encyclopedic journal of his con¬ 
versations. After appointment in 1859 as literary 


5 ° 4 



Irving 

executor of Washington Irving, he used this 
material and a vast collection of notebooks and 
letters to write his four-volume biography, The 
Life and Letters of Washington Irving (1862- 
64). This work is full of prejudices, but must 
always remain a source book for our knowledge 
of Washington Irving. In 1866 Pierre edited 
Irving's Spanish Papers and Other Miscellanies, 
and died ten years later, known chiefly as the 
biographer and interpreter of his more famous 
kinsman. 

[Sources for our knowledge of Pierre Munro Irving 
exist only in the above-mentioned biography and in in¬ 
cidental allusions in the correspondence of Washington 
Irving, chiefly in the collections of the New York Pub¬ 
lic Library and Yale University.] S. T. W. 

IRVING, ROLAND DUER (Apr. 29, 1847- 
May 27, 1888), geologist and mining engineer, 
was born in the city of New York. His father, 
Pierre Paris Irving, son of Ebenezer and Eliza¬ 
beth (Kip) Irving, was an Episcopal clergyman 
and a nephew of Washington Irving [q.vf] ; his 
mother, Anna Henrietta (Duer) Irving, was a 
daughter of John Duer [q.vf], an eminent New 
York lawyer and jurist. That young Irving was 
“well born" and came naturally by his literary 
and general scholastic habits is evident. In 1849 
the family moved to New Brighton, L. I. As a 
youth, though strong and robust in appearance, 
Irving was frail, subject to frequent and alarm¬ 
ing attacks of illness, and handicapped by weak 
eyes. For these reasons his early education was 
gained at home under the instruction of his fa¬ 
ther and sisters. At the age of twelve he was 
sent to a classical school where his teacher was 
accustomed to take long walks with his favorite 
pupils on Saturday afternoons. During these 
rambles the boy interested himself in collecting 
rocks, ores, and minerals, and gave the first evi¬ 
dences of his tendency toward the natural sci¬ 
ences. Notwithstanding this bent he entered 
upon a classical course at Columbia in 1863, but 
was forced to abandon it a year later on account 
of his eyes. At the end of a six months' holiday 
spent in England he returned to the United 
States, and in 1866 entered upon a course in the 
Columbia School of Mines. Still troubled by his 
eyes, he found it necessary to have much of the 
text of his studies read to him. This slow and 
laborious method of acquiring an education un¬ 
doubtedly had much to do with the development 
of the remarkable memory for which he later be¬ 
came noted. Soon after his graduation in 1869, 
he became superintendent of smelting works at 
Grenville, N. J,, and in 1870 accepted the chair 
of geology and mineralogy in the University of 
Wisconsin, where he developed to an unusual de¬ 
gree the dual facilities of instruction and in- 


Irving 

vestigation. With the establishment in 1873 of a 
geological survey of Wisconsin under Prof. T. 
C. Chamberlin [q.v.'], Irving was appointed one 
of the three assistant geologists and assigned for 
the first year to the study of the Penokee iron 
range; the second and third years being devoted 
to the Paleozoic and Archaean areas of the cen¬ 
tral part of the state. The results of these labors 
appeared in Geology of Wisconsin, Survey of 
1873-79 (4 vols., 1882-83). He also contributed 
a number of articles to the American Journal of 
Science , notably to the issues of July 1874, June 
1875 and May 1879. In 1880, under the auspices 
of the United States Geological Survey, he en¬ 
tered upon a series of investigations of the geol¬ 
ogy of the Lake Superior regions, involving 
both the iron and copper-bearing rocks. To this 
task he devoted himself most assiduously until 
his death in 1888. His achievement here was 
given its “best single expression," according to 
Chamberlin (post), in his Copper-Bearing 
Rocks of Lake Superior (1883), published as a 
monograph of the United States Geological Sur¬ 
vey. His work, which lay in a most difficult field, 
was distinguished for its thoroughness and hon¬ 
esty of purpose. He was one of the first among 
American geologists to enter the field of genetic 
petrography and show convincingly its full util¬ 
ity. His most important single work was prob¬ 
ably the determination of the origin of the iron 
ores of the region. 

In personality, Irving was of a modest, retir¬ 
ing disposition, but he possessed a “rollicking 
brusque humor" that greatly endeared him to his 
associates. He was married in 1872 to Abby 
Louise McCulloh of Glencoe, Md. They had a 
daughter and two sons, one of whom, John Duer 
Irving [q.vf], became distinguished in his fa¬ 
ther's profession. 

[Ninth Awn. Report, U. S. Geol. Survey, 1887-88 
(1889); T. C. Chamberlin, in Am. Geologist, Jan. 
1889; Am. lour . Sci., July 1888; Science, June 15,. 
1888; bibliography of Irving’s writings in J. M. Nickles, 
“Geologic Literature on North America,” U. S. Geol. 
Survey Bull. 746 (1923) ; Cuyler Reynolds, Geneal. and 
Family Hist, of Southern 'N. Y. and the Hudson River 
Valley (1914), vol. Ill; Madison Democrat, May 31, 
1888.] G.P.M. 

IRVING, WASHINGTON (Apr. 3, 1783- 
Nov. 28, 1859), author, was horn in New York, 
the son of Deacon William Irving, of the Orkney 
family of Irvine, a former British packet officer, 
a patriot during the Revolution, and a successful 
merchant Irving's mother was Sarah (Sanders) 
Irving, the grand-daughter of an English curate. 
The youngest of eleven children, among whom 
were the politician and poet, William [$.».], the 
business man, Ebenezer, and the writer, Peter 
[g.®.], Washington Irving was reared in a home 



Irving 

whose customs were partly Scottish, partly Eng¬ 
lish, and always religious and literary. Deacon 
Irving was a Scotch Covenanter, and his last 
child received Presbyterian baptism, though in 
the Episcopal Chapel of St. George, where the 
Presbyterians were temporarily worshiping 
(Church Records, First Presbyterian Church). 
He was a precocious, undersized boy, “easily 
moved to pity and tears by a tale of distress”—a 
sensibility that later found poignant expression 
in his essays and tales. His was essentially a 
healthy nature, however, and his earliest recol¬ 
lections of the garden at 128 William St. were of 
romantic plays and games with his brothers and 
sisters. At the time of George Washington's in¬ 
auguration into the Presidency, the boy's nurse 
sought out the General and obtained his blessing 
for the lad. His education, in the various “male 
seminaries'' of the city, was fragmentary. He 
obtained merely a superficial knowledge of geog¬ 
raphy, history, French, and Latin, but a contem¬ 
porary noted, even in these apprentice days his 
“quick foresightedness ... apt seizure of a 
novelty, a principle, or a fact.” The real influ¬ 
ences of these formative years were in the genial 
life of the growing city. As a boy he mingled 
with the velvet-clad ladies and gentlemen, a so¬ 
cial level above his own middle-class family, who 
promenaded before the City Hall, where Con¬ 
gress was in session. He listened to the bookish 
talk of his brothers, William and Peter, both 
members of “The Calliopean Society.” He stud¬ 
ied drawing with Archibald Robertson; he was 
friendly with the wood-engraver, Alexander An¬ 
derson [q.z>.], and with the older brother, John 
Anderson, musician and artist He stole away 
from the family prayer meetings, over the roofs 
of the Dutch gabled houses, to attend secretly the 
little theatre in John Street. Gun on shoulder, 
he tramped the open country above Broadway 
and Bridewell, and shot squirrels in the woods 
along the Hudson. Thus he began what he called 
in old age his “early companionship with this 
glorious river.” In quieter hours at home he 
lingered long over Newberry's picture books and 
the old prints of the Thames and London Bridge 
in the Gentleman’s Magazine . 

In 1798 he entered the law office of Henry 
Masterton, and though for a time he was covetous 
of success, and though Longworth's Almanac of 
1808 boasts of: “Irving, Washington, attorney 
at law 3 Wall,” he soon wearied of his chosen 
profession, seeking every opportunity to diversify 
its monotony by society, by scribbling, and by 
travel. Thus in 1803, he made his first contact 
with the frontier in a journal with the Hoffmans 
and Ludlow Ogden through upper New York 


Irving 

State and Canada as far as Montreal. Enduring 
good-humoredly the hardships of the bumping 
ox-cart, swollen rivers, and wretched inns, he 
derived an indelible impression of the fascination 
of the pioneer's life. Returning to New York, he 
wrote for Peter Irving’s Morning Chronicle and 
for his anonymous Burrite sheet, The Corrector, 
In the former for Nov. 15, 1802, he offered the 
first installment of “The Letters of Jonathan 
Oldstyle, Gent.,” amateurish but lively satire on 
theatrical and social New York. These juvenilia 
won him a place in the tea-table gossip of the 
day. The affectionate brothers now regarded him 
with pride, not unmixed with anxiety, for he was 
obviously failing in health. To improve this and 
to solidify his talents, they sent him abroad; on 
May 19, 1804, he sailed for Bordeaux, for an ab¬ 
sence of nearly two years. His tour led him, 
reading Sterne and Mrs. Radcliffe, through 
Montpellier and Marseilles, to Genoa, whence he 
wrote home exuberant letters on the Italian thea¬ 
tres and the beauty of Genoese women. En route 
from Genoa to Sicily he was captured by pirates, 
and off Messina he beheld Nelson’s fleet on pa¬ 
trol in the Mediterranean. Turning homeward, 
he met in Rome Washington Allston [q.v.], who 
almost persuaded him to become a painter. In 
Paris he doffed all pretence of study, save for a 
few lectures in botany, always a hobby, and gave 
himself up to the gay life of the capital. Youth 
and high spirits indeed furnished the mood of 
the entire journey, which concluded with short 
stays in Holland and England. On Mar. 24,1806, 
the New York Gazette announced his return. 
His new assets were good health and a half- 
dozen notebooks, bulging with anecdote and 
backgrounds for future story and tale. 

Irving's enthusiasm for the law was now neg¬ 
ligible ; his passion for writing irresistible. 
Within a year, through the influence of the 
“Nine Worthies” of “Cockloft Hall” (who in¬ 
cluded besides his brothers William and Peter, 
James Kirke Paulding, Henry Brevoort, and 
Gouverneur Kemble) he was a moving spirit in 
publishing Salmagundi; or, the Whim-Whams 
and Opinions of Launcelot Lang staff, Esq . and 
Others (twenty numbers, January 1807-Janu- 
ary 1808), whimsical essays which mirrored the 
rise and fall of New York opinion on its social 
life, books, theatres, politics, and personalities. 
In “Old Sal,” as the brothers fondly called these 
audacious sketches, may be found anticipations 
of Irving's life-opinions and prejudices: his dis¬ 
taste for democratic Jeffersonian policies, for 
mobs and pedantries; his love of hoax, the super¬ 
natural, and the antiquarian. He was now well 
known as a writer, and as a wit in New York 



Irving 

and Philadelphia society; and his letters, par¬ 
ticularly those in 1807 descriptive of the trial of 
Aaron Burr, at Richmond, which he attended in 
a minor capacity, are admirable transcripts of 
life in America during the first decade of the 
century. Yet the tranquil, almost shallow flow 
of his life now took a sharp turn. While engaged 
upon his comic Diedrich Knickerbocker’s A 
History of New York, he suffered a bereave¬ 
ment which affected him deeply. He loved and 
lost in her eighteenth year, his betrothed, Ma¬ 
tilda, the youngest daughter of Judge Josiah 0 . 
Hoffman [q.v.]. She died suddenly of tubercu¬ 
losis on Apr. 26, 1809. For weeks, Irving, as he 
confessed later, was nearly out of his mind; and 
fourteen years later he could write: “She died 
in the flower of her youth & of mine but she has 
lived for me ever since in all woman kind. I see 
her in their eyes—and it is the remembrance of 
her that has given a tender interest in my eyes 
to everything that bears the name of woman’’ 
(Journal, 1823 - 24 , p. 117). This episode in 
Irving’s life has been over-sentimentalized, but 
there can be no doubt of its sobering and deep¬ 
ening effect upon him, as witnessed, despite later 
love-affairs, by his covert but persistent refer¬ 
ences in his journals to Matilda Hoffman and 
by her demonstrable influence upon such pas¬ 
sages as those on the deathbed in “Rural Fu¬ 
nerals” in The Sketch Book . He struggled with 
the concluding chapters of A History of New 
York,an odd anodyne for his grief. This sprawl¬ 
ing burlesque appeared in December 1809, and 
may be reasonably called the first great book of 
comic literature written by an American. It is 
at once rollicking farce and shrewd satire. 
Among Irving’s targets are Swedes, Yankees, 
colonial historians, Dutch settlers in New Am¬ 
sterdam, red-breeched Jefferson and his demo¬ 
crats, English, French, and Spanish literature, 
and the quizzical author himself. Although lo¬ 
cal, it has been translated into a half-dozen lan¬ 
guages, and in English has, in spite of prolixity 
and subservience to temporal satire, rivaled The 
Sketch Book in popularity. For the next six 
years Irving was restless, depleting his energies 
in such hackwork as his devout edition of the 
poetry of Thomas Campbell (1810) ; in the edi¬ 
torship of the Analectic Magazine (1813-14); 
in the New York offices of his brothers; in polit¬ 
ical agencies in Washington, where he became 
the friend of Dolly Madison; in society; and in 
something very like dissipation. All this he for¬ 
got during the last months of the War of 1812 
as aide-de-camp to Gov. Daniel Tompkins [q.z'.], 
but disappointed in a plan to accompany his 
friend, Commodore Decatur, to Tripoli, he final- 


Irving 

ly set sail listlessly for Europe, to assist in a 
branch of the family business at Liverpool. He 
was to be gone seventeen years, and was to re¬ 
turn as “Geoffrey Crayon,” the famous Ameri¬ 
can author. 

Working in Liverpool with his brother, Peter, 
touring England and Wales with James Ren- 
wick, of New York, idling in Birmingham, at 
the home of his brother-in-law, Henry Van 
Wart, his spirits revived. This enchanted Eng¬ 
land, with thatched cottages and ivied castles, 
seemed a realization of his dreams in his father’s 
library. ^Yet the failure of the firm of P. & E. 
Irving, in the business depression of the post¬ 
war period, plunged him into fresh despair. For 
nearly two years his portion was “anxious days 
and sleepless nights,” embittered in 1817 by the 
news of his mother’s death. The necessity of 
earning his daily bread drove him, fortunately 
for American literature, to writing. In the fall 
of 1817 he visited Abbotsford. Scott, in his old 
green shooting-coat, with dog-whistle at his 
button-hole, talked long with him in walks over 
the bare hills along the Tweed, and encouraged 
him in his resolve to write. In particular, Scott 
spoke of legend and of the rich mine of German 
literature. Save the meeting of Emerson and 
Carlyle at Craigenputtock in 1833, no literary 
encounter between an American writer and an 
English has been more seminal. Riveting Ir¬ 
ving’s enthusiasm for Campbell, whom he had 
just met in London, for Moore, and Byron, Scott 
fixed in him also his predilection for legendary 
themes. Within a year he had commenced the 
study of German, and completed the first draft 
of “Rip Van Winkle.” The other essays and 
stories of The Sketch Book Irving wrote in Bir¬ 
mingham and London, publishing them in New 
York in groups of four or five essays during the 
years 1819 and 1820, and following these trans¬ 
atlantic installments by the printing in London 
(1820) of a complete English edition. The 
book’s success in both countries was instantane¬ 
ous, and Irving wept tears of joy, finding him¬ 
self almost overnight a distinguished man of 
letters. Hazlitt pointed out the debt of The 
Sketch Book to outworn literary traditions of 
the eighteenth century, and others noted its ob¬ 
ligations to the “village school,” but the stric¬ 
tures on its superficial, fragile character were 
lost in the chorus of praise from Lockhart, By¬ 
ron, Jeffrey, Scott, and a multitude of other 
readers. These sensed the triviality of such pa¬ 
pers as “The Pride of the Village,” but felt also 
the dignity and tenderness of “Westminster Ab¬ 
bey,” “Stratford-on-Avon,” and “The Muta¬ 
bility of Literature,” as well as the deft humor 


507 



Irving 

and ingenious use of folklore in “Rip Van 
Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” 
In addition the entire book was transfused by 
a gracious and finished style, particularly sur¬ 
prising, thought the English critics, from an 
American writer, “a kind of demi-savage, with 
a feather in his hand instead of on his head.” 

“Geoffrey Crayon” was now, remarked his 
friend, C. R. Leslie, the painter, “the most fash¬ 
ionable fellow of the day.” “Had anyone told 
me,” Irving wrote John Murray, the publisher, 
“a few years since in America that anything I 
could write would interest such men as Gifford 
and Byron, I should as readily have believed 
a fairy tale.” Since he disliked the Cockney 
school, his intimacies were now with Samuel 
Rogers, Thomas Moore, and Scott, and with the 
habitues of Holland House, where he was a con¬ 
stant visitor. In Paris for several months in 
1820, he still enjoyed thirstily this first fame, 
hob-nobbing with Albert Gallatin and George 
Bancroft, collaborating in play-writing with 
John Howard Payne, observing with delight the 
preparation of French translations of his writ¬ 
ings, and arguing with Leslie about the proper 
costume for a projected painting of himself. He 
still cherished his overflow of notes from The 
Sketch Book, and during this winter, acting on 
a hint from Moore, he commenced Bracebridge 
Hall, This he finished at Van Wart’s, after his 
own return to England in time for the corona¬ 
tion of George IV. Bracebridge Hall (1822), 
for which he received, he himself said, a thou¬ 
sand guineas from Murray, seems today utterly 
insipid, but it solidified Irving’s literary repu¬ 
tation. The devotees of gift-books and annuals 
liked the sentimental sketches of an English life 
that never did exist; others were pleased by the 
more robust work in “The Stout Gentleman” 
and “Dolph Heyliger.” This adulation of his 
admirers the dark-eyed author acknowledged, 
with that winning smile of his, and that sweet 
husky voice. His personal charm accentuated 
his popularity, and he was now, to use his own 
phrase, “hand-in-glove with nobility and mo¬ 
bility.” He was, in fact, weary of his ceaseless 
social engagements, and, besides, was worried 
about his health, for he suffered from a cutane¬ 
ous disease of the ankles, which was destined to 
cloud somewhat his happiness during various 
periods of his life. He had written himself out 
concerning England; he longed, as always, for 
the stimulus of travel, and he was curious, after 
his visit to Scott, about Germany. On July 6, 
1822, he left London, and passing through Hol¬ 
land, reached the baths of Aix-la-Chapelle. 

It was but seven years after the formation of 


Irving 

the Confederation; and everywhere Irving met 
soldiers from the Napoleonic wars, and felt the 
stir of new political and social aspirations. But, 
characteristically, he was far more interested in 
Germany’s past than in her present. Reading 
Schiller and Goethe, and making numerous jot¬ 
tings on folklore, he traveled through Heidel¬ 
berg, Strasbourg, Munich, and Salzburg to Vi¬ 
enna. Here he hesitated, meditating a return to 
Tom Moore in Paris and to his intimate friend, 
Thomas W. Storrow. He had, however, now 
resolved to write a “work on Germany,” and 
improvement in the language was imperative. 
In November he pushed on through Prague to 
Dresden, where he passed, so he said afterwards, 
the happiest winter of his life. The little Saxon 
court of Frederick Augustus was at once a bi¬ 
zarre and an appropriate setting for Washing¬ 
ton Irving of William Street, New York. His 
writings were already known here, and he was 
at once accepted by the King, the court, and the 
vivacious circle of English, French, Spanish, 
and Russian diplomats, as well as by the inti¬ 
mate family circle of Mrs. John Foster, an Eng¬ 
lish lady then living in Dresden. To her daugh¬ 
ter, Emily, Irving probably proposed marriage, 
but no conclusive proof exists that this episode 
affected deeply either his life or his writings. 
The winter enriched Irving’s knowledge of Ger¬ 
man; introduced him to a quaint and genial so¬ 
ciety; and enlarged his circle of friends; but 
was, on the whole, a period of misdirected en¬ 
ergy. There is a marked discrepancy between 
the wealth of materials in his journals of this 
time, and his actual use of them in creative lit¬ 
erature. Too preoccupied with society, too in¬ 
dolent, too timid of merely repeating through 
Continental legend the current fashions of Eng¬ 
land, he never brought the great opportunity of 
the German sojourn to full fruition. 

The next nine months in Paris, beginning cn 
Aug. 3, 1823, repeat the familiar story of pur¬ 
poses delayed. Reluctant to use his German ma¬ 
terials, he was absorbed again by society, par¬ 
ticularly by the English and American travelers 
who, after the abdication of Napoleon, were for¬ 
ever streaming through the capital. His anchor¬ 
age was T. W. Storrow’s home, with its little 
republic of children and American friends, but 
he is seen often at Lady Thomond’s or the Amer¬ 
ican embassy, or negotiating for some piece of 
hackwork at Galignani’s, where he was much 
sought after as an editor. Now forty years old, 
Irving’s suggestiveness to others becomes more 
than ever apparent He had once composed the 
first draft of a novel. Now with Kenney, the 
actor, and Payne he wasted precious hours in 


508 



Irving 

writing anonymously for the theatre. In his 
portfolio were “Abu Hassan” and “Der Frei- 
chiitz,” two translations he had played with in 
Germany; and now he toiled over Payne's man¬ 
uscripts, revising, and inserting lyrics. All this 
came eventually to nothing. Crossing to Eng¬ 
land in the spring, he rigged up and finished 
under the bludgeon of Gifford, a pot-pourri of 
tales and sketches—a miserable travesty of his 
original purpose of a “work on Germany.” This 
was Tales of a Traveller (1824), a hodge-podge 
of minor German anecdotes, scraps of stories 
derived second hand from Moore, Horace Smith, 
and Col. Thomas Aspinwall. The book was sav¬ 
agely reviewed, and Irving's subsequent depres¬ 
sion included the resolution to have done not 
only with the novel, the drama, but also the short 
story, per se . He had blurred, and he knew it, 
the reputation won by The Sketch Book and 
Bracebridge Hall. 

The years, 1824 and 1825, in France were for 
the most part, in spite of travel, unhappy. 
Troubles thickened about him. We see him in 
1825 frantically anxious about his disastrous in¬ 
vestments of his meager capital, and working 
hopelessly on a book concerning America, the 
manuscript of which he probably burned. Yet 
just ahead of him lay the richest experience of 
his picturesque life. On Jan. 30, 1826, he re¬ 
ceived a letter from Alexander H. Everett, at¬ 
taching him to the United States embassy in 
Madrid, and proposing a unique literary project. 
It was one of those lucky chances so frequent in 
the life of Washington Irving. As a boy on the 
Hudson he had dreamed of King Boabdil and 
“bellissima Granada”; during the last two years 
in Paris and Bordeaux he had studied Spanish, 
in the faint hope of crossing the Pyrenees. Now, 
in February 1826, he was in Madrid, discussing 
with Everett a proposed translation into Eng¬ 
lish of the recently published Coleccion de los 
Viages y Descubrimientos (of Columbus), by 
the distinguished naval officer and scholar, Don 
Martin Fernandez de Navarrete. The great cur¬ 
rent of English and American interest in Span¬ 
ish history and culture was now rising; the as¬ 
tute Irving took advantage of it, anticipating, in 
large measure, the work of Prescott, Ticknor, 
and Gayangos. He was now lodged at the house 
of the great Hispano-American bibliographer, 
Obadiah Rich. Speaking Spanish in Rich's fam¬ 
ily living room, studying Spanish in his incom¬ 
parable library, and mingling in the Spanish so¬ 
ciety of the capital, Irving began his three years' 
immersion in the romantic life and thought of 
the Peninsula. He perceived immediately that 
Navarrete's book, a collection of scholarly docu- 


Irving 

ments, demanded for his purpose not transla¬ 
tion but an adaptation in the form of a popular 
life of the great discoverer. For two years he 
labored, corresponding with Navarrete, and toil¬ 
ing in the dusty libraries of Madrid. The His¬ 
tory of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Co¬ 
lumbus was published by Murray in London in 
1828. It was the most painstaking effort of 
Irving's life, and it won him election to the “Real 
Academia de la Historia,” the friendship of 
Navarrete, and a literary reputation in Spain, 
where the work is still quoted respectfully. Su¬ 
perseded by modern histories and biographies 
on the same subject, it still charms, and is a testi¬ 
mony, with its carefully documented pages, to 
Irving's minor gift as an amateur historian. 

During the composition of this book Irving 
had been diverted and fascinated in Rich's li¬ 
brary by reading the ancient historians of Gra¬ 
nada. When early in 1828, he left Madrid for a 
holiday in Andalusia, he carried with him the 
first rough notes of the manuscripts of A Chron¬ 
icle of the Conquest of Granada and The Al¬ 
hambra. His route, by diligence and on mule- 
back, lay, through Cordova, to Granada, where, 
during this first stay of a few weeks, he was in 
a perpetual day dream, over the vega, the pal¬ 
aces, and the relics of Boabdil and Ferdinand 
and Isabella. He pressed on, through the nar¬ 
row defiles of the robber-infested mountains, to 
Malaga, Cadiz, and Seville. Here he lingered, 
living near the Geralda and the Archives of the 
Indias, happy in the art galleries with David 
Wilkie, and working earnestly now at The Con¬ 
quest of Granada. This he completed in a re¬ 
treat just outside the little Spanish port of 
Puerto de Santa Maria, whence he could look 
down upon the field where fought Roderick the 
Goth. Here and in Seville he cemented two 
of the most interesting friendships of his life, 
that with the German scholar Johann Nikolaus 
Bohl von Faber, and with the latter's daughter 
Cecilia. This lady, just beginning her career as 
“Fernan Caballero,” the distinguished Spanish 
novelist, discussed Peninsula folklore with him, 
and unquestionably influenced his shift from 
Spanish history to Spanish folklore. The trans¬ 
mutation of his concern for American, English, 
and German folklore, was effected in his so¬ 
journ, surrounded by Spanish servants and 
Spanish friends, in the Alhambra itself, during 
the spring and summer of 1829. Wandering in 
the passes of the Sierras Nevadas, studying in 
the library of the Duke of Gor, setting down old 
Spanish stories from the lips of the peasant, 
Mateo Ximenes, surveying from his private 
apartment in the palace the Generalife and the 



Irving 

court of Lindaraxa, he composed the engaging 
stories and sketches of The Alhambra. This col¬ 
lection, not published until his return to Amer¬ 
ica, three years later (1832), is more than 
“a Spanish Sketch Book.” Translated sixteen 
times into Spanish, it is a record not only of the 
most significant period of Irving’s stay in Spain, 
but an important item in the bibliography of 
Granada’s history. This and the eloquent but 
diffuse Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada 
(London, 1829), identify Irving as an impor¬ 
tant nineteenth-century interpreter of Spanish 
legend and culture. 

The over-vigilant, far-reaching, protective in¬ 
fluence of his brothers, still uneasy about his 
protracted dilettantism, had now procured for 
him the post of secretary of the United States 
legation in London. Regretfully, and, it would 
seem, unwisely, Irving terminated abruptly his 
stay in Spain, and took up in October 1829 his 
duties under Louis McLane, then minister to 
England. Letters of McLane, Martin Van Bu- 
ren, and others indicate his reluctant efficiency 
in this post, but in 1832 he returned to America. 
His appearance in New York was triumphal. 
His was the story that Americans of his genera¬ 
tion loved, the story of obscure youth achieving 
fame, and especially in that field wherein a sense 
of national inferiority persisted, the province of 
literature. The New York Evening Post (May 
3 X, 1832) describes in detail the toasts and eulo¬ 
gies of the grandiose dinner of welcome, attend¬ 
ed by three hundred eminent citizens of the na¬ 
tion. In a halting, but tactful speech Irving as¬ 
sured his countrymen of his unchanging love for 
them and for America. He was, however, rest¬ 
less; and in 1832, with Charles Joseph Latrobe, 
he joined Commissioner Henry L. Ellsworth 
[q.vJ\ on his expedition to the land of the Osages 
and Pawnees. He was yielding to the wide¬ 
spread demand for a book from his pen on 
American themes, and was renewing at the same 
time his youthful interest in the frontier. The 
story of this pilgrimage, during which he forded 
turbulent streams, slept in the open air, and shot 
buffalo, he told in A Tour on the Prairies, the 
first volume of a series, The Crayon Miscellany 
(5835), which also included other exuviae of 
his notebooks, ’’Abbotsford” and ’’Newstead 
Abbey” in one volume, and Legends of the Con¬ 
quest of Spain. Once more, he profited from 
popular literary fashions. The Tour, the suc¬ 
ceeding Astoria (1836), and The Adventures of 
Captain Bonneville, U. S. A., (1837), appeased 
the contemporary hanger for books from him on 
the western frontier. Simultaneously they sub¬ 
dued the murmurs against him as the Tory, an- 


Irving 

glophile author of Bracebridge Hall. Yet all 
Irving’s compositions on Western themes were 
commonplace, defining him still more sharply 
indirectly, as an urban writer and as a born 
dweller in cities. Astoria, which he revised 
from papers furnished by the fur-merchant and 
set in order by his nephew, Pierre Munro Irving 
[q.v.l, and The Adventures of Captain Bonne¬ 
ville, are frank hackwork. 

In fact, either because his work was done, as 
some of the rising generation of writers hinted, 
or because, as may be deduced from discreet 
hints in the letters, he loathed the “mire” of its 
politics, and the bareness of its culture, Irving’s 
readjustment to American life, after the seven¬ 
teen years in Europe, was, in a sense, imperfect. 
He entered into New York society; he estab¬ 
lished with his nieces his patriarchal home at 
“Sunnyside,” near Tarrytown, on the Hudson; 
he accepted tributes to himself, even from Poe[ 
as a kind of dictator of American letters; yet 
there is evidence that he had informed Webster 
that he would not be indifferent to a foreign dip¬ 
lomatic post. The announcement, therefore, of 
his appointment in 1842, as minister to Spain 
could hardly have been the shock which it ap¬ 
peared to those who understood him imperfectly. 
It was a happy appointment. In Spain, though 
he had been attacked there in 1838 for his casual 
trick of offering virtual translations as originals, 
he was more than favorably known; and anxiety 
concerning his attitude in the Anglo-French 
struggle for domination in the Peninsula was 
softened by the increasing reputation of his 
Spanish writings. The Alhambra, in particular, 
was to be a passport to the good graces of all 
Madrid. In his sixtieth year, then, his eyes fell 
again upon the old scenes, but now he lived, 
surrounded by secretaries, within a stone’s throw 
of the palace, and was plunged at once into the 
intrigues surrounding the Regent, Maria Chris¬ 
tina, the dictator, Espartero, and the little queen 
Isabella II. Under the stress of the tangled dip¬ 
lomatic life, which brought him incidentally the 
friendships of such men as the statesman, Ar- 
guelles, and the novelist, Martinez de la Rosa, 
and the English minister, Sir Henry Bulwer, 
and under the burden of that old illness which 
had begun long ago in London, his literary en¬ 
deavor ceased. He merely worked fitfully at the 
biography of Washington, which he had con¬ 
ceived in 1825. But in the task of representing 
a democratic country, whose diplomatic ambi¬ 
tions were still regarded by older nations with 
amusement, he was competent. The hundreds 
of official letters in Madrid and Washington 
show him effective, chiefly through the native 


510 



Irving 

shrewdness which was so strong a part of his 
nature. Most of all, in spite of the complete 
sophistication of his twenty-third year in Eu¬ 
rope, there is evidence of that perennial wistful¬ 
ness for the ways of kings and pageantry, befit¬ 
ting a disciple of Sir Walter Scott He never 
ceased, even in the corrupt life of the Madrid 
of the forties, to find in the story of Isabella II 
the mood of old romance. 

When Irving returned to quiet “Sunnyside” 
in 1846 thirteen years of life still remained. But 
the long holiday from literary effort had done 
its work. Writing had lost its zest. He finished 
his Oliver Goldsmith (1849), but this was but a 
tame expansion of an early sketch made for 
Galignani years before; Mahomet and His Suc¬ 
cessors (2 vols., 1849-50), though it depended 
upon some study of Arabic and original sources, 
was a feeble repercussion of standard biogra¬ 
phies of the prophet; and Wolf erfs Roost 
(1855) though it contained charming memories 
of his youth and his travels, was but a compila¬ 
tion of stray leaves from his notebooks. For 
eleven years he worked intermittently but gal¬ 
lantly at the stupendous life of Washington, and 
lived to see the fifth and final volume completed 
in 1859, but the last vignette of him, broken in 
health, fighting against a failing heart and nerv¬ 
ous depression as he strove to fulfil this boyhood 
impulse, is pitiful. It is a fairer picture of the 
old Washington Irving, revered but now sup¬ 
planted in literature by the bolder geniuses of 
Emerson, Hawthorne, and Poe, to see him 
ruddy-faced, albeit with the carefully disguised 
wig, briskly walking his familiar Broadway, dad 
in his Talma cloak, pointed out to strangers as 
our first man of letters; or, to behold him peace¬ 
ful in the home life, so essential to his sensitive 
nature, which he had built for himself at “Sun¬ 
nyside” despite the disappointments in Matilda 
Hoffman, Emily Foster, and, it is said, in Mary 
Wollstonecraft Shelley, Here he lived, quietly, 
pouring out recollections of Scott, Moore, and 
Spanish scenes, with occasional visits to such 
friends as Kennedy or Kemble, solid men, who, 
like himself, and after the belief of his circle, 
now thought literature rather a gentleman's avo¬ 
cation than a profession. Here he lived, sur¬ 
rounded by his devoted nieces, and visited rev¬ 
erently by N. P, Willis, by Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, by Donald Grant Mitchell, and by hosts 
of others, all seeking to pluck, as did the French 
from Voltaire's, a hair from his mantle. Here 
he died, ending a life which owed its power not 
only to marked, if limited, literary talents and 
to essential sweetness of character, but also to 


Irving 


the coincidence of these gifts with the forma¬ 
tive years of nineteenth-century America. 

. CA hfe by the author of this article will be published 
r 2 ear j ? re * P res ent sources are P. M. Irving, 
q/ and Letters of Washington Irving (4 vols., 
106.2-04), rich m source materials but biased; H. W. 
Boynton, Washington Irving (1901); C. D. Warner, 
Washington Lying (1881) ; G. S. Heilman, Washing¬ 
ton Irving, Esquire; Ambassador at Large (1925); 
Letters of Washington Irving to Henry Brevoort 
( I 9 1 5 )» ed. by G. S. Heilman; Letters of Henry Bre¬ 
voort to Washington Irving (1916), ed. by G. S. Hell- 
? nai ?_’ r The Journals of Washington Irving (1919), ed. 
by W. P. Trent and G. S. Heilman; Journal of Wash¬ 
ington Irving, 1823-1824 (1931), ed. by S. T. Wil- 
hams; Washington Irving Diary, 1828-1829 (1926). 
ed. by C. L. Penney; Notes White Preparing Sketch 
Book (1927), ed. by S. T. Williams; Letters from Sun¬ 
nyside and Spain (1928), ed. by S. T. Williams; Die- 
dnch Knickerbocker's A History of New York (1927), 
fxriv S’ T. Williams and Tremaine McDowell; S. T. 
Williams, Washington Irving and Fernan Caballero,” 
o 1 ?f English and Germanic Philology. July 1930; 

Williams, “The First Version of the Writings of 
Washington Irving in Spanish,” in Modern Philology, 
1930; H. A. Pochmann, “Irving’s German Sources 
m 1 he Sketch Book/ ” in Studies in Philology, July 
1930; H. A. Pochmann, “Irving's German Tour and 
Its Influence on His Tales,” in Pubs, of the Modem 
Language Asso., Dec. 1930. An important collection 
of Irving manuscripts is in the N. Y. Pub. Lib.; an- 
other is at Yale Univ. Other important documents are 
m the possession of the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, 
Harvard Univ. the Pa. Hist. Soc.; and Roderick Terry, 
Newport, R. I.] S T W 


IRVING, WILLIAM (Aug. 15,1766-Nov. 9, 
1821), poet, merchant, politician, was the eldest 
surviving son of William and Sarah (Sanders) 
Irving of New York, and the brother of Wash¬ 
ington Irving [g.z/.], to whose career he was af¬ 
fectionately devoted, as was his son Pierre 
Munro Irving [q.v.]. William Irving evinced 
an interest in politics, but his avocation, like that 
of Peter Irving [q.vJ], another brother, was lit¬ 
erature. He early declaimed “a piece from 
Pope,” for example, at the meetings of the “Cal- 
liopean Society,” and in 1792 was one of its 
vice-presidents. On Nov. 7, 1793 (Duyckinck, 
post), he married Julia Paulding. After a brief 
experiment in business on the frontier he was 
engaged for some years in trade at 208 Broad¬ 
way, where his prosperity and that of his broth¬ 
er Ebenezer enabled them to express their love 
of the youngest brother, Washington, by send¬ 
ing him abroad for two years. Annoyed by 
Washington's dilettante escapades on his jour¬ 
ney, William Irving nevertheless continued to 
be guide to the younger brother, who on one 
occasion spoke of him as “the man I loved most 
on earth.” 


At the time of Washington Irving's return 
from this fifst journey to Europe (1806), Wil¬ 
liam Irving was forty years old, “a man,” said 
James K. Paulding [g.z/.], his brother-in-law, 
“of great wit, genius, and originality.” He joined 
at once in the mirth and wit of “The Lads of 


5 11 



Irwin 

Kilkenny” in which the Irvings, Paulding, 
Henry Brevoort, Gouvemeur Kemble, and 
others were moving spirits, at the old mansion, 
“Cockloft Hall,” on the Passaic, and he became 
in 1807 an important contributor to the genial 
and satirical booklets called Salmagundi; or The 
Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Lang - 
staff , Esq . and Others. To this “dish of real 
American cookery” William Irving’s contribu¬ 
tion was light verse, in which he pilloried the 
foibles of the age, notably those of Thomas 
Green Fessenden, the Yankee magazinist. 

In the meantime he attained prominence in 
both business and politics, becoming a leader 
among the merchants in the foreign trade along 
the East River. Affected at times by fits of 
shyness, his was nevertheless a forceful person¬ 
ality. He was active in the preparations for the 
great naval dinner on Dec. 29, 1812, and he 
spoke at the enormous Democratic gathering in 
1813. He was indeed an active Democrat, sup¬ 
porting the war, and on Dec. 28, 1813, in the 
election for Egbert Benson’s successor to Con¬ 
gress, he outstripped the Federalist, Peter Au¬ 
gustus Jay [q.v.], by a majority of 376 votes. 
He suffered great losses in the collapse of the 
family business in the post-war depression but 
remained a prominent citizen and patriot, serv¬ 
ing in Congress from 1814 to 1819. When he 
died in 1821 his brother Washington Irving, 
then engaged in the preparation of Bracebridge 
Hallj remembered the long fraternal affection, 
the courageous career in behalf of the Irving 
family, and the merry verses from “the mill of 
Pindar Cockloft,” and lamented his passing as 
“one of the dismallest blows that I ever experi¬ 
enced.” 

[Sources of information, concerning' William Irving 
are .in occasional passages in the letters of Washington 
Irving, chiefly in the collections of Yale University and 
the New York Public Library. See P. M. Irving, The 
Life and Letters of Washington Irving (4 vols., 1862- 
64); W. I. Paulding, Literary Life of lames K. Paul¬ 
ding (1867) ; A. L. Herold, James Kirke Paulding 
(1926); E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck, Cyc. of Am. Lit . 
(rev. ed., 2 vols., 1875) ; Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. (1928) ; 
N. Y. Daily Advertiser, Nov. 10, 1821.] S.T.W. 

IRWIN, GEORGE LE ROY (Apr. 26,1868- 
Feb. 19,1931), soldier, was bom at Fort Wayne, 
near Detroit, Mich., the son of Brigadier-Gen¬ 
eral Bernard John Dowling Irwin, United States 
Army, and Antoinette Elizabeth (Stahl) Irwin. 
His father (1830-1917), a distinguished surgeon 
of Irish ancestry and a veteran of both Indian 
and Civil Wars, was the recipient of a Congres¬ 
sional Medal of Honor for “distinguished gal¬ 
lantry in action against hostile Chiricahua Apache 
Indians near Apache Pass, Ariz., Feb. 13 and 14, 
1861” 

S’ 


Irwin 

After preparation in private schools and cer¬ 
tain study in Europe, young Irwin was appoint¬ 
ed to West Point from Illinois, and graduated 
creditably with the class of 1889. As second lieu¬ 
tenant, 3rd Artillery, he married Maria Eliza¬ 
beth Barker of Baltimore and New York, on 
Apr. 30, 1892. In the years which followed', he 
passed through all intermediate grades to the 
rank of colonel, July 1,1916, serving in the Phil¬ 
ippines, 1899-1901; in Cuba with the Army of 
Cuban Pacification, 1906-09; graduating from 
the Artillery School in 1894 and from the Army 
War College in 1910; participating in the ex¬ 
pedition to Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914; and, ex¬ 
cept for a tour of duty in the quartermaster’s 
department, 1910-14, becoming prominently iden¬ 
tified with the use and development of modem 
field artillery. When the United States entered 
the World War, Irwin was appointed brigadier- 
general, National Army, and assumed command 
of the 161st Field Artillery Brigade, at Camp 
Grant, Ill. On Dec. 12,1917, he sailed for France 
with units of the 41st Division, and on May 10, 
1918, was assigned to command the 57th Field 
Artillery Brigade. His record was brilliant: after 
preparatory service on the Alsace and Verdun 
fronts, he participated in all the operations of 
the Aisne-Mame, Champagne, Oise-Aisne, and 
Meuse-Argonne offensives, where “the success 
of the division whose advance he supported, was 
due in large part to his technical skill and ability 
as an artillerist” (citation accompanying award 
of the Distinguished Service Medal). His com¬ 
mand was withdrawn from the front lines, Nov. 
2, 1918, after an exceptionally long period under 
fire, and he was placed in command of the Ar¬ 
tillery School at Saumur from Nov. 4, 1918, to 
Jan. 25, 1919. He returned to the United States 
in May, in command of the 57th Field Artillery 
Brigade, and served for four years as assistant 
to the inspector general of the army. On Mar. 
2 > J 9 2 3 > he was appointed brigadier-general, 
United States Army, and commanded the 16th 
Infantry Brigade at Fort Howard, Md. In the 
June following he was given the important duty 
of commanding the Field Artillery School at 
Fort Sill, Okla., until Mar. 6, 1928, when his 
promotion to the rank of major-general carried 
him to the command of the Panama Canal Di¬ 
vision. 

Late in the year 1930, his system weakened by 
years of amoebic dysentery contracted in the Phil¬ 
ippines, Irwin sought renewed health through 
a trip to Europe. While returning to Panama 
from this leave of absence, he died, on the Italian 
steamer Virgilio , off Port of Spain, Trinidad. 
His body was buried with military honors beside 

2 



Isaacs 

the grave of his father at West Point, N. Y. He 
was survived by his widow, two sons, and a 
daughter. Irwin was decorated by France with 
the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre, 
and by the United States with the Distinguished 
Service Medal. 

r Chicago Tribune and Army and Navy Register of 
Feb 2i f 1931; N. Y. Times, Feb. 20, Mar. 12, 1931; 
Who’s Who in America , 1930-31; G. W. Cullum, Biog. 
Reg. Officers and Grads. U. S. Mil. Acad., vols. IV-VII 
(1001-30); archives of the Asso. of Grads., U. S. Mil. 
Acad.] C.D.R, 

ISAACS, ABRAM SAMUEL (Aug. 30,1851- 
Dec. 22, 1920), son of Samuel Myer Isaacs 
[q.v.] and Jane (Symmons) Isaacs, was born in 
New York City, and died in Paterson, N. J. The 
pattern of his life was determined by the ardent 
interest in Jewish literature and Jewish life 
which characterized his home. After receiving 
the degree of A.B. in 1871 and that of A.M. in 
1874 from the University of the City of New 
York, he continued his studies in the University 
of Breslau and the Jewish Theological Seminary 
of that city, specializing in German literature 
and Semitics. On his return to America he was 
given in 1878 the degree of Ph.D. honoris causa 
by the University of the City of New York. He 
was married, Apr. 23, 1890, to Lily Lee Harby, 
who bore him two sons. 

In 1857 his father had founded a weekly paper 
in New York, the Jewish Messenger, as an ex¬ 
ponent of traditional Judaism. On his father’s 
death in 1878, Isaacs took over the editorship, 
which he maintained until the paper was ab¬ 
sorbed by the American Hebrew in 1903. From 
1886 to 1894 he was professor of Hebrew, and 
from 1887 to 1895 professor of German also in 
the University of the City of New York. He was 
professor of German literature in the post-grad¬ 
uate department from 1895 to 1906, when he 
became professor of Semitics. Besides these 
journalistic and professorial duties, he found 
time to be minister in the East Eighty-Sixth 
Street Synagogue, New York, in 1886 and 1887, 
and to serve as preacher in the Barnert Temple 
(B’nai Jeshurun) of Paterson, N. J., from 1896 
to 1905. He also lectured extensively through 
the country. In addition, he produced a steady 
stream of books. Among these should be men¬ 
tioned: A Modern Hebrew Poet: The Life and 
Writings of Moses Chaim Luzzatto (1878), 
What is Judaism? A Survey of Jewish Life, 
Thought and Achievement (1912), and the fol¬ 
lowing books for juvenile readers: Stories from 
Rabbis (1893, 2nd edition 1911), Step by Step: 
a Story of the Early Days of Moses Mendelssohn 
(1910), The Young Champion: One Year in 
Grace Aguilar's Girlhood (1913), Under the 


Isaacs 

Sabbath Lamp: Stories of Our Time for Old 
and Young (191 g),School Days inHome Town 
(1928), and he edited The Old Guard and Other 
Addresses ( 1906),by his brother Myer S. Isaacs. 
He left a valuable manuscript work on Schiller, 
which is as yet unpublished. In 1907 he edited 
the Jewish department, and in 1919 the Semitic 
department of The Encyclopedia Americana . 
Hundreds of journalistic articles, book reviews 
in the New York Times and Bookman, and many 
charming poems, must be mentioned to complete 
the record. 

His simple literary style reflects the modest sim¬ 
plicity of the man. He had the gift of terse 
and interesting presentation both as teacher and 
as writer. The mantle of scholarship he wore 
with the light grace of an urbane gentleman of 
innate refinement, broad culture, and fine taste 
in letters, art, and the art of living. Perhaps the 
principle determinant of his character was a 
Jewish religious loyalty and deep spiritual feel¬ 
ing. These came to expression in well wrought 
hymns, some of which have been adopted by the 
Synagogue. 

[Joshua Bloch, N. Y. Univ. Alumnus, Mar. 1921; 
Pubs. Am. Jewish Hist. Soc., vol. XXXI (1928) ; Na¬ 
than Stem, in Central Conference of Am. Rabbis, Thir¬ 
ty-Second Ann. Convention, vol. XXXI (1921); Gen. 
Alumni Cat . of N. Y. Univ. 1833-1905, College, Applied 
Science and Honorary Alumni (1906) ; J. L. Chamber- 
lain, N. Y. Urtiv.( 1901), pt. II; Jewish Exponent, Dec. 
31, 1920; N. Y. Times, Dec. 24, 1920; Who’s Who in 
America, 1920-21.] D.deS.P. 

ISAACS, SAMUEL MYER (Jan. 4, 1804- 
May 19, 1878), rabbi and journalist, was bom 
at Leeuwarden, in the Netherlands. In 1814, his 
father, Myer Samuel Isaacs, ruined by Napo¬ 
leonic wars, moved with his family to London. 
There the former banker became a rabbi, and de¬ 
voted his five sons to the synagogue. Four of 
the five, including Samuel, entered the rabbinate. 
While a young man in England, Samuel was the 
head of the Neveh Zedek orphan asylum. In 
1839 he was called to New York to be rabbi of 
the B’nai Jeshurun Synagogue. Eight years 
later, he became the spiritual leader of Congre¬ 
gation Shaaray Tefila, a secession group from 
B’nai Jeshurun, and remained its minister until 
his death. Shortly before coming to America he 
had married Jane Symmons of London. Among 
his children were Judge Myer S. Isaacs, presi¬ 
dent of the board of delegates of American Is¬ 
raelites, one of the originators and organizers 
of the United Hebrew Charities of New York 
City, and president of the Baron de Hirsch Fund, 
Isaac S. Isaacs, a lawyer and a prime mover in 
organizing the Young Men’s Hebrew Associa¬ 
tion of New York, and Abram S. Isaacs [#.«>.]* 
Samuel Isaacs was largely responsible formak- 

l 3 



Isaacs 

ing unorganized New York Jewry a coherent, 
articulate community. He was the first rabbi in 
New York to introduce regular English sermons 
into the service, sermons in which for the most 
part he urged the necessity of preserving historic 
Jewish tradition, and he soon became, second 
only to Isaac Leeser in Philadelphia, the most 
influential orthodox rabbi in the country. As an 
outcome of the Mortara case, he helped create 
the Board of Delegates of American Israelites 
to defend the rights of Jews. He was one of the 
founders in New York of the Jews’ (later Mt. 
Sinai) Hospital, the Hebrew Free School As¬ 
sociation, and the United Hebrew Charities, and 
was influential in the establishment of Maimon- 
ides College in Philadelphia. He consecrated 
thirty-eight synagogues, including the first ever 
built in Illinois. His influence as a community 
organizer and as an exponent of historic Juda¬ 
ism was most widely spread, however, through 
the Jewish Messenger , a weekly organ of ortho¬ 
dox Judaism founded by him in 1857, and merged 
into the American Hebrew in 1903. In its pages 
he battled uncompromisingly in defense of tra¬ 
ditional Judaism against the increasing inroads 
of Reform Judaism. As an ardent abolitionist, 
his denunciations of slavery cut off his South¬ 
ern subscribers. Thereupon he wrote: “We want 
subscribers, for without them we cannot publish 
a paper, and Judaism needs an organ; but we 
want much more truth and loyalty, and for them, 
we are ready, if we must, to sacrifice all other 
considerations” (Morais, post , p. 156). Integ¬ 
rity, fearlessness, and conscientiousness were 
outstanding characteristics of Isaacs and won the 
admiration of the very Reform Jews whose prin¬ 
ciples it was his life’s work to combat. Though 
zealously loyal to his own religious principles, 
he showed a tolerance which sprang from a 
ready, genial humor, and an abounding benevo¬ 
lence. His religious devotion, high ability, warm 
sympathy, and sterling, unblemished character, 
won for him a general esteem characterized in 
the following editorial comment: “Mr. Isaacs 
during his long and busy life, did perhaps more 
than any other one man in New York to make 
the name of a Jew respected, and to reflect credit 
upon the Jewish Synagogue and the Jewish min¬ 
istry” (New York World , May 21, 1878). 

[Jewish Messenger (N. Y.), May 24, 1878, Jan. 6, 
188a, supplement; Reformer and Jewish Times (N. Y.), 
May 24, 1878; H. S. Morais, Eminent Israelites of the 
Nineteenth Century (1880); A. S. Isaacs, "Rev. Samuel 
M. Isaacs," in Mag. of Am. Hist. , Mar. 1891; Pubs. 
Am. Jewish Hist. Soc., vol. IX (1901) ; Cyrus Adler, in 
Jewish Encye. f vol. VI (ed. 1925); Emanuel Hertz, 
Abraham Lincoln, The Tribute of the Synagogue 
(1P27); Israel Goldstein, A Century of Judaism in N. 
Y. B’nai Jeshurun J825-1925 (1930).] D.deS V 


Isham 

ISHAM, SAMUEL (May 12, 1855-June 12, 
1914), artist and author, was born in New York 
City, the son of William Bradley Isham and 
Julia (Burhans). His father was a business 
man, allied with matters of banking and real es¬ 
tate, who, regretting that he had himself received 
no academic advantages, was doubly resolved to 
give them to his sons. Samuel was prepared at 
Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., and sent to 
Yale at an early age, where he was graduated 
in his twentieth year with the class of 1875 
(B.A.). His studies were pursued in part in the 
Art School where Professor Niemeyer gave him 
a severe training in the rudiments. This assigned 
a particular direction to the young man’s inter¬ 
ests when, following what his father had estab¬ 
lished as in some sort a family tradition, he went 
abroad on the termination of his college course. 
Isham gravitated straight to Paris and spent 
three years there, chiefly under the guidance of 
Jacquesson de la Chevreuse. The disciplinary 
habit of that painter, who in his inculcation of 
sound principles of draftsmanship continued the 
austere ideal of Ingres, left a profound impres¬ 
sion upon the American student. It helped to 
make him, all his life long, a devoted craftsman. 

On his return to the United States Isham was, 
humanly speaking, destined as a matter of course 
to an artistic career. Curiously he turned his 
back upon it and practised as a lawyer instead. 
Five years of the legalistic life, however, only 
served to throw him back upon the profession he 
had chosen first, and in the early eighties he was 
dedicated decisively to the brush. He proceeded 
to Paris again and entered the Academie Julien, 
working under Boulanger and Lefebvre. He 
painted landscape and the figure, showing dis¬ 
tinctive talent in both categories, and especially 
excelling in a firm, clean-cut type of workman¬ 
ship. His themes in genre were of an idealistic 
and decorative nature, with a not infrequent tinc¬ 
ture of classical myth. “Music,” “The Apple of 
Discord,” “Psyche,” “The Lilac Kimono”—the 
titles of some of his pictures—suggest the grace¬ 
ful and more or less imaginative material in 
which he dealt. 

His success was prompt, especially, at the out¬ 
set, upon the scene of his French training. Works 
by him were cordially received into the Paris 
Salon and on his homecoming he found his col¬ 
leagues equally appreciative. In 1891 he was 
elected to the Society of American Artists, the 
body salient at that time for its progressive per¬ 
sonalities and policies. Identification with the 
Society was tantamount to identification as one 
of the coming men. In 1900 he became an asso¬ 
ciate of the National Academy of Design and six 



Isherwood 

years afterwards was elected a full academician, 
on the occasion of the fusion of the Academy and 
the Society. He joined the New York Water 
Color Club and the Architectural League. He 
belonged to the National Institute of Arts and 
Letters, the Century Association, the Salmagundi 
Club. He exhibited all over the country, served 
on juries, won medals, and saw paintings of his 
enter public museums. He was part and parcel 
of the art life of the United States for years, 
down to the day of his death at Easthampton, L. 
I., in 1914. 

Isham’s diversified activity has a dual signifi¬ 
cance. It points in the first place to his living, 
efficient qualities as an artist, to the respect in¬ 
spired by his craftsmanship and his personality, 
and further it testifies to the rich experience 
which qualified him to write a memorable book. 
The History of American Painting, first pub¬ 
lished in 1905 and reissued with supplemental 
chapters by another hand in 1927. This book was 
produced as part of a series planned by Prof, 
John C. Van Dyke with the intention of having 
every contribution to it written by a practitioner 
of the art surveyed. Isham, as the editor of the 
series has said, had to be “bullied and badgered” 
into the composition of his volume, but when 
once he had undertaken it—doing most of the 
work in solitude in Paris—he made it the author¬ 
itative compendium in its field. Based on ex¬ 
haustive research, it is informed by the sensitive 
spirit of a painter, one who had a special insight 
into his subject, and, above all, it discloses the 
operation of an alert faculty of discrimination. 
It is sympathetic, critical, agreeable in style, a 
vital addition to the literature of art in the 
United States. 

[Samuel Burhans, Burhans Gened . (1894); Who's 
Who m America, 1914-15; Obit. Record Grads . Yale 
Univ., 1910-15 (1915) ; Am. Art News, July 18, 1914; 
Am. Art Annual, vol. XI (1914) ; N . Y. Times, June 
13, 1914; biographical sketch in the 1927 edition of The 
History of American Painting.} q. 

ISHERWOOD, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

(Oct 6, 1822-June 19, 1915), mechanical engi¬ 
neer and naval architect, was born in New York 
City, the son of Benjamin and Eliza (Hicks) 
Isherwood, and a descendant of Benjamin Isher¬ 
wood of Cheshire, England, who came to the 
United States shortly after the Revolution and 
of Robert Hicks who came to New England in 
the Fortune in 1652. His father was a physician. 
The boy was sent to the Albany ( N. Y.) Academy 
when he was nine, but after five years there he 
was returned to his home (1836) because of 
“serious misconduct.” He was then placed in the 
mechanical department of the Utica & Schenec¬ 
tady Railroad under the instruction of David 


Isherwood 

Matthews, master mechanic. Upon the comple¬ 
tion of the road, he worked for a time in the of¬ 
fice of his stepfather, John Green, a civil engi¬ 
neer on the construction of the Croton Aqueduct, 
and then entered the employ of the Erie Rail¬ 
road, under Charles B. Stuart [gw.], later engi- 
neer-in-chief of the navy, who was at that time 
division engineer at Susquehanna. Following this 
engagement, he served as engineer on the con¬ 
struction of lighthouses for the United States 
Treasury Department, in which connection he 
designed a new and efficient type of lighthouse 
lens and was sent to France by the department to 
supervise the manufacture of an order of the 
lenses. 

After a short time spent in the Novelty Iron 
Works, New York, acquiring the experience re¬ 
quired for admission to the newly established 
Engineer Corps of the United States Navy, he 
became in 1844 a first assistant engineer, in the 
original group of appointees. During the war 
with Mexico, he served aboard the Princeton, the 
first screw-propeller boat of the navy, and then 
aboard the Spitfire , which took part in every 
naval action of the war. He served at the Pensa¬ 
cola Navy Yard in 1844-45 and on board the 
General Taylor in 1846-47. He was promoted to 
the rank of chief engineer in 1848. In 1852-53 he 
was stationed at the Navy Department in Wash¬ 
ington, and there designed the paddle-wheels for 
the Water Witch, the first feathering paddle- 
wheels used in the United States Navy. He then 
served four years, 1854-58, as chief engineer on 
the San Jacinto, off the coast of Africa and in 
the East Indies. In 1859 he returned to Wash¬ 
ington, where he directed the design of a class 
of gunboats for the Russian government. 

In this year (1859) he published Engineering 
Precedents, in two volumes, which set forth the 
results of his investigations of the distribution 
of energy and work throughout the motive-power 
system of a steam vessel. These investigations, 
carried on in the twelve years of his active serv¬ 
ice, were the first systematic and sustained at¬ 
tempts to ascertain the distribution of energy and 
losses in engines and boilers, by actual measure¬ 
ments under practical, operating conditions. In 
1863 and 1865 he published the first and second 
volumes of Experimental Researches in Steam 
Engineering, upon which most of his fame as an 
investigator and student is founded. Experimen¬ 
tal Researches consists of reports and discussions 
of experiments carried out aboard many ships 
of the navy by commissions of which Isherwood 
was a member and often ranking member. It in¬ 
cludes the findings of the investigation carried 
on aboard the U. S. S. Michigan, the results of 



Isherwood 

which were the first to indicate that the classical 
theories of Watt, Mariotte, and Gay-Lussac con¬ 
cerning the expansion of steam had practical lim¬ 
its, and that steam engines designed from these 
theories alone were not necessarily the most ef¬ 
ficient. Isherwood demonstrated that with in¬ 
creasing ratios of expansion, cylinder condensa¬ 
tion losses became larger while the additional 
work gained from the increased expansion be¬ 
came progressively smaller. He then concluded 
that for every actual steam engine there is a lim¬ 
iting ratio of expansion, beyond which econom¬ 
ical expansion is impossible. He determined the 
limit of efficient expansion for the engines of the 
Michigan , and because it occurred at such an 
early point in the stroke his results were imme¬ 
diately attacked. His work was soon confirmed 
by the independent work of Tyndal and Mayer, 
however, and Engineering Researches, translated 
into six foreign languages, became a standard 
engineering text and remained for many years a 
basis and a pattern for further experimental re¬ 
search. 

In 1861 Isherwood was appointed engineer-in¬ 
chief of the navy and in 1862 became the first 
chief of the bureau of steam engineering. When 
the Civil War began, the steam navy consisted 
of six frigates of low power, six sloops of war, 
nine gunboats, two dispatch boats, and five side- 
wheel vessels of small power. At the end of the 
war there were 600 steam vessels of all descrip¬ 
tions in commission. Isherwood personally di¬ 
rected the design and construction of the machin¬ 
ery necessary to accomplish this expansion. His 
work was the target of much criticism, however, 
of which The Navy of the United States (1864), 
by E. N. Dickerson, and A Brief Sketch of Some 
of the Blunders in the Engineering Practice of 
the Bureau of Steam Engineering in the U. S. 
Navy, by an Engineer (1868) are typical. The 
chief criticism in the latter brochure was that 
Isherwood made the machinery of his boats heav¬ 
ier than was customary at that period; but, as 
Isherwood explained, this was an extra precau¬ 
tion against inexperienced handling by war per¬ 
sonnel and an insurance against breakdown in 
action (of which there were remarkably few in¬ 
stances). Probably his most famous design was 
the Wampanoag class of sloops-of-war, the ves¬ 
sels from which the present type of light cruiser 
developed. These sloops-of-war were designed 
as “commerce destroyers” (a term and function 
said to have originated with Isherwood) and 
were developed to blockade the coast of the Con¬ 
federate States* The Wampanoag class is spoken 
of as the invention of Isherwood, who in addi¬ 
tion to designing the machinery suggested the 


Isom 

principal dimensions of the hull. When built, the 
vessels were the fastest in the world. The Wam¬ 
panoag attained a speed of 17% knots an hour, a 
speed which practically every naval expert had 
declared to be impossible. 

Isherwood remained as chief of the bureau of 
steam engineering for eight years. “He was the 
handsomest man in Washington in those days,” 
according to R. H. Thurston (in Cassier’s Mag¬ 
azine, post, p. 345) ; “his curling black hair set 
off to great advantage rarely excellent features, 
and while men were interested in his always en¬ 
tertaining . . . conversation—he was a great 
conversationalist—the ladies and the photogra¬ 
phers agreed in a more aesthetic view of the 
man.” After being relieved as chief of the bu¬ 
reau, he spent the remainder of his active service 
largely in the study of foreign navies and naval 
bases, and in the direction of experimental naval 
researches as the presiding officer of special naval 
boards. His work at the Mare Island Navy Yard 
(1869-70) included a series of propeller experi¬ 
ments, the results of which were notable contri¬ 
butions to knowledge in this field (details of his 
experiments are given in A. E. Seaton, The 
Screw Propeller, London 1909). He was retired 
June 6,1884, as a chief engineer, the highest per¬ 
manent rank in the engineer corps, with the rela¬ 
tive rank of commodore, and made his home in 
New York where he wrote many articles for the 
Journal of the American Society of Naval Engi¬ 
neers . He was thirty-one years on the retired list. 
At the time of his death in New York City, he 
held the relative rank of rear admiral. The steam 
engineering building at the Naval Academy, An¬ 
napolis, was named Isherwood Hall in his honor. 
Isherwood was married in Baltimore to Mrs. 
Anna Hansine (Munster) Ragsdale, shortly after 
the death in 1848 of her first husband. 

[C. W. Baird, in Jour. Am.* Soc. of Naval Engineers, 
Aug. 1915 J F. G. McKean, in the same journal, Nov. 
1915; R. H. Thurston, in Cassier’s Mag. (N. Y.), Aug. 
1900; B. F. Isherwood, “The Sloop-of-War Wampa- 
noag,’ Ibid., Aug. and Sept., 1900; R. H. Thurston, A 
Manual of the Steam-Engine (1891); L. R. Hamersly, 
The Records of Living Officers of the U. S. Navy and 
Marine Corps (7th ed., 1902) ; Who’s Who in America, 
Trans. Am. Soc. Mech. Engineers, vol. 
XXXVII (1915) j Army and Navy Jour., June 26, July 
3 > * 9*5 ; N. Y. Times, June 20, 1915.] F.A. T. 

ISOM, MARY FRANCES (Feb. 27, 1865- 
Apr. 15, 1920), librarian, the daughter of Dr. 
John Franklin Isom and Frances A. (Walter) 
Isom of Cleveland, Ohio, was born in Nashville, 
Tenn. She attended Wellesley College (1883- 
84), But on account of failing health was unable 
to continue her college course. In 1899, after the 
death of her father, she determined upon library 
work as a career. She then entered the Pratt In- 



Isom 

stitute of Library Science. Finishing there in 
1901, she went directly to Portland, Ore., as cat¬ 
aloguer of the John Wilson Collection in the 
Library Association of Portland, a small sub¬ 
scription library with 1,000 members. She was 
made librarian in January 1902, at which time 
the library became a free public institution. A 
law was passed in 1903 which extended its privi¬ 
leges to the rural communities of Multnomah 
County. Miss Isom’s conception of the function 
of a public library is expressed in her words at 
the opening of the new Central library building, 
Sept. 6, 1913: “The public library is the people’s 
library. ... It is but a sorry library that in ad¬ 
dition to its volumes of classics, its treasured 
shelves of wit and wisdom of past ages, does not 
offer also the best of modern thought, does not 
take pride in its collections on engineering, on 
agriculture, on housekeeping, on mechanics, on 
all the trades carried on in the community.” The 
ideas thus expressed were faithfully fulfilled un¬ 
der her administration, and her broadminded 
policy made the Portland library an important 
educational institution in the community, and 
won for her distinction among librarians through¬ 
out the country. Her career is characterized by 
the great improvements she accomplished in li¬ 
brary service. She helped to secure the enact¬ 
ment, in 1905, of the law creating the Oregon 
Library Commission, which was designed to co¬ 
ordinate library activities throughout the state, 
and was a member of the commission from its 
creation till the time of her death. She founded 
the State Library Association, was one of the 
organizers of the Pacific Northwest Library As¬ 
sociation and its president in 1910-n. She was 
vice-president and member of the council of the 
American Library Association, 1912-13. At the 
time of the World War she was appointed direc¬ 
tor of war work in Oregon for the American 
Library Association, which entailed among other 
things supplying the spruce camps with books. 
She volunteered to the American Library Asso¬ 
ciation for library service over seas, and for six 
months was engaged in organizing libraries in 
the American hospitals in France. She was a 
woman of keen intellect, of forceful character, 
and especially qualified for leadership. She took 
part in many activities making for the develop¬ 
ment and betterment of the community, and was 
a member of a number of important civic organi¬ 
zations. 

[L $ rar y Asso. of Portland, Monthly Bull., Memorial 
iyo.. May 1920; Who's Who in America, 1920-21; Pub- 
Itc Libraries, May 1920; Library Jour., July 1, 1920; 
Morning Oregonian (Portland), Apr. 16, 1920; Oregon 
Jour., Apr. 15, 1920; personal acquaintance.] 

N.B.P. 


Iverson 

IVERSON, ALFRED (Dec. 3, 1798-Mar. 4, 
I ° 73 ), jurist, congressman, senator, was bom 
probably in Liberty County, Ga., the son of Rob¬ 
ert and Rebecca (Jones) Iverson. He came of 
Danish stock, his first American ancestor being 
a Danish sea-captain who settled at Wilmington, 
N. C. The family subsequently moved into east 
Georgia, where it was one of substance and dis¬ 
tinction when Alfred Iverson was bom. Gradu¬ 
ating at Princeton in 1820, he began the practice 
of law in Clinton, Jones County, Ga., and repre- 
sented. that county in the lower house of the 
Georgia Assembly in three sessions, 1827-29. In 
1830 he moved to Columbus, Muscogee County, 
in the section recently vacated by the Creeks. 
An early settler of the town, he took a 
position at the bar, and participated in the devel¬ 
opment of the section. From Nov. 10, 1835, to 
Dec. 14, 1837, he served as judge of the state su¬ 
perior court, Chattahoochee circuit; in 1843 he 
was elected to the state Senate from Muscogee 
County, serving one term. 

Iverson’s political affiliations were Democratic. 
In 1844 he was named a Polk elector. He fa¬ 
vored Texan annexation. He was elected to Con¬ 
gress, and served one term, 1847-49. On Nov. 
13,1850, he became, for the second time, judge of 
the Chattahoochee circuit, which office he held 
until. January 1854, when he resigned to accept 
election to the United States Senate, taking his 
seat, Dec. 3, 1855, as a colleague of Robert 
Toombs. In the Senate, Iverson took an advanced 
position on “Southern rights,” asserting that the 
only province of the federal government as re¬ 
garded slavery in the territories was to assure its 
protection. On Jan. 6 , 1859, while debating the 
Pacific Railroad bill, he took occasion to prophe¬ 
sy early secession and dissolution of the Union 
(Congressional Globe, 35 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 242- 
44 , App., pp. 290-91). This speech brought a 
remonstrance from his colleague Toombs, who 
thought it premature. In Georgia, too, displeas¬ 
ure was expressed at his radical views, and on 
July 14,1859, he undertook to defend his position 
in a speech at Griffin, Ga., which, because of its 
radicalism, gained nation-wide notoriety. He 
maintained that the time for compromise of 
Southern rights as regards slavery had passed, 
and that defiance to the abolitionists was the 
only course remaining; and if slavery was not 
assured full protection in all the territories, he 
advocated immediate formation of a separate 
Southern confederacy (Federal Union, MiUedge- 
ville, Ga., July 26, 1859). These views injured 
him politically, and he was not reelected to the 
Senate, but when Georgia seceded in January 
1861, before the expiration of his first senatorial 


517 



Ives 

term, he along with Toombs resigned his seat 
on Jan. 28. 

In the balloting for Confederate States sena¬ 
tor in November 1861 Iverson led on several 
ballots for the second seat, but on the fifth ballot 
he withdrew, and Toombs was elected. When 
Toombs refused the seat, Iverson wrote a public 
letter declining, under die circumstances, to be 
considered for appointment by the governor 
(Avery, post , p. 243). Aged sixty-three, he re¬ 
sumed the practice of law in Columbus, taking 
no active part, military or political, in the affairs 
of the Confederacy, though his son and namesake 
(Feb. 4, 1829-Mar. 31, 1911) was a brigadier- 
general in the Confederate army. After the war 
he moved to Macon, Ga., where he lived a re¬ 
tired life until his death. He was twice married; 
first, to Caroline Goode Holt, who bore him two 
children, and after her death to Julia Frances 
Forsyth, daughter of the statesman John For¬ 
syth [q.vJ], who also bore him two children. 

[Georgia newspapers for the period, especially the 
Columbus Sun, afford material. See also W. J. Northen, 
Men of Mark in Ga., vol. II (1910) ; J. H. Martin, 
Columbus, Ga. (2 vols. in 1, 1874-75); Nancy Telfair, 
A Hist, of Columbus, Ga. (1929), pp, 95-100; James 
Stacy, Hist. of the Midway Congreg. Church, Liberty 
County, Ga. (n.d.), pp. 97-98; Herbert Fielder, A 
Sketch of the Life and Times and Speeches of Joseph 
E. Brown (1883); I* W. Avery, The Hist, of the State 
of Ga., 1850-81 (1881), pp. 104-06, 243 ; “Correspond¬ 
ence ^ of Toombs, Stephens and Cobb,” ed. by U. B. 
Phillips, in Ann. Report Am. Hist. Asso., vol. II (1913) ; 
Atlanta Constitution, Mar. 7, 1873. Certain personal 
information has been furnished by Dr. Alfred Iverson 
Branham, a grandson of Iverson.] jj j p c j r 

IVES, CHAUNCEY BRADLEY (Dec. 14, 
I 8 I o-Aug. 2, 1894), sculptor, scion of a family 
distinguished in Connecticut annals, was bom in 
Hamden, near New Haven, Conn. One of the 
seven children of a farmer, he early felt repug¬ 
nance for farm work. He was in fact physically 
unfitted for its rigors, having a tendency toward 
tuberculosis, from which four of his brothers 
and sisters died. Having shown skill in wood¬ 
carving, he was apprenticed at sixteen to R. E. 
Northrop, a carver of New Haven. It is said 
that later he worked under Hezekiah Augur 
[ff-v-L pioneer carver-sculptor. Certainly he ac¬ 
quired the wood-carvers point of view, for his 
early attempts in sculpture Were made in the “di¬ 
rect-action” method natural to a worker in wood 
and pursued by Augur in his marble-carving. 
Ambitious to become a sculptor, young Ives went 
to Boston, locked himself in his room to show 
what he could do unassisted, and produced direct¬ 
ly from marble, without recourse to a clay or 
plaster model, a bust which was regarded as 
creditable. Other attempts followed. One of 
$ies€, a head of .a boy, William Hoppin, was 
shown in a jeweler’s window in Boston and 


Ives 

brought him orders. In 1841, while he was tak¬ 
ing plaster casts at Meriden, Conn., a doctor 
warned him of “decline.” He scoffed at the cau¬ 
tion but three years later found himself ordered 
south for his health. He thereupon borrowed 
from a friend the means to go to Italy. He re¬ 
mained in Florence seven years, meanwhile, since 
he had already some reputation for his portrait 
busts, earning enough to support himself and 
pay his debt. To this period belong his busts of 
Prof. Benjamin Silliman (New York Historical 
Society) and of Ithiel Towne (Yale Art Gal¬ 
lery). In 1851 he removed to Rome, his head¬ 
quarters until his death in that city. 

Ives returned frequently but only briefly to 
America. In 1855, bringing with him his eight 
new statues, among them “Pandora,” “Cupid 
with his Net,” “Shepherd Boy,” “Rebecca,” 
“Bacchante,” and “Sans Souci,” he came to New 
York, and there opened a studio, intending to re¬ 
main two years. In two months, however, he had 
disposed of his output. Events of a later visit in¬ 
cluded his marriage in i860 to Maria Louisa 
Davis, daughter of Benjamin Wilson Davis, of 
Brooklyn, N. Y. Their family life w’as spent in 
Rome, where six of their seven children were 
born. In 1872 his marble figures of Jonathan 
Trumbull and of Roger Sherman, sent by Con¬ 
necticut, were placed in the Statuary Hall of the 
Capitol, Washington, D. C. On the fagade of the 
Capitol at Hartford, Conn., is his marble figure 
of Trumbull, and in the grounds of Trinity Col¬ 
lege, in the same city, his bronze of Bishop 
Thomas C. Brownell. His portrait busts of Gen¬ 
eral Scott and of William H. Seward were shown 
at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876. His last 
public work, a bronze historical group, “White 
Captive and Indian,” completed in Rome in 1886, 
was unveiled in Lincoln Park, Newark, N. J., 
the year after his death. His sculpture, highly 
salable in its time, has come to be regarded as 
weak and trifling. Lorado Taft (The History of 
American Sculpture , ed. 1924, p. 113) concludes 
that it “did no harm,... it came because it was 
precisely suited to its day.” 

[H. W. French, Art and Artists in Conn. (1879), P* 
82; H. T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists (1867), p. 
582; Chas. E. Fairman, Art and Artists of the Capitol 
of the U. S. of America (1927).] ^ ^ 

IVES, ELI (Feb. 7, 1778-Oct. 8,1861), physi¬ 
cian, was bom in New Haven, Conn., the son of 
Levi Ives, a physician, and Lydia (Augur) Ives. 
He prepared for college under the tuition of the 
Rev. Ammi Robbins of Norfolk, Conn., and en¬ 
tered Yale in 1795, graduating in 1799. For a 
period of fifteen months following his graduation 
he was rector of the Hopkins Grammar School 
in New Haven and began the study of medicine 


518 



Ives 


Ives 


with his father and with Dr. Eneas Munson, To 
complete his medical education he went to Phila¬ 
delphia where he attended lectures under Rush, 
Wistar, and Barton. In September 1805 he mar¬ 
ried Maria Beers, the daughter of Nathan Beers. 
To them were born five children, three sons and 
two daughters. Almost from the first Ives had 
an extensive practice. In 1806 he was elected one 
of the fellows of the Connecticut Medical Society 
and was secretary of the organization in 1810, 
1811, and 1812. In the first number of the com¬ 
munications, published in 1810, there are three 
short papers from his pen, and in October 1811 
the honorary degree of M.D. was conferred upon 
him by the Society. He had a very influential 
part in the establishing of the medical institution 
at Yale College and seems to have been at the 
head of the movement to organize the Connecti¬ 
cut Medical Society. When the new’ medical in¬ 
stitution was established by joint action of the 
Connecticut Medical Society and Yale College he 
was appointed in association with his preceptor, 
Munson, to the chair of materia medica. He be¬ 
came interested in medical teaching and at his 
own expense established a botanical garden on 
grounds adjoining the college. One of his con¬ 
temporaries has said: “In the botanical depart¬ 
ment of Materia Medica he was far beyond his 
age and was the most learned physician of his 
time in this country” (Dutton, post, p. 934). As 
a result of his labors in this field several diplomas 
were conferred upon him by British and Euro¬ 
pean societies. Dwight’s Statistical Account of 
the City of New Haven , published in 1811, con¬ 
tains a list of 320 botanical species, all found in 
New Haven, which was prepared by Ives, and in 
Baldwin’s Annals of Yale College (eds. 1831 and 
1838) the names of 1,156 species are set down, 
the joint production of Ives, William Tully, and 
Melines C. Leavenworth. Ives was a member of 
the convention which compiled in 1820 the first 
Pharmacopoeia of the United States of America, 
and was president of the second convention in 
1830. When the American Medical Association 
met in New Haven in i860 he was chosen its 
president. Although never active in the field of 
politics, he was a candidate for lieutenant-gov¬ 
ernor of Connecticut in 1831. He occupied the 
chair in materia medica and botany sixteen years 
until 1829, that of theory and practice twenty- 
three years until 1852, and that of materia medica 
again nine years until his death, the last eight 
years of which he was professor emeritus. In 
medical practice he was called into consultation 
throughout the state. He died at the age of 
eighty-two years and eight months, after about 
a year of invalidism. 


Bronson, biographical sketch in Proc. Conn . 
Medic. Soc. 2 ser., vol. II (1867) ; F. B. Dexter, Biog. 
Sketches of the Grads, of Yale Coll, vol. V (1911); 
W. R. Cutter, ed., Geneal and Family Hist. ... of 
Conn <1911), vol. IV; W. L. Kingsley, Yale Coll: A 
Sketch of Its Hist. ( 1879), vol. II; E. E. Atwater, 
Hist, of the City of New Haven (1887) ; S. W. S. Dut¬ 
ton, “An Address at the Funeral of Eli Ives, M.D.,” 
New Englander, Oct. 1861; Daily Morning Jour, and 
Courier (New Haven), Oct. 9, 1861.] jj ^_ s 


IVES, HALSEY COOLEY (Oct. 27, 1847- 
May 5, 1911), artist, teacher, art-museum ad¬ 
ministrator, son of Hiram DuBoise and Teresa 
(McDowell) Ives, was bom in Montour Falls, 
Schuyler County, N. Y. His father died about 
the beginning of the Civil War and the son took 
up the work of a draftsman. In 1864 he entered 
the government service in that capacity and was 
sent to Nashville, Tenn., where his association 
with artists and especially with Alexander Pia- 
towski, a Pole, developed his enthusiasm and 
ability. From 1869 to 1874 he traveled in the 
South and West, and in Mexico, as a designer 
and decorator, and in the latter year he went to 
St. Louis as instructor in the Polytechnic School. 
Later, after study abroad, he entered the faculty 
of Washington University. He had begun in 
1874 a free evening class in drawing, which grew 
finally in 1879 the St. Louis Museum and 
School of Fine Arts, afterward developed as a 
department of the University under his direction. 
Its first museum building at Nineteenth and Lo¬ 
cust Streets (now demolished) was opened in 
1881, and Ives was active in building up its 
collections and also in popularizing art by means 
of Sunday lectures to artisans. On Feb. 21,1887, 
he married Margaret A. Lackland of St Louis, 
who bore him two children. 

His work in the St. Louis Museum and art 
school led in 1892 to his appointment as head of 
the art department at the World’s Columbian Ex¬ 
position of 1893, and the success of this depart¬ 
ment was due largely to his ability in acquisition 
and selection. Here and later at the St. Louis 
exposition he successfully advocated the inclu¬ 
sion of the so-called “minor arts” in the collec¬ 
tions shown in the art building. In 1894, under the 
authority of the United States Bureau of Educa¬ 
tion, he traveled widely abroad to examine and 
report upon methods used in foreign schools and 
museums of art; and after repeated service as 
commissioner, representing the United States at 
expositions in Europe, he was chief of the de¬ 
partment of art of the St. Louis world’s fair of 
1904. The planning and construction of its art 
building as a permanent structure, to serve after 
the fair as an art museum for the city, was due 
largely to his efforts, and after the removal of the 
collections in the earlier museum to the new loca- 


5*9 



Ives 


Ives 


tion, he worked unceasingly to augment and im¬ 
prove them. He had already, in 1895, been elected 
a member of the City Council, where he served 
a four-years’ term and labored for the recogni¬ 
tion by the city of a public museum of art as a 
legitimate object of municipal support. He se¬ 
cured at that time legislation that ultimately aid¬ 
ed in establishing the museum as a city institu¬ 
tion, with a stated tax for its upkeep, and thence¬ 
forward his efforts were exerted entirely to 
strengthen its position. The museum and art 
school were separated at this time, the latter re¬ 
maining a department of Washington Univer¬ 
sity. 


Ives received many honors including member¬ 
ship in many learned societies and decorations 
from foreign governments. In addition, he re¬ 
ceived special medals for his services from the 
directors of the Chicago and St. Louis fairs and 
from the French government. Owing to his oc¬ 
cupation with teaching and administrative work, 
he painted little. His landscape "Waste Lands,” 
which won a silver medal at the Portland exhibi¬ 
tion of 1905, is now owned by the St. Louis Mu¬ 
seum. As a teacher he inspired his pupils with 
lasting respect and affection. As an organizer, 
administrator, and protagonist of the populari¬ 
zation of art, he was a power not only in his own 
community but throughout the country. He died 
suddenly in London while on a professional trip. 


[See Halsey Cooley Ives, LLJ)., Founder of the St. 
Louis School of Fine Arts; First Director of the Cits 
Art Museum (1915), edited by W. B. Stevens and put- 
hshed by the Ives Memorial Association; The Saint 
Louts Artists Guild’s Illustrated Handbook of the 
Missouri art exhibit at the Lewis and Clark Exposition, 
190s (1905), with text by G. J. 2 olnay; Art Rev., 
June, July 1911 ; Am. Art Ann., 1911; Academy Notes , 
JWy 1911; Art and Progress, July 19x1; St. Louis 
Globe-Democrat, May 6, 1911; Times (London), May 

8 * I9II * ] A.E.B. 


IVES, JAMES MERRITT (Mar. 5, 1824- 
Jan, 3, 189s), partner in the lithograph house 
of Currier & Ives, was bom in New York City, 
presumably in a cottage on the grounds of Belle¬ 
vue, of which his father was superintendent He 
went to work at the age of twelve but reinforced 
his slight formal education with constant study 
inlibraries and in art galleries. In i8S2,soonafter 
his marriage to Caroline Clark, sister-in-law of 
Nathaniel Currier [gw.], he entered the latter’s 
firm as book-keeper. Very shortly it became evi¬ 
dent that his arduously acquired artistic knowl¬ 
edge would be of great value to the house. En¬ 
dowed with a shrewd insight into the public taste, 
aM a critical eye for technical perfection, he was 
able to direct the production of prints at once 
popular and well executed. In 1857 he was ad¬ 
mitted to the firm as partner, and the firm name 


was changed to Currier & Ives. Ives became 
virtually general-manager. A few of the great 
bulk of lithographs subsequently published were 
his own drawings, but in the main he merely di¬ 
rected the activities of the staff of artists em¬ 
ployed by the house. 

In 1865 Ives moved from Brooklyn to West¬ 
chester, and tw'o years later he moved to Rye 
N. Y., where he resided for the rest of his life* 
During the Civil War he organized and served as 
captain of Company F of the 23rd Brooklyn regi¬ 
ment^ which saw service during the Confederate 
invasion of Pennsylvania. His lithograph busi¬ 
ness remained his main interest throughout his 
life, and his connection with it ended only with 
his death. When Currier retired in 1880, his 
son Edward West Currier succeeded him. At 
Ives’s death in 1895 his interest passed on to his 
son Chauncey Ives. The firm was continued by 
the sons of the founders until 1902, when the 
younger Ives bought out Currier. In 1907 he 
sold out to Daniel W. Logan, who w'as unable to 
continue the work and disposed of the remaining 
stock of equipment. During the years of the elder 
Ives’s connection with the house, prints were 
turned out in prodigious numbers and were sold 
widely not only in America, but on the Conti¬ 
nent There was almost no subject of popular in¬ 
terest not given colorful delineation, from clipper 
ships and horse racing to sentimental subjects 
and the bloomer costume. Thus the Currier & 
Ives prints form an accurate and picturesque rec¬ 
ord of the temper of the period. 

a J- Peters, Currier & Ives, Printmakers to the 

Am. People (3 vols., 1929-31); Warren A. Weaver, 
J-Atho graphs of N. Currier and Currier & Ives (1925); 
Russel Crouse, Mr. Currier and Mr. Ives (1930) ; Cari¬ 
catures Pertaining to the Civil War, published by Cur¬ 
rier & Ives from 1856 to 1872 (1892); The Spirit of 
America: Currier and Ives Prints (London, 1930); 
Wm. Abbatt, A Selection of Lithographs Published by 
Currier & Ives (1929); Jane Cooper Bland, Currier & 
Ives: A Manual for Collectors <1931) ; An Alphabetical 
List of 5735 Titles of N. Currier and Currier & Ives 
Prints (1930) I the Antiquarian, Dec. 1923; Antiques, 
Jan. 1925; Country Life, Aug. 1927; N. Y. Tribune, 
Jan. s, 1895.] j j t 

IVES, JOSEPH CHRISTMAS (1828-Nov. 
12, 1868), soldier, explorer, was bom in New 
York City. He was graduated from the United 
States Military Academy in July 1852 and was 
appointed brevet second lieutenant of ordnance 
in the United States Army. The following year 
he was transferred to the Topographical Engi¬ 
neers and served as assistant to Lieut. A. W. 
Whipple [q.v.] in the Pacific Railroad survey 
along the 35th parallel (1853-54). After three 
years in the Pacific Railroad office in Washing¬ 
ton, Ives was promoted to first lieutenant and 
placed in command of the expedition sent to ex~ 


5 20 



Ives 

plore the Colorado River (1857-58). The navi¬ 
gability of the river having been ascertained by 
Lieut. George H. Derby [q.v.] and George A. 
Johnson, Ives made a minute hydrographic sur¬ 
vey, using an iron steamer built in Philadelphia 
and shipped in sections via Panama and San 
Francisco. Leaving the unwieldy steamer at the 
mouth of the Black Canyon, he continued his 
explorations by skiff and later made a land jour¬ 
ney over the route traversed in 1776 by the mis¬ 
sionary priest Francisco Garces [q.v.] on his 
march to Oraibi. The comprehensive observa¬ 
tions of Ives and the scientists accompanying his 
expedition were “a distinct contribution” to the 
knowledge of a little-known and superficially ex¬ 
plored region (Freeman, post,p. 170). The vivid 
descriptions in Ives's interesting and valuable 
“Report upon the Colorado River of the West” 
(House Executive Document No. 90 , 36 Cong., 

1 Sess.) drew acclaim ( American Journal of 
Science and Arts, May 1862). Ives also prepared 
a Memoir to Accompany a Military Map of the 
Peninsula of Florida, South of Tampa Bay 
(1856) and Military Maps of the Seat of War in 
Italy (1859). In 1859-60 he served as engineer 
and architect of the Washington national monu¬ 
ment, after which he became astronomer and sur¬ 
veyor to the commission sent to survey the bound¬ 
ary between California and the intervening 
United States territories (1860-61). Appointed 
captain in May 1861, he declined the appointment 
and was commissioned captain of engineers in 
the Confederate army. In Nov. 8, 1861, he was 
appointed by General Lee chief engineer of the 
department composed of the coasts of South Car¬ 
olina, Georgia, and East Florida. During 1861- 
62 he was engaged in perfecting the defenses of 
Savannah and Charleston, and was promoted 
colonel. He then undertook the obstruction of 
the rivers of North Carolina (1863) and was ap¬ 
pointed aide-de-camp to President Davis (1863- 
65), in which capacity he made tours of inspec¬ 
tion and investigations of the several military de¬ 
partments. In December 1864 he was sent by 
Davis to aid General Beauregard in the defense 
of the city of Charleston. After the war he lived 
in New York City, where he died in November 
1868. 

[G. W. Cullum, Biog. Reg. Officers and Grads. U . S. 
Mil Acad. (3rd. ed., 1891) ; Official Records (Army ); 

F. S. Dellenbaugh, The Romance of the Colorado River 
(1902); L. R. Freeman, The Colorado River (1923); 

N. Y. World, Nov. 25, 1868.] F.E.R. 

IVES, LEVI SILLIMAN (Sept. 16, 1797- 
Oct. 13, 1867), Episcopalian bishop and Catho 1 - 
lic publicist, son of Levi and Fanny Silliman 
Ives, was born in Meriden, Conn. The Ives fam¬ 
ily soon left the ancestral farm for Turin, N. Y., 

5 2 


Ives 

in the Black River country where a number of 
Meiiden folk had settled, and young Levi was 
trained in the local school and in Lowville Acad¬ 
emy until he enlisted in the War of 1812. In 
1816 he registered at Hamilton College with the 
view of becoming a Presbyterian minister, but 
illness prevented his graduation. In 1819 he 
affiliated with the Protestant Episcopal Church 
and studied theology under Bishop J. H. Hobart, 
whose daughter, Rebecca, he married in 1822. 
Ordered a deacon by Bishop Hobart, Aug. 14, 

1822, he was ordained priest by Bishop William 
White in Trinity Church, Philadelphia, June 14, 

1 823, and assigned to St. James' Church, Ba¬ 
tavia, N. Y. His advance was rapid: he was suc¬ 
cessively rector of Trinity Church (Southwark), 
Philadelphia; assistant minister in Trinity 
Church, New York; rector of St. James' Church, 
Lancaster, Pa.; and finally the bishop of North 
Carolina. He was consecrated bishop in 1831 at 
Trinity Church, Philadelphia, by Bishop White 
who was assisted by the Bishops H. U. and B. T. 
Onderdonk. 

In his Southern diocese he infused new life 
into the church. He also found time to publish 
his New Manual of Devotions, Humility a Minis¬ 
terial Qualification (1840), The Apostle's Doc¬ 
trine and Fellowship (1844), and The Obedience 
of Faith (1849). The slavery question was dis¬ 
tressing to him. Despite his concern about negro 
education and his publication of a catechism for 
slaves, which did not please his fold, he was taken 
to task for championing slavery in an address 
before an Episcopalian convention in which he 
answered the reproof administered to the Ameri¬ 
can church by the lord bishop of Oxford (Wil¬ 
liam Jay, A Letter to the Rt. Rev. L. Silliman 
Ives, 3rd ed., 1848). As a result of a study of the 
Protestant revolt in England, Ives was attracted 
by the Oxford movement and founded the Broth¬ 
erhood of the Holy Cross at Valle Crucis, N. C., 
which featured High-church views. In 1848, 
when he was arraigned before a convention of 
the Episcopalian Church for heterodox practices, 
his explanations were accepted, though the 
Brotherhood was dissolved (R. S. Mason, A Let¬ 
ter to the Bishop of North Carolina on the Sub¬ 
ject of his late Pastoral on the Salisbury Conven¬ 
tion, 1850). But apparently the bishop's trac- 
tarian doubts were not silenced, for while on 
leave of absence, he journeyed to Rome and there 
came to a decision which “produced a great sen¬ 
sation/' He resigned his see, Dec. 22,1852, made 
his submission to Pope Pius IX on Christmas 
day, and brought his wife into the Catholic 
Church. Thereupon he was officially deposed. 
Remaining abroad two years, he delayed his pas- 

I 



Ivins 

sage a week to return with the Rev. Hugh Galla¬ 
gher and thus missed death on the ill-fated 
Arctic which sank with his baggage. 

In his Trials of a Mind in its Progress to 
Catholicism: a Letter to his Old Friends (1853), 
Ives explained his reason for abandoning his po¬ 
sition in the Protestant Episcopal Church and 
for seeking admission, as a layman, into the 
Catholic Church, with no prospect but “peace of 
conscience” and “salvation” (p. 11). With a 
wife and no resources, he was indeed without 
prospects and became a burden on the Catholic 
bishops who were urged by Rome to look after 
his material welfare until he found his niche as 
an instructor in English in St John’s College, 
Fordham, N. Y., and in St. Joseph’s Seminary, 
and as a lecturer at the convents of the Sacred 
Heart and Sisters of Charity. Although a found¬ 
er and first president of the Catholic Male Pro¬ 
tectory and a promoter of the House of the Holy 
Angels, as well as president of the New York 
conference of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, 
he never attained prominence in the Catholic 
Church. 

[H. G. Batterson, A Sketch-book of the Am. Epis¬ 
copate (1878) ; F. E. Tourscher, The Kenrick-Frenaye 
Correspondence (1920) ; J. J. O’Connell, Catholicity in 
the Carolines and Georgia (1879) ; C. B. Gillespie, A 
Century of Meriden (1906) ; J. G. Shea, A Hist of the 
Cath. Ch. Within the Limits of the U. S., vol. IV 
(1892) ; Cath. Encyc vol. VIII (1910) ; A Review of 
the “Trials of a Mind in its Progress to Catholicism tJ 
(1855) J Freeman's Jour., Jan. 29, Feb. 12, 1853, Apr. 
28, 185s; Church Rev. and Ecclesiastical Reg., Apr. 
1853, July 1854; Cath. Mirror, Jan. 1, 8, Feb. 12, 1853, 
Oct. 19. 1867; Metropolitan (Baltimore), Mar. 1853; 
N. Y. Times, Feb. 8, 1853, Oct. 15, 1867; N. Y. Herald, 
Oct. is, 1867.] R.J.P. 

IVINS, WILLIAM MILLS (Apr. 22, 1851- 
July 23, 1915), lawyer, reformer, was born in 
Freehold, N. J., the son of Augustus and Sarah 
(Mills) Ivins. He was a descendant on his fa¬ 
ther’s side of Isaac Ivins, an English Quaker 
who settled in Mansfield, N. J., in 1711; his an¬ 
cestry on his mother’s side was French Hugue¬ 
not. During his early boyhood, his parents moved 
to Brooklyn, N. Y., where he w’as educated at 
Adelphia Academy. After his graduation he was 
employed for a brief while by the publishing firm 
of D. Appleton & Company; he left their employ 
to enter the law school of Columbia University, 
from which he was graduated in 1873, being ad¬ 
mitted to the bar the same year. On Feb. 3,1879, 
he married Emma Laura Yard, the daughter of 
James Sterling Yard of Freehold and Trenton, 
N. J. Early in his career Ivins took an active 
interest in political reform and was a member of 
the group which forced the retirement in 1880 of 
Hugh McLaughlin, the head of the so-called 
“Brooklyn Ring.” William R. Grace Iq.v.'], 


Ivins 

shortly after his election in 1880 as mayor of 
New York City, appointed Ivins his private sec¬ 
retary and later, city chamberlain. His expert 
knowledge of municipal and financial adminis¬ 
tration was acquired in this office, as was also his 
abiding hatred of the Tammany chieftains. From 
1886 to 1888 he was also judge-advocate general 
of the state of New York. In February 1889 he 
resigned as city chamberlain to become a partner 
in the firm of W. R. Grace & Company, the lead¬ 
ing South American merchants of the day, but 
shortly, tiring of commercial life, resumed the 
practice of law, resolving at the same time to de¬ 
vote his energy and ability to the cause of politi¬ 
cal reform. 

As a reformer, Ivins interested himself in three 
problems: the reform of the election laws, control 
of public utilities, and the reform of municipal 
government. In 1890 the committee on cities of 
the New York Senate, undertaking a study of 
the administration of cities, retained the firm of 
Tracy, McFarland, Ivins, Boardman & Platt as 
counsel. Ivins was very active in the investiga¬ 
tion, and the report of the committee (New York 
Senate Document 72 , Apr. 15,1891), which has 
become a classic of its kind, was in large measure 
the product of his labor. In 1907, under commis¬ 
sion from the legislature, he drafted a revised 
charter for New York City which, though it was 
not adopted, is still followed as a model. For ten 
years he worked to have the blanket ballot adopt¬ 
ed in New York City and he was successful in 
having the first Australian-ballot reform bill 
passed through the legislature. As special coun¬ 
sel to the New York Public Service Commission 
in 1907 he was notably successful in the services 
he rendered during the investigation of the In- 
terborough-Metropolitan and Brooklyn Rapid 
Transit systems. He was a pioneer in the move¬ 
ment for modern public service commission acts 
and many of the reforms for which he stood have 
been adopted in different states (see his article 
“Public Service Commissions,” Century, May 
1909, and the preface to the admirable legal trea¬ 
tise, The Control of Public Utilities, 1908, of 
which he was joint author with H. D. Mason). 
In 1905 he accepted the Republican nomination 
for mayor of New York City, with the admitted¬ 
ly forlorn hope of keeping Tammany out of the 
City Hall, and in the election received 137,049 
votes to 228,851 for McClellan and 225,166 for 
Hearst. He offered his services as counsel to 
Hearst in the recount forced by Hearst’s charges 
of ballot-box stuffing, and, four years later, when 
Hearst ran again for mayor, Ivins managed his 
campaign. 

The breadth and accuracy of his learning and 


522 



Izard 

his adroitness at cross-examination account in 
part for the distinction which he achieved. He 
was an accomplished linguist, knowing intimate¬ 
ly French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portu¬ 
guese. Among his papers, at his death, were 
found uncompleted translations of Bergson and 
Nietzsche, and a comprehensive monograph on 
the rubber trade. His skill at cross-examination 
was first revealed in his examination of Richard 
Croker [ q.v .] and was permanently established 
by two subsequent victories; his successful rep¬ 
resentation, in 1893, of the Brazilian government 
in a boundary dispute with the Argentine Repub¬ 
lic, and his volunteered defense of the Cuban 
rebel Garcia, arrested in New York for violating 
the neutrality laws of the United States. In the 
latter case the jury, after deliberating five min¬ 
utes, returned a verdict of not guilty. Ivins’ most 
notable performance in this field came, however, 
in 1915, when he was employed by William 
Barnes, Jr., to represent him as counsel in the 
Roosevelt-Barnes libel suit. After months of 
preparation, he kept Roosevelt on the witness 
stand over forty hours, subjecting him to a merci¬ 
less and subtle cross-examination. The jury de¬ 
liberated for two days; but finally, to Ivins’ great 
disappointment, brought in a verdict for Roose¬ 
velt. The physical strain of the trial coupled with 
the after effects of an attack of jungle fever 
contracted several years before during a trip to 
the rubber districts of the Amazon, caused Ivins’ 
death. He left tw’o sons and two daughters. 

[Information as to certain facts from W. M. Ivins, 
Jr., and E. W. Ivins; N. Y. County Lawyers Asso. Year 
Book, 1 pi6; N. Y. State Bar Asso. Proceedings . . . 
1916 . .. and Reports for 1915 (1916); N. Y. Times , 
Apr.-May, July 2 4, 1915.] H. C. 

IZARD, GEORGE (Oct. 21, 1776-Nov. 22, 
1828), soldier, territorial governor of Arkansas, 
son of Ralph [ q.v .] and Alice (De Lancey) 
Izard, was born at Richmond, near London, 
while his father, a native of South Carolina, was 
temporarily residing in England (South Caro¬ 
lina 1 Historical and Genealogical Magazine , July 
1901, p. 222). In 1783 he came to America with 
his mother and attended school in Charleston and 
Philadelphia. Returning to Europe for a military 
education, he spent five years in the schools of 
England, Germany, and France. While at the 
ficole du Genie in Metz he was commissioned 
second lieutenant in the United States Army, and 
on his return to America in 1797 he was sent to 
Charleston to take charge of Castle Pinckney. 
As war with France became imminent he was 
raised to the rank of captain. Jefferson’s plan for 
reducing the army resulted in his being placed in 
the artillery, whereupon he resigned. In 1812 he 


Izard 

accepted another commission and w'as sent to 
New York by Secretary John Armstrong [q.v.], 
with the rank of brigadier general, to defend the 
city against a threatened attack by the British. 
On Jan. 21, 1814, he was commissioned major- 
general and, upon the retirement of Wilkinson 
and Hampton, he became senior officer in com¬ 
mand in New York on the Canadian border. 
Though he had been given a military training, he 
was never able to put it to the test. In addition 
to inheriting raw recruits and an inadequacy of 
supplies from his predecessors, he was constantly 
being shifted from post to post, against his own 
judgment, by an incompetent secretary of war. 
He was moved from Plattsburg just in time to 
keep him from sharing with MacDonough the 
victory over Prevost. With the largest effective 
army on the border he marched about 400 miles 
in inclement weather, and part of the way, 
through trackless forests, arriving at Batavia in 
twenty-nine days only to find that Drummond 
had retreated from Erie just six days before. He 
crossed over into Canada, but Drummond re¬ 
mained behind his works and continued to 
strengthen them. To pass to Drummond’s rear 
would have been extremely dangerous—there 
were 30,000 regulars in Canada and only about 
10,000 Americans between Plattsburg and De¬ 
troit—and Izard chose the road to caution, re¬ 
treating to winter quarters to preserve a nucleus 
for a greater army the following spring. At once 
Armstrong, who had been forced out of office for 
the disaster at Washington, started a storm of 
criticism which ruined Izard’s usefulness and he 
tendered his resignation. Later he published his 
correspondence with the War Department with¬ 
out comment, leaving the world to judge who was 
right. Critics are still divided as to the wisdom 
of his last military move, but they sustain Izard 
on other points. On Mar. 4, 1825, Monroe ap¬ 
pointed him governor of Arkansas Territory, a 
position which he held until his death. The most 
important business of his administration was 
dealing with the Indians, and he managed this in 
a satisfactory way. The members of the legisla¬ 
tive council criticized him for using “dictatorial 
power” in telling them to go home after they had 
finished the public business in order to save 
money; but they went home. While living in re¬ 
tirement at Philadelphia he had become an active 
member of the American Philosophical Society. 
He collected a fine library of English, French, 
Spanish, and Latin books, but it was lost by the 
sinking of the boat which was carrying it east¬ 
ward after his death. On June 6, 1803, he mar¬ 
ried Elizabeth Carter (Farley), daughter of 
James Parke Farley of Antigua. She had been 


5 2 3 



Izard 

twice married previously; first, to John Bannis¬ 
ter, and second, to Thomas Lee Shippen. They 
had three sons. 

[Official Correspondence with the Dept of War 
Relative to the Military Operations of the Am. Army 
Under the Command of Maj.-Gen. Izard (1816); “Of¬ 
ficial Correspondence of Governor Izard,” Ark. Hist 
Asso. Pubs., vol. I (1906); G. E. Manigault, “Military 
Career of General George Izard,” Mag. of Am. Hist, 
June 1888; W. E. Birkhimer, Hist. Sketch ... of the 
Artillery, U. S. Army (1889) ; J- H. Shinn, Pioneers 
and Makers of Ark. (1908) ; “Izard of South Carolina,” 
S. C. Hist, and Geneal. Mag., July 1901; Roberdeau 
Buchanan, Geneal. of the Descendants of Dr. Wm. Ship- 
pen (1877) ; P outsorts Am. Daily Advertiser (Phila.;, 
Dec. 24,1828.] D Y T 

IZARD, RALPH (Jan. 23, 1741/2-May 30, 
1804), Revolutionary patriot, diplomat, senator, 
was born at “The Elms,” his father’s beautiful 
estate near Charleston, S. C. His family, found¬ 
ed in America by Ralph Izard who came from 
England in 1682, was one of the oldest and 
wealthiest in the province, having large holdings 
devoted to the cultivation of rice and indigo. His 
father w’as Henry Izard, who died when Ralph 
was only seven; his mother, Margaret Johnson, 
daughter of Robert Johnson [q.v.], who had been 
governor of Carolina under the proprietors and 
was the first governor of South Carolina under 
the Crown. Ralph Izard, as the only surviving 
son, inherited his father’s estates. At the age of 
twelve he was sent to school at Hackney, Eng¬ 
land. Returning to Carolina in 1764 to take 
charge of his plantations, he married, May 1, 
I 7 fi 7 » Alice De Lancey, daughter of Peter and 
niece of James De Lancey [q.v. ], formerly chief 
justice and lieutenant-governor of New York. 
In 1771 he went back to London, where he pur¬ 
chased a house in Berners Street with the inten¬ 
tion of remaining. He Was fond of literature 
and music and a patron of art; his house in Lon¬ 
don reflected his tastes. According to his daugh¬ 
ter, he declined to be presented at Court because 
he would never “bow the knee ... to mortal 
man” (Deas, post, p. vi). In 1774, with his wife 
and his friend, Arthur Lee [q.v.], he made a tour 
of the Continent—sending back to South Caro¬ 
lina, among other observations, notes on mul¬ 
berry culture—and passed some time at Rome, 
where, with Mrs. Izard, he sat for his portrait 
to John Singleton Copley. In May 1775 he re¬ 
turned to England and used such influence as he 
had to avert the coming conflict with the colo¬ 
nies; but finding it impossible for one of his 
sympathies to remain there, he removed with his 
family to Paris after October 1776, intending to 
sail for-America. 

While in Paris he was elected by Congress, 
May 7, 1777, commissioner to Tuscany, but he 
was never received by that government and so re- 


Izard 

mained in France. He considered that as a dip¬ 
lomatic representative of the United States he 
had a right to take part in the consultations be¬ 
tween the French court and the ministers com¬ 
missioned to that court, but this right was not 
recognized by Benjamin Franklin [q.vJ], toward 
whom Izard developed a bitter antagonism. The 
latter also contended that his goods should be ex¬ 
empt from duties, and that out of funds collected 
m France his salary as minister to Tuscany 
should be paid. These claims, also rejected by 
Franklin, led to further alienation. With Arthur 
Lee, Izard was on friendly terms, and John 
Adams [q.v.] in part upheld him. Meantime, his 
estates had been sequestered in South Carolina 
and his wife’s brother, James, and her uncle 
Oliver De Lancey [ qq.v.] had become notorious 
as Loyalist leaders in New York. Tormented by 
anxiety, in financial straits, nervous, irritable, 
subject to attacks of gout, mistaken in his atti¬ 
tude toward the other commissioners of the 
United States, he was nevertheless undoubtedly 
devoted to the American cause. While in Paris, 
he opened negotiations with Tuscany, aided 
Alexander Gillon [ q.v .] in securing funds for 
ships of war, and cooperated w^ith Lee in his 
efforts toward obtaining the French treaty. The 
delay in Paris and the controversies with Frank¬ 
lin led to Izard’s recall in 1779, before his resig¬ 
nation had been received, but after his dispatches 
explaining his position reached Congress, a reso¬ 
lution was passed approving his conduct (Aug. 
9 > 1780). Arriving in Philadelphia in August 
1780, he repaired to Washington’s headquarters, 
where he influenced the Commander-in-Chief to 
send General Greene to take command of the 
southern army. In 1782 he was chosen a dele¬ 
gate from South Carolina to Congress, serving 
until peace was declared. Subsequently he de¬ 
clined to become a candidate for governor of the 
state, but served in the legislature and on the 
adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1789 was 
chosen United States senator. He stood high in 
the friendship and confidence of Washington, of 
whose administration he was a stanch supporter. 
He w'as president pro tempore of the Senate dur¬ 
ing the sessions of the Third Congress. In 1795 
he retired from public life to the care of his prop¬ 
erty; and two years later a stroke of paralysis 
made him an invalid for the rest of his days. 

Although prior to the Revolution Izard had 
hotly resented the “Royal Tyranny,” he had no 
sympathy for democracy. Tall, fine-looking, in 
his youth an adept at outdoor sports, he was a 
frequent sufferer from gout in his later years 
and developed a notorious irascibility. He died 
near Charleston, at the age of sixty-two, and was 


524 



Jack — Jackman 

buried outside the wall o£ the church at St. 
James, Goose Creek. His wife died in Philadel¬ 
phia, Apr. i, 1832. Of their fourteen children, 
three sons and four daughters survived to marry 
and one son, George Izard [#.*/.], became a ma¬ 
jor-general in the United States Army. 

[See S. C. Hist, and Geneal. Mag., July 1901, Jan.- 
july 1921, July 1928; G. E. Manigault, in Mag. of Am. 
Hist., Jan. 1890; Francis Wharton, The Revolutionary 
Diplomatic Correspondence of the U. S. (6 vols., 1889); 
Correspondence of Mr. Ralph Izard of S. C. (vol. I, 
1844, the only volume ever printed), edited with a short 
memoir by his daughter, Anne Izard Deas; Recollections 
of Joshua Francis Fisher, Written in 1864 (1929); 
Journals of the Continental Congress; Alexander Gar¬ 
den, Anecdotes of the Am. Revolution . . . Second Ser. 
(1828); Charleston Courier, June 1, 1804. The Lib. of 
Cong, has a collection of Izard papers.] M.L.W. 

JACK, CAPTAIN [See Captain Jack, 1837?- 

1873]- 

JACKMAN, WILBUR SAMUEL (Jan. 12, 
1855-Jan. 28, 1907), educator, was born in Me- 
chanicstown, Ohio. When he was four years old, 
his parents, Barnard C. and Ruth (Lilley) Jack- 
man, moved to California, Pa., and soon after¬ 
ward the boy began to attend a small private 
school. The father and mother had only the 
limited education which was offered by district 
schools, but they were ambitious for their son 
and encouraged him to devote himself to intellec¬ 
tual pursuits. A few years after going to Cali¬ 
fornia they bought a farm which had belonged 
to Jackman’s great-grandfather. Here, in a pic¬ 
turesque rural environment, the boy cultivated 
the interest in nature which later became his 
dominant personal and professional interest. In 
1875 he entered the normal school in California, 
riding back and forth daily on horseback. He 
taught in the district schools of the neighbor¬ 
hood while pursuing his course and graduated 
in 1877. He then became a teacher in the normal 
school, serving in this capacity until 1880, when 
he entered Allegheny College. In 1882 he trans¬ 
ferred to Harvard, where he graduated with the 
degree of A.B. in 1884. 

Immediately after graduation he became a 
teacher in the Central High School of Pitts¬ 
burgh, in charge of the courses in natural sci¬ 
ence. Such courses in high schools were then 
relatively new. His success as a teacher attract¬ 
ed the attention of Col. Francis Wayland Parker 
[#.s>.], principal of the Cook County Normal 
School in Chicago, who in 1889 invited Jackman 
to join his staff. Jackman accepted and found 
himself in an environment of the most congenial 
type. The Cook County Normal School was the 
center of a vigorous movement for the reform of 
the curriculum through the addition of new con¬ 
tent, especially in history, geography, and sci- 


Jackson 

ence. It was also a center for reform in methods 
of teaching, the chief aim being to remove all 
traces of rigid formalism. Jackman became an 
enthusiastic admirer and lieutenant of Colonel 
Parker. He also became a prolific writer in the 
field of nature study. Some of his most notable 
books are: Nature Study for the Common 
Schools (1891), Number Work in Nature Study 
(1893), an d Nature Study for Grammar Grades 
(1898). In addition he wrote numerous articles 
for educational journals and was a frequent 
speaker at teachers’ meetings. 

When the Chicago Institute was organized in 
1900, Jackman was made dean. He was the man 
on whom Colonel Parker, the director of the In¬ 
stitute, relied in all administrative matters. The 
two men had similar ideas on education and 
they worked together in complete sympathy. 
When, in 1901, the Institute gave up its inde¬ 
pendent existence and was transferred to the 
University of Chicago, Jackman became a mem¬ 
ber of the faculty of that institution and took up 
his duties there as the first dean of the new col¬ 
lege of education, serving in this capacity for 
three years. Because of his interest in the recon¬ 
struction of the elementary-school curriculum 
and also because of his belief that the training of 
teachers through direct contact with pupils is the 
most important phase of teacher training, he re¬ 
linquished the deanship in 1904 and took charge 
of the University Elementary School. At this 
time he also assumed editorship of the Elemen¬ 
tary School Teacher , which became the chief 
medium through which he promoted the recon¬ 
struction of the elementary-school curriculum. 
After his sudden death from pneumonia, the 
movement to introduce nature study into the ele¬ 
mentary-school curriculum became for a time 
less vigorous than it had been under his leader¬ 
ship. It is only in recent years that his pioneer¬ 
ing work has show’n its full effects. On Dec. 23, 
1884 he had married Ellen Amelia Reis of Pitts¬ 
burgh. 

[Register of the XJniv . of Chicago, 1906-07; Paul 
Monroe, Cyc. of Education, vol. Ill (1912); Jour, of 
Education, Jan. 31, 1907; Elementary School Teacher, 
Apr. 1907; Who’s Who in America, 1903-05; Chicago 
Tribune, Jan 29, 1907.] C.H. J. 

JACKSON, ABRAHAM REEVES (June 17, 
1827-Nov. 12, 1892), physician, and pioneer 
gynecologist, was born in Philadelphia, the son 
of Washington and Deborah (Lee) Jackson. 
Having graduated from the Central High School 
of his native city in 1846, he devoted a short 
time to the study of marine engineering only to 
return to his original interest in medicine, said 
to have been inspired largely by the character and 



Jackson 

ability of the family physician. In 1848 he re¬ 
ceived the degree of M.D. from the Pennsylvania 
Medical College and at once settled in Strouds¬ 
burg, Pa., as a general practitioner. In 1850 he 
married Harriet Hollinshead. He volunteered 
for medical service in the United States Army 
in 1862 and rose to the post of assistant medical 
director of the Army of Virginia. That he al¬ 
ways retained his interest in military associates 
is attested by the fact that in 1889 he was elected 
to the presidency of the acting assistant surgeons 
of the United States Army. He was discharged 
in 1864 and in the following year suffered the 
loss of his wife. In 1867 he made his first tour 
of Europe and chanced to be in the party of 
Mark Twain, who immortalized him as the witty 
and humorous “Doctor” in Innocents Abroad. It 
is said that the jokes attributed to the “Doctor” 
Were a verbatim report of Jackson’s utterances. 

For reasons not entirely clear Jackson now 
made a radical departure in his career and about 
1870 moved to Chicago with a view to limiting 
his practice to gynecology. There was precedent 
enough for this course, for the pioneer labors of 
J. Marion Sims [q.v .] and others had made it 
practicable to restrict one’s activities to the new 
specialty. In 1871, although the Chicago fire 
of that year must have made the undertaking 
doubly difficult, Jackson succeeded in founding 
the Woman’s Hospital of Illinois of which he 
was surgeon in chief, and in the same year he 
married as his second wife Julia Newell of Janes¬ 
ville, Wis., a woman of great talents and social 
prestige. In 1872 he received an appointment as 
lecturer on gynecology at Rush Medical College, 
from which he resigned in 1877. That same year 
he infected himself while operating and the re¬ 
sulting sepsis caused some impairment of his 
general health. In 1882 he was a cofounder and 
the first president of the Chicago College of 
Physicians and Surgeons. By 1883 gynecology 
had progressed so far in Chicago that a special 
society was formed, the Chicago Gynecological 
Society, with Jackson as its president. In 1889 
he developed an attack of aphasia, attributed to 
his infection many years before, and made a tour 
of the world in company with his wife. Upon his 
return it is known that he felt himself doomed to 
an early demise but he plunged into manifold ac¬ 
tivities: he was elected president of the Ameri¬ 
can Gynecological Society in 1891, and his last 
year of practice, 1891-92, w!as the most lucrative 
and successful of his career. On Nov. 1, 1892, 
he suffered a second stroke of apoplexy and suc¬ 
cumbed on the 12th. He wrote many valuable 
papers on gynecological subjects, characterized 
by originality in thought and language, but it is 


Jackson 

said that this very quality of originality de¬ 
terred him from writing a textbook, because he 
would be compelled to incorporate the work of 
other men. Since he was unsurpassed as a teach¬ 
er, this attitude was deplored. 

[R. F. Stone, Biog. of Eminent Am. Physicians and 
Surgeons (1894) ; W. B. Atkinson, The Physicians and 
Surgeons of the U. S. (1878); H. A. Kelly and W L 
Burrage, Am. Medic. Biogs. (1920); Am. Jour. Oh- 
stretics, Jan. 1893; Chicago Clinical Rev., Dec. 1802 • 
Chicago Medic. Recorder, Dec. 1892; N. Y. Jour of 
Gynecology and Obstetrics, Jan. 1893; Trans Am 
Gynecological Soc., 1893 ; Trans. Chicago Gynecological 
S°C: vol. I (1892-93); Chicago Tribune, Nov 1, 

l892 ' ] E.P 

JACKSON, ANDREW (Mar. 15, 1767-June 
8, 1845), seventh president of the United States, 
was born in the lean backwoods settlement of the 
Waxhaw in South Carolina (Bassett, Life, 1911, 
PP* 5 ~ 7 )- His father, for whom he was named' 
his mother, Elizabeth Hutchinson, and two broth¬ 
ers had migrated from the neighborhood of Car- 
rickfergus in the north of Ireland in 1765. Two 
years later, shortly before the birth of Andrew, 
the father died. Mrs. Jackson, being left a de- 
pendent widow, took up residence with relatives, 
and her little son started life under the most dis¬ 
couraging circumstances. He was sent to an old- 
field school, and developed into a tall, slender, 
sandy-haired, tempestuous stripling. When he 
had attained the age of nine years, the Revolu¬ 
tion broke upon the country and its horrors later 
visited the Waxhaw’ settlement. His brother 
Hugh was killed in 1779; he and his brother 
Robert, though mere lads, took part in the bat¬ 
tle of Hanging Rock, and afterward were cap¬ 
tured by the British. The boy troopers were 
thrown in prison, where they contracted small¬ 
pox. Their mother secured their exchange and 
release, but Robert died from either the effects 
of the disease or neglected wounds. During 1781 
Mrs. Jackson went to Charleston to nurse the 
sick, and here she died of prison fever. Bereaved 
of the last member of his family, Andrew at the 
age of fourteen was now alone in the world. 

^ His mother s death at that place probably drew 
him to Charleston. Here he learned something 
of the great world, including the racing of horses 
and the manners of “gentlemen.” Returning to 
his native settlement, he tried his hand at school¬ 
teaching and finally decided to take up the study 
of law. This was a daring yet a sagacious de¬ 
cision. Now seventeen years old, he apparently 
had no funds with which to finance his studies, 
but he possessed a horse and an abundance of 
courage; and the West was in need of young 
lawyers who could endure the rigors of frontier 
practice. He began the reading of law under 
Spruce Macay, at Salisbury, N. C., and had as 
fellow student and companion John McNairy. 



Jackson 

The two became close friends. Much of their 
time was spent in horse-racing, cock-fighting, 
and carousing (Parton, post, i860, I, 104, 108- 
09). Certainly Jackson gained little knowledge 
of Blackstone, but after two years of study, and 
a brief stay in Martinsville, N. C., he and Mc- 
Nairy in 1788 packed their horses and moved 
along the slender trail which led to the trans- 
montane West. Tradition has it that he arrived 
at Jonesboro (now Tenn.) riding a fine horse 
and leading another mount, with saddle-bags, 
gun, pistols, and fox-hounds. This was elab¬ 
orate equipment for a struggling young law¬ 
yer, and within the year he increased it by the 
purchase of a slave girl (John Allison, Dropped 
Stitches in Tennessee History, 1897, pp. 8, 10). 
Jackson and McNairy qualified to practise be¬ 
fore the courts, but Jackson still found time to 
engage in his favorite sport of horse-racing, and 
he fought a bloodless duel with Waightstill 
Avery, then the most famous lawyer in western 
North Carolina. All this makes it clear that the 
young man had set himself up in the world as a 
“gentleman.” Frontiersmen normally fought with 
their fists rather than with pistols, and prided 
themselves more upon physical prowess than 
upon manners. Though commonly looked upon 
as a typical Westerner, Jackson was ever an aris¬ 
tocrat at heart. 

In the fall of 1788 the first wagon road from 
the vicinity of Jonesboro to the infant town of 
Nashville was opened by the militia, and the 
two budding attorneys were of the first party to 
traverse the new highway. McNairy had been 
appointed judge of the superior court of the new 
jurisdiction, and Jackson accompanied his friend, 
doubtless hoping to profit from the association. 
On reaching Nashville, then a stockaded village 
of log cabins, the young lawyer found lodging 
with the widow of Col. John Donelson, a wealthy 
and prominent land speculator from Virginia 
and one of the founders of Nashville. In the 
home of his widow was another lawyer-lodger, 
named John Overton, and the daughter of the 
house, Rachel, who had made an unfortunate 
marriage to Lewis Robards. Overton was a well- 
connected young man from Virginia, and he and 
Jackson became lifelong friends. Jackson was 
also attracted to Rachel Robards, and their friend¬ 
ship led to divorce from her jealous husband. 
By reason of misapprehension they were married 
two years before the decree of divorce was grant¬ 
ed, and a long-lived scandal was the result. A 
second marriage ceremony was, of course, nec¬ 
essary. Jackson had married into a family far 
superior to his own socially, and he reaped no 
small benefit from this tie. Though of good 


Jackson 

birth, Rachel had been reared in the wilderness 
and consequently was almost illiterate and with¬ 
out training in the niceties of social usage. Jack- 
son was attached to her with romantic devotion 
throughout his life. They had no children, but 
he adopted his wife’s nephew, who in his foster 
father’s will was called Andrew Jackson, Jr. 

While establishing himself in such personal 
ways, Jackson was also engaged in establishing 
himself in business. He secured a ready practice 
in the collection of debts, and McNairy appoint¬ 
ed him prosecuting attorney for the district In 
1790 North Carolina ceded her western country 
to the United States, and William Blount, pow¬ 
erful in North Carolina politics, was appoined 
governor. Blount was wealthy and prominent; 
Jackson was an unknown backwoods lawyer. But 
the two became acquainted shortly after Blount’s 
appointment. A man situated as was the Gov¬ 
ernor needed energetic young lawyers in his ad¬ 
ministration, and Jackson probably facilitated his 
own introduction. In 1791 he was given the same 
appointment under the territorial government 
that he had held under North Carolina, and soon 
was also appointed judge-advocate of the David¬ 
son County militia regiment (“Governor Blount’s 
Journal,” American Historical Magazine, Nash¬ 
ville, July 1897, pp. 234,247). Strangely enough, 
this was the only military office which Jackson 
held until he became a major-general of Ten¬ 
nessee militia in 1802. Land was the great com¬ 
modity of the West and land speculation the 
most obvious avenue to riches. Being an enter¬ 
prising, ambitious young man, Jackson bought 
and sold many thousand acres. His transactions 
in two instances at least were extremely equivo¬ 
cal, one of them gaining him an airing before the 
United States Senate (T. P. Abernethy, From 
Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee, 1932, pp. 
262-76). Among other purchases was that of the 
“Hermitage” tract, where he made his home and 
lived the life of a cotton planter after 1795. He 
established a store nearby where he exchanged 
manufactured articles from Philadelphia for cot¬ 
ton and peltry, which he shipped to New Or¬ 
leans. 

When Tennessee was admitted as a state in 
1796, Jackson sat as a delegate in the convention 
which framed its first constitution. The fact that 
he was placed upon the committee which was 
appointed to draw up a frame of government was 
a recognition of his professional qualifications. 
The constitution of North Carolina was followed 
as a model, but the drafting committee omitted 
from the new’ instrument the clause in the older 
document requiring all officials under the state 
to believe in God, in a future state of rewards 


5 2 7 



Jackson 

and punishments, and in the divine authority of 
the Old and New Testaments. A motion from 
the floor proposed to insert it. The future leader 
of Democracy here made his debut as a liberal. 
Jackson, along with most of the prominent men 
of the convention, opposed the motion, though it 
passed with modifications ( Journal of the Pro¬ 
ceedings of a Convention ... at Knoxville .. • 
for the Purpose of Forming a Constitution, ed. 
1852, pp. 23-24, 29). 

Under the new state government Jackson was 
elected without opposition to the one seat which 
Tennessee was allotted in the federal House of 
Representatives. This might be taken as an in¬ 
dication of his outstanding popularity, but it does 
not appear that he was notable in that respect. 
All the evidence tends to indicate that the plans 
of William Blount [ q.v who was now sent to 
the federal Senate, were responsible for the ele¬ 
vation of Jackson. As protege of the powerful 
Blount, Jackson was given many a lift along the 
highroad to success. Though he did not win 
laurels in Congress as an orator, he did make 
himself conspicuous by voting against resolu¬ 
tions approving^Washington’s administration, and 
by securing compensation for militiamen who 
had marched under Sevier on an Indian raid not 
only unauthorized by the government but actu¬ 
ally contrary to its orders. The latter accom¬ 
plishment, which must have required some abil¬ 
ity, won him a secure place in the favor of his 
constituency. 

In 1797 Blount was expelled from the Senate. 
He and John Sevier were the leaders of rival 
factions in state politics, and this reverse threat¬ 
ened to injure not only Blount but also his entire 
following. Jackson occupied an important posi¬ 
tion in this group, and the responsibility for re¬ 
trieving the situation devolved upon him. It was 
under these circumstances that he resigned his 
seat in the House and sought and secured a 
place in the Senate (“Correspondence of Gen. 
James Robertson,” American Historical Maga¬ 
zine, Nashville, Oct 1899, pp. 343-45). Jackson 
now returned to Philadelphia, but, being greatly 
involved in business difficulties, in April 1798 he 
resigned for a second time a seat in the federal 
legislature. He was not the kind of man to take 
an interest in wordy debates and the subtleties 
of political intrigue. He had a certain shrewd¬ 
ness, but it was not of a complex type. He was 
restless and vigorous and he loved action rather 
than words. 

In 1798, at the instance of William Blount, he 
received the support of Governor Sevier and was 
elected one of the superior judges of Tennessee 
(Tennessee Historical Society MSS., Blount to 


Jackson 

Sevier, July 6,1798). Jackson was not a learned 
judge, but he was a fearless and energetic one 
and no criticism has ever come upon him in con¬ 
nection with his work in this capacity. The con¬ 
ventional picture of the irascible soldier and self- 
willed president should be tempered by recalling 
this phase of his career. He seems to have had 
no plans other than to live out his life as a gen¬ 
tleman of the western border. He rode the cir¬ 
cuit, planted cotton at “The Hermitage,” raced 
horses at Clover Bottom, and talked with his 
friends at the taverns in Nashville. While po¬ 
litical office apparently held no great attraction 
for him, he was keenly interested in the major- 
generalship of the militia of Tennessee. This of¬ 
fice, filled by the vote of the field officers of the 
division, was, next to the governorship, the most 
important in the gift of the state. In those days 
militia offices were no sinecures. All able-bodied 
men were liable to serve, and they were not in¬ 
frequently called upon for active duty. Even in 
times of peace, musters were often held, and the 
belted and plumed officers drilled their men in 
hunting shirts with much eclat. In 1801 Gov¬ 
ernor Sevier, being ineligible for a fourth suc¬ 
cessive term, gave way to Archibald Roane, a 
young lawyer who had come out to the wilder¬ 
ness with Jackson in the early days and was of 
the Blount faction. Sevier now ran against Jack- 
son for the generalship, and when the vote was 
found to be tied, Roane cast his deciding ballot 
for his friend, Jackson, who was thus elected 
(1802). Upon such slender threads does the des¬ 
tiny of even the greatest men sometimes depend. 
In 1803 Jackson supported Roane for the gov¬ 
ernorship against Sevier, who was now eligible. 
The quarrel between Sevier and Jackson, which 
had begun earlier (A. V. Goodpasture, “Genesis 
of the Jackson-Sevier Feud,” American Histor¬ 
ical Magazine, Nashville, Apr. 1900, pp. 115- 
23), developed into bitter enmity and all but led 
to a serious personal encounter. Sevier, however, 
was successful in the election and Jackson gained 
no advantage. The next year he resigned his 
judgeship and retired to private life except for 
his military commission. But the fates were still 
unkind. Wien Aaron Burr visited Nashville in 
1806 in the interest of his well-known expedition 
down the Mississippi, Jackson entertained him 
at “The Hermitage” and undertook a contract to 
build boats for him. When Burr was discredited, 
Jackson's connection with him was used to his 
disadvantage by his enemies. During the same 
year he fought his famous duel with Charles 
Dickinson. While severely wounded himself, he 
brought down his man. Since Dickinson had 


528 



Jackson 

powerful connections, Jackson was further weak¬ 
ened politically by the affair. 

Jackson lived the life of a country gentleman 
from 1806 until 1812. Then the second war with 
Great Britain broke upon the country and gave 
him his chance for fame. The massacre by the 
Creeks of the inmates of Fort Mims in the Mis¬ 
sissippi Territory was followed by a call upon 
Tennessee for assistance. Willie Blount, half- 
brother to William, was then in the guberna¬ 
torial chair, and he gave to his friend Jackson 
the command of the forces sent by Tennessee to 
subdue the hostile natives. The country through 
which the latter had to march was naturally dif¬ 
ficult, and without roads of any kind. The troops 
under his command were militiamen and volun¬ 
teers enlisted for short tours of duty. His sup¬ 
plies had to be shipped down the river from East 
Tennessee. The enemy gave him far less trouble 
than his “friends,” but he overcame all obstacles 
and accomplished the seemingly impossible by 
defeating the Indians at Horseshoe Bend (Mar. 
27, 1814). It was perhaps not a great feat of 
generalship, but it was a supreme feat of will. 
The victory established his military reputation 
and brought him a commission as major-general 
in the army of the United States. It was in this 
capacity that he was called upon to defend New 
Orleans against the veterans of Wellington whom 
the British sent against that city. The military 
problem was a relatively simple one, for the en¬ 
emy had to approach the city along a narrow 
strip of land lying between the river and the 
marsh, and Jackson selected for his main line of 
defense an old canal lying athwart this passage. 
Again his main problem was tactical rather than 
strategic, for his troops were motley and undis¬ 
ciplined. Collecting his militiamen from Ken¬ 
tucky and Tennessee, his creoles, his negroes, and 
his pirates, he threw up a palisade and manned 
the canal. Thrice the British attacked with des¬ 
perate bravery, and three of their generals were 
left lying upon the bloody field of Chalmette. 
Finally the thin red line recoiled, and New Or¬ 
leans was saved. But the treaty of peace had 
been signed before the battle was fought (Jan. 
8, 1815). The victory was without effect^ upon 
the peace with Britain, but by no means without 
effect upon the peace within the United States. 
It created a president, a party, and a tradition. 

This battle made Jackson the major hero of 
the war, and a national figure of the first magni¬ 
tude. He w'as now forty-eight years of age. Tall 
and slender even to the point of emaciation, his 
frail body supported a head of great strength. 
His face was long and narrow, with a high fore¬ 
head and hair which stood stiffly erect. His eyes 


Jackson 

were small and blue and kindled with a burning 
fire. His nose was straight and his mouth gen¬ 
erous and strong, but the teeth were too long 
and the upper lip too heavy. The jaw was thin 
and lantern, but the chin was firm and clear-cut. 

It was an impressive countenance, and one alto¬ 
gether distinctive (H. A. Wise, Seven Decades 
of the Union, 1872, p. 80). The character of his 
mind was even more distinctive than was his ap¬ 
pearance. His temper was hot and his spirit 
high, yet he could restrain emotions or play them 
up for the sake of effect. He spoke volubly, in 
a vehement and somewhat declamatory manner, 
but with perfect self-possession. He was tender 
and gentle with those whom he loved, and loyal 
to those whom he considered his friends. He 
hated his enemies with unabated fervor, and all 
who opposed him were his foes. He was strong- 
willed and impetuous in action, yet he reflected 
carefully before coming to a decision. In polit¬ 
ical matters he sometimes deferred to the advice 
of others, but as often acted upon his own ini¬ 
tiative. The course which he followed in such 
cases depended primarily upon whether the sub¬ 
ject were one which touched him personally, or 
whether it were one upon which he could look 
objectively. 

Shortly after the battle, it occurred to several 
keen politicians, including Aaron Burr, Edward 
Livingston, and William Carroll, that the vic¬ 
torious general had become a presidential possi¬ 
bility. But Monroe was the incumbent and he 
was scheduled for reelection in 1820. Jackson 
was his friend and had no intention of competing 
with him. Though the General denied that he 
sought office, it is clear that his thoughts began 
to turn toward Washington. His prospects were 
disturbed by the Seminole affair of 1818. In this 
year Jackson was sent to chastise some Florida 
Indians who were making trouble along the Ala- 
bama-Georgia border. Believing that he was 
acting in accord with the wishes of the admin¬ 
istration, but without official authorization, he 
followed the natives across the international line 
and captured the Spanish town of Pensacola. In 
addition to this, he hanged two British subjects 
who had been exercising hostile influence among 
the red men. The government was thus brought 
face to face with the possibility of war with both 
Great Britain and Spain, and it was left for 
Monroe and his advisers to find a way out of 
the difficulty in which the over-zealous Jackson 
had involved them. The President and every 
member of the cabinet save John Quincy Adams 
felt that Jackson had exceeded his authority and 
that his acts should be disavowed, but the Secre¬ 
tary of State advised that the blame be put upon 



Jackson 

Spain for her lax administration, and his coun¬ 
sel prevailed. It was a happy solution, for Jack¬ 
son's conduct w'as pleasing to the majority of the 
Western people, and a reprimand might have 
made him president before his time. Monroe's 
position had been a delicate one. He wished Jack- 
son to believe that he was friendly, but he re¬ 
fused to assume responsibility for the attack on 
Pensacola, and he did not come openly to the 
defense of the General. After the excitement had 
blown over and the United States had acquired 
Florida, the President made amends of a kind 
by appointing Jackson to be the first governor 
of the new territory. Resigning his military com¬ 
mission on June i, 1821, Jackson accepted the 
position because its tender was looked upon as 
a public vindication of his conduct and because 
he thought it would enable him to furnish offices 
to some of his friends (Bassett, Correspondence, 
III, 1928, p. 65). In the latter expectation he 
was largely disappointed, and his experiences as 
governor were otherwise embarrassing. Tact 
rather than courage was the qualification which 
the position required, and he was never noted for 
this virtue. Before the end of the year he gave 
up the post in disgust and retired to “The Her¬ 
mitage" to become once more a private citizen. 

Meanwhile, Monroe had been elected presi¬ 
dent for a second term in 1820. The time had 
come when men might turn their attention to the 
election of 1824, and it was with an unwonted 
interest that they did so. The great panic of 
1819 h a d left the West economically prostrate 
and the hordes of debtors sent up a cry for re¬ 
lief. In many states the legislatures passed vari¬ 
ous measures for their benefit, including, in some 
cases, the establishment of state-owned, state- 
operated banks whose paper money was to be 
used for the succor of the needy (T. H. Benton, 
Thirty Years’ View, I, 1854, p. 5)* In Tennes¬ 
see, as well as Kentucky and Alabama, such in¬ 
stitutions were established. Ambitious politicians 
saw the opportunity offered by the situation and 
demagoguery was rife. Jackson was one of the 
few who opposed the state bank in Tennessee. 
It was also opposed by the two candidates for 
the governorship of the state in 1821. Of these, 
Edward Ward, wealthy and educated, was looked 
upon as the aristocratic candidate, and William 
Carroll as representing the democracy. Jackson 
supported Ward, who was overwhelmingly de¬ 
feated (T. P. Abemethy, “Andrew Jackson and 
the Rise of Southwestern Democracy," Ameri¬ 
can Historical Review, Oct. 1927, pp. 67-68). 
Thus the hero of New Orleans aligned himself 
with the conservative interests in his state at the 
time the great popular movement which bears 


Jackson 

his name was getting under way. Though his 
presidential campaign was already on foot, he 
made no attempt to conceal his views. 

When he returned to “The Hermitage" in 
1821, a group of three old friends who resided in 
or near Nashville constituted themselves a con¬ 
fidential committee for political purposes. Of 
these, William B. Lewis \_q.v .] was a neighbor 
who had married a ward of Jackson; John H. 
Eaton [q.v.*] was a satellite who had defended 
the General when the Seminole affair was before 
the Senate in 1819; and John Overton [ q.v .] had 
lodged with Jackson at the widow Donelson's in 
frontier days and had remained a loyal friend 
and business associate during all the intervening 
years. He furnished most of the initiative, Eaton 
contributed diplomatic ability, and Lewis was the 
informal secretary and general busybody. To¬ 
gether they supplied the press with favorable ma¬ 
terial, formed connections in other states, and 
secured Jackson's nomination by the Tennessee 
legislature in 1822. There were similar groups 
elsewhere who saw the opportunity to organize 
the masses, so lately stirred to political conscious¬ 
ness by the panic, and thrust the old-time poli¬ 
ticians from the seats of power. Thus the Jack- 
son movement was launched as a popular cause 
in spite of the unpopular stand which he took at 
the same time in the politics of his own state. 
The explanation is that he was known as a suc¬ 
cessful general and Indian fighter, a son of the 
frontier with the romance of the pioneer about 
him, and an expansionist, and that few people 
outside the state knew or cared anything about 
Tennessee politics. In the state all factions were 
anxious to see the favorite son become president 
of the nation. The presidential movement de¬ 
veloped smoothly until 1823, when it became nec¬ 
essary for Tennessee to elect a new* senator. The 
incumbent, Col. John Williams, had fought Jack- 
son bitterly during the Seminole controversy of 
1818-19, an d the friends of the latter did not 
think that they could afford to permit the return 
of such an enemy. But no man could be found 
with sufficient strength to defeat him, and the 
only recourse was to put forward Jackson him¬ 
self. He objected, for he had been in the Senate 
once before. His friends insisted, however, and 
he finally gave way. The result was that, in 
1823, for a second time Jackson occupied a seat 
in the Senate of the United States. Just as in 
1798, he accepted the place in order to prevent 
the election of an opponent, and held it only long 
enough to secure the succession of a friend. This 
time he took a more active part in the proceed¬ 
ings of the body and registered his vote on the 
leading measures. It is notable that he favored 


530' 



Jackson 

bills providing for the construction of internal 
improvements at federal expense, and supported 
the protective tariff (Bassett, Life, pp. 344-45). 
He was a true representative of die West, favor¬ 
ing an expansionist policy which would result in 
the development of the newer states. 

It was, therefore, with a political as well as a 
military record that Jackson stood before the 
country as a presidential candidate in 1824. His 
opponents were Henry Clay and John Quincy 
Adams, both nationalists. John C. Calhoun, once 
a rival, now occupied the second place on the 
Jackson ticket. William H. Crawford, the anoint¬ 
ed of the “Virginia Dynast/’ and the only strict 
constructionist of the five, was strong with the 
politicians of Washington and greatly feared by 
his opponents. Jackson had quarreled with him 
in 1816 over an Indian treaty, and this animos¬ 
ity added zest to the General’s ambition. In the 
election, Jackson received the highest popular 
vote, but, as compared with the votes in suc¬ 
ceeding elections, it was an exceedingly small 
one. The military hero had not yet conquered 
the nation. In the Southwest, where the memory 
of Indian wars was still fresh, his strength was 
overwhelming except in the vicinity of New Or¬ 
leans and among the commercial elements else¬ 
where. The movement for him was in the nature 
of a popular uprising in this section, and the 
conservative elements in the population, though 
numerically weak, were inclined to be hostile. 
Clay divided the Northwest with him and Craw¬ 
ford split the Southeast. In the East, where In¬ 
dian wars were long forgotten, Jackson’s strength 
was due more to the work of local politicians 
than to any direct appeal which his personality 
made to the masses. His support here came part¬ 
ly from the rural democracy, and partly from 
the nationalists. Political power was still com¬ 
monly wielded by the few, who were able to 
shape public opinion among a people accustomed 
to leadership. 

When the Clay supporters combined with those 
of Adams to elect the latter, the Jackson fol¬ 
lowing sent up a cry of “bargain and corruption” 
in which they fully believed, and which furnished 
the motive power for a campaign of renewed 
intensity to elect their favorite in 1828. It was 
during this period that the campaigners were 
able to arouse the masses throughout the country 
to an active interest in politics and to a pitch of 
enthusiasm which was more general than any¬ 
thing that had previously affected the people. 
The Jackson movement became a personal mat¬ 
ter, the vindication of a hero who had been 
wronged, and the campaigners conjured with 
the name of “Old Hickory.” No definite pro- 


Jackson 

gram of reform was proposed; no political ideals 
were set forth; the sole aim was the election of 
Jackson. Men who could not understand prin¬ 
ciples of any sort could understand this issue. 
Before the year 1828 came around, the political 
situation had changed radically. Clay withdrew 
from the race, and ill health forced the retire¬ 
ment of Crawford. This left the Jackson-Cal- 
houn ticket to face Adams alone. Martin Van 
Buren of New York had supported Crawford in 
1824. Now he turned to Jackson and carried with 
him a strong Crawford following in Virginia 
and Georgia (C. H. Ambler, Thomas Ritchie, 
I 9 I 3 > PP* 107-08). Thus a state-rights element 
had joined a nationalist group. The question of 
the Bank of the United States had not been 
before the people in 1824, and Jackson, in spite 
of later utterances, had not previously mani¬ 
fested hostility toward that institution. He began 
to show a hostile spirit, however, at about the 
time of his coalition with Van Buren, and the 
fact that some of the branches of the bank op¬ 
posed him during the campaign fixed his ani¬ 
mosity (R. C. H. Catterall, The Second Bank of 
the United States, 1903, pp. 183-84; R. C. Mc- 
Grane, ed., The Correspondence of Nicholas Bid¬ 
dle, 1919, pp. 87-88). This was Jackson’s first 
commitment to the strict-constructionist faction 
and it is highly probable that Van Buren was 
responsible for the change. Since Adams was a 
nationalist of strong convictions, it was natural 
that his opponent should take the other side, and 
the vote in the election of 1828 shows that he 
was understood to have done so. The combina¬ 
tion between Jackson and Van Buren was cer¬ 
tain to bring on a struggle between Calhoun and 
Van Buren for the succession. When the hero 
of New Orleans journeyed to the scene of his 
great victory to participate in an anniversary 
celebration on Jan. 8, 1828, James A. Hamilton 
[q.v.], a trusted friend of Van Buren, went 
along to sound him on a reconciliation with 
Crawford and to suggest to him the disloyalty 
of Calhoun. But Jackson would not believe that 
Calhoun had been disloyal, and was not enthusi¬ 
astic over reconciliation with Crawford (Jackson 
Papers, Library of Congress, J. A. Hamilton to 
Jackson, Feb. 17, 1828; American Historical 
Magazine, Nashville, Jan. 1904, pp. 93-98, R. G. 
Dunlap to Jackson, Aug. 10, 1831). Thus the 
first move failed, but Van Buren bided his time. 
When the election occurred, Jackson carried 
both New York and Pennsylvania with a solid 
West and South except for Maryland. His pop¬ 
ular vote was four times what it had been in 
1824 (Edward Stanwood, History of the Presi¬ 
dency, vol. I, 1898, pp. 136,148). 


531 



Jackson 

The popular campaign had succeeded. The 
masses had been aroused for the first time to an 
active interest in politics. At the inauguration 
they stormed the White House and their lead¬ 
ers busied themselves in demanding a share of 
the spoils of victory. The new administration 
satisfied this demand, removing many old em¬ 
ployees of the government and putting new men 
in their places. This process was facilitated by 
the adoption of the principle of rotation in of¬ 
fice, under which tenure was usually limited to 
four years instead of during good behavior. All 
this was in keeping with Jackson’s personal 
views, for he looked upon politics as a very per¬ 
sonal matter, and he had always believed that his 
friends should be rewarded by public prefer¬ 
ment No abstract principle of equal rights actu¬ 
ated him in this stand. Van Buren became sec¬ 
retary of state and John H. Eaton became sec¬ 
retary of war, but Calhoun’s friends had to be 
rewarded with several cabinet posts. It was clear 
from the first that harmony could not prevail 
between the factions thus represented. It was 
Eaton who first introduced discord by marrying 
the notorious Peggy O’Neill, daughter of a Wash¬ 
ington tavern-keeper (see O’Neill, Margaret L.). 
The ladies of the cabinet refused to receive her 
and Mrs. Calhoun took a leading part in the 
work of exclusion. Jackson, ever gallant, de¬ 
fended Peggy ; and Van Buren, being a widower, 
aided his chief. The President took the matter 
personally, and the Secretary of State was much 
strengthened by the incident Thus a social issue 
all but wrecked the Cabinet of the arch-Demo- 
crat Van Buren’s cause was also promoted by 
the nullification controversy. Calhoun had been 
a strong advocate of internal improvements 
while a member of Monroe’s cabinet, and was 
known as a decided nationalist in 1824. The 
tariff measure of that year, however, was op¬ 
posed by South Carolina, and that of 1828 drove 
her into strenuous resistance to the policy of 
protection (C. S. Boucher, The Nullification 
Controversy in South Carolina, 1916). State- 
rights ideas were revived and strengthened, and 
Calhoun joined the movement without openly 
avowing the fact when he drew up his “Exposi¬ 
tion” of 1828. There was much reason to look 
upon Jackson at that time as a state-rights man, 
and the difference of opinion was not revealed 
until the famous Jefferson birthday dinner of 
1830, when the President gave his toast, “Our 
Union, it must be preserved!” (Bassett, Life, p. 
555)- The breach which thus developed was 
widened and made irreparable by Crawford’s 
publication of the facts in regard to the cabinet 
meeting of 1818, when Calhoun had wished to 


Jackson 

see Jackson censured for his conduct in the 
Seminole campaign. Thus everything worked 
into the hands of Van Buren, and he supplanted 
the great Carolinian in the councils of the ad¬ 
ministration. In 1831 the cabinet was reorgan¬ 
ized so as to force the friends of Calhoun out, 
and Van Buren, on being rejected by the Sen¬ 
ate as minister to the Court of St. James’s, 
became Jackson’s choice to replace Calhoun in 
the vice-presidency. 

While this struggle was in progress, the ad¬ 
ministration faced an equally important issue in¬ 
volving the Bank of the United States. The 
charter was to expire in 1836, but so important 
was the matter that it could not be ignored until 
that time. Jackson failed to mention it in his 
inaugural address, but in his first annual mes¬ 
sage to Congress brought up the question. Here 
he expressed himself as opposed to the existing 
charter, but as favoring one which would estab¬ 
lish a government-owned bank so limited in its 
operations as to avoid all constitutional difficul¬ 
ties (Richardson, post, II, 1896, p. 462). In 
1820 Jackson had opposed a government-owned 
bank in Tennessee, and time had justified his 
opposition. He knew, or should have known, 
that the notes issued by the Bank of the United 
States were almost the only paper currency which 
would circulate without depreciation in all parts 
of the Union, and that there was not enough gold 
and silver to serve the needs of trade (T. P. 
Abemethy, “Early Development of Commerce 
and Banking in Tennessee,” Mississippi Valley 
Historical Review, Dec. 1927, pp. 318-25). The 
ideas expressed in his message therefore seem 
unnecessarily crude, and are hard to account for. 
There is much reason to suspect that they were 
inspired by Van Buren and that they represent 
New York’s opposition to the Philadelphia bank. 
It was his opponents, however, rather than Jack- 
son, who forced the issue. Clay together with 
Nicholas Biddle, president of the Bank, decided 
that the recharter should be demanded before the 
election of 1832 so that, if Jackson should veto 
it, it would become the issue in the campaign. 
As they anticipated, the measure was passed and 
vetoed, and the bank question became the lead¬ 
ing issue in the election which followed. 

Van Buren’s hand could be seen even more 
clearly in another issue which confronted the 
people at the time. The Western states were 
greatly in need of improved transportation facil¬ 
ities, and macadamized roads were just coming 
into use. When Congress in 1830 passed an act 
for the improvement of the road from Maysville 
to Lexington, Ky., Jackson vetoed the measure. 
His message explaining his act stated that works 


532 



Jackson 

of national importance might be countenanced, 
but that the road in question was of local inter¬ 
est only. He thus did not argue on strict-con- 
structionist grounds, but on grounds of expedi¬ 
ency (Richardson, post, II, 1896, p. 487) - His po¬ 
sition was badly taken, however, for the highway 
from Wheeling to Maysville w’as one of the 
most important in the whole West, and the 
great southwestern mail was being carried along 
it at the time. 

In 1832 the Democratic party held its first 
national nominating convention for the purpose 
of naming Van Buren for the vice-presidency. 
Since the congressional caucus had favored 
Crawford in 1824, Jackson and his following op¬ 
posed it as an undemocratic institution and suc¬ 
ceeded in killing it. The nominating convention 
grew up to take its place. This device was advo¬ 
cated as giving a more direct expression to the 
will of the people, but Jackson was not inter¬ 
ested in the will of the people unless it coincided 
with his own, as his attitude toward this and 
the succeeding convention well proves. In the 
election of 1832 Jackson stood before the coun¬ 
try with his policy well developed. The theorist 
would have found it difficult to determine whether 
he was a strict or a liberal constructionist, an 
advocate of state rights or of nationalism; but 
such abstract questions did not enter much into 
consideration. The bank question was the para¬ 
mount issue, and the President’s stand was 
immensely popular. The back-country people cor¬ 
rectly regarded the banks as privileged institu¬ 
tions, and they looked upon the losses which they 
themselves sustained because of a fluctuating 
paper currency as amounting to sheer robbery. 
Jackson’s position appeared to them to be a 
manifestation of pure democracy, and they sup¬ 
ported it with utmost enthusiasm. The result 
was that the President was reelected over Clay 
by a popular vote which slightly exceeded that 
of 1828 and broke the opposition even in New 
England. Shortly after this election, the nulli¬ 
fication controversy came to a head. A new pro¬ 
tective tariff measure was passed in 1832 and 
South Carolina called a convention which for¬ 
bade the collection of the duties within the state. 
Jackson countered with a proclamation threat¬ 
ening to use force if necessary in the execution^ 
of the law. In this crisis Clay secured the pas¬ 
sage of the compromise tariff of 1833 and the 
danger was averted, each side claiming victory. 
Jackson’s attitude in this matter was character¬ 
istic of his temperament, and he doubtless acted 
upon his own initiative. While nullification re¬ 
ceived little support outside South Carolina, the 
state-rights school in the South was offended 


Jackson 

by the President’s assumption of the right to 
coerce a state, and some of the leaders of this 
wing of the party deserted to the opposition. 

Having prevented the recharter of the Bank 
of the United States, Jackson feared that it 
would retaliate by trying to bring on a panic. In 
order to curb its dangerous power, he decided 
that the federal deposits should be withdrawn 
from its vaults. After he had experienced some 
difficulty in finding a secretary of the treasury 
who would cooperate in the work, the object 
was accomplished. The Senate passed resolutions 
condemning the action of the President, and an 
important group of leaders in the Southern wing 
of the party was alienated. But the Bank was 
dead, and the government funds were distrib¬ 
uted among state banks. Neither the credit nor 
the currency of the country was improved by 
these measures, which were in effect inflationist, 
but the “money power,” once so arrogant, had 
been humbled and the masses who were not in¬ 
terested in commerce applauded the policy. His 
“specie circular” (July 11, 1836) later added to 
the difficulties of sound banks and served in part 
to precipitate the panic of 1837. 

Jackson’s record as an expansionist was all 
that should have been expected. His policy of 
removing the Indians west of the Mississippi 
quieted a dangerous situation in Georgia, where 
he had upheld state aggression in defiance of 
John Marshall and the Supreme Court, but met 
with less success in Alabama. His desire to take 
advantage of the Texas revolution in order to 
secure the annexation of that province to the 
United States was not gratified. It seems prob¬ 
able that he hoped, through the instrumentality 
of his friend Samuel Houston, to find an excuse 
for intervention, but the plan did not succeed 
and prudence did not permit it to be pushed (H. 
A. Wise, Seven Decades of the Union, 1872, p. 
149). In diplomatic affairs the administration 
succeeded signally. The trade of the British West 
Indies was opened to the United States for the 
first time since the Revolution, and a claim 
against France for Napoleonic spoliations was 
settled by strong-handed methods. The last great 
struggle of Jackson’s career was over the selec¬ 
tion of his successor. He had chosen Van Buren 
for this honor, and the nomination of the latter 
by the convention of 1836 was secured by force¬ 
ful action. Jackson apparently did not realize 
that it was inconsistent with the principles of 
democracy for a president to select his successor 
by manipulating a convention, but many of his 
followers saw it and deserted his cause. Thus 
Jackson, at different times, alienated several 
groups of his earlier supporters, and these joined 


533 



Jackson 

the Clay-Adams opposition to form the Whig 
party. The new organization adopted Clay's na¬ 
tionalist policy. Jackson on the other hand, had 
disappointed the West in regard to internal im¬ 
provements, and the commercial interests, in¬ 
cluding a large proportion of the planters of the 
South, on the bank question. Thus he left his 
party with a strict-constructionist heritage. He 
had entered politics as a member of a school 
which looked upon public office as a fit subject 
for personal exploitation; he had always con¬ 
sidered himself a strict constructionist, but he 
had grown up in the spirit of Western national¬ 
ism and had represented that school as late as 
1824. Under the influence of Van Buren he 
veered toward the opposite stand. The partisan 
alignment established in his day persisted for 
many years, and the Democratic party retains 
until the present time some of the principles 
which he adopted. 

The nation and the executive office grew 
stronger because of Jackson, and his adminis¬ 
tration ranks as one of the most‘important in 
American history. With his practical mind and 
aggressive spirit, he was never a theorist. He 
met issues as they arose, sometimes acting on his 
own initiative and sometimes on the suggestions 
of others. He was doubtless unconscious of his 
inconsistency, and his advisers must share with 
him the credit for his extraordinary political 
success. He had little understanding of the dem¬ 
ocratic movement which bears his name and he 
came to support it primarily because it sup¬ 
ported him. Yet the common man believed im¬ 
plicitly in him and remained his faithful fol¬ 
lower. While he yet lived a tradition grew up 
around his name which has made him one of the 
greatest of American heroes, and the glamor of 
his colorful personality will never fade from the 
pages of American history. 

After seeing Van Buren elected and inaugu¬ 
rated he retired once more to “The Hermitage,” 
where his strength gradually failed and in 1845 
he died. He was buried in the garden by his be¬ 
loved Rachel, who by seventeen years had pre¬ 
ceded him. 

[The principal biographies are: J. S. Bassett, The 
Life of Andrew Jackson (1911) ; Jas. Parton, Life of 
Andrew Jackson <3 vols., i860);*and W. G. Sumner, 
Andrew Jackson (1882). From the Jackson MSS. ip 
the Lib. Cong., 5 vols. of the Correspondence of Andrew 
Jackson (1926-31), edited by the late J. S. Bassett have 
been published. For state papers see J. D. ^Richardson, 
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presi¬ 
dents, II (1896). Several collections of Jackson letters 
have been published in Am. Hist. Mag. (Nashville, 
Tenn.), Apr. 1899, pp. 99-104; July 1899, PP- 229-46; 
Apr. 1900, pp. 132-44; Jan. 1904, pp. 83-104, Among 
works dealing with the Jackson period may be cited: 
Wm, McDonald, Jacksonian Democracy (1906) ; F. A. 
Ogg, The Reign of Andrew Jackson (1919); C. G. 


Jackson 


Bowers, The Party Battles of the Jackson Period 
(1922); S. G. Heiskell, Andrew Jackson and Earh 
Tenn. Hist. (2 ed., 2 vols., 1920) ; T. P. Abernethv 
From Frontier to Plantation in Tenn. (1932). Among 
articles on Jackson as distinguished from Jacksonism 
are: J. S. Bassett, “Maj. Lewis on the Nomination of 
Andrew Jackson/’ Procs. Am. Antiquarian Sor 
XXXIII (1924), PP. 12-33; and T. P. AhemS^ 
Andrew Jackson and the Rise of Southwestern De¬ 
mocracy,” Am. Hist. Rev., Oct. 1927, pp. 64-77. For 
his military activities, see H. S. Halbert and T. H. Ball 
The Creek War (1895) ; G. R. Gleig, Narrative of the 
Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and 
New Orleans (1821) ; G. C. Moore Smith, The Autobi¬ 
ography of Lieut.-Gen. Sir Harry Smith (1901), vol. I • 
A. L. Latour, Hist. Memoir of the War in W. Fla. 
(1816). Information on Jackson’s early career is*to be 
found in the letters of Gen. Jas. Robertson in the li¬ 
brary of George Peabody College for Teachers; on his 
later career in the papers of Jas. K. Polk in Lib. Cong. • 
and the John Overton Papers in the library of Tenn. 
Hist. Soc.] T P A 


JACKSON, CHARLES (May 31, 1775-Dec. 
r 3> i 855)> lawyer, was born in Newburyport, 
Mass., the son of Jonathan Jackson by his sec¬ 
ond wife, Hannah Tracy, and the brother of 
James, 1777-1867, and Patrick Tracy Jackson 
Iqq.v. ]. The father was a Harvard graduate, 
active in commerce and in the committee of 
correspondence, a Federalist who was continu¬ 
ously in public office. He held that “freedom 
of discussion ought not to be restrained,” and 
deprecated “all vulgar prejudices, and undue at¬ 
tachments to the opinions of a sect” ( Thoughts 
upon the Political Situation, n.d., pp. 139, 176). 
After preparing at the Boston Latin School and 
Dummer Academy, Charles Jackson entered 
Harvard in 1789, graduating in 1793 at the head 
of his class. He read law with Theophilus Par¬ 
sons, that “giant of the law” who had already 
prepared Rufus King and John Quincy Adams. 
In 1796 Jackson opened an office in Newbury¬ 
port, removing thence to Boston in 1803. Such 
was his diligence in his early legal study that 
he is said not to have read a newspaper for three 
years; “the American Blackstone,” was Parsons' 
prophecy ( Monthly Law Reporter, March 1856, 
p. 607). In 1813 he left “as great a business as 
one man could have” (Parsons, post, p. 175) to 
accept appointment to the supreme judicial court 
of Massachusetts. 

During his tenure of office he spoke for the 
court in about eighty cases, and filed one dis¬ 
sent. (In those days opinions were usually by 
the chief justice, or merely per curiam. Dissents 
Were very rare.) His opinions were character¬ 
ized by clarity and erudition. Judicial duties 
were exacting when the court was continually 
making its circuit through the state; by 1823 
Judge Jackson’s health proved unequal to the 
task, and he resigned and went abroad. In Lon¬ 
don he was well received and sat in court with 
Lord Stowell. While on the bench he began the 



Jackson 

preparation of A Treatise on the Pleadings and 
Practice in Real Actions; With Precedents of 
Pleadings, which he published in 1828. 

In the state constitutional convention of 1820 
he was chairman of the committee on final form 
of amendments. Though a regular church goer, 
he helped to annul the old provision authorizing 
the legislature to enjoin church attendance, but 
he thought “every one ought to contribute to 
the support of public worship . . . because [it] 
is a civil benefit” (J. J. Putnam, post, p. 109). 
He showed himself an advocate of free speech 
(Journal of the Debates and Proceedings in the 
Convention of Delegates Chosen to Revise the 
Constitution of Massachusetts, 1821, p. 244). 
From 1833 to 1835 he presided over the com¬ 
mission to revise the state statutes. “In politics, 
he clung ... to the ancient faith of the old Es¬ 
sex platform” (Monthly Law Reporter, March 
1856, p. 609), but his “reserve and sensitive¬ 
ness” and an “indifference to personal fame” 
kept him out of the center of the political arena. 
In 1828 he joined Harrison Gray Otis and 
others in repudiating the aspersions which 
President John Quincy Adams cast upon the 
loyalty of New England’s Federalist leaders. 
Later he was a conservative Whig. “How, un¬ 
der the sun,” he asked his nephew, “can it be 
that you are a Free Soiler” (Morse, post, p. 
219). A farm school for boys and two libraries 
were founded through his aid. He served Har¬ 
vard as an overseer (1816-25), and, as a fel¬ 
low (1825-34), he helped to guide the college 
through financial straits (Josiah Quincy, His¬ 
tory of Harvard University, 1840, II, 362 ff.). A 
contemporary estimate of Jackson’s character 
takes the form of a rating scale with 7 represent¬ 
ing the highest degree. It runs: law knowledge, 
7; political knowledge, 2; classical knowledge, 
1; talent, 5; wit, o; integrity, 7; practice, 7. 
Jackson was a Mason and there survives An 
Oration, Delivered before .,. St Peter’s Lodge, 

. . . Newbury port. Mass. (1798). He was mar¬ 
ried, Nov. 20, 1799, to Amelia Lee, by whom he 
had one child. After his wife’s death in 1808 he 
was married, Dec. 31,1809, to her cousin, Fran¬ 
ces Cabot, by whom he had five children. Dr. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes was his son-in-law. 

[J* J- Putnam, A Memoir of Dr. James Jackson 
(1905) ; E. C. and J. J. Putnam, The Hon . Jonathan 
Jackson and Hannah (Tracy) Jackson, Their Ancestors 
and Descendants (1907) ; James Jackson, Hon. Jona¬ 
than Jackson (1866 ) ; J. T. Morse, Jr., Memoir of Col . 
Hfnjy Lee (1905) ; Theophilus Parsons (Jr.), Memoir 
of Theophilus Parsons (1859) ; Monthly Law Reporter, 
Mar. 1856; 10-18 Mass. Reports; Joseph Palmer, Ne¬ 
crology of Alumni of Harvard College, 1851-52 to 1862 - 

(1864) i Boston Daily Advertiser , Dec. 14, 1855*] 

C.F. 


Jackson 

JACKSON, CHARLES SAMUEL (Sept. 15, 
1860-Dec. 27, 1924), newspaper publisher, was 
born on a plantation in Middlesex County, Va. 
His mother, Anna Boss, bom on the same plan- 
an< ^ k* s father, James Henry Jackson, 
a Marylander, belonged to the Tidewater aris¬ 
tocracy. His formal education included no more 
than the common school branches, supplemented 
by a course in a business college. His publish¬ 
ing career began at the age of sixteen with the 
purchase of a small printing press, upon which 
he printed cards and handbills. In 1880, with 
just enough money to pay the cost of transporta¬ 
tion, he set out by train for San Francisco and 
from there went by steamboat to Oregon. He 
found his first employment as agent for the 
Utah, Oregon, & Idaho Stage Company at 
Pendleton, Ore., a position that ended with the 
coming of the railroad in 1882. In the mean¬ 
time, he established a circulating library in the 
stage office and bought an interest in the local 
paper, the East Oregonian, of which he at length 
became the sole owner, changing it from a week¬ 
ly to a semi-weekly, and in 1888 to a daily. On 
Mar. 9, 1866, he married Maria Foster Clopton. 

He was attracted to Portland in 1902 by the 
opportunity to acquire ownership of the Port¬ 
land Evening Journal, a paper launched in 
March of that year during the heat of a political 
campaign, and tottering on the brink of failure 
when Jackson took it over in July. He changed 
its name to the Oregon Daily Journal and began 
his editorship with the avowal that “the Journal 
in head and heart will stand for the people.” He 
continued in active control until Jan. I, 1920, 
during which time the number of subscribers 
increased from 1,800 to 92,000, a building and 
equipment worth close to a million dollars were 
added, and at his death, he left an estate of ap¬ 
proximately $812,000 (Journal, Jan. 15, 1925). 
At the time the Journal was established, the 
Morning Oregonian was without a rival in the 
daily newspaper field, and the former was the 
first paper successfully to challenge the latter’s 
supremacy. 

In his politics, Jackson was described as “in¬ 
dependent with leanings towards the most demo¬ 
cratic form of government.” “If the time ever 
comes when the Journal cannot be free and fear¬ 
less and independent I will throw it into the 
river,” he is quoted as having remarked fre¬ 
quently (Journal, Dec. 30, 1924). The paper 
became a recognized organ of the Democratic 
party and a supporter of its candidates. It fur¬ 
thered such social, political, and economic re¬ 
forms as the “Oregon System” of initiative and 
referendum—over which it assumed special 


535 



Jackson 

sponsorship—direct primary, popular election of 
senators, recall, and the presidential preference 
primary, woman’s suffrage, the eight-hour day 
for women workers, child-welfare legislation, 
the income tax, and the commission plan of 
government for Portland. A contemporary op¬ 
posed to most of the reforms that Jackson advo¬ 
cated portrays him as combining “the traits of 
rugged Andrew Jackson, droll Mark Twain, 
and talkative Jim-Ham Lewis ... It is in ob¬ 
stinate, old-fashioned, uncompromising democ- 
cracy—love of the uncouth masses—that ‘Sam’ 
Jackson resembles Andrew Jackson. Also, in 
his rough and ready way of attacking anything 
that is big, important, and established. Also, in 
his square jaw and rugged features.” This 
writer further describes him as “a great, big, 
rugged, queer, comical character, exactly where 
he belongs, making money . . . donating it lav¬ 
ishly to causes that strike his fancy” (C. C. 
Chapman, Oregon Voter , May 8, 1915)- The 
same writer ( Oregon Voter, Jan. 3, 1925) says: 
“He possessed the faculty of splitting his edi¬ 
torial mind from his business mind as effective¬ 
ly as if the editor and the business manager were 
two distinct personalities. The advertisers count¬ 
ed for nothing so far as influence on editorial 
policy of the Journal was concerned.” A few 
days before his death he donated to the State of 
Oregon a tract of eighty-nine acres on Marquam 
Hill, which now bears the name “Sam Jackson 
Park,” to be used by the University School of 
Medicine, adjacent to which it lies. 

[Joseph Gaston, Portland, Ore,, Its Hist, and Builders 
(1911); Who's Who in America, 1924-25 ; Who's Who 
on the Pacific Coast, 1913; Editor and Publisher (N. 
Y.), Mar. 1, 1924; Ore. Daily Jour., Mar. 9, Dec. 29* 
1924.] £ c_k 

JACKSON, CHARLES THOMAS* ’(June 21, 
1805-Aug. 28,1880), chemist and geologist, was 
the son of Charles and Lucy (Cotton) Jackson 
and a descendant of Abraham Jackson, who in 
1657 was married to Remember Morton at 
Plymouth, Mass. Bom in Plymouth, Charles 
T. Jackson received his early education in the 
town school, and in the private school of Dr. 
Allyne of Duxbury. His medical training was 
begun under the private tutoring of Doctors 
James Jackson, 1777-1867, and Walter Chan- 
ning Iqq.vJ], who prepared him for entrance to 
the Harvard Medical School where he received 
the degree of M.D. in 1829, having, incidentally, 
won the Boylston prize for a dissertation on 
Paruria MelUta. His interest in mineralogy was 
aroused by finding chiastolite crystals in frag¬ 
ments of schist in the glacial drift. In company 
with his friend Francis Alger, he twice visited 
Noyg. Scptia fop the purpose of collecting min- 


jacKSon 

erals and studying geology, the results of their 
two trips finding expression in 1828 in a series 
of joint papers in the American Journal of Sci¬ 
ence (1828-29). In 1829, Jackson went to Eu¬ 
rope where he studied medicine at the Sorbonne 
and geology and mineralogy at the ficole des 
Mines. There he formed a firm and lasting 
friendship with L. filie de Beaumont and other 
well-known French geologists. He visited Ve¬ 
suvius, Etna, the Lipari Islands, and the Au¬ 
vergne district of France and made long walk¬ 
ing tours in Switzerland, Bavaria, Italy, and 
Austria. He also made acquaintance with the 
leading medical men and performed, with Doc¬ 
tors John Fergus and Johannes Glaisner, numer¬ 
ous autopsies on victims of the prevailing cholera 
epidemic, an account of which he published on 
returning to America ( Medical Magazine, Oc¬ 
tober, 1832). Soon after his return he began to 
practise medicine in Boston, and on Feb. 27, 
1834, married Susan Bridge of Charleston, who, 
with three sons and two daughters, survived him. 
In 1836, finding his services more in demand as 
a chemist and mineralogist, he abandoned him¬ 
self wholly to these pursuits and established a 
laboratory which became a well-known place of 
resort for students and others interested in scien¬ 
tific work. 

While in Europe, Jackson had secured for 
himself a large number of electrical instruments 
and apparatus. It so happened that he and S. F. 
B. Morse [ q.v .], who was a passenger on the 
return voyage, were led to discuss the new de¬ 
velopments in electricity, and some years later 
Jackson claimed to have pointed out to Morse at 
this time the underlying principles of the elec¬ 
tric telegraph which Morse patented in 1840. 
It is known that Jackson had previously per¬ 
fected a working model of such a device, but he 
thought lightly of the instrument and failed to 
realize its commercial value. In the controversy 
as to priority which followed the announcement 
of Morse’s patent, Jackson claimed for himself 
the honors of the discovery. Later Jackson made 
a similar claim to priority in the discovery of 
guncotton after it had been announced by C. F. 
Schonbein (1846). 

In 1837, under a cooperative arrangement be¬ 
tween Maine and Massachusetts, Jackson en¬ 
tered upon a survey of the public lands of the 
two states. By an act of the Maine legislature 
in the same year, there was established a state 
geological survey, with Jackson as state geolo¬ 
gist Three years were spent in the work, the 
results published in three annual reports (1837, 
1838, and 1839), and no sooner was this survey 
completed than he was engaged for a like pur- 



Jackson 

iose by Rhode Island. Here with equal prompt- 
Less he brought out his report at the end of the 
irst year (1840). Before completion of the 
Ihode Island survey he was made state geolo¬ 
gist of New Hampshire, and again brought out 
t series of reports (1841-44) with characteristic 
dacrity. After completing the New Hampshire 
survey, Jackson confined himself mainly to teach- 
ng chemistry in Boston, but in 1847 he came 
nto public life again as a United States geolo¬ 
gist, in company with J. D. Whitney [ q.v .] and 
(. W. Foster, to report upon the mineral wealth 
jf the public lands in the Lake Superior region. 
Here, however, there arose serious trouble, due 
in part to personal opposition to Jackson, who 
was forced to resign at the end of the second year 
and returned again to his laboratory. 

Prior to the Lake Superior episode Jackson 
had become involved in a bitter controversy con¬ 
cerning the introduction of surgical anesthesia. 
As in his dealings with Morse, Jackson again 
claimed to be the virtual discoverer, and that 
others had robbed him of his idea. The basis for 
his claims may be outlined briefly as follows: In 
1834 he had observed that an alcoholic solution 
of chloroform when applied to a nerve renders 
it insensible to pain. He had also investigated 
the action of nitrous oxide, and in 1837 showed 
that its effects were in part due to asphyxia. In 
1841-42 he accidentally broke a large container 
of chlorine and stated that he was nearly suffo¬ 
cated as a consequence, but that through inhala¬ 
tion of ether the pain and irritation caused by 
the accident w'ere relieved. The narcotic effects 
of ether being thus disclosed to him, he carried 
out further experiments, on one occasion com¬ 
pletely etherizing himself and remaining uncon¬ 
scious for fifteen minutes. On Sept. 30,1846, he 
suggested to W. T. G. Morton [q.v.] that ether 
be used in extracting a tooth, and told him how 
to administer it. He took no further interest, 
however, in the rapid developments which fol¬ 
lowed Morton's use of ether, and assumed no 
responsibility until December, when he address¬ 
ed two letters to M. de Beaumont (dated Dec. 1 
and Dec. 20, 1846) to be read to the French 
Academy of Sciences, in which, without men¬ 
tioning Morton's name, he announced himself the 
discoverer of surgical anesthesia. On Mar. 2, 
1847, he made a similar announcement at the 
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The 
paper, published the day before the meeting in 
the Boston Daily Advertiser , was sent abroad 
purporting erroneously to carry with it the offi¬ 
cial sanction of the American Academy. It can¬ 
not be doubted that Jackson knew that inhalation 
of ether would produce unconsciousness, but this 


Jackson 

was common knowledge at that time, for in 
Jonathan Pereira's Elements of Materia Medica 
(1839) one finds the statement (p. 211), “If the 
air be too strongly impregnated with ether stupe¬ 
faction ensues." Jackson gave Morton the sug¬ 
gestion and supplied him with the ether which 
he used during the first extraction, but he took 
no part in demonstrating the surgical uses of 
ether, and had Morton's experiment proved fa¬ 
tal to the patient Jackson would probably have 
been the first to condemn him. Through the paper 
to the American Academy, Jackson was prompt¬ 
ly recognized abroad and he was accorded many 
honors in Europe. In order further to support 
his claims he published in 1861 A Manual of 
Etherization, Containing Directions for the Em¬ 
ployment of Ether, Chloroform and other Anaes¬ 
thetic Agents . 

The later years of his life were soured by 
perpetual controversy, and finally in 1873 his 
mind gave way, but he did not die until 1880. He 
was an erratic and versatile genius with an ex¬ 
traordinary capacity for hard work. “He had 
the inventive faculty; the habit of incessant in¬ 
vestigation; the capacity of getting tangible, 
fruitful results; and the ability to suggest suc¬ 
cessful expedients to others" (Woodworth, 
post). When not in the heat of controversy he 
could be “a ready conversationalist, even elo¬ 
quent in his speech and fond of telling stories" 
(Ibid.) His geological work in Maine was 
largely mineralogical and consisted principally 
of reconnaissances. His discovery of tin deposits 
was one of many interesting incidents, but was 
of little value. His recognition of the synclinal 
structure of the rocks underlying Narragansett 
Bay in Rhode Island was noteworthy (The 
Autobiography of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler , 
1909, pp. 109-10), but his estimate of the possi¬ 
ble value of the coal beds of that state was vastly 
overdrawn. In New Hampshire, as in both of 
the previous surveys, no new problems were 
evolved. 

[J. B. Woodworth, in Am. Geologist, Aug . 1897, with 
an incomplete bibliography of Jackson’s writings; G. 
P. Merrill, Contributions to a History of Am. State 
Geological and Natural History Surveys (1920), being 
Bull. 109 of the U. S. Nat. Museum; Martin Gay, 
Statement of the Claims of Charles T. Jackson to the 
Discovery of the Applicability of Sulphuric Ether to the 
Prevention of Pain in Surgical Operations {1847); J. 
L. Lord and H. C. Lord, A Defense of Dr. Charles T. 
Jacks on*s Claims to the Discovery of Etherization 
(1848); R. M. Hodges, A Narrative of Events Con¬ 
nected with the Introduction of Sulphuric Ether into 
Surgical Use (1891); Amos Kendall, Morse's Patent: 
Full Exposure of Dr. Chas. T. Jackson's Pretensions to 
the Invention of the American Electro-Magnetic t Tele¬ 
graph (1852) ; Proc. Am. Acad . Arts and Sci., n.s, 
VIII (1881); Proc. Boston Soc. Nat . Hist., vol. XXI 
(1883); Springfield Daily Republican , Sept. 9, 1880; 
Medic. Record, Sept. 11,1880; Pop. Sci, Monthly, July 


537 



Jackson 

1881 ; National Mag., Oct. 1896; Atlantic Monthly, 
Nov. 1896.] G.P.M. 

J.F.F. 

JACKSON, CLAIBORNE FOX (Apr. 4, 

1806-Dec. 6, 1862), governor of Missouri, the 
son of Dempsey and Mary (Pickett) Jackson, 
was born in Fleming County, Ky. Before he 
was twenty he emigrated to Old Franklin, Mo., 
where he worked in a store and later took a part¬ 
nership in the business. About 1830 he moved 
across the Missouri River into Saline County, 
where he was proprietor of a store until 1836. 
Here he married in succession three sisters, 
daughters of Dr. John Sappington \_q.v.]. Al¬ 
though his schooling in Kentucky had been 
meager, he obtained a good practical education 
through association with his father-in-law and 
others. His public papers show that he was able 
to express himself clearly and forcefully. 

Jackson entered politics when he was elected 
to the General Assembly in 1836. Thereafter he 
was for four years cashier of the State Bank of 
Missouri at Fayette. In 1842 he was again 
elected to the legislature, and was speaker of 
the House in 1844 and in 1846. Up to this time 
he had been an active supporter of Senator 
Thomas Hart Benton [q.v.]. During the next 
three years, however, he and the “Central 
Clique” of pro-slavery men in the Democratic 
party turned against Benton; and when Ben¬ 
ton’s influence prevented Jackson’s nomination 
for governor in 1848, the latter became openly 
hostile to “Old Bullion.” The “Central Clique” 
opposed Benton not only because of his attitude 
on slavery but also because as younger men they 
resented his overweening domination of the 
Democratic party in Missouri. The anti-Benton 
policy was powerfully formulated in the famous 
“Jackson Resolutions” passed by the Assembly 
in 1848, which constituted a set of instructions 
from the “Central Clique” to Missouri’s sena¬ 
tors, aimed especially at Benton. Although Ben¬ 
ton defied this injunction and as a result was 
defeated for reelection to the Senate, his influ¬ 
ence was nevertheless sufficient to prevent Jack¬ 
son’s nomination for Congress both in 1853 and 
1855. In i860, however, he was nominated and 
elected governor. 

His inaugural address did not call for seces¬ 
sion, although he asserted that should the Union 
be dissolved, Missouri must go with the South. 
His recommendations to the legislature were 
that a state convention be called, and that the 
militia be reorganized. The one proposal was 
approved, the other was dropped. When the con¬ 
vention met, in February 1861, it was found that 
not one of its ninety-nine members favored im- 


Jackson 

mediate secession, though a majority bitterly op¬ 
posed coercion. Going on record as favoring 
any workable compromise, it adjourned in 
March. Governor Jackson, too, favored com¬ 
promise, but was bent on arming the militia, as 
was shown by his attempts, frustrated by Fran¬ 
cis P. Blair and Nathaniel Lyon [qq.v.], to get 
control of the United States arsenal at St. 
Louis. Lincoln’s call for volunteers brought to 
Jackson additional support in his opposition to 
coercion, and gave him the opportunity to write 
his defiant message to Secretary Cameron, re¬ 
fusing to furnish a single man for such an “un¬ 
holy crusade.” After Lyon broke up the encamp¬ 
ment of state troops at Camp Jackson, the re¬ 
assembled legislature voted Jackson’s militia 
bill; and upon the failure of the compromise 
between Sterling Price, commander of the state 
troops, and the federal general William Selby 
Harney [q.v.], the Governor called for 50,000 
volunteers to defend the state. He and many 
members of the legislature withdrew to Neosho, 
and in November 1861, this remnant of the As¬ 
sembly passed the ordinance of secession. Jack- 
son did not play a prominent part in the actual 
fighting of the Civil War. He died of cancer 
near Little Rock, Ark., in December 1862. 

[Sketch by Jonas Viles, in The Messages and Procla¬ 
mations of the Govs, of the State of Missouri, vol. Ill 
(1922), which contains all of Jackson’s important pub¬ 
lic papers; P. O. Ray, The Repeal of the Mo. Compro¬ 
mise (1909) ; T. L. Snead, The Fight for Mo. (1886); 
T. H. Benton, Thirty Years’ View (2 vols., 1854-56); 
W. B. Napton, Past and Present of Saline County, Mo. 
(1910) ; R. J. Rombauer, The Union Cause in St. Louis 
in 1861 (1909) ,* A. J. D. Stewart, The Hist, of the 
Bench and Bar in Mo. (1S98) ; Journals of Senate and 
House of Mo.; “Missouri Troops in Service During the 
Civil War,” Sen. Doc. 412, 57 Cong., 1 Sess.] 

H.E.N. 

JACKSON, DAVID (i747?-Sept. 17, 1801), 
physician, apothecary, patriot, the son of Sam¬ 
uel Jackson, was born in Oxford, Chester Coun¬ 
ty, Pa., and received his early education in an 
academy near his home. Subsequently he enter¬ 
ed the medical department of the College of Phil¬ 
adelphia, later the University of Pennsylvania, 
from which he was graduated with the degree 
of B.M. in the class of 1768, the first to complete 
the course in the new school. After practising 
his profession in Chester County for several 
years he went to Philadelphia, where he settled 
prior to the Revolution. He entered into the so¬ 
cial, scientific, and political life of the city and 
upon the outbreak of the Revolution took an ac¬ 
tive part both as a patriot and as a surgeon in 
the cause of the colonies. On Nov. 26,1776, the 
Continental Congress appointed him manager of 
the lottery “for defraying the expenses of the 
next campaign.” Having become senior physi¬ 
cian and surgeon of the General Hospital in 


53 8 



Jackson 

Philadelphia, he asked the Congress, June 23, 
1777> to permit him to resign from the manage¬ 
ment of the lottery. Later he was attached to the 
Pennsylvania militia, Continental Line, as sur¬ 
geon, and on Oct. 23, 1 779 , was made quarter¬ 
master-general of the Pennsylvania militia in 
the field, but soon was appointed senior surgeon 
of the military hospital. At the same time he was 
elected a member of the medical staff of the 
Philadelphia General Hospital, serving until 
Dec. S, 1780. He is said to have been present at 
the surrender of Cornwallis, at Yorktown, Va., 
Oct. T9, 1781. 

After hostilities had been ended Jackson re¬ 
turned to Philadelphia and opened an apothecary 
shop which he conducted in connection with his 
profession. He was a delegate to the Continen¬ 
tal Congress from Philadelphia from April to 
November 1785. In 1789 he was elected a trus¬ 
tee of the University of the State of Pennsyl¬ 
vania, which in 1791 became the University of 
Pennsylvania, and served upon the board until 
his death. In 1792 he was elected a member of 
the American Philosophical Society and on July 
4» 1793, was associated with David Rittenhouse, 
James Hutchinson, and other Philadelphians in 
the organization of the first Democratic society 
in the country. At the time of his death he was 
one of the aldermen of Philadelphia. He was 
twice married; in 1768 to Jane (Mather) Jack- 
son, the widow of his elder brother, Paul; and 
second, to Susanna Kemper, by whom he had 
nine children. His eldest son, David, succeeded 
him in the drug business, and his second son, 
Samuel Jackson [#.*/.], was for thirty-six years 
connected with the medical school of the Uni¬ 
versity of Pennsylvania. 

[Ewing Jordan, article in the Alumni Reg., Mid-May, 
June 1900; H. G. Ashmead, Hist. Sketch of Chester, 
on Delaware (1883) ; J. W. Croskey, Hist, of Block ley 
(1929); Pa. Archives, 5 ser., vols. IV and V (1900) ; 
H. P. Jackson, The Geneal. of the “Jackson Family 
(1890); Poulson’s Am. Daily Advertiser, Sept. 19, 
1801.] J.J. 

JACKSON, EDWARD PAYSON (Mar. 15, 
1840-Oct. 12, 1905), educator, author, the son 
of Congregational missionaries, Rev. William 
C. and Mary A. (Sawyer) Jackson, was born in 
Erzerum, Turkey. When five years old he was 
brought by his parents to the United States, 
the journey from Erzerum to the Black Sea 
being made on donkeys, over what was practical¬ 
ly the route of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand. 
After study at Phillips Andover Academy, he 
entered Dartmouth College in 1836, remaining 
one year. In i860 he enrolled at Amherst, where 
he completed his sophomore year, but did not 
graduate though he was given the honorary de- 


Jackson 

gree of M.A. in 1870. Enlistment in Company 
D, 45th Massachusetts Infantry, September 1863, 
interrupted his studies, and he served as private 
and corporal in the battles of Kinston, White¬ 
hall, Goldsboro, Dover Crossing, and Rachel- 
der's Creek. He was mustered out but reenlisted 
in Company A, 5th Massachusetts Regiment, 
and was made second lieutenant for bravery. 

After the war he taught at Whitehall, N. Y., 
served for one year as president of the Ladies' 
College, Ottawa, Canada, and then as principal 
of the High School at Holyoke, Mass., until 
1870. For the next seven years he was principal 
of the High School at Fall River, Mass., and 
from 1877 to 1904, an instructor in the Boston 
Latin School. As a teacher he inspired his pu¬ 
pils with his own enthusiasm for the sciences, 
of which his favorite subjects were zoology and 
physics. He was a self-taught astronomer and 
made an unusual set of star charts for classroom 
use. Among his scientific publications are: An 
Astronomical Geography (1870); Manual of 
Zoology (1884); and The Earth in Space 
(1887). He also wrote a novel, A Demigod 
(1886), which appeared anonymously and 
aroused much interest and curiosity at the time. 
Character Building (1891), which is probably 
his best known and most influential publication, 
consists of the familiar talks of a teacher with 
his pupils on the conduct of life and was award¬ 
ed a prize by the American Secular Union for 
the best essay on the instruction of “children 
and youth in the purest principles of morality 
without inculcating religious doctrine." In ad¬ 
dition, he was a contributor to magazines, for 
which he wrote nearly a hundred essays, poems, 
scientific articles, and monographs on various 
subjects. Many of his articles had wide circula¬ 
tion and were used as supplementary reading in 
grammar and high schools. He was a member 
of the Authors' Club of Boston and had a wide 
circle of friends. His physical and mental activ¬ 
ities were unwearied, and his work as a teach¬ 
er was characterized by much originality. He 
was twice married: first, on Mar. 26, 1865, to 
Helen Maria Smith who died Mar. 1,1896; and 
second, June 24, 1904, to Mrs. Mary Elizabeth 
Clark. By the former he had three sons and one 
daughter. 

[ Who's Who in America, 1906-07; Amherst Coll. 
Biog , Record (1927) ; A Bibliog . of the Boston Authors 
Club (1904) ; Boston Globe and Boston Transcript, Oct. 
14. 190s : information as to certain facts from a son.] 

F.T.P. 

JACKSON, GEORGE K. (175&-N0V. 18, 
1822), teacher, composer, and organist, was bom 
in Oxford, England. Having shown a bent to¬ 
ward music, he was placed at an early age under 


539 



Jackson 

the instruction of Dr. James Nares. He was 
appointed a surplice boy at the Chapel Royal in 
London, and he was one of the tenor singers at 
the grand Commemoration of Handel in 1784. 
In 1791 he received from St. Andrew’s College 
a diploma as Doctor of Music (Parker, post ) 
and he always insisted upon using that title. He 
came to Norfolk, Va., in 1796, resided for a 
while in Elizabeth, N. J., and then removed to 
New York City. In all of these places he found 
employment as a teacher and organist, and by 
1804 he was directing the music in Saint 
George’s Chapel in the growing metropolis. As 
early as 1812 he had moved on to Boston, was 
organist in the Brattle Street Church of that 
city, and with the cooperation of Gottlieb Graup- 
ner and Monsieur Mallet began a series of ora¬ 
torios, some of which were repeated in neighbor¬ 
ing towns. Dr. William Bentley of Salem states 
in his Diary (vol. IV, 1914, p. 135) that on Dec. 
1, 1812, at an Oratorio of Sacred Music, “the 
celebrated Dr. Jackson, an Englishman, per¬ 
formed on the organ with great power and pure 
touch ... Dr. Jackson’s voluntaries were be¬ 
yond anything I had heard.” During the later 
years of the war with Great Britain he withdrew 
to Northampton, but at the conclusion of peace 
returned to Boston and served successfully as 
organist at King’s Chapel, Trinity, and Saint 
Paul’s. Before leaving England he had married 
in London the eldest daughter of D”. Samuel 
Rogers, and eleven children were born to thpm 
Jackson taught in the best families. In his 
church work he endeavored to introduce the 
English method of chanting. He once lent his 
name to a plan of character notes. Intensely 
impulsive and irritable in temper, he several 
times resigned his positions on account of ad¬ 
verse criticism. Of his talents and abilities 
John R. Parker (post, p. 130) writes in a sketch 
printed in Boston within two years of the mu¬ 
sician s death: “His voluntaries were elaborate 
and replete with chromatic harmonies, embrac¬ 
ing the most scientific and classic modulations. 
His interludes to psalmody were particularly ap¬ 
propriate to the sentiments expressed in the 
subject . . . His compositions as a harmonist, 
are of high rank, they possess a profound knowl¬ 
edge of the science, and an originality of modu¬ 
lation wherein are displayed a comprehensive 
view of effects, the result only of deep and la¬ 
borious study.” 

Jackson’s musical writings were numerous. 
Ftrst Principles; or a Treatise on Practical 
Thorough Bass was published in London in 
1795 . His later books were printed after his 
coming to America: David’s Psalms (1804); 


Jackson 

A Choice Collection of Chants (1816); The 
Choral Companion (1817); and Watts’ Divine 
Hymns Set to Music. He also edited the har¬ 
mony of Wainwright’s Set of Chants (1819) 
and. contributed several of his own to this col¬ 
lection. Perhaps his last work for music was to 
examine the compilation made by Lowell Mason 
[q.v.], who was trying to secure its publication 
in Boston. This manuscript was favorably rec¬ 
ommended and the first edition appeared in 1822 
as the Boston Handel and Haydn Society’s Col~ 
lection of Church Music, dedicated to Dr Genres 
K. Jackson. ge 


. [See J. R. Parker, Musical Biog. (182=;') • r C Pw- 
o“ s and /• S. Dwight, Hist, of the Handel'art Haydn 
Soc. (1883-93); Justin Winsor, The Memorial Hist, of 

. i V T S y/? 8l , 7 83 } '• V1 £ l . and Probate records of 
L Metcalf, Am. Writers and Compilers of 
Sacred Music (1925). In the library of the Harvard 
Musical Asso., Boston, there is a bound volume of Jack- 
son s sheet music, comprising 385 pages, and containing 
apse printed m London, as well as many published in 
this country.] J * F j 

JACKSON, GEORGE THOMAS (Dec. 19, 
1852-Jan. 3, 1916), dermatologist, the son of 
George T. and Letitia Jane Aiken (Macauley) 
Jackson, was born and died in New York City 
His only brother, Rev. Samuel M. Jackson [q.v.], 
was a well-known writer on church history! 
George Jackson’s early education was in a pri¬ 
vate school. After finishing the freshman year in 
the College of the City of New York, he spent 
some, time in business. Entering the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons (ColumbiaUniversity), 
he graduated in 1878, and then studied for two 
years in Berlin, Vienna, and Strassfcurg. 

In 1881 he began medical practice in New 
York City and during his earlier years served 
as assistant surgeon at the New York Skin and 
Cancer Hospital, visiting physician at Randall’s 
Island Hospital, consulting dermatologist at the 
New York Infirmary for Women and Children, 
and consulting dermatologist at the Presbyterian 
Hospital. From 1890 to 1899 he was professor of 
dermatology in the Woman’s Medical College of 
the New York Infirmary. He was the chief of 
clinic in the dermatological department of the Col¬ 
lege of Physicians and Surgeons for twenty-five 
years, and later became professor of dermatology 
in that institution (1908-15). From 1895 to 
1900 he was also professor of dermatology at the 
University of Vermont. His prominence in his 
special field is evinced by the fact that he was 
president of the New York Dermatological So¬ 
ciety (1889-90), of the American Dermatologi¬ 
cal Association (1901-02), and treasurer of the 
International Dermatological Congress held in 
New York in 1907. He wrote many articles on 
the hair and on various skin diseases for the 


540 



Jackson 

current medical journals and was the author of 
the following books: Ready-Reference Handbook 
of Diseases of the Skin (1892, 7th ed., 1914); 
A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of the Hair 
and Scalp (1887, 2nd ed., 1894) ; A Treatise on 
Diseases of the Hair (1912), with Charles W. 
McMurtry. Jackson was industrious and pains¬ 
taking and the books which he wrote were ad¬ 
mirable text-books and brought him a well-de¬ 
served reputation as an author, while as profes¬ 
sor of dermatology at the College of Physicians 
and Surgeons he acquired an enviable reputa¬ 
tion as a teacher. He stood high in his profes¬ 
sion and commanded the respect of all his col¬ 
leagues. His rather sudden death was a dis¬ 
tinct loss to dermatology. He was married, Oct. 
3, 1878, to Caroline Gerlach Weidemeyer, and 
had four sons. 

[Historian’s record of the New York Dermatological 
Society; “Golden Anniversary of the Am. Dermato¬ 
logical Asso.” Archives of Dermatology and Syphi¬ 
lology, Oct. 19 26; Jour . of Cutaneous Diseases, Mar. 
1916; John Shrady, The Coll . of Physicians and Sur¬ 
geons, vol. I (n.d.); Who's Who in America, 1916-17; 
N. Y. Times, Jan. 4, 1916.] £. h.F _x. 

JACKSON, HALL (Nov. 11, 1739-Sept. 28, 
1797), physician, surgeon, was born in the old 
Leavitt homestead in Hampton, N. H., a son of 
Dr. Clement and Sarah (Leavitt) Jackson of 
Portsmouth, N. H. He was a great-grandson of 
John Jackson, yeoman, who in November 1679 
came to New England from Dartmouth in the 
Hannah & Elisabeth, with his wife and children 
{New England Historical and Genealogical Reg¬ 
ister, October 1874, p. 376). After living a short 
time in Cambridge, Mass., he removed to Ports¬ 
mouth, N. H., where his son Clement became a 
prominent shipping captain and merchant and 
the father of several children, among them Dr. 
Clement, the father of Hall Jackson. The lat¬ 
ter commenced the study of medicine in the of¬ 
fice of his father in Portsmouth, which experi¬ 
ence he enriched by attending for three years 
lectures in the public hospitals of London, where 
he came to enjoy not only the friendship of sev¬ 
eral well-known surgeons of that time but also 
the acquaintance of David Garrick, the actor, 
and the scientists Erasmus Darwin and William 
Withering. While in London he became inter¬ 
ested in performing the operation known as 
cataract-couching and also received honorable 
mention from the faculty for an ingenious in¬ 
vention by which a ball was extracted from a 
gunshot wound which had baffled the attending 
surgeons. He is not credited with introducing 
the operation of cataract-couching into Ameri¬ 
ca but he is known to have been one of the earli¬ 
est surgeons to perform it here. After his stay 
in London, where he specialized in the study of 


Jackson 

smallpox, he returned to Portsmouth and estab¬ 
lished himself as a physician and surgeon. From 
this period forward, his progress was marked. In 
1764 he was summoned to Boston to perform the 
duties of inoculation, the town being in the 
throes of a smallpox epidemic. Returning to 
Portsmouth, he, with three others, opened a 
smallpox hospital on HenzelTs Island. About 
this time or a little later he also established a 
hospital on Cat Island in Marblehead harbor. 
Five days after the battle of Concord and Lex¬ 
ington, he offered his services in the raising of 
a company of minute-men. On June 19,1775, he 
was summoned to Boston to attend soldiers who 
had been wounded at the battle of Bunker Hill. 
He remained in the vicinity of Boston and Cam¬ 
bridge throughout that summer and, during the 
autumn, under orders from General Sullivan, re¬ 
cruited a company of artillery. In the same au¬ 
tumn he was appointed surgeon of a regiment 
commanded by Pierce Long which was among 
those engaged in the capture of Fort Ticonder- 
oga under Gen. Ethan Allen. During this ab¬ 
sence from his practice he had occasion to la¬ 
ment that “Doctors Cutter, Brackett & Little 
[are] running away with all my business at 
Portsmouth” ( Letters of Josiah Bartlett, Wil¬ 
liam Whipple and Others, 1889, P* 29). On Nov. 
I 4> * 775 > the Provincial Congress of New Hamp¬ 
shire voted its thanks to Dr. Jackson and author¬ 
ized his commission as chief surgeon of the New 
Hampshire troops in the Continental Army, with 
the rank of colonel. This position he held dur¬ 
ing the duration of the war. He was among 
the first to introduce foxglove (digitalis) into 
the New World (F. R. Packard, History of 
Medicine in the United States, 1931, II, 964), 
raising it from seeds given him by his friend, 
Dr. Withering. He was an honorary member of 
the Massachusetts Medical Society, a charter 
member of the New Hampshire Medical Soci¬ 
ety, and a prominent Mason, being, in 1790, 
grand master of the Grand Lodge of New 
Hampshire. He sat for John Singleton Copley 
and the painting portrays him in a long, brown 
periwig. On Dec. 1, 1765, he was married to 
Mrs. Molly (Dalling) Wentworth, daughter of 
Capt. Samuel Dalling of Portsmouth and wid¬ 
ow of Lieut. Daniel Wentworth, R.N. They had 
one son and one daughter. 

TC. W. Brewster, Rambles about Portsmouth, 2 ser. 
(1869); J. H. Tatsch, Freemasonry in the Thirteen 
Colonies (1929) ; R. L. Jackson, in Granite Monthly, 
Nov.-Dee. 1914, and in Americana, Jan. 1919, with re¬ 
production of the Copley portrait; vital records of 
Hampton, N. H.; obituary in The Oracle of the Day 
(Portsmouth, N. H.), Sept. 30, 1797*1 R.L.J. 

JACKSON, HELEN MARIA FISKE 
HUNT (Oct 15, 1830-Aug. 12, 1885), poet, 


541 



Jackson 

novelist, philanthropist, better known as Helen 
Hunt Jackson, was born in Amherst, Mass., the 
daughter of Nathan Welby and Deborah (Vinal) 
Fiske. Her father, a graduate of Dartmouth, 
taught Latin and Greek and later moral philoso¬ 
phy and metaphysics at Amherst College. Her 
mother, a Bostonian, died of consumption in 
1844. There were four children, two sons who 
died in infancy and two daughters, Helen and 
Anne. Cared for by an aunt, Helen was given 
a somewhat desultory education at Ipswich Fe¬ 
male Academy, Mass., and at the school of the 
Abbott brothers in New York City. She was an 
early neighbor and schoolmate of Emily Dick¬ 
inson, and the two remained lifelong friends. 
She was married, Oct. 28, 1852, to Edward Bis- 
sell Hunt, a brother of Washington Hunt [q.v.], 
and they led the roaming life of a military fam¬ 
ily. Her husband was lieutenant, captain, final¬ 
ly major of an army corps of engineers. He had 
devised a submarine sea-projector called a “sea- 
miner,” and in 1863 he was accidentally killed 
by suffocation when experimenting with it. 
Their first son, Murray, died, aged eleven 
months, in 1854, and the remaining son, Warren 
Horsford, known as “Rennie,” died in April 
1865. Her parents, husband, and sons dead, she 
felt utterly bereft. The'love affair between Emily 
Dickinson and Edward Hunt, assumed in the 
book on the poet by Josephine Pollitt, rests on 
the slenderest of foundations. The tradition 
among Mrs. Hunt’s relatives is that Captain 
Hunt rather disliked Emily, terming her “un¬ 
canny.” 

Hitherto Mrs. Hunt had exhibited few signs 
of literary gift; her life had been domestic and 
social. She returned in 1866 to Newport, R. I., 
where her husband had been stationed for a time. 
Here she made the stimulating acquaintance of 
T. W. Higginson. Her first well-known poem 
was contributed to the newly established Nation, 
1865, three months after Rennie’s death. Her 
first published prose sketch appeared in 1866 in 
the New York Independent, for which she wrote 
between three and four hundred articles and 
book reviews, besides writing for Hearth and 
Home and other publications. In 1868-70 she 
traveled abroad, writing the papers afterward 
published in Bits of Travel . Her first volume, 
Verses, was published in 1870. During the sev¬ 
enties and early eighties most of the leading 
magazines published work from her versatile and 
prolific pen. She wrote, testified Higginson, 
then her literary adviser, the much-speculated- 
about Saxe Holm stories, published in early 
numbers of ScribneVs Monthly, though she 
never admitted their authorship. 


Jackson 

In May 1872 she took a trip to California, 
and then, for bronchial trouble, passed the winter 
of 1873-74 at the Colorado Springs Hotel, in 
Colorado. While there she met William Sharp¬ 
less Jackson, a banker, financier, promoter, and 
railway manager, whom she married on Oct 22, 

1875. Colorado Springs remained her home for 
the last decade of her life. Her novel, Mercy 
Philbrick’s Choice, was printed in Boston in 

1876, in the No-Name series, succeeded by Het¬ 
ty’s Strange History and Nelly’s Silver Mine. 
During her western life she began to feel an 
interest in the Indians, which reached a Him^ 
when she heard two Indians lecture in Boston in 
1879 or 1880 on the wrongs of the Poncas. Af¬ 
ter spending many months in the Astor library, 
New York City, she made a report, A Century 
of Dishonor (1881), a document of 457 pages 
sketching the dealings of the government with 
the Indian tribes. This she sent to each member 
of Congress at her own expense. In 1882 she 
was appointed by the government as a special 
commissioner, w'ith Abbot Kinney of Los An¬ 
geles, to investigate the condition and needs of 
the Mission Indians of California, and in 1883 
she had a report ready. When she felt that her 
efforts had brought no results, she turned to 
fiction and set forth her indictment of the treach¬ 
ery and cruelty of the government’s treatment of 
the Indians in Ramona (1884). The book went, 
however, far beyond its intention, and has great¬ 
er appeal as a romance of the passing of the old 
Spanish patriarchal life in California than it has 
as a “problem” story. 

She continued to be a prolific writer of verse, 
juvenile literature, travel sketches, moral essays, 
household hints, and novels till her death. She 
signed her name to little of her work save at the 
last, though for a time she wrote over the initials 
“H. H.” Much of her prose work may never be 
identified, for her aversion to publicity was an 
obsession and she liked to mystify her readers. 
After a prolonged illness she died at the age of 
fifty-four. She was buried near the summit of 
Cheyenne Mountain, in a place selected by her¬ 
self. Later, to escape the commercialization of 
the spot and the vandalism of relic-hunting tour¬ 
ists, her body was removed to Evergreen Ceme¬ 
tery at Colorado Springs, where it remains. She 
is described by her contemporaries as brilliant, 
impetuous, intensely conscious, alw’ays charm¬ 
ingly dressed, and in many respects fascinating. 
They add that she united business acumen to her 
gifts of mind and personality. The following are 
Mrs. Jackson’s main publications: Verses ( 1870, 
1874 t 879 ) 1 Bits of Travel (1872); Saxe 
Holm's Stories (1874-78); Bits of Talk about 



Jackson 

Home Matters (1873); Bits of Talk, in Verse 
and Prose, for Young Folks (1876); Mercy 
Philbrick’s Choice (1876) ; Hetty's Strange His¬ 
tory (1877) ; Bits of Travel at Home (1878) ; 
Nelly’s Silver Mine (1878) ; The Story of Boon 
(1874), a poem; A Century of Dishonor (1881) ; 
Mammy Tittleback and her Family (1881) ; The 
Training of Children (1882); The Hunter Cats 
of Connorloa (1884); Glimpses of California 
and the Missions (1883); Ramona (1884); Zeph 
(1885); Glimpses of Three Coasts (1886); Son¬ 
nets and Lyrics (1886); and Between Whiles 

.(1887). 

[For information concerning Helen Hunt Jackson 
see especially Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Liver¬ 
more, Am . Women (ed. 1897), vol. II; T. W. Higgin- 
son, Contemporaries (1899); Moncure D. Conway, 
Autobiog., Memories, and Experiences (1904) ; Martha 
Dickinson Bianchi, The Life and Letters of Emily 
Dickinson (1924) ; Josephine Pollitt, Emily Dickinson, 
the Human Background of her Poetry (1930); F. G 
Pierce, Fiske and Fisk Family (1896) ; The Hist, of the 
Town of Amherst, Mass. (1896) ; Louise Pound, “Bio¬ 
graphical Accuracy and ‘H. H./ ” Am. Lit., Jan. 1931; 
N. Y. Tribune, Aug. 14, 1885. For accounts of Ramona 
see D. A. Hufford, The Real Ramona (1900) ; Geo. 
Wharton James, Ramona's Country (1909); Margaret 

V. Allen, Ramona's Homeland (1914) ; C. C. Davis and 

W. A. Alderson, The True Story of Ramona (1914).] 

L.P. 

JACKSON, HENRY ROOTES (June 24, 
1820-May 23, 1898), lawyer, soldier, editor, dip¬ 
lomat, was born in Athens, Ga. His father, 
Henry Jackson, brother of James, 1757-1806 
[q.t/.], was a native of Devonshire, England. He 
migrated to America in the latter years of the 
eighteenth century and settled in Georgia. Af¬ 
ter graduation (M.D., 1802) from the medical 
department of the University of Pennsylvania, 
he became secretary to William H. Crawford 
[g.z;.], then minister to France, served as charge 
d'affaires after Crawford's return, and then be¬ 
gan a long service as professor of mathematics 
in the University of Georgia. He married 
Martha Jacqueline Rootes of Fredericksburg, 
Va., and Henry Rootes Jackson was their son. 
He was prepared for college under his father's 
tutelage, entered Yale College, and was gradu¬ 
ated as an honor man in 1839. On his return to 
Georgia, he studied law and began practice in 
Savannah. Before he was twenty-four he was 
appointed (1843) a United States district at¬ 
torney. On the outbreak of the Mexican War, 
he became colonel of a Georgia regiment and 
served until the close of hostilities. For a short 
time (1848-49) he was one of the editors of 
the Savannah Georgian and in 1849 he received 
an appointment to the superior court bench, in 
which capacity he was engaged until 1853. He 
resigned to accept appointment as charge in 
Austria, and on his promotion to the post of min- 


Jackson 

ister resident, served in that position till 1858. 
On his return from Europe, he was offered the 
chancellorship of the University of Georgia, but 
declined that honor. He was a member of the 
government counsel in the unsuccessful prosecu¬ 
tion of the captain and owners of the slave-ship 
Wanderer, seized in its attempt to bring African 
slaves into Savannah (United States circuit 
court, 1859). Jackson withdrew’from the Demo¬ 
cratic convention at Charleston in i860 when 
the Southern extremists seceded, became an 
elector on the Breckinridge ticket, and was a 
member of the Georgia secession convention of 
1861. Upon the organization of the Confederacy, 
he was appointed to a judgeship in the Confed¬ 
erate courts in Georgia, resigning to accept ap¬ 
pointment as a brigadier-general (July 4,1861). 
Later in the year he assumed command, with 
rank of major-general, of a division of Georgia 
state troops. After the fall of Atlanta (Sept. 21, 
1864), be again became a brigadier in the Con¬ 
federate army, served under Hood in Tennessee, 
and was captured and held as a prisoner of war 
at Johnson's Island and Fort Warren until the 
surrender. 

With the coming of peace, Jackson resumed 
the practice of law in Georgia. In 1885 Cleve¬ 
land appointed him minister to Mexico, where 
he remained until his resignation in 1886 because 
of a disagreement with his government on the 
question of the Rebecca, a schooner seized by 
Mexico on the charge of smuggling. For nearly 
a quarter of a century he was president of the 
Georgia Historical Society and deeply interest¬ 
ed in the preservation of the materials for the 
history of the state. He was also for many years 
a trustee of the Peabody Education Fund. As a 
supporter of his intimate friend, Joseph E. 
Brown [ q.v .], he took a vigorous part in state 
politics being active from the close of the Civil 
War until his death, though he never sought 
public office for himself. He was twice married: 
first, to Cornelia Augusta Davenport of Savan¬ 
nah, from which union there were four children; 
and second, to Florence Barclay King of St. 
Simons Island. In 1850 he published a book of 
verse, Tallulah and Other Poems . His “Red Old 
Hills of Georgia" is perhaps the best known of 
his poems. 

[J. M. Brown, in The Wanderer Case (1891); I. W. 
Avery, Hist, of the State of Ga. from 1850 to 1881 
(1881); Herbert Fielder, A Sketch of the Life and 
Times and Speeches of Joseph E. Brown (1883) ; C. C. 
Jones, Hist, of Savannah, Ga. (1890); F. D. Lee and 
J. L. Agnew, Hist. Record of the City of Savannah 
(1869); L. L. Knight, Reminiscences of Famous 
Georgians (2 vols., 1907—08) ; W. J. Northen, Men of 
Mark in Ga., vol. Ill (19n); Memoirs of Ga. (1895), 
vol. II; Obit. Record Grads. Yale XJniv . (1898); A 
Quarter-Century Record of the Class of 1839 (1865); 
Morning News (Savannah), May 24, 1898.] T.H, J. 


543 



Jackson 

JACKSON, HOWELL EDMUNDS (Apr. 8, 

1832-Aug. 8, 1895), jurist, senator, brother of 
William Hicks Jackson [g.s/.], was the son of 
Dr. Alexander Jackson, a physician and a man 
of culture and refinement, and his wife, Mary, 
nee Hurt, daughter of a Baptist minister. Both 
parents were Virginians who had settled in Ten¬ 
nessee in 1830. Their son, born at Paris, Tenn., 
graduated from the West Tennessee College in 
1849, studied at the University of Virginia in 
1851-52, and graduated from the law school at 
Lebanon, Tenn., in 1856. He began the practice 
of law at Jackson but was in Memphis from 1858 
until the outbreak of the Civil War. There, in 
1859, he married Sophia Malloy. Coming of a 
Whig family, he opposed secession, but after 
Tennessee seceded he served the Confederacy 
as receiver of sequestered property. In 1865 he 
resumed his practice at Memphis, but later re¬ 
turned to Jackson, and in April 1874, his first 
wife having died, married Mary Harding of 
Nashville. 

Jackson was of rather small stature, quiet and 
reserved in manner, but genial and companion¬ 
able with his intimates and withal a man of ac¬ 
curate learning, sound judgment, and strict in¬ 
tegrity. His public career began with his elec¬ 
tion to the legislature in 1880, as a Democrat, by 
a narrow majority. When the legislature assem¬ 
bled in 1881 to choose a United States senator 
on joint ballot, bitter factional feeling made the 
election of any of the several Democratic candi¬ 
dates impossible; after days of balloting a Re¬ 
publican member arose and, in a dramatic 
speech, cast his vote for Jackson, who had not 
been a candidate. State-credit Democrats and 
Republicans followed, and Jackson was elected. 
In the Senate, while not a conspicuous member, 
he took high rank as a lawyer. He was still 
enough of an old-line Whig not to accord al¬ 
ways with a majority of his Democratic col¬ 
leagues, as was shown by his notable speech in 
favor of the Blair educational bill. Toward the 
close of his term he was appointed by President 
Cleveland to fill a vacancy on the federal bench 
(6th circuit), and after some urging accepted 
the office as a matter of duty, resigning his Sen¬ 
ate seat in 1886. In 1891, when the circuit court 
of appeals was established at Cincinnati, he be¬ 
came its first presiding judge. The work of the 
bench was much more congenial to his tastes and 
temperament than the turmoil of politics, and his 
opinions soon made him known as among the 
ablest of the circuit judges. In 1893, therefore, 
when a justice of the United States Supreme 
Court died just before Benjamin Harrison was 
to be succeeded in the presidency by Grover 


Jackson 

Cleveland, Harrison, certain that any Republi¬ 
can nominated would fail of confirmation by the 
Democratic Senate, appointed Jackson, who took 
his se. n t Mar. 4, 1893. For some months he did 
his full share of the work, but he developed tu¬ 
berculosis and, although when the Court con¬ 
vened in October 1894 he was in his place, his 
growing weakness forced him from the bench 
during most of that term. When the Income 
Tax case (Pollock vs. Farmers 3 Loan & Trust 
Company) came on for argument in March 1895, 
he was absent without any expectation of being 
able to return. The remaining eight justices 
were evenly divided in opinion and a reargu¬ 
ment was ordered, whereupon Jackson, sum¬ 
moning the last remnant of his strength, took 
his place on the bench, expecting to cast the vote 
which should decide the validity of the income 
tax law. On reconsideration, however, one of 
the other justices changed his opinion, and by 
a vote of five to four the act was held unconstitu¬ 
tional. Jackson's dissenting opinion (158 U. 
696) was delivered May 20,1895. He died at his 
home near Nashville less than three months 
later. 

[J. W. Caldwell, Sketches of the Bench and Bar of 
Tenn, (1898); W. S. Speer, Sketches of Prominent 
Tennesseans (1888); J. T. Moore, Tennessee the Vol¬ 
unteer State (1923), vol. II; Biog. Dir . Am. Cong. 
(1928) ; In Memoriam , published in 1895 by the U. S. 
Supreme Court; Nashville American , Aug. 9, 1895.] 

W.L.F. 

JACKSON, JAMES (Sept. 21, 1757-Mar. 19, 
1806), governor of Georgia and United States 
senator, best known for his assault on the Yazoo 
Land companies, was born at Moreton Hamp¬ 
stead, Devonshire, England, the son of James 
and Mary (Webber) Jackson. At the age of fif¬ 
teen he emigrated to Georgia and was placed 
under the protection of John Wereat, a Savan¬ 
nah lawyer. His six years of military service 
during the Revolution were rendered in the 
Georgia state forces, and “impassioned ebr 
quence” was one of his chief contributions to 
the cause. He took part in the unsuccessful de¬ 
fense of Savannah (1778), the battle of Cow- 
pens, and the recovery of Augusta (1781). In 
July 1782, at which time he held the rank of lieu¬ 
tenant-colonel, he was ordered by General 
Wayne to take possession of Savannah upon its 
evacuation by the British. Three weeks later 
the legislature of Georgia gave him a house and 
lot in that town. 

After studying law with George Walton 
he built up a practice that he estimated was 
worth £3,000 a year by 1789. He served several 
terms in the Georgia legislature, was appointed 
colonel of the militia of Chatham County (1784) 


544 



Jackson 

and brigadier-general (1786), and was elected 
an honorary member of the Society of the Cin¬ 
cinnati. In 1788 he was elected governor, but de¬ 
clined the office on the ground of his youth and 
inexperience. On Jan. 30,1785, he married Mary 
Charlotte Young, by whom he had five sons. 
Four of these were later prominent in the pub¬ 
lic life of the state. In 1789 he was elected mem¬ 
ber of Congress from the eastern district of 
Georgia. Anthony Wayne [q.v.~\ defeated him 
for reelection in 1791. Jackson, charging fraud, 
induced the House of Representatives to unseat 
Wayne, but failed to get the place for himself. 
He was sent to the legislature, and in 1792 was 
appointed major-general for service against the 
Creek Indians. He was elected to the United 
States Senate in 1793 but resigned in 1795 on 
account of the Yazoo scandal and, returning to 
Georgia, was elected to the legislature, where 
he led the successful fight for the repeal of the 
obnoxious act. He was an influential member 
of the convention of 1798 that framed a new state 
constitution. Governor from 1798 to 1801, he 
was again elected to the United States Senate in 
the latter year and served in that body until his 
death in 1806. He was a member of the Georgia 
commission that made the land cession of 1802. 

In national politics he was an independent Re¬ 
publican. In the first Congress he assailed vehe¬ 
mently the judiciary bill and Hamilton's financial 
measures, defending the “gallant veteran" of the 
Revolution against the “wolves of speculation"; 
but he was a professed admirer of Blackstone, 
urged a stringent naturalization law as a bar to 
the “common class of vagrants, paupers and 
other outcasts of Europe," and opposed amend¬ 
ing the Federal Constitution. His principles 
were not inflexible, for he was shortly thereafter 
one of the chief advocates of the Eleventh 
Amendment to the Constitution. Although he 
supported Jefferson and Burr in 1800 and, when 
his party was victorious, counseled a political 
ally not to be “squeamish" about dismissing 
Federalist office-holders, he refused to acknowl¬ 
edge the obligation of party regularity, opposing 
the administration's bill for the government of 
the Orleans Territory (1805) and its efforts to 
settle with the Yazoo claimants and to prohibit 
the African slave trade. In Georgia he culti¬ 
vated the up-country leaders, among them Wil¬ 
liam H. Crawford [#.z\], and while in the Sen¬ 
ate urged federal aid for a road from Kentucky 
to Augusta, Ga. 

Rice and cotton were the principal crops raised 
on his tidewater plantations. While governor he 
recommended to the state legislature that it either 
pay Miller and Whitney a “moderate" sum for 


Jackson 

their patent right to the cotton gin or else sup¬ 
press the right. Gentle and affectionate towards 
family and friends, a reader of the Encyclopedia 
and a patron of the University of Georgia, he 
would fight at the drop of a hat. In one rough- 
and-tumble affray he saved himself from being 
gouged by biting his opponent's finger. He killed 
Lieutenant-Governor Wells of Georgia in a duel 
fought without seconds (1780). His own death, 
which occurred in Washington, D. C., is said by 
some to have been due to wounds received in the 
last of his many duels, although J. Q. Adams, 
who was in Washington at the time, attributed 
it to the dropsy. An English country boy mould¬ 
ed by the Southern frontier, Jackson was a fervid 
patriot in speech and a violent partisan in action. 

[T. U. P. Charlton, The Life of Maf.-Gen. James 
Jackson (1809; reprinted, with additions, in 1897), 
contains, in addition to secondary accounts, a number of 
Jackson’s letters; an autobiography is in the possession 
of the Ga. Hist. Soc., Savannah (W. J. Northen, Men 
of Mark in Ga., vol. I, 1907) ; see also Annals of Cong., 
1789-91, 1793-95, and 1801-06; Am. Hist. Rev. t Oct. 
1897, p. 118; James Herring and J. B. Longacre, The 
Nat. Portr. Gallery of Distinguished Americans, vol. 
Ill (1836); W. B. Stevens, A Hist . of Go., vol. II 
(1859) ; A. H. Chappell, Miscellanies of Ga. (1874) ; 
National Intelligencer and Washington Advertiser , 
Mar. 2 i, 1806.] A.P.W. 

JACKSON, JAMES (Oct. 3, 1777-Aug. 27, 
1867), physician, brother of Charles and Pat¬ 
rick Tracy Jackson [qq.v.~], was the fifth of the 
nine children of Hannah, daughter of Patrick 
Tracy, merchant of Newburyport, and Jonathan 
Jackson, colonial banker and merchant, descend¬ 
ed from Edward Jackson of London who settled 
in Cambridge, Mass., in 1643. Despite .the some¬ 
what straitened circumstances of his family, 
James attended the Boston Latin School, Dum- 
mer Academy, and later Harvard College, where 
he met his life-long friend John Pickering [gw.] 
of Salem and John Collins Warren Iq.v.], whose 
father, John Warren [q.v.J, was undoubtedly 
responsible for directing his interests to the 
study of medicine. After receiving the degree 
of A.B. in 1796, he entered the Harvard Medi¬ 
cal School, where he came under the guidance 
of Benjamin Waterhouse [q.v.], professor of 
the theory and practice of physic, Aaron Dexter, 
and J. Gorman [qq.v.]. In December 1797 he 
apprenticed himself to Edward Augustus Hol¬ 
yoke [g.v.], physician of Salem, and thus be¬ 
came one of the many who owed their instruc¬ 
tion to this remarkable man. He received the 
degree of A.M. from Harvard in 1799, that of 
M.B. in 1802, and in 1809 upon passing exami¬ 
nations and having his thesis accepted, that of 
M.D. The thesis, Remarks on the Brunonian 
System, he dedicated to Holyoke. In October 
1799 he obtained a free passage abroad on the 


545 



Jackson 

ship of his brother Henry, and remained nearly 
a year in London, during which time he served 
as dresser at St. Thomas's Hospital, studying 
anatomy there under Cline, and under Sir Ast- 
ley Cooper at Guy's. FromWoodville he learned 
the technique of vaccination, which had been 
introduced by Jenner only a few months before. 
Returning to Boston in the autumn of 1800, he 
“began business," as he says in his diary, on 
Oct. 1, and on Oct. 11 one finds him advertising 
in the Columbian Centinel that he is prepared to 
vaccinate. His knowledge of the new procedure 
evidently attracted many patients, and he was 
the first in America to investigate vaccination 
in a scientific spirit. The results of his experi¬ 
ences were published in reserved and guarded 
terms in the Columbian Centinel (Feb. 14, and 
Apr. 8, 1801). He was appointed physician to 
the Boston Dispensary in 1802, and later iden¬ 
tified himself with the movement for the reor¬ 
ganization and rebuilding of the Harvard Medi¬ 
cal School (1810). In 1812 he was appointed 
to the Hersey Professorship of the Theory and 
Practice of Physic in succession to Benjamin 
Waterhouse, who had been the first to hold this 
chair. He was largely responsible also for the 
foundation of the Massachusetts General Hos¬ 
pital, the plans for which were made in 1810, al¬ 
though it was not actually opened until 1821. 

As a physician Jackson exerted great influ¬ 
ence both locally and in America at large. He 
had been brought up during a period of tran¬ 
sition; in his early years there were few phy¬ 
sicians, superstition was widespread, and there 
were almost no facilities for the education of 
students in medicine. Having seen the older 
schools of Europe, he was able to formulate 
plans for the development of American medical 
education. As a lecturer he was attractive and 
in his teaching he was essentially a therapeutic 
nihilist, believing firmly in the “vis medicatrix 
naturae Osier pointed out that Jackson gave 
the first description of peripheral alcoholic neu¬ 
ritis, in a three-page paper published in the New 
England Journal of Medicine (1822). Jackson 
also gave an excellent description of the symp¬ 
toms of appendicitis without appreciating that 
it was the appendix which was at fault. His 
many case books show his remarkable alertness 
and are filled with shrewd clinical observations. 

On Oct 3, 1801, he married Elizabeth Cabot, 
daughter of Andrew Cabot of Beverly, to whom 
he had long been engaged. She died in Novem¬ 
ber 1817, and he soon afterwards married her 
sister Sarah. By his first wife he had nine 
children; the eldest son, James Jackson junior 
(1810-1834), had a remarkable career. After 


Jackson 

graduating from Harvard he studied in Paris 
under Louis and while there made an important 
study of an epidemic of cholera then raging. 
This was published on his return (1832), but 
unfortunately he died a year later of tuberculous 
pericarditis. His father never recovered from 
this overwhelming loss and he resigned his post 
at the medical school in consequence. His mem¬ 
oir of his son is an interesting psychological 
document in that it is entirely objective and al¬ 
most wholly devoid of any evidence of the deep 
feeling which prompted him to write it. Jack¬ 
son's Letters to a Young Physician (1855) are 
filled with penetrating advice and are written in 
an attractive literary style which has caused 
them to remain one of the classics of American 
medical literature. They were followed by a 
sequel Another Letter to a Young Physician 
(1861). He also published a useful syllabus, 
On the Theory and Practice of Physic (1825). 

[J. J. Putnam, A Memoir of Dr . James Jackson 
(1905) ; H. A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Am. Medic. 
Biogs. (1920); Boston Medic, and Surgic . Jour., Sept. 
5, 1867; Boston Post, Aug. 29, 1867; the Jackson case 
books and other MSS. are in the Boston Medical Li¬ 
brary.] J.F.F. 

JACKSON, JAMES (Oct. 18, 1819-Jan. i 3 , 
1887), jurist, member of Congress, was born in 
Jefferson County, Ga. His father, William H. 
Jackson, was the son of Gov, James Jackson 
Iq.vf], who took a leading part in the early his¬ 
tory of Georgia. His mother, Mildred Lewis 
Cobb, was the aunt of Howell and Thomas 
Reade Rootes Cobb \_qq.vJ\. When James was 
ten years old his parents moved to Athens, 
where, after a few years' preparation in private 
schools, he entered the state university. He was 
graduated in 1837 and began the study of law in 
the office of Howell Cobb. Upon his admission 
to the bar in 1839, he moved to Monroe, Walton 
County, and entered upon the practice of law. 
Three years later he was made secretary of the 
state Senate, and from that time until the end of 
the Civil War he was, in one capacity or an¬ 
other, continually in the public service. From 
1845 to 1849 he represented Walton County in 
the General Assembly, for the next eight years 
he was judge of the superior courts for the west¬ 
ern circuit, and during the four years following, 
a representative from Georgia in Congress. 
When Georgia seceded he resigned from Con¬ 
gress, and soon after the beginning of the war 
he was made a judge-advocate, with the rank of 
colonel, on the staff of “Stonewall" Jackson. At 
the conclusion of the war he went to live in 
Macon, where he practised law in partnership 
with Howell Cobb and, after Cobb's death, with 
Nisbet, Bacon, and Lyon. In 1875 be was chosen 


546 



Jackson 


Jackson 


an associate justice of the supreme court of 
Georgia and five years later, chief-justice, which 
position he held until his death. 

Jackson filled all of the offices he held credit¬ 
ably and acceptably, but his upright character 
and charming personality seem to have im¬ 
pressed his contemporaries more than his intel¬ 
lectual attainments. He had the faculty of mak¬ 
ing difficult tasks seem easy because of his quiet 
efficiency. Cultured, courteous, and with unu¬ 
sual magnetism, he endeared himself to those 
about him. His judicial opinions are not erudite 
but are clear, well written, and convincing; some 
of them reveal a high ability. He inherited from 
his mother a deeply religious temperament and 
was a prominent layman in the Methodist Epis¬ 
copal Church, South. He was twice married, 
first, in 1853, to Ada Mitchell of Milledgeville, 
Ga., by whom he had five children; she died in 
1867, and in 1870 he married Mrs. Mary School- 
field of St. Louis, Mo. His death occurred in 
Atlanta. 

[See Bernard Suttler, in W. J. Northen, Men of 
Mark in Ga., vol. Ill (1911); memorial in 78 Ga. Re¬ 
ports, 807; Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. 1774-1927 (1928); 
Atlanta Constitution, Jan. 14, 1887. Jackson’s opinions 
as an associate and chief-justice of the supreme court 
are to be found in 54 —77 Ga. Reports .] B.F. 

JACKSON, JAMES CALEB (Mar. 28,1811- 
July 11, 1895), physician, abolitionist, was bom 
in Manlius, Onondaga County, N. Y., whither 
his father, James Jackson, a physician, son of 
Col. Giles Jackson of Tyringham, Berkshire 
County, Mass., had moved. The mother of James 
Caleb was MaryAhn (Elderkin) Jackson, grand¬ 
daughter of a Connecticut Revolutionary of¬ 
ficer, Jedidiah Elderkin. Because of impaired 
health, the elder James Jackson gave up medi¬ 
cine and retired to a farm when his son was 
about twelve and at seventeen the latter entered 
Manlius Academy to prepare for college. The 
death of his father prevented the completion of 
his academic work, however, and marrying Lu- 
cretia Brewster, Sept. 10, 1830, he definitely 
abandoned all plans for a college education. Hav¬ 
ing become interested in the anti-slavery move¬ 
ment, he made the acquaintance of Gerrit Smith 
[#.£/.], who advised him to come to Peterboro, 
N. Y. There he settled in 1838 and became an 


tributed considerably to its support. With Luther 
Myrick, he founded the Madison County Abo¬ 
litionist at Cazenovia, N. Y., in September 1841. 
After a year this was sold by the publishers and 
Jackson moved to Utica where for two years he 
was editor of the Liberty Press . He then went 
to Albany and purchased the Albany Patriot , 
which he edited until 1846, when poor health 
caused him to sell the paper to William L. Chap¬ 
lin. In June 1847, at Macedon Lock, N. Y., he 
was one of the sponsors of the Liberty League, 
a fourth party, which had grown out of the Lib¬ 
erty Party. 

During the months of his illness he had been 
under the care of Dr. S. 0 . Gleason of Cuba, N. 
Y. Long interested in medicine, Jackson soon 
formed a partnership with Gleason and Theo¬ 
dosia Gilbert. At the head of Skaneateles Lake 
they opened a hygienic institute known as the 
“Glen Haven Water Cure.” In the winter of 
1849-50 Gleason withdrew from the partnership 
and in the fall of 1858 Jackson himself left Glen 
Haven and moved to Dansville, N. Y. There he 
opened a water cure that became famous as “Our 
Home Hygienic Institute.” In 1879 turned 
over the management of it to his son, Dr. James 
H. Jackson. Possessing religious convictions 
concerning the necessity of reform, Jackson was 
unwearied in his search for conditions that 
needed remedying. He was an active member 
of the association for dress reform, and he fought 
against what he considered the evils of rum and 
tobacco. He held drug medication to be “the 
popular delusion of the nineteenth century and 
the curse of the age”; hydropathy became his 
favorite reform. For many years he was the 
assistant editor of The Laws of Life, a periodi¬ 
cal devoted to hydropathy and the advertisement 
of “Our Home.” He acquired a reputation 
among his contemporaries as a popular orator 
and writer. Of his half-dozen popular books on 
medicine only one now has a claim to notice: 
How to Treat the Sick Without Medicine 
(Dansville, N. Y., 1868), an exposition of his 
hypdropathic practices, briefly summarized as 
“ Tis Nature cures the sick.” From 1886 to 
1895 he lived in North Adams, Mass.; his death 
occurred while he was on a visit to Dansville. 


agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery So¬ 
ciety. In the spring of 1840 he was made the 
secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society. 
He assisted Nathaniel P. Rogers in editing the 
National Anti-Slavery Standard (founded in 
June 1840) until Oliver Johnson became editor 
in June 1841. In the fall of 1840 Jackson lec¬ 
tured in western New York. Gerrit Smith in¬ 
vited him to edit a third-party paper and con- 


[D W. Elderkin, Geneal. of the Elderkin Family 
(copr. 1888); W. P. and F. J. Garrison, William Lloyd 
Garrison 1805-18/9 (4 vols., 1885-89); J. H. Smith, 
Hist, of Livingston County , N. Y. (1881) ; i/ 8 g^Dans- 
ville-1902 (n.d.), ed. by A. 0 . Bunnell; Buffalo Conner, 
July 12, 1895; MS. letters in Gemt Smith Miller Col¬ 
lection at Syracuse University.] F. M—n. 

JACKSON, JOHN ADAMS (Nov. 5, 1825- 
c. Aug. 30, 1879), sculptor, was bom in Bath, 
Me., and died in Pracchia, Italy. His parents 


547 



Jackson 

were Thomas Jackson and Susan (Smith) Hale 
Jackson, daughter of Ebenezer and Susan Smith 
of Woolwich, Me. Various biographers state 
that in youth he was a pupil of D. C. Johnston, 
of Boston; that later, having become expert in 
“linear and geometrical drawing,” he turned to 
crayon drawing, in which field he made credit¬ 
able portraits; and that in Paris he studied anat¬ 
omy and drew from life under Charles Suisse, 
a portrait painter. In 1851, the year before 
Daniel Webster’s death, he modeled a bust of 
that statesman, not from life, but from informa¬ 
tion and portraits furnished by the Webster fam¬ 
ily. In 1853, he was in Florence, Italy, where 
he made portrait busts of Miss Adelaide Phillips, 
and of Thomas Buchanan Read, the poet after¬ 
ward famous for his “Sheridan’s Ride.” Both 
of these works by Jackson were shown in the 
United States, the Union League Club of Phila¬ 
delphia buying the “Read.” In 1854, he was 
again in Paris, where he made a bust of John 
Young Mason, the United States minister to 
France. His fame in portraiture was estab¬ 
lished ; it is said that his sitters numbered a hun¬ 
dred. Among them were Dr. Lyman Beecher, 
Wendell Phillips, and George S. Hillard. The 
“Phillips” and the “Hillard” busts, done in the 
pseudo-classic manner of their time, are still on 
view at the Boston Athenaeum. The Sage Li¬ 
brary in New Brunswick, N. J., owns the bust 
of Dr. G. W. Bethune. 

In 1858, Jackson set up a studio in New York 
City, where he produced both portraits and ideal 
figures until in i860, fortified by a commission 
from the Kane Monument Association (New 
York City) to make a post-mortem statue of 
Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the explorer, he returned 
to Florence, which was thenceforth his home. 
Data concerning the result of this project are 
conflicting. Both in England and in Italy, the 
sculptor’s marble group of “Eve and the Dead 
Abel” (1867), a composition of the familiar 
“Pieta” type, met high praise from the critics; 
its anatomy was favorably analyzed in a sur¬ 
geon’s essay. A copy owned by the Metropolitan 
Museum drew from Lorado Taft (post, p. 200) 
a statement that the work as a whole “is credit¬ 
able,” though its modeling is “thin and tire¬ 
some.” Among numerous ideal themes were 
“Autumn,” “Cupid Stringing his Bow,” “Cupid 
on a Swan,” “Titania and Nick Bottom,” “The 
Culprit Fay,” “Peace,” “Dawn.” A medallion 
called “Morning Glory” was fourteen times re¬ 
produced in marble. 

Jackson visited New York in 1867, and de¬ 
signed for the Croton Water Board a group for 
the southern gatehouse of the reservoir in Cen- 


Jackson 

tral Park. In 1869, his figure of a “Reading 
Girl” was the subject of a laudatory article in 
the Berlin Zeitung . His “Musidora,” shown at 
the Vienna Exposition of 1873, won plaudits 
from the press both of Vienna and Boston. In 
1874, a Soldiers' Monument from his hand was 
erected in Lynn, Mass., the city being symbolized 
by a bronze female figure, flanked by bronze 
statues of “War” and “Justice,” supported on a 
large granite pedestal. With “Hylas” (1875) 
and “II Pastorello,” he returned to ideal themes. 

[Names of parents and date of birth have been sup¬ 
plied by the city clerk, Bath, Me. C. E. Clement and 
Laurence Hutton, Artists of the Nineteenth Century 
(rev. ed., 1907), gives a fairly complete list of Jack- 
son’s works and their owners, with extended critical 
excerpts from the Boston Transcript, and from the 
Boston Daily Advertiser, Oct. 28, 1878. D. T. Valen¬ 
tine, Manual of the Corporation of the City of N. Y., 
i860, lists the members of the Kane Monument Asso¬ 
ciation in 1859, and bas a lithograph of the proposed 
Kane statue. See also Lorado Taft, The Hist, of Am . 
Sculpture (enl. ed., 1924) ; H. T. Tuckerman, Book of 
the Artists (1867); Evening Post, (N. Y.), Sept. 1, 
1879; N. Y. Tribune, Sept. 3, 1879.] A. A. 

JACKSON, JOHN BRINCKERHOFF 

(Aug. 19, 1862-Dec. 20, 1920), diplomat, was 
bom at Newark, N. J.,the son of Frederick Wol¬ 
cott and Nannie (Nye) Jackson. Although his 
father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had 
been identified with the railroad interests of New 
Jersey, John early decided upon a naval career. 
He was graduated from the United States Naval 
Academy in 1883 and spent the next two years 
with the European Squadron. While assigned 
to duty in the United States he married Florence 
A. Baird of Philadelphia, Apr. 26, 1886. Shortly 
after his marriage he was ordered to join the 
Pacific Squadron but because of his wife's ill 
health, resigned his commission as ensign, June 
30, 1886. He then began the study of law and 
was admitted to the New York bar in 1889. 

On Dec. 30, 1890, President Harrison ap¬ 
pointed Jackson second secretary of the legation 
in Germany, then in charge of Minister Phelps 
of New Jersey. Four years later President 
Cleveland commissioned him secretary of em¬ 
bassy, in which capacity, frequently as charge 
d'affaires ad interim, he served at Berlin until 
1902. His twelve years in Germany under four 
administrations gave the American mission a 
valuable continuity when both countries were 
embarking as world powers, and when the new 
Emperor’s aggressive political and commercial 
policies in the East and in the West were com¬ 
ing into conflict with those of the United States. 
Jackson was in charge of the embassy in all 
about twenty months, including the last tense 
month of the Spanish-American War, during 
the Hague Conference of 1899, and while the 


548 



Jackson 


Jackson 


Boxer Rebellion in China was at its height. He 
was personally respected and liked by the Em¬ 
peror and by German officials generally and he 
held the confidence of the chiefs of mission un¬ 
der whom he served. 

His loyal and efficient services in Germany 
won him a commission of Oct. 13, 1902, as min¬ 
ister to Greece, in which capacity he served un¬ 
til 1907. During this period he was accredited, 
at various times, to Roumania, Servia, Bulgaria, 
and Montenegro. He then spent two years each 
as minister to Persia and Cuba, returning to 
the Balkans in 1911 as minister to Roumania, 
Servia, and Bulgaria. His long experience in 
Europe made his early services as minister of 
great value but gradually he became less suc¬ 
cessful in maintaining the confidence of his gov¬ 
ernment. According to custom, he submitted his 
resignation with the coming of the Democratic 
administration. It was accepted in August 1913, 
and he left Bucharest two months later. Upon 
the outbreak of the World War he volunteered 
his services to the American embassy at Berlin. 
On Jan. 16, 19x5, he was made a special agent 
of the Department of State to assist the am¬ 
bassador in matters relating to the war. Because 
of previous experience in Germany his services 
proved invaluable and he was retained on the 
embassy staff until its withdrawal in February 
1917. Thereafter he remained in Switzerland, 
where he died after a prolonged illness at the 
early age of fifty-eight. 

[Who's Who in America, 1920-21; U. S. Dept, of 
State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the 
U. S., 1895-1913 ; N. Y. Times, Dec. 21, 1920; archives 
of the Dept, of State.] C. S. 

JACKSON, JOHN DAVIES (Dec. 12, 1834- 
Dec. 8, 1875), physician, son of John and Mar¬ 
garet (Spears) Jackson, both natives of Ken¬ 
tucky, was born and died at Danville in that 
state. After a preliminary education at Centre 
College, from which he obtained the degree of 
A.B. in 1854, he studied medicine for one year 
in the medical department of the University of 
Louisville, going then to the medical department 
of the University of Pennsylvania at Philadel¬ 
phia, where he took his doctor’s degree in 1857. 
He was of a reserved, modest, studious dispo¬ 
sition and made his way slowly in practice in his 
native town. During the Civil War he served 
with the rank of surgeon in the Confederate 
army, and upon being paroled at Appomattox 
returned at once to Danville, where he estab¬ 
lished a private dissecting room, built up a class, 
and proved himself an excellent teacher. He 
read extensively, learning French so as to read 
French literature, and collected a fine medical 


library, very rich in old books. Giving his at¬ 
tention especially to surgery, he went repeatedly 
to the East to perfect himself in various branches 
of his profession, and spent some time in study 
in Paris in 1872. In 1874 he published An Op¬ 
eration Manual, translated from the French of 
L. H. Farabeuf, and he contributed many clinical 
papers to the Richmond and Louisville Medical 
Journal, the American Journal of the Medical 
Sciences, and the Transactions of the Kentucky 
State Medical Society. He set forth in an amus¬ 
ing manner some of the ethical questions con¬ 
fronting the medical profession in two papers, 
Anniversary Address before the Boyle County 
( Ky .) Medical Society (1869) and The Black 
Arts of Medicine (1870), which, edited by L. S. 
McMurtry, were subsequently (1880) repub¬ 
lished together. His papers were marked by 
clarity, brevity, and a vivid, pleasant style. At 
the time of his death he was first vice-president 
of the American Medical Association. 

Jackson’s chief service outside his professional 
work was in reviewing and vindicating the claim 
of Ephraim McDowell [g.v.] to recognition as 
the first physician to perform ovariotomy and 
thus to inaugurate abdominal surgery. He wrote 
a “Biographical Sketch of Dr. Ephraim Mc¬ 
Dowell, of Danville, Ky.,” which was published 
in the Richmond and Louisville Medical Journal 


in November 1873; spoke constantly of Mc¬ 
Dowell, and urged the Medical Society of Ken¬ 
tucky appropriately to mark his grave. It was 
by virtue of his efforts that the bodies of Mc¬ 
Dowell and his wife were brought from their 
neglected graves at “Travellers’ Rest,” Gover¬ 
nor Shelby’s country place, and reinterred at 
Danville with a suitable monument commemo¬ 
rating McDowell’s epoch-making operation of 
1809 in the wilderness. 

Jackson was unmarried, his whole life and 
energy being devoted to his profession. He was 
universally esteemed by his colleagues and pa¬ 
tients for his kindness of heart, integrity of char¬ 
acter, affectionate friendship, and his wide 
knowledge; and he was called in consultation 
throughout central Kentucky. His death at the 
age of forty-one was due to tuberculosis which 
he developed during his convalescence from an 


autopsy infection. 

[J. M. Toner and L. S. McMurtry, sketch m Rich¬ 
mond and Louisville Medic. Jour., Jan. 1876, also pub¬ 
lished separately as A Biog. Sketch of John D. Jackson, 
M.D. (1876); L. S. McMurtry, Memoir of JohnD. 
Jackson (1876 ?); Trans. Am. Medic. Asso.,\ ol. XXIX 
(1878); Some of the Medic. Pioneers of Ky. {19i 7 h 
ed by T, N. McCormack, issued as a supplement to the 
Ky. Medic. Jour, (this pamphlet contains Jacksons 
sketch of McDowell and a sketch of Jackson by Mc- 
Murtry); Am. Medic . Weekly, Dec. 11, 

A? Jr t Jw 


549 



Jackson 

JACKSON, JOHN GEORGE (Sept. 22, 

1777-Mar. 28, 1825), congressman, jurist, was 
born near Buckhannon, Va. (now W. Va.), eld¬ 
est son of George Jackson, a man of more rugged 
intellect than schooling, Indian fighter, colonel 
in the Continental army, and thrice member of 
Congress; and grandson of John Jackson, the 
Scotch-Irish emigrant, who was Gen. “Stone¬ 
wall” Jackson's great-grandfather. His mother 
was Elizabeth von Brake. In 1784 the family 
moved to Clarksburg. John received “a liberal 
education,” became a civil engineer, and at nine¬ 
teen was appointed surveyor of public lands west 
of the Ohio. From 1798 to 1801 he represented 
Harrison County in the Virginia legislature and 
gave effective support to all Republican meas¬ 
ures during several stirring sessions. Mean¬ 
while he read law and in 1801 was admitted to 
the bar, where he swiftly won distinction. Suc¬ 
ceeding his father in the Eighth Congress, he 
vigorously upheld the administrations of Presi¬ 
dents Jefferson and Madison, whose entire con¬ 
fidence he enjoyed, and came to be regarded as 
a leading and highly influential member before 
ill health caused him to resign, Sept 28, 1810. 
At the next election he was returned to the Vir¬ 
ginia Assembly and rendered important services 
in procuring passage of the law which estab¬ 
lished chancery courts at Winchester and Clarks¬ 
burg. This same winter, 1811-12, he was chosen 
brigadier-general of militia. In 1813 he was 
again elected to Congress and remained two 
terms, relinquishing his earlier Jeffersonian 
principles so far as to introduce amendments in 
favor of internal improvements, a national bank, 
and taxes on exports (American Historical As¬ 
sociation Reports, 1896, II, 246, 255, 260). He 
declined reelection in 1817. A fluent and fear¬ 
less speaker, he filled the pages of the Annals of 
Congress while winning recognition for his out¬ 
spokenness in debate and for his fidelity to friends 
and principles. His spirited defense of his 
brother-in-law, Madison, against the attacks of 
the Federalists and John Randolph, at the time 
of the discussions in Congress over the Yazoo 
Lands and during the conflict over the Spanish 
negotiations, carried him to the point of inviting 
duels with Randolph and with Josiah Quincy; 
and on Dec. 4, 1809, he was permanently lamed 
in an encounter with Joseph Pearson of North 
Carolina, whom he wounded badly. In 1819 
President Monroe appointed him the first United 
States judge for the Western District of Vir¬ 
ginia, and until his death he graced this office 
with his urbane and dignified deportment, his 
eloquent charges, and his capable decisions. 

It was not Jackson's political career alone. 


Jackson 

however, which led one historian to designate 
him, too generously, “the most remarkable man 
west of the mountains.” His public spirit and 
astonishing energy prompted him to undertake 
numerous works calculated to benefit his section. 
He helped to improve waterways and local 
roads; served on the commission whose recom¬ 
mendation to the legislature resulted in the es¬ 
tablishment of the University of Virginia; and 
sought to develop the state's natural resources, 
not only through commerce and by opening salt 
and iron mines, but also by building furnaces 
and foundries, woollen factories, tanneries, and 
mills. These varied enterprises absorbed large 
sums of money, “and at his death left his princely 
estate heavily embarrassed” (R. L. Dabney, Life 
and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen, Thomas /. Jack- 
son, 1866, p. 7). Jackson married, 1801, Mary, 
daughter of John Payne of Philadelphia and sis¬ 
ter of Dolly Madison, and by her was grandfa¬ 
ther of Gov. Jacob Beeson Jackson of West 
Virginia. She died seven years later and he 
married, second, Sept. 13, 1810, Mary Meigs, 
only daughter of Gov. Return Jonathan Meigs 
of Ohio (Allen C. Clark, Life and Letters of 
Dolly Madison, 1914). 

[T. C. Miller and Hu Maxwell, W. Va. and Its Peo¬ 
ple (1913), vols. II and III; Henry Haymond, Hist, of 
Harrison County, W. Va. (1910); Roy B. Cook, The 
Family and Early Life of Stonewall Jackson (1924); 
T. J. Arnold, Early t Life and Letters of Gen. Thos. J. 
Jackson (1916); Richmond Enquirer , Apr. 15, 1825; 
files of the Congressional Joint Committee on Print- 
in S *3 A. C.G., Jr. 

JACKSON, MERCY RUGGLES BISBE 

(Sept. 17, 1802-Dec. 13, 1877), homeopathic 
physician and educator, was born at Hardwick, 
Mass. She was the daughter of Constant and 
Sarah (Green) Ruggles. Her early education 
was thorough and in accordance with the best 
obtainable in her time. She was married in June 
1823 to Rev. John Bisbe, a Universalist minis¬ 
ter, and with him moved in 1824 to Hartford, 
Conn., where he was pastor of the first Uni¬ 
versalist Society, and afterward to Portland, 
Me., where he died in 1829. Of this marriage, 
which was a very happy one, three children were 
born. After her husband's death Mrs. Bisbe, 
thrown upon her own resources for the support 
of herself and her family, opened a school for 
young ladies. This venture was successful, but 
she found the task of teaching too arduous for 
her, and abandoning her school, started a dry- 
goods store. She had been engaged in this en¬ 
terprise for three years when she married, in 
i 835, Capt. Daniel Jackson of Plymouth, Mass., 
by whom she had eight children. 

During all her married life, she maintained an 



Jackson 

active interest in the study of medicine and es¬ 
pecially in homeopathy as related to the illnesses 
of children. She and her husband practised in 
a small way. In 1848 her interest in the study 
of homeopathy became more active. Dr. Capen 
of Plymouth, an old-school physician, stimulated 
her ambition by furnishing her with books and 
medicines. Her practice grew with years, and 
some time after the death of her husband in 1852, 
she was induced to enter the New England Fe¬ 
male Medical College, from which she graduated 
in i860 at the age of fifty-eight. Immediately 
after graduation she settled in Boston, Mass. On 
the organization of the Boston University School 
of Medicine in 1873, she was elected adjunct 
professor of diseases of children, in association 
with Dr. Nathan R. Morse. Shortly after en¬ 
tering upon the practice of medicine in Boston, 
she applied for membership in the American In¬ 
stitute of Homeopathy. Her application met with 
vigorous opposition and was rejected because 
the by-laws did not contemplate the admission 
of women. Annually for ten years she applied, 
meeting with lively opposition, until in 1871, at 
die session in Philadelphia, she and two other 
women physicians were duly elected to member¬ 
ship. She died six years later, at. the age of 
seventy-five. Energetic and enthusiastic to the 
end, a few months before her death she had be¬ 
gun the study of German. One of her sons, Dr. 
Samuel H. Jackson, a homeopathic physician, 
became a member of the faculty of the Boston 
University School of Medicine. 

[T. L. Bradford’s “Biographies of Homeopathic 
Physicians,” in library of Hahnemann Medic. Coll., 
Phila.; Trans, of the Thirty-first Session of the Am. 
Inst, of Homoeopathy . . . 1878 (i?79); E. Cleaves, 
Cleaves’ Biog. Cyc. of Homeopathic Physicians and 
Surgeons (1873) I L. R. Paige, Hist. 0/ Hardwick, 
Mass. (1883), pp. 233. 486-87; H. S. Ruggles, The 
Buggies Family (n.d., 1917) ; New Eng. Medic. Gazette, 
Jan. 1878; Mass, Homoeopathic Medic. Soc. rubs., 
1878-79 (1880) ; Homoeopathic Times (N. Y.), Jan. 
1878; Boston Transcript, Dec. 14, 1877.] C.B. 

JACKSON, MORTIMER MELVILLE 

(Mar. 5, 1809-Oct. 13, 1889), jurist, diplomat, 
was born at Rensselaerville, Albany County, N. 
Y., son of Jeremiah Jackson, a prominent farm¬ 
er, and Martha Keyes, his wife. He was edu¬ 
cated partly in the district schools, and partly in 
Lindley Murray Moore’s boarding school at 
Flushing, L. I. He also had the advantage of 
several years’ instruction in Borland and For¬ 
rest’s collegiate school, New York City, where 
he won a prize as the best English scholar. He 
then entered a business house in New York but 
soon began reading law which he completed un¬ 
der the tutelage of David Graham. Becoming a 
leader among the young men of the city, he was 


Jackson 

chairman of the lecture committee of the Mer¬ 
cantile Library Association and inaugurated the 
plan of a course of free lectures by distinguished 
local men. He was also deeply interested in poli¬ 
tics and in 1834 headed the delegation to the 
Young Men’s State Whig Convention in Syra¬ 
cuse which first nominated Seward for governor. 
He drafted the convention’s address to the pub¬ 
lic. 

Shortly after his marriage in June 1838 to 
Catherine Garr, daughter of Andrew S. Garr of 
New York City, he removed to Wisconsin, re¬ 
maining temporarily in Milwaukee but settling 
the following year in Mineral Point where he 
built up a lucrative practice. In 1841 Governor 
Doty appointed Jackson attorney-general for the 
Territory of Wisconsin which office he filled 
worthily for four years. When Wisconsin be¬ 
came a state in 1848, he was elected the first 
circuit judge of the fifth judicial circuit, as such 
becoming a member of the supreme court, till 
June 1, 1853, when the separate supreme court 
was organized. He thereafter continued in pri¬ 
vate practice at Madison, until 1861, when he 
entered upon his notable career as American 
consul to Halifax, to which office he was ap¬ 
pointed through Seward’s influence. On account 
of the strategic position of the port of Halifax 
during the Civil War, his position was of crucial 
importance to the United States. A large pro¬ 
portion of all the blockade runners either fitted 
out at Halifax or made it a port of call; and it 
was the duty of the American consul to transmit 
to his government full information about them. 
After the close of the war the renewal of the 
American-British controversy over our fisheries 
rights created a troublesome diplomatic situation 
to the solution of which Jackson contributed both 
facts and law. His report (House Executive 
Document No. l s pt. 1, 4 1 Cong., 3 Sess., pp. 42&- 
31) upon the “fisheries and the fisheries laws of 
Canada” is a model of concise statement and 
fundamental reasoning. In 1880 Jackson was 
advanced to the post of consul-general at Hali¬ 
fax which enabled him to continue at a place 
where he had become a prime favorite. How¬ 
ever, on account of failing health he resigned m 
1882 and returned to Madison, where, Mrs. 
Jackson having died in 1875, he lived a solitary 
life at the hotel. He wrote for the Madison 
Literary Club a short paper in eulogy of Daniel 
Webster, contributing several Webster anecdotes 
out of his personal experience. « 

Jackson represented the best type of cultivated 
Puritan gentleman. His refined manners and 
social aplomb fitted him peculiarly for diplomatic 
service. His disposition was urbane, just, and 


55 1 



Jackson 

above all kind. He was public spirited, being 
one of the prime movers for an improved public 
school system in Wisconsin, and he endowed a 
professorship of law in the University of Wis¬ 
consin. Though not markedly original, he was 
a pleasing public speaker. His health was never 
robust. 

[The best sketch of Jackson is by Wilshire C. But¬ 
terfield in the Mag. of Western Hist., Jan. 1887. See 
also addresses by S. U. Pinney and J. H. Carpenter 
on presenting Jackson's portrait to the Wisconsin Su¬ 
preme Court, 80 Wis. Reports, xliii-xlviii; Proc. of the 
Thirty-seventh Ann. Meeting of the State Hist. Soc. of 
Wis. (1890); Wis. State Jour.. Oct. 14, 15, 1889.] 

J.S. 

JACKSON, PATRICK TRACY (Aug. 14, 
1780-Sept 12,1847), founder of cotton factories 
at Lowell, was bom at Newburyport, Mass., the 
youngest son of Jonathan and Hannah (Tracy) 
Jackson. James, 1777-1867, and Charles Jackson 
[qq.v.l were his brothers. His maternal grand¬ 
father, Patrick Tracy, had migrated penniless 
from Ireland, but had raised himself to a position 
of opulence and public esteem in the city of New¬ 
buryport. His father enjoyed a distinguished 
career as a member of the Continental Congress 
in 1782, supervisor of internal revenue for the 
Boston district, treasurer of Massachusetts, and 
treasurer of Harvard College. Educated in the 
Newburyport schools and at Dummer Academy, 
Jackson was apprenticed at the age of fifteen to 
William Bartlett, at that time the richest and 
most enterprising merchant of Newburyport. 
Skill and industry soon won him the confidence 
of his master and before he had reached the age 
of twenty he was dispatched as supercargo on a 
voyage to St. Thomas with authority superior 
to the captain. His success in this venture led 
his elder brother, Capt. Henry Jackson, to offer 
him in 1799 the position of captain’s clerk on his 
ship bound for the Far East, and Bartlett gen¬ 
erously relinquished his claims of apprenticeship 
to enable the boy to take advantage of the op¬ 
portunity. 

Following this trip Jackson took command of 
ship and cargo for three successive voyages, the 
last of which occupied four years and was com¬ 
pleted in 1808. Having accumulated some capi¬ 
tal, he retired from the sea and established him¬ 
self as a Boston merchant specializing in trade 
with the East and West Indies. Although he 
was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1811, by his 
energy and integrity in combination with his 
first-hand knowledge of trading conditions he 
was enabled eventually to amass a fortune and 
to win the confidence of his associates. His 
shipping interests were severely curtailed by the 
War of 1812, but he speedily found an outlet for 
his energy and organizing genius in the manu- 


Jackson 

facture of cotton. Shortly after the outbreak 
of the war his brother-in-law, Francis Cabot 
Lowell, returned from England full of enthusiasm 
for establishing a textile factory. Jackson was 
quickly won to the scheme and with Nathan Ap¬ 
pleton and a few close friends organized in 1813 
the Boston Manufacturing Company and built a 
mill on the Charles River at Waltham. It was 
in this mill that the machinery designed and 
built by Lowell and Paul Moody was set up and 
it was here that for the first time probably in the 
world all the operations for converting the raw 
cotton into the finished cloth were brought to¬ 
gether in one factory. Jackson was in immediate 
charge of the Waltham mills, and he speedily 
became so interested in textile manufacture that 
he relinquished his other projects. Aided by the 
tariff of 1816, the manufacturers extended their 
operations at Waltham to include the local power 
resources. In 1820 Jackson and his associates, 
in search of a location for further extensions, 
decided upon East Chelmsford on the Merrimac 
River. They purchased the land bordering the 
river, erected cotton factories, and christened 
the new community Lowell in honor of the origi¬ 
nator of the Waltham factory. Thus the “Man¬ 
chester of America” came into being. 

Jackson not only was the prime mover in the 
founding of the city of Lowell and the Merrimac 
Manufacturing Company, the first concern there, 
but he also established the Appleton Company 
and was interested in other local enterprises. 
The business at Lowell had so increased by 1830 
that the problem of communication was acute. 
Transportation facilities by way of the Middle¬ 
sex Canal and turnpike were inadequate and 
Jackson turned a ready ear to the reports of 
steam railways which came from England. 
Thoroughly convinced of the practicability of a 
steam railroad from Boston to Lowell, he finally 
won his friends to the feasibility of the project, 
and undertook to supervise personally the con¬ 
struction. His lack of engineering knowledge 
led him to act with deliberation and under the 
best advice obtainable, but it was his own fore¬ 
sight which led the company to lay a roadbed 
wide enough for double tracking. On the com¬ 
pletion of the Boston & Lowell railroad Jackson 
looked forward to a well-earned retirement when 
a sudden curtailment of his fortune through real- 
estate speculation forced him to engage even 
more actively in business. The construction of 
the Boston & Lowell railroad had necessitated 
the filling in of ten acres of swamp flats upon 
part of which the Boston station had been built. 
To obtain the gravel Jackson had purchased land 
on Pemberton Hill and, having leveled it, built 


552 



Jackson 

houses on Pemberton Square, Tremont Row, and 
Somerset Street, a speculation which quickly 
collapsed in the panic of 1837. The death in that 
year of Kirk Boott, perhaps the ablest of the 
early Lowell mill managers, and his own some¬ 
what straitened financial condition, led Jackson 
to take over again the active administration of 
several Lowell enterprises, which he conducted 
with undiminished brilliancy. This intense ac¬ 
tivity in his later years, however, told on his 
health and he was unable to resist an attack of 
dysentery which brought death at his seaside 
home at Beverly, Mass., in the summer of 1847. 
Spare but strong of frame, taller than the aver¬ 
age and with light hair and blue eyes, Jackson 
was a man of distinguished presence. From his 
Irish grandfather he inherited a quick temper 
but a cheerful and sympathetic disposition, a 
characteristic which won him many friends. He 
had married, Nov. 1, 1810, in Boston, Lydia 
Cabot by whom he had nine children. 

[J. A. Lowell, “The Late Patrick Tracy Jackson, 0 
the Merchants* Mag. and Commercial Rev., Apr. 1848, 
with engraving; J. J. Putnam, A Memoir of Dr. James 
Jackson (1905), ch, vi; E. C. and J. J. Putnam, The 
Hon. Jonathan Jackson and Hannah (Tracy) Jackson: 
Their Ancestors and Descendants (1907) ; Nathan Ap¬ 
pleton, Introduction of the Power Loom, and Origin of 
Lowell (1858) ; C. F. Ware, The Early New Eng. Cot - 
ton Manufacture (1931); Boston Courier, Sept. 14, 
i 847 «] H.U.F. 

JACKSON, SAMUEL (Mar. 22, 1787-Apr. 
S, 1872), physician, was the son of David Jack- 
son [( q.vJ\ and Susanna Kemper. As a boy he 
worked behind the counter of his father’s drug 
store. At the same time he attended school and 
in 1808 he graduated in medicine from the Uni¬ 
versity of Pennsylvania. Not at first successful 
in practice, he carried on his father’s drug busi¬ 
ness, though he hated it, for he had small apti¬ 
tude for affairs. During the War of 1812 he 
joined the first city troop of cavalry and took 
part in operations along the Chesapeake and in 
parts of Maryland. In 1815 he returned to the 
practice of medicine, gradually achieved suc¬ 
cess, and paid the debts on the drug business, 
which had meantime failed. He gained promi¬ 
nence during the yellow-fever epidemic as presi¬ 
dent of the Philadelphia department of health. 
In papers read before the Academy of Medicine 
he advanced the theory that the disease was in¬ 
digenous and associated with putrescent animal 
matter. He pointed out that patients did not in¬ 
fect their attendants and that the “black vomit” 
was hemorrhagic. In 1821 he aided in founding 
the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, became 
a member of its board of trustees, and from 1821 
to 1827 served as professor of materia medica 
and pharmacy. He was also connected with the 


Jackson 

Medical Institute of Philadelphia, which Na¬ 
thaniel Chapman [q.z'.] had established in 1817. 
In 1827 he was appointed assistant to Chapman 
in the University of Pennsylvania. There he 
taught the “institutes of medicine”—an old name 
for physiology. In 1835 a chair of the institutes 
was established and Jackson held it for twenty- 
eight years. For three years (1842-45), he 
taught in the wards of the Philadelphia Hospital. 

In 1822 Jackson was made attending physician 
of the Philadelphia Almshouse, a position which 
gave him wide opportunities for pathological re¬ 
search. Here he studied the use of auscultation, 
then a new diagnostic method, and checked his 
results by post-mortem examinations. In 1832, 
during an outbreak of Asiatic cholera, he was 
sent to Montreal to study the disease and diag¬ 
nosed it as malignant cholera. While in Canada 
he married the daughter of a British officer. Re¬ 
turning to Philadelphia, he took charge of a 
cholera hospital. He lived nine years after re¬ 
signing his chair in 1863. He was a teacher by 
temperament rather than an investigator or great 
practitioner. In person he was small and viva¬ 
cious, with a long narrow head and long light 
hair, twinkling gray eyes and a fascinating smile. 
Enthusiastic, losing himself completely in the 
excitement of a lecture, he spoke in a peculiar 
chirping voice, with quick nervous gestures, but 
held his hearers till the last word. He had a 
genius for friendship. He overcame many physi¬ 
cal difficulties, for he was never robust and dur¬ 
ing later life was almost crippled by neuritis or 
arthritis. He wrote The Principles of Medicine, 
Founded on the Structure and Functions of the 
Animal Organism (1832) and published numer¬ 
ous papers in the Philadelphia Journal of the 
Medical and Physical Sciences and in the Ameri¬ 
can Journal of the Medical Sciences . Three popu¬ 
lar remedies which were made according to his 
formulas were Jackson’s Pectoral Syrup, Jack¬ 
son’s Ammonia Lozenges, and Jackson’s Pec¬ 
toral and Ammonia Lozenges. 

[“Sketches of Eminent Living Physicians; No. XIV, 
Samuel Jackson, Boston Medic, and Surgic. 

Jour., Nov. 21, 1849 ; Jos. Carson, A Discourse Com¬ 
memorative of the Life and Character of Samuel Jack- 
son (18 72) ; J. W. England, ed.. The First Century of 
the Philo. Coll, of Pharmacy (19 22) ; Old Penn, Apr. 
9, 1910; Trans, of the Medic. Soc. of the State of Pa., 
vol. XII, pt. 2 (1879); A. C. P. Callisen, Medicinisches 
Schriftsteller-Lexicon, IX (1832), 345-48, XXIX 
(1841), 117; H. P. Jackson, The Geneal. of the Jackson 
Family (1890) ; S. W. and A. H. Gross, Autobiog. of 
Samuel D. Gross (2 vols., 1887); Medic . and Surgic . 
Reporter, Apr. 13, 20, 1872; PhUa. Medic . Times, May 
15, 1872; Press (Phila.), and Philo. Inquirer, Apr. 6, 
1872*] J.R.O. 

JACKSON, SAMUEL MACAULEY (June 
19, 1851-Aug. 2, 1912), Presbyterian clergy- 


553 



Jackson 

man, philanthropist, church historian, brother of 
George Thomas Jackson [g.z/.], was born in 
New York, the son of George T. Jackson, who 
came to New York from Dublin, Ireland, in 
1834, and was associated in business with Cor¬ 
nelius van Schaick Roosevelt, grandfather of 
President Roosevelt. His mother was Letitia 
Jane Aiken Macauley, daughter of Samuel Ma- 
cauley, a New York physician of Irish birth. 
Educated in the public schools and the college of 
the City of New York (A.B. 1870; A.M. 1876), 
he prepared for the ministry in Princeton Theo¬ 
logical Seminary, 1870-71, and Union Theologi¬ 
cal Seminary, New York, 1871-73. The interest 
in church history wakened by the teaching of 
Henry Boynton Smith and Philip Schaff lqq.vJ\ 
of the Union faculty led him to further study in 
the universities of Leipzig and Berlin, with 
travel in Palestine, 1873-75. He was ordained 
May 30, 1876, and became pastor of the Pres¬ 
byterian Church in Norwood, N. J. For the 
pastoral office he was richly qualified by en¬ 
thusiastic faith and buoyant friendliness, but 
diffidence in public situations and a lack of art 
in discourse led him to resign his ministry in 
1880. 

Returning to New York he gave himself to 
social Christian activity and the promotion of 
historical scholarship, devoting to these causes 
painstaking labor and generous gifts from his 
private means. From 1885 he served the Char¬ 
ity Organization Society in various capacities 
and for the last nine years of his life was its 
vice-president. Convinced that poverty and 
crime were closely related, he became recording 
secretary of the Prison Association of the State 
of New York and by his liberal gifts of money 
secured the classification of its extensive collec¬ 
tion of penological literature. To serve these 
cherished purposes he edited nine volumes of 
useful Handbooks for Practical Workers in 
Church and Philanthropy (1898-1904) and 
served as teacher in the Amity school for Chris¬ 
tian workers. The cause of foreign missions also 
claimed him. Hoping for a complete history of 
missions in English and having made a mission¬ 
ary bibliography with more than 5,000 titles, he 
printed a selection of these in the Report of the 
Centenary Conference on the Protestant Mis¬ 
sions of the World . . 1888 (2 vols., London, 

1889), and later with the cooperation of Rev. 
George Gilmore furnished an enlarged and clas¬ 
sified list to E. M. Bliss's Encyclopaedia of Mis¬ 
sions (1891, vol. I, Appendix). Elected to the 
board of trustees of Canton (China) Christian 
College, now Lingnam University, May 28,1901, 
he served henceforth on its faculty committee 


Jackson 

and from Apr. 15, 1905, to his death was presi- 
dent of the board. Always a ready contributor 
to the expenses of the College, he finally erected 
Jackson Hall as a residence for its president and 
provided in his will a legacy of $5,000. 

As may be seen by his appreciation of SchafFs 
zeal for Christian philanthropy, Christian union, 
and theological scholarship ( New York Evan¬ 
gelist, Oct. 26,1893), Jackson was a devoted dis¬ 
ciple of that eminent teacher. Many of SchafFs 
projects were realized through him. For Schaff 
he prepared the material for a Dictionary of 
the Bible (1880), and he was associate editor 
with Schaff in producing A Religious Encyclo¬ 
pedia: or Dictionary of Biblical, Historical , 
Doctrinal, and Practical Theology (3 vols., 
1882-84), better known as the “Schaff-Herzog 
Encyclopaedia.” He executed SchafFs plan of 
a supplementary Encyclopedia of Living Di¬ 
vines (1887) and as editor-in-chief brought to 
pass the more elaborate New Schaff-Herzog 
Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (13 vols., 
1908-14). In New York University, where he 
himself, dispensing with salary, served as pro¬ 
fessor of church history from 1895 to his death, 
he commemorated his revered master by endow¬ 
ing a Philip Schaff lectureship. 

Independently, and with financial loss, Jack- 
son produced in 1889 a Concise Dictionary of 
Religious Knowledge (rev. ed., 1891; 3rd ed., 
1898). He was editor for religious literature in 
Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia (1893-95, 1897 
ff.) and for Protestant theology and religious 
biography in the New International Encyclo¬ 
pedia (1902-05). He defined church terms 
for the Standard Dictionary (1895) and the 
New International Dictionary (1900). Without 
thought of compensation he edited for the Hu¬ 
guenot Society of America several volumes of 
their publication, and to the American Society 
of Church History he was even more generous. 
He was its secretary, conducted its correspond¬ 
ence, made its programs, edited its Papers, 
paid some of its deficits, and joyously provided 
luncheon and dinner for its annual sessions. He 
was one of the editors of the American Church 
History Series (13 vols., 1893-97) and con¬ 
tributed “A Bibliography of American Church 
History” to Volume XII (1894). In 1895 he 
projected the important series on “Heroes of the 
Reformation,” and for this at once began his 
own biography of Zwingli. This volume, Hid- 
dreich Zwingli, the Reformer of German Switz¬ 
erland, his chief production, wrought with mi¬ 
nute care and critical accuracy, appeared in 1901. 
To make Zwingli's works accessible in English 
he planned with the assistance of other scholars 


554 



Jackson 

a translation of Zwingli’s writings in six vol¬ 
umes, omitting the Bible commentaries. A vol¬ 
ume of Selected Works of Huldreich Zwingli 
was published in 1901, and in the spring of 1912 
he brought out the first volume The Latin Works 
and the Correspondence of Huldreich Zwingli 
Since he was bearing the cost of production, his 
death from pernicious anasmia in the following 
summer halted further publication for ten years; 
but the work was later carried on by others; a 
second volume appeared in 1922 and a third, in 
1929. Shortly before his death he wrote for his 
expected address as president of the American 
Society of Church History a discourse on “Ser- 
vatus Lupus, a Humanist of the Ninth Century.” 
This is found in the Society's Papers (2 ser., 
vol. IV, 1914). The final benefaction of the 
warm-hearted lover of learning was the gift to 
Union Seminary of his ample collection of Ref¬ 
ormation literature. 

He lived unmarried, with modest outlay save 
for learning and the social good. He was a man 
of handsome presence, radiant with smiling cor¬ 
diality. His ardent religious faith interposed no 
barrier from men of other creeds. 

[Memorial addresses by W. W. Rockwell, D. S. 
Schaff, and J. I. Good, in Papers of the American So¬ 
ciety of Church History, 2 ser., IV (1914) ; Necrolog¬ 
ical Report . . . Princeton Theol. Sem., 1913; Alumni 
Cat., Union Theol. Sem. (1926); Who's Who in Amer¬ 
ica, 1912-13; N. Y. Times, Aug. 3, 4, 1912.] 

F.A.C. 

JACKSON, SHELDON (May 18, 1834-May 
2, 1909), missionary, was born at Minaville, 
N. Y., the son of Samuel Clinton Jackson, whose 
father was a native of England, and of Delia 
(Sheldon) Jackson. The atmosphere of his 
childhood home was one of refinement of man¬ 
ner and culture of mind, with profound religious 
convictions dominating all; in his earliest in¬ 
fancy his parents consecrated him to a life of 
service as a missionary. He began his education 
at a district school, went to an academy at Glens 
Falls, N. Y., for one year, then transferred to 
a Presbyterian academy near Hayesville, Ohio, 
where he continued till he was far enough ad¬ 
vanced to enter the sophomore class at Union 
College, Schenectady, N. Y. Graduating in the 
spring of 1855, he entered Princeton Theological 
Seminary in the autumn, graduated Apr. 27, 
1858, and was ordained to the ministry May 5, 
1858, by the Presbytery of Albany, N. Y. A 
fortnight later he married Mary Voorhees, and 
on Oct. 6 of the same year began his missionary 
career in a school for Choctaw boys at Spencer, 
Indian Territory. 

The following year he was transferred to Min¬ 
nesota, where he labored until 1864, spending 


Jackson 

some time in the summer of 1863 as an agent of 
the United States Christian Commission with 
the Army of the Cumberland. He held a pas¬ 
torate at Rochester, Minn., 1864-69, but in 1870 
returned to the home mission field, becoming 
superintendent for the Board of Home Missions 
in the area which includes Montana, Wyoming, 
Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. To 
this region he devoted twelve years of painstak¬ 
ing pioneering, ministering alike to Indians and 
whites, as he laid the spiritual foundations on 
which scores of rising communities should later 
build enduring structures. For ten years, 1872- 
82, he edited the Rocky Mountain Presbyterian , 
forerunner of the Presbyterian Home Mission¬ 
ary. In 1877 he visited Alaska with a view to 
establishing missions there, and in 1884, after 
two years in New York as business manager 
for the Board of Home Missions, he returned 
to Alaska as superintendent. On Apr. 11, 1885, 
he was appointed, under the federal government, 
the first superintendent of public instruction for 
Alaska, in which capacity he served until the 
end of his life. 

His achievements in the Rocky Mountain 
states, both as pioneer missionary and as execu¬ 
tive, were more than duplicated in the northern 
Territory. At as early a date as was possible 
with the hindering modes of transportation there 
prevailing, he made careful exploration and sur¬ 
vey of the vast new country's resources and most 
immediate needs. Schools were set up in all 
centers of population as rapidly as physical 
equipment and teachers could be made available. 
He early planned to relieve the starving condi¬ 
tion of the Eskimos by inducing the federal gov¬ 
ernment to plant domesticated reindeer in the far 
North—to replace the wasted and lost food sup¬ 
plies of earlier days, such as the caribou, salm¬ 
on, whale, and walrus, and to set the Eskimos 
in the way of self improvement. Bitter, even 
violent, opposition rose against both his educa¬ 
tional and his industrial plans; but after many 
hardships and discouragements his plans were 
approved, financed, and set in operation. Be¬ 
cause of prolonged storms, the first sixteen rein¬ 
deer he purchased in Siberia were landed in 
1891 on Unalaska, one of the largest islands of 
the Aleutian group. On July 4, 1892, he began 
to land the first herd of domesticated reindeer 
(fifty-three in number) ever brought to the 
mainland of Alaska. In all, 1,280 reindeer were 
purchased before the various ranges were sat¬ 
isfactorily stocked, and from this nucleus has 
developed an industry which, in 1928, reported 
675,000 head of reindeer in its several herds. In 
connection with his work in the North, Jackson 


555 



Jackson 

published Alaska, and Missions on the North 
Pacific Coast (1880), The Presbyterian Church 
in Alaska, An Official Sketch of its Rise and 
Progress, 1877-84 (1886), Introduction of Rein¬ 
deer into Alaska . . . 1890 (1890) and subse¬ 
quent reports, and the sections on reindeer and 
on education in Seal and Salmon Fisheries and 
General Resources of Alaska (1898), vol. III. 
From 1887 to 1897 he edited the North Star, of 
Sitka. In May 1897 he was elected moderator 
of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian 
Church, the highest honor his denomination can 
confer. 

Sheldon Jackson, as an academy and college 
student, was noted by his associates for his di¬ 
minutive stature and his full-grown determina¬ 
tion to master every task set before him, not¬ 
withstanding his handicap of weak eyes and fre¬ 
quent attacks of illness. A rugged life in the 
open, after he had concluded student days and 
removed to the West, soon gave to his slight 
body a sturdiness quite in keeping with the great 
heart and humanitarian ambition of the man. 
In the fortieth year of his strenuous activities 
in the Rocky Mountain states and in Alaska, a 
newspaper correspondent characterized him as 
“short, bewhiskered, and bespectacled. By in¬ 
side measurement a giant” (Stewart, post, p. 
31). Devoted to his work until the end, he de¬ 
livered his last address in the interest of Alaska 
a few days before undergoing an operation from 
which he did not recover. He died at Asheville, 
N. C., shortly before his seventy-fifth birthday. 

[R. L. Stewart, Sheldon Jackson (1908); J. T. Fans, 
The Alaskan Pathfinder (1913); Necrological Report 
.. . of Princeton Theol. Sem., 1910; A, V. Raymond, 
Union Univ . (1907), vol. II; L. D. Henderson, Alaska 
(1928) ; Who's Who in America, 1908-09 ; Home Mis¬ 
sion Monthly, July, Sept. 1909; Asheville Gasette 
News, May 3, 1909.] R.J.D. 

JACKSON, THOMAS JONATHAN (Jan. 
21, 1824-May 10, 1863), best known as “Stone¬ 
wall” Jackson, Confederate soldier, was born 
at Clarksburg, Va. (now W. Va.). His great¬ 
grandfather, John Jackson, who came to Amer¬ 
ica in 1748 and finally settled in western Vir¬ 
ginia, though born in England was of Scotch- 
Irish stock. Thomas was the second son and 
the third of four children of Jonathan Jackson, 
a lawyer, and Julia Beckwith (Neale) Jackson, 
and, as his parents died in poverty during his 
early childhood, he was reared by his uncle, 
Cummins E. Jackson. He himself added the 
name Jonathan when nearly grown. Entering 
West Point in July 1842, much handicapped by 
a poor preliminary education, he “studied very 
hard,” by his own admission, “for what he got,” 
and was so engrossed in his work that he said 


Jackson 

afterward he did not remember having spoken 
to a single woman during his whole cadetship; 
but he rose steadily in his grades, year by year, 
and in 1846 graduated seventeenth in a class of 
fifty-nine that included G. B. McClellan, A. P. 
Hill, and others of scarcely less subsequent dis¬ 
tinction. Sent almost immediately to Mexico, 
he was distinguished at Vera Cruz, at Cerro 
Gordo, and at Chapultepec, became a major by 
brevet within eighteen months after graduation, 
and was publicly complimented by General 
Scott. Returning to the United States in 1848, 
he served at Fort Columbus (1848) and Fort 
Hamilton (1849-51), N. Y., and was sent to 
Florida in the latter year, but accepted the pro¬ 
fessorship of artillery tactics and natural phi¬ 
losophy at the Virginia Military Institute, Lex¬ 
ington, Va., in 1851, and resigned from the army, 
effective Feb. 29, 1852. 

Jackson was not especially successful as a 
teacher and was the butt of many a cadet joke. 
While at Lexington he found his chief satisfac¬ 
tions in travel, in the fellowship of the Presby¬ 
terian church, and in a very sunny domestic life. 
His first wife, Eleanor Junkin, died in the fall 
of 1854, fourteen months after she wedded him, 
and on July 16, 1857, he married Mary Anna 
Morrison. Both his wives were the daughters 
of Presbyterian ministers. He often spent his 
summer vacations in the North and in 1856 trav¬ 
eled five months in Europe, where he seems to 
have been more interested in scenery and art 
than in the military establishments of the great 
powers. He had no part in public affairs prior 
to the Civil War, beyond that of commanding 
the cadet corps at the hanging of John Brown, 
on Dec. 2, 1859. A Democrat and the owner of 
a few slaves, most of whom he bought at their 
own request, he deplored the prospect of war, 
which he described as the “sum of all evils.” 

Ordered to Richmond on Apr. 21, 1861, with 
part of the cadet corps, Jackson was so little 
known that when his name was presented for 
a commission a member of the Virginia conven¬ 
tion inquired, “Who is this Major Jackson?” 
He was soon sent to Harper’s Ferry as colonel 
of infantry, and on June 17,1861, was made brig¬ 
adier-general. Having brought his command to 
high efficiency, he moved it with the rest of 
Gen. Joseph E. Johnston’s army to the battle¬ 
field of Bull Run, where it steadfastly sustained 
the Federal onslaught at a critical moment. 
“There is Jackson standing like a stone wall,” 
cried Brig.-Gen. Barnard E. Bee, as his own 
troops retreated ( Charleston Mercury, July 25, 
1861). This incident gave Jackson his sobri¬ 
quet of “Stonewall,” which he always insisted 


556 



Jackson 

Bee had intended to apply to his brigade and 
not to him personally. With prestige much in¬ 
creased by this battle, Jackson became a major- 
general on Oct. 7, 1861, and on Nov. 5 assumed 
command in the Shenandoah Valley, a district 
of the Department of Northern Virginia. The 
next few months added nothing to his reputa¬ 
tion. An unsuccessful raid against Romney in 
January 1862, conducted in bitter weather, was 
followed by a controversy with Brig.-Gen. W. 
W. Loring, who insisted that Jackson had spared 
his own troops and had put the burden of out¬ 
post duty on Loring’s command. Jackson imme¬ 
diately preferred charges against Loring and 
sought to bring him before a court martial. 

On Mar. 8-9, Johnston evacuated Manassas, 
retreating to the line of the Rappahannock, and 
thereby forced Jackson, most unwillingly, to 
abandon Winchester on Mar. 11. This move 
was the beginning of the Valley campaign of 
1862, which many critics regard as the most 
remarkable display of strategic science, based 
on accurate reasoning, correct anticipation of 
the enemy's plans, rapid marches, and judicious 
disposition of an inferior force, in all American 
military history. Marching up the Valley, Jack- 
son turned on his pursuer, Maj.-Gen. James 
Shields, under a misapprehension of the Federal 
strength, and was repulsed with heavy losses at 
Kernstown, near Winchester, on Mar. 23. This 
engagement was accounted a defeat for Jackson, 
and as it followed quickly on the Romney expe¬ 
dition it destroyed the fame he had gained at 
First Manassas (Bull Run). Rumor spread that 
he was dangerously reckless and that he became 
insane when excited. It was not until the cam¬ 
paign had developed further that the Confeder¬ 
acy realized how his daring attack on Shields 
had alarmed the Federals and had led to the re¬ 
tention in northern and western Virginia of 
troops that otherwise would have strengthened 
McClellan in his attack on Richmond. 

From Apr. 17 to May 12, 1862, Jackson's 
movements were under the supervision of Rob¬ 
ert E. Lee. The two had known each other since 
the Mexican War. Lee had recommended 
Jackson for the post at Lexington and probably 
was responsible for sending him to Harper’s 
Ferry. In perfect understanding, they devel¬ 
oped a plan to attack Brig.-Gen. N. P. Banks 
and thereby prevent the dispatch of troops from 
Banks to McDowell, who was preparing to move 
southward from Fredericksburg to join Mc¬ 
Clellan in front of Richmond. As a preliminary, 
Jackson attacked Milroy, commanding a part of 
Fremont’s army, at McDowell, west of Staun¬ 
ton, on May 8. Before the situation had cleared 


Jackson 

up after this minor engagement, Gen. Joseph E. 
Johnston, who had then brought his army close 
to Richmond, resumed his direction of Jackson’s 
movement. Fearing that Banks was too strong¬ 
ly entrenched at Strasburg to be attacked, John¬ 
ston ordered part of Jackson’s army from the 
Valley, but Jackson saw his opportunity and ap¬ 
pealed to Richmond. This was the real crisis of 
the campaign. Lee approved a continuance of 
the offensive, Jackson moved rapidly down the 
Valley, struck Banks at Front Royal on May 23, 
and on May 24-25 drove him through Winches¬ 
ter and to the Potomac. The Lincoln adminis¬ 
tration at once took alarm for the safety of 
Washington and suspended the southward march 
of McDowell, who was expected to unite with 
McClellan in overwhelming Johnston near Rich¬ 
mond. In its effects, this probably was Jack¬ 
son’s greatest single contribution to the South¬ 
ern cause. 

After pursuing Banks to the Potomac, Jack- 
son was forced immediately to withdraw up the 
Valley to protect his rear, threatened by Shields 
from the east and by Fremont from the west 
Although the line of the retreat of his 16,000 
men was the objective of 62,000 Federals, Jack- 
son escaped by rapid marching, and when he 
had drawn the enemy to a favorable position he 
prepared to attack his pursuers separately. His 
margin of time was the narrowest, for Fremont 
was advancing down the Valley west of the 
Massanutton Mountains and Shields’s division 
was strung out from Luray southward. Taking 
advantage of the ground, Ewell checked Fre¬ 
mont at Cross Keys on June 8, and the next day 
Jackson successfully attacked Shields’s advanced 
guard at Port Republic and hurled it back. This 
was perhaps Jackson’s most brilliant battle tac¬ 
tically and it disclosed for the first time his great 
skill in making rapid dispositions in the face 
of the enemy. These two actions are better 
known than the battle of Winchester and they 
virtually paralyzed action by the divided Fed¬ 
erals in Jackson’s front, but the effects of these 
two onslaughts were hardly as great as those 
that followed the operations of May 23-25. The 
great object of Jackson’s campaign, which was 
to prevent the dispatch of troops from northern 
Virginia to the Richmond front, had already 
been accomplished. 

The withdrawal of Shields and Fremont end¬ 
ed the Valley campaign. Lee, meantime, had 
succeeded Johnston in command of the forces 
around Richmond, which now became known 
as the Army of Northern Virginia. His first 
plan was to reenforce Jackson with troops from 
the Carolinas and Georgia for a march into 


557 



Jackson 

Pennsylvania, in the hope that this would draw 
the Union armies from Richmond and the South 
Atlantic seaboard, but the exposed states would 
not consent to the transfer of the required troops. 
Lee had accordingly to substitute a second plan, 
involving a more limited offensive in the Valley 
with a subsequent rapid movement of Jackson's 
army to Richmond. To this end, Lawton's bri¬ 
gade from Georgia and eight regiments under 
Whiting from the Army of Northern Virginia 
were sent to Jackson on June 8-11, 1862. The 
Federals, however, had retreated too fast and 
too far for this offensive to be completed in the 
time Lee could allow. He accordingly ordered 
Jackson to Richmond with nearly the whole of 
his force and detrained him at Fredericks Hall 
on June 23 in order to employ him in the Seven 
Days' Campaign. Jackson, unfortunately, was 
in a strange country and was physically worn 
down from lack of sleep, on which he was very 
dependent. His march on June 26 was slow 
and was so obstructed by the enemy that he did 
not execute Lee's plan to turn Beaver Dam 
Creek, thereby causing delay and a costly, futile 
assault on Fitzjohn Porter by A. P. Hill. At 
Gaines's Mill on June 27 Jackson's troops fought 
well, and on the 29th they were sent in pursuit 
of McClellan, who was changing his base from 
the Pamunkey to the James. Jackson slept lit¬ 
tle during this pursuit and on June 30, when he 
arrived at White Oak Swamp, he was so close 
to physical collapse that his mind did not func¬ 
tion with its usual military precision and he did 
not attempt to take a position no stronger than 
several he successfully stormed when in good 
physical condition. His failure to cross the 
swamp that day contributed materially to the 
disruption of Lee's elaborate plan for the envel¬ 
opment of McClellan by simultaneous conver¬ 
gence at Glendale on June 30. In the battle of 
Malvern Hill on July 1, the final action of the 
campaign, Jackson had no conspicuous part. 

On July 13, Jackson was detached and moved 
to Gordonsville, whence his 24,000 men advanced 
to Cedar Run and fought an inconclusive en¬ 
gagement with Pope’s army on Aug. 9. Lee soon 
joined him and planned for Aug. 18 an offensive 
that was delayed by a series of mishaps. On 
Aug. 24, at a conference between them, a deci¬ 
sion was reached to divide the army temporarily 
and to send Jackson by way of Thoroughfare 
Gap to Manassas Junction, Pope's advanced 
base. Jackson at once began the most famous 
of all his marches and covered fifty-one miles in 
two days with 20,000 men. He destroyed the 
enemy's base on Aug. 27, and then retired to a 
well-chosen position at Groveton, six miles 


Jackson 

northwest of Manassas, there to hold the Fed¬ 
erals at bay until Longstreet could join him. On 
the 28th and 29th, most admirably feeding in his 
reserves as needed, Jackson fought a stubborn 
action, beat off all attacks and on Aug. 30-31 
was still strong enough to share in the offensive 
by which Pope was driven back to the Wash¬ 
ington defenses (Second Bull Run). “Neither 
strategically nor tactically did . . . [Jackson] 
make a single mistake" in this daring campaign 
(Henderson, post , II, 235). To him, more than 
to any of his lieutenants, Lee owed the success of 
a turning movement that enabled him to con¬ 
tinue the offensive and to carry the war into the 
enemy's country. 

By this time, Jackson had become a Southern 
hero, and his “foot cavalry,” as his fast-march¬ 
ing infantry was called, was the most famous of 
Confederate commands. Although he shunned 
all display and did nothing to evoke the causerie 
de bivouac that Napoleon regarded as almost es¬ 
sential to a general's success in creating morale, 
Jackson had personal peculiarities that lent 
themselves to legend. At thirty-eight he was 
“Old Jack” to his adoring soldiers, who cheered 
him tumultuously whenever they saw him, and 
magnified his every eccentricity. He wore a 
weather-beaten cap and gigantic boots, with the 
plainest of uniforms. Riding an ugly horse at 
the head of his column, and often mud-spattered, 
he frequently was seen to lift one of his arms to 
its full length above his head, as if invoking di¬ 
vine blessing, though actually the gesture had 
its origin in nothing more significant than a be¬ 
lief that the arm was contracting and needed to 
be stretched. His religious impulses were known 
throughout the army. On the eve of battle, he 
would rise several times during the night for 
prayer, and he was so strict in his observance 
of the Sabbath that he would not even write a 
letter to his wife when he thought it would travel 
in the mails on Sunday. His favorite company 
was that of Presbyterian divines; his chosen 
topic of conversation was theology. Stern and 
exacting in discipline, he was uncommunicative 
in his dealings with his subordinates. The great¬ 
er their responsibility, the more he demanded of 
them. Ewell said, “I never saw one of Jackson's 
couriers approach without expecting an order 
to assault the North Pole” (Henderson, I, 438), 
and this officer, his most trusted lieutenant, was 
firmly convinced that Jackson was insane. In 
action, his eyes, which normally were somewhat 
dreamy, would blaze with excitement, and until 
the Second Manassas campaign he was sus¬ 
pected of undue fondness for playing a lone 
hand. He was absolutely loyal to Lee, however, 


558 



Jackson 

whom he professed himself willing to “follow 
blindfolded.” 

During the advance into Maryland in 1862, 
Jackson led Lee's advanced guard, captured 
Harper's Ferry and 12,520 prisoners on Sept. 
15, and shared in the bloody action at Sharps- 
burg (Antietam) on Sept. 17. He again dis¬ 
tinguished himself at the battle of Fredericks¬ 
burg, Dec. 13. Meantime, on Oct. 10, he had 
been promoted lieutenant-general and had been 
given command of the second of the two corps 
into which the Army of Northern Virginia had 
been divided. Wintering at Moss Neck, eleven 
miles down the Rappahannock from Fredericks¬ 
burg, Jackson prepared his reports of the oper¬ 
ations subsequent to Kernstown and, in April, 
had a short visit from his wife and her infant 
daughter, Julia, whom he had never seen. 

On Apr. 29 he was called away by the news 
that the Federal army, 130,000 strong, was 
crossing the Rappahannock above and below 
Fredericksburg in an effort to double up both 
flanks of Lee's army of 62,000. Leaving 10,000 
of his 37,000 men to hold off the Federal left 
wing under Sedgwick, Jackson moved west¬ 
ward into the Wilderness of Spotsylvania on 
Apr. 30 to join Lee who was facing Hooker's 
main army, advancing down the Rappahannock 
toward Fredericksburg. On May 1 the advanced 
guard of the Union forces was driven back to 
a strong position near Chancellorsville. That 
night Lee and Jackson had a conference at which 
it was decided to follow much the same strategy 
as had been employed at Second Manassas, and 
to leave 14,000 men in Hooker's front while 
Jackson proceeded to the rear of the enemy. Be¬ 
fore daylight on May 2 Jackson began the last 
of his great marches, one of the most effec¬ 
tive operations of its kind in the history of war. 
Near sunset, in a most dramatic setting, Jack- 
son struck the rear of the Union right, com¬ 
pletely routed the XI Corps, which was un¬ 
aware of his presence, and so threatened Hook¬ 
er's line that a retreat across the Rappahannock 
became inevitable. In the twilight, returning 
from the front, Jackson was severely wounded 
by the fire of his own men and died of pneumonia 
at Guiney's Station, south of Fredericksburg, 
May 10. His body was carried to Richmond, 
where it lay in state, and thence to Lexington, 
Va., where it was interred and has since rested. 

“I know not how to replace him/' Lee wrote 
in absolute truth, giving Jackson full credit for 
what was, perhaps, the most spectacular victory 
of Lee's career. The Army of Northern Vir¬ 
ginia was never the same after Jackson's death, 
and, though Lee conducted in 1864 some of his 


Jackson 

most brilliant maneuvers, he did not find another 
lieutenant who so well understood him or could 
execute his orders with such powerful, perfectly 
coordinated, hammer-strokes of attack. In any 
list of the half-dozen greatest American soldiers, 
Jackson is included by virtually all critics, 
though his career of field-service in the Con¬ 
federate Army was limited to less than twenty- 
five months and his opportunities for independ¬ 
ent command were few and brief. President 
Davis apparently never considered the dispatch 
of Jackson to Tennessee, where strategy of his 
type might have changed the course of the war. 

In person, Jackson was of medium height and 
somewhat thin, with large hands and feet. He 
was an excellent though not a graceful horse¬ 
man. His stride was long and rapid; his voice 
was low; his manner, most affectionate in pri¬ 
vate life, was simple but grave and slightly stiff 
in public; in address he was modest and in con¬ 
versation he was not brilliant or magnetic. His 
military reading, which was not particularly 
wide, centered about Napoleon. It is possible 
that his study of Napoleon had been exagger¬ 
ated. His copy of Napoleon's Maxims of War, 
which was in his haversack at the time he was 
wounded, does not appear to have been consult¬ 
ed often or read closely. 

[Of numerous early lives of Jackson, the only one 
of permanent historical value is that by his adjutant- 
general, R. L. Dabney, Life of Lieut.-Gen. Thos. J. 
Jackson ( 2 vols., 1864-66). The standard work is G. F. 
R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the Am. Civil 
War (2 vols., 1898), one of the most fascinating of 
military biographies. Particular aspects of his cam¬ 
paigns and career were dealt with by his surgeon, H. 
M. McGuire, in Sou. Hist. Sac. Papers, XIV (1886), 
XIX (1891), XXV (1897) J and by one of his aides, 
Jas. P. Smith, in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 
III (1888), Religious Character of Stonewall Jackson 
(1897), Stonewall Jackson and Chancellorsville (1904), 
and in Sou. Hist . Soc. Papers, XLIII (1920). His 
private life and correspondence are presented in the 
book by his wife, Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of 
Stonewall Jackson (1895). T, J. Arnold, Early Life 
and Letters of Gen. Thos. J. Jackson (1916), and R. 
B. Cook, Family and Early Life of Stonewall Jackson 
(1924), give much new detail on his youth. Next to 
Henderson, the best study of his operations in 1862 is 
Wo. Allan, Hist, of the Campaign of Gen. T. J. 
(1 Stonewall ) Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley of Va. 
(1880). His principal reports are in War of the Re¬ 
bellion: Official Records (Army), 1 ser., vols. II, V, 
XI, pt. 2, XII, pts. 1, 2, XIX, pt 1, XXI. The reports 
of Chancellorsville are in vol. XXV, pt. 1. The “Cor¬ 
respondence” volumes bearing the same numbers con¬ 
tain his dispatches. There is an obituary in Richmond 
Sentinel, May 11, 1863. Many of his relics are at the 
V. M. I., Lexington, Va.; some of them and his sword 
are in the Confederate Museum, Richmond. The rain¬ 
coat in which he was shot at Chancellorsville is in the 
museum at Edinburgh, Scotland. His horse, “Little Sor¬ 
rel,” mounted by a taxidermist, is in the museum of 
Lee Camp Soldiers' Home, Richmond, Va.] 

D.S.F. 

JACKSON, WILLIAM (Mar. 9, 1759-Dec. 
18, 1828), soldier, secretary, was bom in Cum- 


559 



Jackson 

berland, England, of English and Scotch parent¬ 
age. Left an orphan in early youth, he was 
brought to South Carolina, where he grew up 
under the guardianship of Owen Roberts. The 
orthodox education of a gentleman's son and the 
influence of Charleston society developed a per¬ 
sonality which gained and held for him, through¬ 
out life, the friendship of such diverse charac¬ 
ters as Washington, Hamilton, John Laurens, 
and Benjamin Lincoln. At the outbreak of the 
Revolutionary War, Jackson obtained a subal¬ 
tern's commission in Gadsden's regiment and in 
1778 took part, as a lieutenant, in the abortive 
expedition against St. Augustine, Fla. On the 
arrival of Major-General Benjamin Lincoln to 
take command of the Southern Department, 
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney recommended 
Jackson as an aide and a proper person to smooth 
the contacts between the New Englander and 
the southern military organizations. As Lin¬ 
coln's aide, Jackson's staff rank became that of 
major, the title by which he was ever afterwards 
known. He was under fire at Tullifiny Bridge, 
at Stono Ferry, and at Savannah, and made the 
last reckless sortie during the siege of Charles¬ 
ton, with the force under Laurens and Hender¬ 
son. He accompanied John Laurens to France, 
as secretary, on the mission of 1781 and in the 
resultant difficulties made hurried journeys from 
France to Holland and to Spain which amounted 
to a total of 2,300 miles in a few weeks. Jackson 
was entrusted with the shipment of the supplies 
for the Continental Army obtained by Laurens' 
activities and in the accomplishment of this task 
came into conflict with Commodore Alexander 
Gillon and Benjamin Franklin [ qq.v .], to the 
second of whom he afterwards apologized. On 
his return to the United States in February 1782, 
he was taken into the War Department by Gen¬ 
eral Lincoln, then secretary at war, and served 
as assistant secretary for two years. During 
that time he helped settle the mutinous outbreak 
of the Pennsylvania troops in June 1783. He 
resigned from the department in October of that 
year to embark upon a mercantile venture to 
Europe, the success of which brought a con¬ 
gratulatory letter from Lincoln with a warning 
against losing his profits through careless gen¬ 
erosity. When the Constitutional Convention 
met in Philadelphia in 1787, Jackson applied to 
Washington for the position of secretary and 
was nominated therefor by Alexander Hamilton; 
his only competitor was William Temple Frank¬ 
lin. At the close of the Convention the records 
were burnt by its order, except the journal of 
proceedings and the yea and nay votes. These, 
in Jackson's handwriting, are the only official 


Jackson 

surviving papers and are both disappointing and 
exasperating because of their paucity and de¬ 
fects. The tradition that Jackson kept a daily 
private record has not been substantiated as yet 
by the discovery of such a document, and stu¬ 
dents of the Constitutional Convention have been 
severe in their strictures on the secretary's lax¬ 
ity; but in the absence of knowledge of the 
supplemental value of the records officially de¬ 
stroyed, these strictures lose some force. Ad¬ 
mitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1788, Jackson 
in the following year was an unsuccessful candi¬ 
date for the office of secretary of the United 
States Senate against Samuel Allyne Otis. 
Washington then appointed him one of his per¬ 
sonal secretaries and, as such, Jackson in full 
uniform attended the President when he de¬ 
livered his first message to Congress. He ac¬ 
companied Washington on tours through the 
Eastern and Southern States and resigned his 
secretaryship in December 1791. The Presi¬ 
dent’s letter, accepting the resignation, shows 
high personal regard and liking for the Major, 
to whom he offered, a year later, the position of 
adjutant-general of the United States Army. 
This was declined, and Jackson formed a busi¬ 
ness partnership with William Bingham. He 
married, Nov. 11, 1795, Elizabeth Willing of 
Philadelphia, daughter of Thomas Willing, 
president of the Bank of North America. In 
August of this year, when Secretary Dandridge 
was unexpectedly called from Philadelphia, 
Jackson volunteered his services to the Presi¬ 
dent and one of Washington's last official acts 
was to appoint the Major United States surveyor 
of customs at Philadelphia, a post which he 
held until he fell victim to Jefferson's sweep of 
Federalists from the government service. Jack- 
son then edited for a time the Political & Com¬ 
mercial Register of Philadelphia. He was secre¬ 
tary of the Society of the Cincinnati for a period 
of twenty-eight years before his death, and 
in 1818-19 he was delegated by the surviving 
officers of the old Continental Army to obtain 
for them an equitable adjustment of their prom¬ 
ised half pay. This was the last of his public 
activities. He died in 1828 and was buried in 
Christ Church cemetery, Philadelphia. 

Jackson published An Oration, to Commem¬ 
orate the Independence of the United States 
(1786), Eidogium on the Character of General 
Washington (1800), and Documents Relative to 
the Claim of Surviving Officers of the Revolu¬ 
tionary Army of the United States, For an Equi¬ 
table Settlement of the Half Pay for Life (1818), 
all of which contain valuable historical material. 

[The best account of Jackson's life is in the Pemsyl- 


560 



Jackson 

Vania Magazine of History and Biography, vol. II 
(1878), but this is deficient in important particulars. The 
American Historical Review, April 1904, prints Jack¬ 
son's letter of 1794 describing conditions in France. 
Journals of the Continental Congress (L. C. edition), 
1780-83, contain valuable references, further elabo¬ 
rated by the Papers of the Continental Congress (MS.). 
The Washington and Franklin MSS. in the Library of 
Congress supply the larger part of the biographical 
coloring. The Jackson MSS. are deposited with the 
Historical Society of Pennsylvania. For obituaries see 
Aurora and Pennsylvania Gazette (Phila.), Dec. 20, 
1828; Poulson’s Am. Daily Advertiser, Dec. 20, 24, 
1828; National Gazette and Literary Register, Dec. 19, 
22, 1828.] J.C.F. 

JACKSON, WILLIAM (Sept. 2, 1783-Feb. 
27, 18 SS), tallow chandler, railway promoter, 
congressman, the son of Timothy and Sarah 
(Winchester) Jackson, and said to be a de¬ 
scendant of Edward Jackson, one of the earliest 
settlers of Cambridge, was born in Newton, 
Mass. Systematic in his reading and study, he 
supplemented the elementary education which he 
received in the town schools. At the age of 
twenty-one, after three years* experience in a 
manufactory of soap and candles in Boston, he 
established himself in the business, in which, in 
spite of reverses suffered during the War of 
1812, he succeeded in laying the foundations of 
a modest fortune. He served a term as repre¬ 
sentative of Boston in the Massachusetts Gen¬ 
eral Court in 1819, retiring at this time from 
active connection with his tallow chandlery. 
About 1826 he became greatly interested in 
railroads. Later as a member of the General 
Court, 1829-1831, he was an active supporter of 
railroad projects in Massachusetts, lecturing ex¬ 
tensively and writing for many newspapers upon 
this subject for the next eighteen years. Many 
of his arguments and predictions which now 
seem conservative were received with ridicule 
and abuse at that time when many persons con¬ 
sidered canals more advantageous. He partici¬ 
pated actively in the construction of several 
Massachusetts railroads including the Western, 
the Boston & Worcester, the Boston & Albany, 
and the New Bedford & Taunton. 

Jackson was a member of the Twenty-third 
and Twenty-fourth congresses (1833-37), be¬ 
ing elected by Anti-Masonic and National Re¬ 
publican support. He refused to be a candidate 
for a third term. In 1840 he took part in the 
organization of the Liberty party, and as their 
candidate was defeated for the lieutenant-gov¬ 
ernorship in 1842, 1843, an ^ I ^44- His anti¬ 
slavery views led him to support the Free-Soil 
party after its establishment in 1848. Long con¬ 
vinced of the evils of intoxication, he was active 
in temperance reform, abolishing, as an em¬ 
ployer, the custom of furnishing rum to his em- 


Jackson 

ployees, and adding the extra sum to the wages 
paid. He w r as a founder and deacon of the Eliot 
Church of Newton, and president of the Ameri¬ 
can Missionary Association for the first eight 
years of its existence, 1846-54. His financial 
concerns late in life were largely confined to the 
land company which he organized in 1848 for 
laying out that part of Newton known as Au- 
burndale, and to two banks, the Newton Savings 
Bank, founded in 1831, of which he was presi¬ 
dent from 1831 to 1835, and the Newton Na¬ 
tional Bank, of which he was president from its 
founding in 1848 to his death. He was married 
twice: on Dec. 1, 1806, to Hannah Woodward 
of Newton (d. Aug. 11, 1814) by whom he had 
one son and four daughters, and in 1816 to Mary 
Bennett of Lunenburg, by whom he had four 
sons and seven daughters. 

[S. F. Smith, Hist, of Newton, Mass. (1880) ; H. K. 
Rowe, Tercentenary Hist, of Newton (1930); Biog. 
Dir. Am. Cong. (1928) ; Boston Transcript, Daily Eve¬ 
ning Traveller, Feb. 28, 1855.] R.E.M. 

JACKSON, WILLIAM HICKS (Oct. 1, 
1835-Mar. 30, 1903), Confederate general and 
stock-breeder, was born at Paris, Tenn., son of 
Dr. Alexander Jackson and Mary W. (Hurt) 
Jackson, both natives of Virginia, who had set¬ 
tled in West Tennessee in 1830. The parents 
later removed to Jackson, Tenn., where William 
was, for the most part, reared. There he at¬ 
tended the common schools and West Tennessee 
College. While in the senior class of the col¬ 
lege, he was appointed a cadet at West Point, 
entering July 1, 1852, and graduating in 1856. 
After a short course in the school of instruction 
of cavalry at Carlisle, Pa., he served as a sec¬ 
ond lieutenant of Mounted Riflemen in Texas, 
1857-61. His regiment operated against the In¬ 
dians in New Mexico. In May 1861 he resigned 
his commission, tendered his services to the 
Confederacy, and was commissioned as a cap¬ 
tain of artillery. In the early battle of Belmont, 
Ky., being unable to land his battery from the 
Mississippi, he led an infantry charge and was 
seriously wounded. On recovery he was pro¬ 
moted to a colonelcy and commanded the 7th 
Tennessee and 1st Mississippi Cavalry regi¬ 
ments. For gallantry in the capture of Holly 
Springs, Miss., he was appointed brigadier-gen¬ 
eral, with rank to date from Dec. 29,1862. This 
success compelled Grant to abandon his land 
campaign against Vicksburg and to organize one 
by the river. Jackson commanded a division of 
cavalry in the spring campaign in Tennessee, 
1863. After the death of VanDorn, he com¬ 
manded cavalry in Mississippi under Pemberton 
and Joseph E. Johnston, taking a leading part in 


5 61 



Jacob 

the Vicksburg* defense and the Meridian cam¬ 
paign of February 1864. Later he led the left 
wing of Johnston's army in defense of Atlanta. 
In Hood's ill-fated Tennessee campaign Jack¬ 
son's division was a part of Forrest's corps and 
covered the retreat. In February 1865 Jackson 
was in command of all Tennessee cavalry and of 
a Texas Brigade. At the end of the war he was 
the Confederate commissioner for the parole of 
troops in Alabama and Mississippi. His career 
was marked by boldness and celerity of move¬ 
ment and high courage in action—qualities which 
led twice to successorship to commands that had 
been those of his chief, General Forrest. He was 
known to his soldiers as “Red Fox" Jackson. 

At the close of the war, Jackson took charge 
of his father's large cotton plantations. In De¬ 
cember 1868 he married Selene, daughter of 
Gen. William G. Harding, of Belle Meade near 
Nashville, and joined General Harding in the 
further development of his estate as a nursery 
of thoroughbred horses. After the death of 
Harding in 1886, he and his brother, Judge 
Howell Edmunds Jackson [q.v.], conducted the 
Belle Meade establishment in partnership and 
brought it to first rank in the South. Later 
Richard Croker of New York acquired a half¬ 
interest, but in a short time he resold to Jackson. 
Among the horses which, in stud, gave to Belle 
Meade an international reputation were Bonnie 
Scotland, Iroquois, Inquirer, Inspector, Great 
Tom, and Luke Blackburn. Jackson's interest 
and leadership in agricultural affairs were dem¬ 
onstrated by his presidency of many organiza¬ 
tions, among them the National Agricultural 
Congress and the Tennessee Bureau of Agricul¬ 
ture. He died at Belle Meade. 

[W. W. Clayton, Hist, of Davidson County, Tenn. 
(1880); John Woolridge, Hist, of Nashville, Tenn. 
(1890); Confed. Mil. Hist (1899), VIII, 316-17; J. 
B. Lindsley, The Mil. Annals of Tenn. (1886) ; M. J. 
Wright, Tenn. in the War, 1861-65 (1908); War of 
the Rebellion: Official Records {Army); G. W. Cul- 
lum, Biog. Reg. . . . TJ. S. Mil . Acad. (ed. 1891), vol. 
II; Thirty-fifth Ann. Reunion, Asso. Grads. U. S. Mil. 
Acad., 1904; Confed. Veteran, May 1903; Nashville 
American, Mar. 31, 1903.] S.C.W. 

JACOB, RICHARD TAYLOR (Mar. 13, 
i825-Sept. 13, 1903), Kentucky soldier and 
Union sympathizer, was the descendant of John 
Jacob, who emigrated from England and settled 
in Anne Arundel County, Md., in 1665, and the 
son of John Jeremiah and Lucy Donald (Rob¬ 
ertson) Jacob. His father left Maryland about 
1806 for Kentucky, where he made a fortune in 
real estate and banking. Richard was bom in 
Oldham County, Ky., at the home of his great¬ 
grandfather, Commodore Richard Taylor, through 
whom he was rdated both to James Madi- 


Jacob 

son and Zachary Taylor. He attended private 
schools and, for a time, Hanover College, Han¬ 
over, Ind, Suffering from ill health, he was sent 
to South America in 1844. The next year he be¬ 
gan the study of law in Louisville. As his health 
still remained impaired, he set out for California 
in the spring of 1846 and arrived on Sept. 9, 
after war had been declared against Mexico. He 
immediately raised a company of men, became 
captain, and joined the forces of John C. Fre¬ 
mont [#.*>.]. In 1847 after Mexican resistance 
had ended in California, he returned to Ken¬ 
tucky by way of the Isthmus of Panama and 
arrived home in time to raise a company, which 
was, however, refused for the new state levy 
since the regiment was already filled. About this 
time he was called to Washington to appear as a 
witness in the court-martial proceedings against 
Fremont where he met and married, on Jan. 17, 
1848, Sarah, the third daughter of Thomas Hart 
Benton and the sister of Fremont's wife. This 
marriage led Jacob to move to Missouri, the 
home of Benton, where he engaged in farming. 
About 1854 he returned to Kentucky and bought 
a home in Oldham County, on the Ohio River, 
near Westport. 

Until this time Jacob's interests had been di¬ 
vided between military affairs and farming, but 
in 1859, with the intensification of the sectional 
struggle, he became interested in politics and 
offered himself as a candidate for the legislature. 
He was elected and was continued in that po¬ 
sition until 1863. Though not a secessionist, he 
considered himself a Democrat and in i860 voted 
for Breckinridge. When the Kentucky parties 
broke up on the question of secession, Jacob 
joined the Unionists. In the legislature, as a 
member of the committee on federal relations, 
he did a great deal to prevent Kentucky's seced¬ 
ing and to keep the state neutral. Although he 
agreed with Governor Magoffin's refusal to obey 
Lincoln's call for troops, he entered the Union 
Army when it became evident that neutrality 
was no longer possible. In 1862 he raised the 
9th Kentucky Cavalry, became its colonel, took 
part in some hand-to-hand engagements, and 
was wounded. In 1863 he was inaugurated lieu- 
tenant-governor. Like many other Kentuckians, 
he felt outraged at the treatment his state was 
receiving from the Federal government. He op¬ 
posed the Emancipation Proclamation and made 
threatening speeches when the government de¬ 
cided to enroll negroes. In 1864 he announced 
his support of McClellan for president and went 
to New York City to begin the campaign with 
a speech in Cooper Institute. On Nov. 11, after 
Lincoln's election, he was arrested by Gen. Ste- 


562 



Jacobi 

phen G. Burbridge, sent across the lines into 
the Confederacy, and forbidden to return under 
penalty of death. Since a great outcry was im¬ 
mediately raised in Kentucky, in order to pre¬ 
vent trouble, Lincoln permitted him to return. 
When he reached Frankfort he was received 
with wild acclaim. 

Having lost his first wife in January 1863 he 
married, on June 6,1865, Laura Wilson of Lex¬ 
ington. After the war he joined the Conservative 
Democrats and ran for Congress in 1867 on their 
ticket, but he was heavily defeated because he 
had turned against the Union too late in the war. 
By 1871 he had become a Republican. Although 
through the rest of his life he held no public of¬ 
fice, except the positions of judge of Oldham 
County for a short time and park commissioner 
for Louisville from 1895 to 1899, he continued 
to enjoy a distinguished popularity in the com¬ 
munity, was prominent in the Presbyterian 
Church and was a loyal supporter of the Grand 
Army of the Republic. 

[The Biog . Encyc. of Ky. (1878); Thomas Speed, 
The Union Cause in Ky. (1907) ; Lewis and R. H. Col¬ 
lins, Hist, of Ky., revised ed. (1874), vol. I; Who's Who 
in America, 1903-05 ; Sen. Exec. Doc. no. 16, 38 Cong., 

2 Sess. (1865); E. M. Coulter, The Civil War and 
Readjustment in Ky. (1926) ; W. K. Anderson, Donald 
Robertson and his Wife . . . their Ancestry and Pos¬ 
terity (1900?) ; Courier-Journal (Louisville), Sept. 14, 
190 3 -] E.M.C. 

JACOBI, ABRAHAM (May 6, 1830-July 10, 
1919), physician, pediatrist, was born at Har- 
tum-in-Minden, Westphalia, of poor Jewish par¬ 
ents who educated him at a great sacrifice. In 
1847 he graduated from the Minden Gymnasium 
and at once entered the University of Greifs- 
wald, where his original intention of studying 
philology was soon changed for a medical ca¬ 
reer. Having studied anatomy and physiology 
here he next repaired to the University of Got¬ 
tingen, where he came under the influence of 
Frerichs, the clinician, and Wohler, a pioneer 
in biochemistry. He removed finally to the Uni¬ 
versity of Bonn, which gave him his medical 
degree in 1851 after he had defended the Latin 
thesis Cogitationes de vita rerum naturalium . 
No sooner had he secured his degree than he 
plunged into the midst of the German Revolu¬ 
tion of 1848, and for the next two years spent 
most of his time in prison accused of lese-maj¬ 
esty. In 1853 he escaped from detention at Min¬ 
den (he had been confined previously at Cologne 
and Berlin) and made his way to England via 
Hamburg. After a vain attempt to practise 
medicine at Manchester he emigrated to Boston, 
where a similar attempt to establish himself 
likewise failed. His third attempt, in New York 
City, proved successful, although he began his 


Jacobi 

career in a tenement-house section with fees of 
twenty-five and fifty cents. From the first he 
seems to have identified himself especially with 
the ailments of infants and children. That he 
preceded Garcia as the inventor of the laryngo¬ 
scope has been stated, but Jacobi did not make 
this claim, and Garcia was certainly the first to 
win recognition for the device. Not long after 
Jacobi's arrival in New York he began to con¬ 
tribute to the New York Medical Journal, then 
edited by Stephen Smith, his papers being chief¬ 
ly abstracts, from German periodicals, of articles 
on children's diseases. By 1857 he was so well 
known as a pediatrist that with J. Lewis Smith 
he was appointed lecturer on the pathology of 
infancy and childhood at the College of Phy¬ 
sicians and Surgeons. In 1859, with Emil 
Noeggerath, he published Contributions to Mid¬ 
wifery, and Diseases of Women and Children, 
which was a financial failure. In i860 he be¬ 
came the first professor of diseases of children 
in the country, at the New York Medical Col¬ 
lege, thus taking precedence over Smith, who 
was given the same chair at the new Bellevue 
Hospital Medical College in 1861. In connec¬ 
tion with his professorship Jacobi established 
the first free clinic for diseases of children and 
published his Report on the Clinic for Diseases 
of Children, Held in the New York Medical Col¬ 
lege, Session of 1860 - 61 , the first report of its 
kind. His Dentition and Its Derangements: 
Course of Lectures in the New York Medical 
College appeared in 1862. In 1865 he occupied 
the chair of diseases of children in the medical 
department of the University of the City of New 
York, and in 1870 he was given the professor¬ 
ship of pediatrics in the College of Physicians 
and Surgeons. Here he taught until 1902, when 
he was made professor emeritus. In 1894, upon 
the death of Henoch, he received the honor of 
an invitation to succeed him in the chair of pedi¬ 
atrics at Berlin but declined by reason of his 
pronounced democratic viewpoint. He practised 
medicine in New York for nearly sixty-six years 
and by no means did he limit his enormous prac¬ 
tice to children, for his waiting rooms were 
crowded with people of all ages and he was much 
in demand as a medical consultant. So great 
was his vitality that at the age of eighty-eight 
he attended the meeting of the American Medi¬ 
cal Association at Chicago and took an active 
part in the proceedings. His death was doubtless 
hastened by the burning of his summer home at 
Lake George, when he narrowly escaped death 
and lost his priceless collection of documents 
and notes for publication—one of the greatest 
misfortunes the medical profession of the United 


5 6 3 



Jacobi 

States has ever sustained. He died at the home 
of his lifelong friend Carl Schurz, who had pre¬ 
deceased him. Among the honors conferred 
upon him by his profession were the presidencies 
of the American Pediatric Society (twice), the 
Association of American Physicians (1896); 
the New York Academy of Medicine (1885- 
89), and the American Medical Association 
(1912-13). A still greater honor, however, be¬ 
cause almost without precedent in the United 
States, was the “Festschrift” in Honor of Abra¬ 
ham Jacobi, M.D., LL,D., with the heading, In¬ 
ternational Contributions to Medical Literature, 
published in 1900 by colleagues and former pu¬ 
pils to memorialize his seventieth birthday. With 
this volume should be placed the Proceedings 
and Addresses at the Complimentary Dinner 
Tendered to Dr. A. Jacobi on the Occasion of the 
Seventieth Anniversary of His Birthday (1900). 
At the memorial service held at the Academy of 
Medicine, July 14, 1919, four days after his 
death, it was stated that the Academy owed its 
great success chiefly to Jacobi’s wisdom and sa¬ 
gacity. 

Jacobi was a prolific contributor to medical 
journals. With Emil Noeggerath, he founded 
the American Journal of Obstetrics in 1862. He 
published several monographs, including The 
Intestinal Diseases of Infancy and Childhood 
(1887; 2nd ed., 1890), Therapeutics of Infancy 
and Childhood (1896; 3rd ed., 1903), and sev¬ 
eral smaller volumes. In 1909 Dr. William J. 
Robinson assembled his papers to date in eight 
volumes, entitled Dr . Jacobi's Works, with the 
cover title, Collectanea Jacobi. Jacobi had an 
extensive library and his articles always bristled 
with learning and citations. 

His medical career can hardly be separated 
from his civic career. He always stood for 
Americanism; civic virtue (he Was active in the 
up-building of the Civil Service Reform Asso¬ 
ciation) ,* scientific methods, and progress, and 
he was not afraid to be on the unpopular side: 
thus he opposed prohibition and advocated birth 
control. During the World War he was strong¬ 
ly anti-German, or rather, anti-Hohenzollern. 
He was a small man, conspicuous in middle life 
by his Oriental and leonine appearance. He had 
an infinite fund of humor which doubtless helped 
to preserve him from the radicalism of his early 
years. In 1873 he married Mary Corinna Put¬ 
nam who as Mary Putnam Jacobi [q.vf] was one 
of the most distinguished woman physicians of 
her time. 

t Lancet-Clinic (Cincinnati), May 14, 19x0; Am. 
Jour. Obstetrics, May 19x3; Francis Huber, in The 
Child (London), Dec. 1913; Medic. Life, Oct. 1926; 
Victor Robinson, “The Life of A, Jacobi/* Ibid., May- 


Jacobi 

June 1928; Medic. Record, July 19, 1919, July 24, 
1920; N. Y . Medic. Jour., July 19, 1919; Jour. Am. 
Medic. Asso., July 19, 1919; F. H. Garrison, “Dr*. 
Abraham Jacobi/’ Science, Aug. 1, 1919; Scientific 
Monthly, Aug. 1919; N. Y. Times, July 12, 1919.] 

E. P. 

JACOBI, MARY CORINNA PUTNAM 

(Aug. 31, 1842-June 10, 1906), physician, edu¬ 
cator, author, was the eldest of the eleven chil¬ 
dren of the publisher, George Palmer Putnam 
[q.v.], and Victorine (Haven) Putnam. On both 
sides she came of unmixed Puritan stock. She 
was born in London while her father was busied 
in establishing his London publishing house. In 
1848, when she was five, the family returned to 
New York. Mary was precocious, with an ac¬ 
tive, dominant disposition. Free country life on 
Staten Island and later at Yonkers and Morris- 
ania stimulated her imagination, developed in¬ 
dependence of character which her desultory 
early home education did nothing to stifle. At 
fifteen she began to commute to an excellent New 
York public school, from which she was grad¬ 
uated in 1859. The following year, she published 
in the Atlantic Monthly (April i860), a story, 
“Found and Lost.” Despite the then virulent 
prejudice against women in medicine, she early 
determined to become a physician, and her fa¬ 
ther placed no obstacles in the path of her “re¬ 
pulsive pursuit.” She took what training a wo¬ 
man might secure in America and was graduated 
in 1863 from the New York College of Pharmacy 
and in 1864 from the Female Medical College of 
Pennsylvania (later the Woman’s Medical Col¬ 
lege), supplementing her work by hospital ex¬ 
perience in Philadelphia and Boston, and by 
private study. Realizing that her preparation 
was seriously inadequate, she sailed for Paris in 
September 1866, to lay deliberate siege to the 
llcole de Medicine, in which no woman had yet 
set foot as a student. Rejected by the faculty, 
she entered hospital clinics and laboratories, at¬ 
tending lectures at the Jardin des Plantes and in 
the College de France, eking out her income by 
contributions to American newspapers and to 
Putnam's Magazine and Scribner's Monthly. In 
the fall of 1867, she achieved admission to a 
dass at the ficole Pratique, and in January she 
circumvented the faculty of the ftcole de Mede- 
cine by appeal to the minister of public instruc¬ 
tion, M. Duruy, for permission to attend the 
cours of a certain professor. Her appearance by 
a side door, the first woman to enter the historic 
amphitheatre, failed to precipitate the predicted 
riot, so thoroughly had she won respect by her 
work in the clinics. She had still a six months’ 
fight for the right to take examinations leading 
to a degree. At last she was sent in by the min- 



Jacobi 

ister against the protests of the faculty, and on 
June 24 passed her first test with the verdict 
“very satisfactory.” The precedent admitted a 
second woman, Dr. Elizabeth Garrett, an Eng¬ 
lish practising physician, who, hastening her 
work, was able to take her degree before her 
friend. Mary Putnam thus found herself, at her 
graduation in July 1871, the second woman doc¬ 
tor of medicine on the registers of the £cole. 
She received the highest mark granted by the 
faculty, together with the second prize for her 
thesis. Having pursued her studies through the 
siege of Paris and the disorders of the Commune, 
she published in Scribner’s Monthly (August 
1871) an able account of the French leaders 
brought forward by the fall of the Empire and 
the establishment of the Republic. That year 
she contributed to the Medical Record the last 
of a series of nineteen letters on “Medical Mat¬ 
ters in Paris, 1 ” which she had begun in 1867. 

Her own education secured, she aspired to 
win opportunity in medicine for other women. 
She returned to New York in the fall of 1871 
and became professor in the new Woman’s Medi¬ 
cal College of the New York Infirmary, founded 
by her friend, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell [ q.v .], 
where for the sixteen ensuing years she was to 
lecture on materia medica and therapeutics. At 
the same time she entered on her long and dis¬ 
tinguished private practice. Her Paris achieve¬ 
ment brought her election in November to the 
Medical Society of the County of New York, of 
which she was the second woman member. To 
its president, Dr. Abraham Jacobi [q.v.], she 
was married July 22, 1873. O* 1 opening of 
the Post-Graduate Medical School she accepted 
the chair of children’s diseases which she held 
for two years. Brilliant in diagnosis, thorough 
in her scholarship, she “came to be known not 
only as the leading woman physician of her gen¬ 
eration, but as belonging in the first group, ir¬ 
respective of sex” ( Life, p. x). A born leader, 
full of fire and magnetism, dowered with humor 
and sympathy which tempered her ruthless^ in¬ 
sistence on relative values and her downright 
devotion to truth, by her vision and her stub¬ 
born courage she opened many doors to women, 
widening their scientific outlook, and helped so 
to raise the standard at the Woman’s Medical 
College that students could be graduated only 
when adequately equipped for their work. Dur¬ 
ing the campaign that opened Johns Hopkins 
Medical School to women, she contributed ably 
to a symposium on women in medicine (Cen¬ 
tury, February 1891). Possessing a delightful 
literary style, she might “undoubtedly have se¬ 
cured a well-earned prestige as a writer” (Life, 


Jacobi 

p. viii). She educated her little daughter large¬ 
ly in accordance with theories of her own. In 
addition to her lecturing, her private practice, 
hospital attendance at the Infirmary, and dis¬ 
pensary service at Mount Sinai and St. Mark’s 
hospitals, she prepared more than a hundred 
important papers for medical societies. Her ag¬ 
gressive altruism expressed itself further in work 
for American Indians and the negro, and in 
support of the Consumers’ League. She was one 
of the founders of the League for Political Edu¬ 
cation. For suffrage she struck an effective 
blow when before the constitutional convention 
at Albany in 1894 she made a masterly address 
which she later expanded into the volume, “Com¬ 
mon Sense?’ Applied to Woman Suffrage (1894), 
which was reprinted and used as a campaign 
document by New York suffragists in the final 
struggle in 1915. 

She had the defects of her qualities. Intel¬ 
lectually a Frenchwoman in the range of schol¬ 
arship, she could never adapt herself to limita¬ 
tions imposed on American medical instruction 
in her day by the meager preparation of the 
students, but expanded her courses beyond the 
receptivity of her classes. Friction on this ac¬ 
count caused her to retire from her professor’s 
chair in 1888. Herself unstinting in service, 
ready to throw herself into any work that needed 
to be done, she was quicker to criticize than to 
understand the absence of instant cooperation 
from others. She had no patience with the lit¬ 
tlenesses of social life, though she had hosts of 
real friends on both sides of the ocean. She died 
of an obscure disease (which she studied pains¬ 
takingly) after four years of progressive in¬ 
validism. Her publications, in addition to those 
previously mentioned, include De la graisse neu- 
tre et de les acides gras (Paris thesis, 1871); 
The Question of Rest for Women during Mens¬ 
truation (1877), awarded the Boylston Prize in 
1876; The Value of Life (1879); Essays on 
Hysteria, Brain-Tumor, and Some Other Cases 
of Nervous Disease (1888); Physiological Notes 
on Primary Education and the Study of Lan¬ 
guage (1889); “Women in Medicine,” in Wo¬ 
men’s Work in America (1891), edited by Annie 
N. Meyer; Stories and Sketches (1907). She 
edited Dr. Abraham Jacobi’s Infant Diet (1874) 
and J. A. C. Uffelmann’s Manual of the Do¬ 
mestic Hygiene of the Child (1891). 

[Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacobi (1925), 
ed. by Ruth Putnam; Mary Putnam Jacobi, M.D., a 
Pathfinder in Medicine, with Selections from Her Writ¬ 
ings and a Complete Bibliography (1925) ; Victor Rob¬ 
inson, “Mary Putnam Jacobi/' Medic . Life, July 1928; 
Jour . Am. Medic. Asso., June 23, 1906 ; N. Y. Medic. 
Jour., June 16, 1906; Woman's Jour. (Boston), June 
16 , 1906; N. F. Times, June 1 2, 1906.] M.B.H. 


S65 



Jacobs Jacobs 

JACOBS, JOSEPH (Aug. 29, 1854-Jan. 30, rary Writers. A brief visit to Spain in 1888 pro- 
1916), historian, critic, folklorist, son of John duced An Inquiry into the Sources of the His - 
and Sarah Jacobs, was born in Sydney, New tory of the Jews in Spain (London, 1894), which 
South Wales. He was educated at the Sydney was the starting point for a methodical examina- 
grammar school and attended the universities of tion of the Jewish manuscript sources in Span- 
Sydney and London. At about the age of eigh- ish archives. In recognition of the value of this 
teen he entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, work he was elected a corresponding member of 
England, and was awarded the degree of B.A. the Royal Academy of History of Madrid. Here 
(senior moralist) in 1876. As a student his spe- too should be included his Story of Geographical 
cial interests were mathematics, history, philoso- Discovery, which passed through several editions 
phy, anthropology, and general literature. George (1898, 1902, 1913, 1915), and was finally pub- 
Eliot’s Daniel Deronda was published in that lished under the title, Geographical Discovery . 
year and its foreshadowing of the modern Pales- He projected a great work to be called “Euro- 
tinian movement aroused considerable criticism, pean Ideals” for which he prepared a detailed 
to which Jacobs made reply in his first published syllabus privately printed under that title in 1911. 
essay, “Mordecai,” Macmillan's Magazine, June Worthy of mention among his historical studies 
1877. This incident aroused his interest in Jew- is an historical novel, As Others Saw Him, deal- 
ish studies and he went to Berlin and studied ing with the life of Jesus, published anonymous- 
under Moritz Steinschneider and M. Lazarus, ly in 1895. 

distinguished Jewish scholars of their day. Re- Jacobs’ anthropological studies naturally led 
turning to England he devoted himself to anthro- him to folklore, and in 1888 he edited The Ear- 
pological studies under and later in association liest English Version of the Fables of Bidpal 
with Sir Francis Galton, applying these studies The same year he published an essay, Jewish 
to such subjects as the comparative distribution Diffusion of Folk Tales . Then followed The Fo¬ 
ol Jewish ability, the Jewish race, and social, lies of AEsop, as First Printed by Caxton (2 
vital, and anthropometric statistics relating to vols., 1889), the first volume of which contained 
them, in which he was the pioneer. These studies his history of the JEsopic fable. This edition was 
he collected in a volume entitled Studies in Jew- frequently reprinted and translated into other 
ish Statistics, Social, Vital and Anthropometric languages. In 1890 he began a series of fairy 
(London, 1891). He also wrote Studies in Bib- tales— English Fairy Tales (1890) which had 
Heal Archeology (1894), applying the anthropo- numerous editions; Celtic Fairy Tales (1891); 
logical method to Biblical institutional history. Indian Fairy Tales (1892); More English Fairy 
On Jan. 11 and 13, 1882, Jacobs contributed Tales (1893); More Celtic Fairy Tales (1894); 
articles to the London Times under the title “Per- and Europa’s Fairy Book (1916). He also ed- 
secution of the Jews in Russia” which were ited Barlaam and Josaphat (1896); The Thou- 
afterward reprinted in book form, with map and sand & One Nights; or, Arabian Nights' Enter- 
appendix. These articles attracted wide attention tainments (6 vols., 1896); and Tales, Done into 
and resulted in the establishment of the “Mansion English by Joseph Jacobs (1899), from Boc- 
House Committee,” afterward called the “Russo- caccio. In his generation he stood alongside of 
Jewish Committee,” which took important steps, Andrew Lang as one of the popular writers of 
in association with like committees on the conti- fairy tales for English-speaking children. He 
nent of Europe and in America, for the ameli- edited Folk-lore and with Alfred Nutt, the Pa- 
oration of the condition of the Jews in Russia, per sand Transactions of the International Folk- 
Ol this committee Jacobs served as honorary sec- lore Congress of 1891. He interspersed these 
retary up to 1900. In 1887 he was active in pro- activities with numerous literary essays and re- 
moting the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition view's and minor studies of Jewish interest. He 
held that year (in celebration of Queen Victoria’s was an important contributor to the London 
Jubilee) and with Lucien Wolf prepared a Cat- Athenceum . Among his numerous literary studies 
alogue of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhi - may be mentioned his volume on Tennyson and 
bition (1887, 1888) and edited with the same “InMemoriam” (1892), his translation and edi- 
collaborator Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica: A Bib - tions of Baltasar Gracian’s Art of Worldly Wis- 
Hographical Guide to Anglo-Jewish History daw (1892,1913), his edition of Howell’s letters, 
(1888). In 1898 he was elected the president of Epistolae-Ho-elianae: The Familiar Letters of 
the English Jewish Historical Society. The most James Howell, Historiographer Royal to Charles 
important result of his studies in Anglo-Jewish II (2 vols., 1892), and of Painter’s Palace of 
htstorywasT&e Jews of Angevin England (1893) Pleasure (3 vols., 1890). His combination of 
in the series of English History by Contempo- philosophical and mathematical knowledge en- 

566 



Jacobs 

abled him to write a really remarkable article on 
Spinoza for the Jewish Encyclopedia. He was 
also a contributor to the eleventh edition of the 
Encyclopedia Britannica and to Hastings’s En- 
cyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. 

The adverse Jewish position in Eastern Eu¬ 
rope led him more and more into practical Jewish 
work and Jewish studies. In 1896 he began the 
issue of the English Jewish Year Book which 
has since then become an institution. In the same 
year he was invited to the United States to de¬ 
liver a course of lectures before Gratz College in 
Philadelphia and chose as his subject “The Phi¬ 
losophy of Jewish History.” In 1900 he was 
invited to come to America as the revising 
editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia . Although 
planned as a temporary visit it resulted in his 
settlement in the United States. He was respon¬ 
sible for the style of the articles in the Encyclo¬ 
pedia but by reason of the wide range of his 
mind he was able also to contribute several hun¬ 
dred articles to it. He was appointed in 1908 a 
member of a Board of Seven which undertook 
a new English translation of the Bible for the 
Jewish Publication Society of America. Upon 
the completion of the Encyclopedia he became 
registrar and professor of English at the Jewish 
Theological Seminary of America in New York, 
but in 1913 retired from this office to become the 
editor of the American Hebrew of the same city, 
a post which he held until his death. His last 
important work was “Jewish Contributions to 
Civilization” which was left incomplete but was 
posthumously published in 1919. Jacobs married 
Georgina Home by whom he had two sons and 
a daughter. 

[Trans, of the Jewish Hist. Soc . of England, Ses¬ 
sions 1915-17 (1918), memorial addresses with bibli¬ 
ography of Jacobs* contributions to Anglo-Jewish his¬ 
tory and statistics by Israel Abrahams; Alexander 
Marx, “The Jewish Scholarship of Joseph Jacobs/* Am. 
Hebrew, Feb. 11, 1916; obituary and appreciations in 
Ibid., Feb. 4, 1916; London Jewish Chronicle, Feb. 
11, 1916; Jewish Exponent (Philadelphia), ^ Feb. 4# 
1916; Mayer Sulzberger, article in Am. Jewish Hist. 
Soc. Pubs., no. 2 5 (1917), with bibliography; Jewish 
Encyc,, vol. VII (1925) ; Who’s Who in America, 
1914-15; N. Y. Times, Feb. 1, 1916.] C. A. 

JACOBS, JOSEPH (Aug. 5 , 1859-Sept. 7, 
1929), pharmacist, philanthropist, collector of 
Bumsiana, was born in Jefferson, Ga., the son 
of Gabriel Jacobs, a native of Germany, and 
Ernestine (Hyman) Jacobs of Chicago, Ill. He 
attended the Martin Institute at Jefferson until 
he was about fifteen years of age when his par¬ 
ents moved to Athens, Ga. He then became the 
apprentice of the distinguished physician-phar¬ 
macist, Crawford W. Long [g.v.]. While em¬ 
ployed in the drug store, of. Long & Billups, he 


Jacobs 

took a course in chemistry at the University of 
Georgia and later attended the Philadelphia Col¬ 
lege of Pharmacy, from which he was graduated 
in 1879. After completing his course in phar¬ 
macy, he returned to Athens and began his busi¬ 
ness career as a manufacturing pharmacist. In 
1884 he moved to Atlanta, Ga., where he pur¬ 
chased a pharmacy. In time his business devel¬ 
oped into a chain of sixteen stores operated 
under the name of the Jacobs Pharmacy Com¬ 
pany. He was an enthusiastic worker in the 
American Pharmaceutical Association as well as 
the Georgia State Pharmaceutical Association. 
He took an active part in the conduct of the 
affairs of these organizations and also partici¬ 
pated in their business and professional meetings, 
contributing to them many papers dealing with 
various phases of pharmaceutical practice. In 
1886 he was married to Claire Sartorious, a resi¬ 
dent of Atlanta, Ga. She died Aug. 26,1910, and 
on Nov. 11,1925, he married Elizabeth Smith of 
Griffin, Ga. 

Jacobs’ devotion to his friends was exhibited 
in many unique and substantial ways. It was 
largely through his efforts that a statue of his 
preceptor, Crawford W. Long, was placed in the 
National Hall of Fame in the Capitol at Wash¬ 
ington. When it was found that the state legisla¬ 
ture, because of constitutional restrictions, could 
not appropriate the ten thousand dollars neces¬ 
sary for carrying out this project, he contributed 
a large part of the sum personally and secured 
the remainder from friends. He also erected a 
granite stone bearing a bronze tablet with suit¬ 
able inscription to the memory of Long in front 
of the Peabody Library on the campus of the 
University of Georgia and was instrumental in 
having a monument erected to him on the Court 
House Square in Danielsville, Ga., the birthplace 
of the physician. Jacobs’ greatest hobby, how¬ 
ever, was collecting works on Burns, and during 
his lifetime he succeeded in assembling the finest 
private collection of the poet’s works in existence 
in America. This he bequeathed to his son Sin¬ 
clair with the stipulation that it should be opened 
to the reading public at least once a month. He 
was the founder of the Atlanta Burns Club and, 
in 1928, he was one of the two American dele- 
gates-at-large to the meeting of the Federated 
Burns Clubs of the World held in Edinburgh, 
Scotland. 

[Jour, of the Am. Pharmaceutical Asso., Oct. 1929; 
Pharmaceutical Era, Sept. 1929; Atlanta Constitution, 
Aug. 5, Sept. 8, 1929; information as to certain facts 
from Jacobs* son, Sinclair Jacobs.] A.G.D-M. 

JACOBS, MICHAEL (Jan. 18,1808-JuIy 22, 
1871), Lutheran clergyman, educator, was born 




near Waynesboro, Franklin County, Pa., the son 
of Henry and Anna Maria (Miller) Jacobs. His 
grandfather, Martin Jacob, emigrated in 1753 
from Preursdorf in Alsace, settling first in Fred¬ 
erick County, Md., but later pushing into the 
wilderness of Washington County, Pa. He gave 
a portion of his land for a church and a school, 
the locality thence gaining the name of Jacob’s 
Church. Michael Jacobs’ mother died in 1810 
and his father, a farmer, in 1822, leaving the boy 
to be reared by relatives. He entered the prep¬ 
aratory department of Jefferson College at Can- 
onsburg, Pa., in 1823 and graduated second in 
the class of 1828. For a short time he taught in 
a boarding school at Belair, Md., but in April 
1829 he went to Gettysburg, Pa., to assist his 
elder brother David at the Gettysburg Gymna¬ 
sium. In his effort to conduct the Gymnasium 
single-handed, David Jacobs (1805-1830), a man 
of saintly life and brilliant promise, had sacri¬ 
ficed his health and was already dying. In 1832, 
when the school was reorganized as Pennsyl¬ 
vania (now Gettysburg) College, Michael was 
elected professor of mathematics and natural sci¬ 
ences and held this post until his retirement, be¬ 
cause of failing health, in 1866. In 1832, having 
read theology privately, he was licensed by the 
West Pennsylvania Synod. In his doctrinal opin¬ 
ions he was a whole-hearted conservative; his 
only recorded outburst of indignation occurred 
on his reading S. S. Schmucker’s Definite Plat¬ 
form. On May 3, 1833, he married Julianna M. 
Eyster of Harrisburg. Although modest and even 
diffident, he exercised a strong influence over his 
pupils and eventually over a good part of the 
General Synod of the Lutheran Church. His 
scientific attainments, considering his isolation 
and straitened circumstances, were respectable. 
He constructed most of the physical and chem¬ 
ical apparatus that he used, won something more 
than local celebrity as a meteorologist, and suc¬ 
ceeded, about 1845, in preserving fruit by can¬ 
ning. This process, although it had been used in 
France for some twenty years, was then un¬ 
known in rural Pennsylvania. His Notes on the 
Rebel Invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania 
and the Battle of Gettysburg (Philadelphia, 
1864; 7th ed., Gettysburg, 1909) was based on 
careful personal observation. He served three 
terms as president of the West Pennsylvania 
Synod and three terms as treasurer. After his 
retirement he continued to live in Gettysburg, 
enjoying his books and his garden until a few 
days before his death. 

[There is a memoir by Jacobs* son, Henry Eyster 
Jacobs, in J. G. Morris, Fifty Years in the Luth. Min¬ 
istry (1878). See also E. S. Breidenbatigh, Pa. Coll. 
Book, 18$2-82 (1882), with portrait; Biog. and Hist. 


Jacobs 

Cat. Washington and Jefferson Coll., 1802-1902 (1902) ; 
and Adam Stump and Henry Anstadt, Hist, of the 
Evangelical Luth. Synod of West Pa. (1925). For 
Jacobs’ brother see M. L. Stoever, memoir in Evan¬ 
gelical Rev., vol. VII (1855-56), and W. B. Sprague, 
Annals Am. Pulpit, vol. IX, pt. 1 (1869).] G.H.G. 

JACOBS, WILLIAM PLUMER (Mar. 15, 
1842-Sept. 19, 1917), Presbyterian clergyman, 
was born in York County, S. C., the son of the 
Rev. Ferdinand and Mary Elizabeth (Redbrook) 
Jacobs. His father was the founder of the York- 
ville Presbyterian Church and conducted girls’ 
schools in Yorkville (York), S. C., Charleston, 
S. C, Fairview, Ala., and Laurensville (Lau¬ 
rens), S. G At the age of sixteen William en¬ 
tered Charleston College. He was a serious stu¬ 
dent and decided that year to give his life to 
Christian work. In 1859 he was appointed to re¬ 
port the proceedings of the South Carolina Sen¬ 
ate for the Carolinian and in i860 he reported 
the session at which the ordinance of secession 
was passed. At nineteen he entered the Columbia 
Theological Seminary. One of his professors, 
James Henly Thornwell Iq.vJ], so impressed 
Jacobs that later he named an orphanage for him. 
Resuming his journalistic activities, he reported 
at Augusta, Ga., 1861, the proceedings of the 
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 
the United States, the first Assembly held by the 
seceding Southern Presbyterians. 

After finishing his course at Columbia he as¬ 
sumed the pastorate of a Presbyterian church of 
forty-seven members in Clinton, S. C., at that 
time a small crossroads village. Here, in 1864, 
he began a work that lasted half a century. The 
state was emerging from the war and entering 
the Reconstruction era, and he believed that a 
small church, properly guided, could be a great 
pow’er in the social welfare of the community. 
He saw the need and dreamed of a home for 
orphans; educational facilities were lacking and 
he planned a high-school association, which grew 
into a college, and a library association for adult 
education. In order to further these schemes he 
established in 1866 a paper called True Witness, 
which was succeeded by Farm and Garden, and 
this by Our Monthly (still issued by the Thorn- 
well Orphanage Press). By 1875 his dream of 
an orphanage was in part realized by the opening 
of the first cottage, housing eight orphans. Dur¬ 
ing the forty-three years of his presidency of 
Thornwell, as the orphanage was called, it grew 
to fourteen homes, housing more than three hun¬ 
dred children. The members of his church stood 
behind him and with their aid Clinton Academy, 
which developed into Clinton College in 1880, 
was established. This institution later became 
the property of the presbyteries of the state and 


568 



Jacobson 

the name was changed to Presbyterian College 
of South Carolina, with Dr. Jacobs still chair¬ 
man of the trustees. In the last years of his life 
his frailness became pronounced, and when in 
1911 the Synod of South Carolina unanimously 
elected him moderator, he declined to serve, be¬ 
cause of his deafness and poor eyesight. He re¬ 
signed the pastorate of the First Presbyterian 
Church but continued to take an active part in 
the affairs of the Orphanage until his death. He 
had married, Apr. 20, 1865, Mary Jane Dillard 
of Laurens County, and to them five children 
were born. His will contained an accurate sum¬ 
mary of his life, “I have lived for three great 
institutions: the First Presbyterian Church, the 
Presbyterian College, and Thornwell Orphan¬ 
age.” One of his hobbies was the science of 
phonography and he at one time edited a maga¬ 
zine devoted to that subject. 

[Thornwell Jacobs, The Life of William Plumer 
Jacobs (1918) ; L. R. Lynn, The Story of Thornwell 
Orphanage (1924) ; F. D. Jones and W. H. Mills, Hist 
of the Presbyt. Ch. in S . C. Since 1&50 (1926); Our 
Monthly, Sept.-Dee. 1917; Clinton Chronicle, Sept. 13, 
1917; Phonographic Mag., Oct. 1914, Nov. 1917; The 
State (Columbia, S. C.), Sept. 11, 1917; Jacobs' di¬ 
aries, 32 vols., in possession of his son, Dr. Thornwell 
Jaoobs, Oglethorpe Univ., Atlanta, Ga.] W.L.Jo. 

JACOBSON, JOHN CHRISTIAN (Apr. 8, 
1795-Nov. 24,1870), Moravian bishop, and edu¬ 
cator, was born at Burkhall near Tondern, Den¬ 
mark. Soon after his birth, his father and mother, 
who were missionaries in the Diaspora service 
of the Church in Denmark, moved to Skjerne, 
where as late as 1913 the people still revered 
their memory and referred to their remarkable 
work (statement by Bishop Hamilton of the 
Moravian Church, Bethlehem, Pa.). The son 
was educated in the Moravian boarding school 
at Christiansfeld and at the higher school at 
Niesky, where he studied theology. Immediate¬ 
ly after graduation he was called to America 
where in 1816 he entered Nazareth Hall, the 
boys* boarding school at Nazareth, Pa., as a 
teacher. Perhaps his chief claim to remembrance 
rests upon his work in the field of education. He 
was a scholar with a critical knowledge of Latin, 
Greek, and Hebrew. He brought to America the 
educational ideals of Europe, and he profoundly 
influenced the trend of education in the Mora¬ 
vian schools at Nazareth and Bethlehem, Pa., 
and at Salem, N. C. In 1820 he became a pro¬ 
fessor in the Moravian Theological Seminary. 
In 1826 he married Lisetta Schnall, also a child 
of missionary parents, and in the same year he 
was called to the pastorate of the church in Beth- 
ania, N. C. For ten years, from 1834 to 1844, he 
was principal of the Salem Female Academy, and 


Jacoby 

was so successful that he was recalled to Naza¬ 
reth Hall as principal. 

Jacobson’s influence was also felt on church 
policy. In 1848 he was a delegate to the General 
Synod at Herrnhut, Saxony, and the following 
year he was called to Bethlehem as a member of 
the Provincial Elders’ Conference over which he 
presided for eighteen years. This was a period of 
growing importance for the American provinces, 
inasmuch as the General Synod in 1848 granted 
them certain powers of self-government, and in 
1857 increased these powers to practical independ¬ 
ence. The result was increased importance for 
the Moravian College finally located at Bethle¬ 
hem, and enlarged responsibility for the Ameri¬ 
can church leaders, of whom Jacobson was one. 
In 1852 he made an extensive tour through the 
western part of the northern province, visiting 
the congregations and mission stations in Michi¬ 
gan, Wisconsin, Upper Canada, Indiana, and 
Ohio (Moravian Church Miscellany for 1852 
and 1853). His story of his journey is an inter¬ 
esting commentary on methods of travel as well 
as a record of church progress. In 1854 he was 
ordained bishop, but he continued from time to 
time to give exegetical lectures on the New 
Testament at the Moravian College. In 1867 he 
retired from active life. Jacobson impressed his 
contemporaries not only with his serious schol¬ 
arship, but also with his joy in life, which gave 
him sympathy with old and young. Character¬ 
istic, too, was his broad-mindedness and lack of 
bigotry. He died after three years of retirement, 
at the age of seventy-five. 

[The Moravian, Dec. 1, 1870; W. N. Schwarze, 
“History of the Moravian College and Theological 
Seminary/* in Trans. Moravian Hist . Soc., vol. VIII 
(1909)1 J. H. Clewell, Hist, of Wachovia in N. C. 
(1902) ; journals of the general and provincial synods; 
J. T. Hamilton, A Hist, of the Moravian Church (1895), 
in the Am. Ch. Hist. Ser. f vol. VIII.] D.M.C. 

JACOBY, LUDWIG SIGMUND (Oct. 21, 
1813-June 20,1874), Methodist missionary, was 
bom at Altstrelitz, Grand Duchy of Mecklen- 
burg-Strelitz, Germany, of Jewish stock, the fifth 
of the six children of Samuel and Henriette 
(Hirsch) Jacoby. He attended the excellent 
school of the Altstrelitz (“Altmochum”) syna¬ 
gogue, but the narrow circumstances of his par¬ 
ents compelled him at the age of fifteen to enter 
the service of A. J. Saalfeld & Company in Ham¬ 
burg. Later he was a drummer for a firm in Leip¬ 
zig. In 1835 he was baptized a Lutheran, but the 
change to Christianity involved no inner strug¬ 
gle and no break with his family. In 1838, after 
a short stay in Nottingham, England, he emi¬ 
grated to the United States and wandered as far 
west as Cincinnati, where he found sufficient em- 


5 6 9 



Jacoby 

ployment as a tutor in English. Out of curiosity 
he attended a Methodist church on Vine Street 
between Fourth and Fifth and was converted late 
in 1839 hy the Rev. William Nast [ q.v .]. Though 
diffident of his qualifications, he yielded to Nast's 
persuasions and prepared himself for ordination. 
In September 1840 he married Amalie Therese 
Nuelsen, born in Germany at Norten near Han¬ 
nover, who had been converted from Catholicism 
to Methodism in Cincinnati. She bore him eight 
children, was his capable assistant in his work, 
and lived to mourn him. His missionary career, 
which first brought Methodism to the Germans 
in the upper Mississippi Valley, to Germany, and 
to Switzerland, began in 1841, when Bishop 
Thomas Asbury Morris sent him to open a mis¬ 
sion in St. Louis. Rowdies blocked the doors 
of his chapel with cow dung and threatened to 
tar and feather him, but he persisted and made 
converts. He then set up preaching stations at 
Galena, Dubuque, and other points and became 
presiding elder of the St. Louis German District 
in 1844 and of the Quincy German District in 
1845. I * 1 i ^48 he petitioned the General Confer¬ 
ence to send him to Germany to begin activities 
there. After a year of rest he sailed in October 
1849, established his headquarters in Bremen, 
and started a congregation. As helpers were sent 
to him, he carried the work to other towns in 
Germany and even into Switzerland. In the north 
he won followers by his command of his boyhood 
Plattdeutsch . For twenty-two laborious years 
he acted as pastor, book agent, editor of publica¬ 
tions, founder and director of a hospice and semi¬ 
nary, superintendent of missions, and presiding 
elder of the Oldenburg District. He was the au¬ 
thor of a Handbuch des Methodismus (Bremen, 
1853; 1854), a Geschichte des Methodismus, 
Erster TheiL (Bremen, 1870; 1871), tracts, and 
other items. Methodism was distinctly unwel¬ 
come in Germany, but through Jacoby's sagac¬ 
ity and devotion it gained a foothold. Weary 
with years of unremitting toil, he returned to the 
United States late in 1871 and became pastor 
of the Soulardgemeinde in St. Louis and soon 
after presiding elder again of the St. Louis Dis¬ 
trict. Before many months he was mortally ill. 
While awaiting death he compiled Letzte Stun- 
den, oder Die Kraft der Religion Jesu Christi im 
Tode (1870). 

[Autobiographical chapter in Experience of German 
Meth . Preachers (Cincinnati, 1859), fcd. by Adam Mil¬ 
ler ; obituary in Minutes of the Annual Conferences of 
the Meth . Episc. Ch 1874, p. 88; J. Schlagenlauf, 
chapter in Charakter-Bilder aus der Geschichte des 
Methodismus (Cincinnati, 1881), ed. by Fr. Kopp; Jo- 
hannes Jungst, Der Methodismus in Deutschland (2nd 
ed., Gotha, 1877) ; Heinrich Mann, Ludwig S. Jacoby 
* * * Sein Leben und Wirken nebst einem Kurzen 


Jadwin 

Lebensabriss seiner Mitarbeiter (Bremen and Zurich, 
1892); St. Louis Daily Globe, June 2 1, 1874.3 G H G* 

JADWIN, EDGAR (Aug. 7, 1865-Mar. 2, 
1931), soldier, engineer, was born at Honesdale, 
Pa., the son of Cornelius Comegys and Charlotte 
Ellen (Wood) Jadwin. His father, a merchant, 
served a term in Congress (1882-84), and the 
family traced ancestry back to colonial forebears 
in Virginia and Pennsylvania, the first of the 
name having been Jeremiah Jadwin who settled 
about 1683 on the neck between Chesapeake and 
Delaware bays. After a common-school educa¬ 
tion, young Jadwin attended Lafayette College, 
Easton, Pa., for two years. He entered West 
Point in 1886 and graduated four years later with 
the highest honors of his class. He was commis¬ 
sioned second lieutenant, Corps of Engineers, 
and after duty with various river and harbor im¬ 
provements, 1890-97, became an assistant to the 
chief of engineers, 1897-98. The war with Spain 
found him promoted to major and lieutenant- 
colonel, 3rd United States Volunteer Engineers, 
with command for a time of a battalion of his 
regiment at Matanzas, Cuba, where he effected 
many sanitary reforms. His subsequent service 
included engineering projects on the Pacific coast 
and in the vicinity of Galveston, Tex., with con¬ 
struction of a deep-sea channel between Galves¬ 
ton and Houston and engineering safeguards fol¬ 
lowing the great hurricane of the year 1900. He 
had reached the grade of major, 1906, when he 
was selected by General Goethals as one of his 
assistants in the construction of the Panama Ca¬ 
nal. As such, he was division engineer of the 
Chagres Division, 1907-08, resident engineer, 
Atlantic Division, 1908-11, and his more impor¬ 
tant accomplishments included construction of a 
ship's channel through Gatun Lake, and build¬ 
ing the great Gatun Dam and Spillway, as well 
as a breakwater at the Atlantic terminus of the 
Canal. He was on important engineering work 
in the Tennessee District, 1911, assistant to the 
chief of engineers at Washington, 1911-16, and 
in charge of the Pittsburgh District, 1916-17, 
with membership on the Ohio River Board of 
Flood Control. Promotion to the grade of lieu¬ 
tenant-colonel had come in 1913. 

With the outbreak of the World War, Jadwin 
was appointed commanding officer, 15th United 
States Engineers (Railway),on July6,1917,and 
with his regiment overseas was soon engaged in 
vast construction projects. He was appointed 
brigadier-general, National Army, Dec. 17,1917, 
and served as chief engineer of advanced lines of 
communication, until Feb. 17, 1918, and as direc¬ 
tor of light railways and roads, American Expe¬ 
ditionary Forces, until Mar. 19, 1918, when he 


570 



Jadwin 

became director of construction and forestry at 
the Service of Supply, Tours, France. This work 
engaged the services of some 61,500 officers and 
men (ultimately increased to 160,000), in the 
construction of many hundreds of army barracks, 
hospitalization for 280,000 beds, many great 
docks for seagoing vessels at various ports, some 
947 miles of standard-gauge railroad, covered 
storage (500 acres) housing ninety days' sup¬ 
plies for 2,120,000 men with remount facilities 
for 39,000, and veterinary space for 23,000 ani¬ 
mals. In the Bordeaux area, four million gallons 
per day of pure water were developed through 
artesian wells, with similar water-supply proj¬ 
ects at Brest and St Nazaire. At Gievres, Jad¬ 
win erected a refrigeration plant with a daily 
capacity of 5,200 tons of meat and 375 tons of 
ice (Army and Navy Register , Dec. 6,1919; and 
Evening Star , Washington, Mar. 3, 1931). The 
Distinguished Service Medal was awarded him 
at the close of the war, “for exceptionally meri¬ 
torious and distinguished services," with the 
statement that “he brought to [his] important 
task a splendidly trained mind and exceptionally 
high skill. His breadth of vision and sound judg¬ 
ment influenced greatly the successful completion 
of many vast construction projects undertaken 
by the American Expeditionary Forces.” He was 
made by the British government a companion of 
the Bath, and by the French government a com¬ 
mander of the Legion of Honor. 

With the ending of the World War, President 
Wilson appointed Jadwin a member of the com¬ 
mission investigating certain conditions in Po¬ 
land, 1919-20, during which period he reverted 
to the rank of colonel. He served as engineer of¬ 
ficer, VIII Corps Area, 1920-22, district engi¬ 
neer at Charleston, S. C., 1922-24, and in the 
same year, 1924, was made chairman of the 
American Section, Joint Canadian-American In¬ 
ternational Board, for the development of the St. 
Lawrence River with respect to navigation and 
power, serving until 1929. His outstanding abili¬ 
ty was recognized, June 19, 1924, by promotion 
to brigadier-general and assistant to the chief of 
engineers, with service on many important boards 
and commissions, including the chairmanship of 
the technical advisory commission to the joint 
congressional committee on the question of leas¬ 
ing Muscle Shoals (1926). He was promoted 
major-general and made chief of engineers, June 
27,1926. Perhaps the most notable service of his 
administration was the sponsoring of the Army 
Engineer Plan for Mississippi Flood Control, 
which was adopted by Congress after much con¬ 
troversy and involved the expenditure of $375 r 
000,000 of public funds. He also served as a 


James 

member of the Federal Oil Conservation Board, 
and of the international conference on oil pollu¬ 
tion of navigable waters. 

He was a delegate to the World's Engineering 
Congress at Tokyo in 1929, and in that year 
served as president of the American Society of 
Military Engineers. Retired from active service 
as a lieutenant-general by operation of law, Aug. 

7, 1929, he became consulting engineer of the 
Meadows Reclamation Commission and chair¬ 
man of a board of advisory engineers to the state 
of New York. In 1930, he was offered by Presi¬ 
dent Hoover the important post of chairman of 
the newly created Federal Power Commission, 
a nomination which was opposed by a minority 
group in the Senate. Declining the appointment, 
he was later designated as chairman of the Inter- 
oceanic Canal Board, to determine upon whether 
or not the government should undertake con¬ 
struction of a canal across Nicaragua, or an in¬ 
crease in the capacity of the Panama Canal. 
While on this duty he died suddenly of cerebral 
hemorrhage at Gorgas Hospital, Canal Zone. 
Interment was at Arlington National Cemetery, 
Mar. 12, 1931, with impressive military honors. 
He was survived by his widow, Jean (Laubach) 
Jadwin, to whom he was married Oct. 6, 1891, 
and by two children. 

[Certain important information lias been furnished 
by a daughter, Charlotte Jadwin Hearn, Washington, 
D. C. For many details see G. W. Cullum, Biog . Reg. 
Officers and Grads., U. S. Mil. Acad., vol. III-VII; 
archives, Asso. of Grads., U. S. Mil. Acad.; Who's 
Who in America, 1930-31; Alfred Mathews, Hist, of 
Wayne, Pike, and Monroe Counties, Pa. (1886); Army 
and Navy Journal, Aug. 17, 1929 ; N.Y. Herald Trib¬ 
une, Aug. 8, 1929, July 12, 1930, and Mar. 3, 1931; 
N. Y. Times, Mar. 3, 1931.] C.D.R. 

JAMES, CHARLES (Apr. 27, 1880-Dec. 10, 
1928), chemist, was bom at Earls Barton, near 
Northampton, England. He was the son of Wil¬ 
liam and Mary Diana (Shatford) James. His 
scientific education was obtained at the Institute 
of Chemistry, London, where he graduated in 
1904; Ramsay was his teacher of chemistry. Af¬ 
ter working about two years as a chemist at the 
New Cransley Iron and Steel Company, Ketter¬ 
ing, England, he came to the United States, 
where he was granted citizenship in 1920. Join¬ 
ing the chemistry staff of New Hampshire Col¬ 
lege (later University of New Hampshire), Dur¬ 
ham, N. H., he remained with that institution 
twenty-two years, as instructor, assistant profes¬ 
sor, and professor and head of the department. 
Here he made extensive investigations of the 
rare earths. The account of this original work, 
which won him international recognition, is em¬ 
bodied in about sixty papers published principally 
in the Journal of the American Chemical Society 


S7i 



James 

from 1907 to 1926. These exhaustive and com¬ 
prehensive researches dealt with the rare-earth 
elements cerium, thulium, europium, samarium, 
neodymium, terbium, gadolinium, erbium, and 
also with other elements which are usually classed 
as rare, e.g., beryllium, yttrium, lanthanum, zir¬ 
conium, scandium, gallium, germanium, and ura¬ 
nium. James’s work covered nearly the whole 
field of the rare-earth problems, and included spe¬ 
cifically the discovery of new compounds of the 
elements samarium, neodymium, and europium, 
the extraction and separation of elements from 
many rare-earth minerals (especially the yttri¬ 
um earths, gadolinite, and monazite sands), and 
a study of the atomic weights of thulium, yttrium, 
and samarium. During his twenty years of work 
in this field he devised new, and improved old, 
methods of handling the rare earths and com¬ 
pounds of the rare-earth elements. He worked 
with large quantities—kilograms in many in¬ 
stances—and prepared large amounts and many 
kinds of salts of the rare-earth and the rare ele¬ 
ments. By nature and temperament he was con¬ 
spicuously generous, and constantly supplied 
workers in this field with material unobtainable 
elsewhere. He left an extensive and valuable col¬ 
lection of the rare-earth metals and their com¬ 
pounds to the University of New Hampshire. By 
his constant work on the rare earths, he ac¬ 
quired exceptional skill in preparing, testing, 
and purifying these baffling substances. Much of 
his work was unqualifiedly original and he often 
labored long and arduously to verify every point 
before publication. Consequently, his results 
were seldom, if ever, seriously questioned This 
unswerving devotion to truth cost him fame at 
least twice. His laboratory records show that 
he anticipated the discovery of lutecium and 
illinium (see Proceedings of the National Acad¬ 
emy of Sciences, December 1926), but he delayed 
publication to be doubly sure. He was a member 
of the American Chemical Society (1907-28), 
the London Chemical Society, and Alpha Chi 
Sigma, and was honored for his work by being 
elected as a fellow of the London Institute of 
Chemistry in 1907. He was awarded the Ramsay 
silver medal in 1901 and in 1911, the Nichols 
medal. Personally, James was a modest, unas¬ 
suming man, who preferred to toil early and late 
in his laboratory. He was an excellent teacher, 
much beloved by his students, who called him 
“King James.” Although an indefatigable work¬ 
er in chemistry, his tastes were catholic and he 
found time to become an expert in cultivating 
flowers, 'raising bees, and collecting stamps. In 
1915 he married Marion E. Templeton of Exeter, 
N. H., who with one daughter survived him. The 


James 

Charles James Hall of Chemistry at the Univer¬ 
sity of New Hampshire, dedicated Nov. 9, 1929, 
will perpetuate his memory. 

[The Life and Work of Charles James (1932), with 
bibliog., privately printed by the Northeastern Section 
of the Am. Chem. Soc., Boston, Mass.; Nucleus (Bos¬ 
ton), Jan. 1929; Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 
(News Edition), Dec. 20, 1928; Jour. Am. Chem. Soc. 
Aug. 20, 1926, p. 121; Who f s Who in America , 1928^ 
29; Manchester Union (Manchester, N. H.), Dec. n 
1928, Nov. 9, 1929.] L.C.N. ' 

JAMES, CHARLES TILLINGHAST (Sept. 

1805-Oct 17) 1862), engineer, United States 
senator, was born at West Greenwich, R. I., the 
fifth of six children born to Silas and Phebe 
(Tillinghast) James. His ancestors on both 
sides were early settlers in Rhode Island; his 
father had been a Revolutionary soldier and a 
judge of the local court. Although his school ed¬ 
ucation was limited, young James learned the 
trade of carpenter by the time he was nineteen 
and immediately thereafter mastered practical 
mechanics, acquainting himself particularly with 
the construction of textile machinery. Removing 
to Providence, he eventually became superin¬ 
tendent of Slater’s steam cotton mills. As a cot¬ 
ton-mill superintendent he became firmly con¬ 
vinced of the superiority of steam-driven textile 
machinery and during the forties and fifties was 
the “great prophet of steam-driven cotton fac¬ 
tories” (Keir, post, p. 309). In support of his 
conviction he wrote for the newspapers, lectured 
frequently, and defended his stand in a printed 
debate carried on with A. A. Lawrence in Hunt's 
Merchant's Magazine (November 1849-March 
1850). His propaganda bore fruit in a number 
of the seaboard cities without adequate water 
power, where commerce was declining. Under 
the inspiration of a series of lectures at Newbury- 
port, the citizens started a mill which failed but 
which James reorganized. For some years he re¬ 
sided in Newburyport, during which time he 
planned and constructed six mills. His reputa¬ 
tion as a reviver of the declining city brought de¬ 
mands for his services at Salem, Mass., Ports¬ 
mouth, N. H., and at Newport, Bristol and other 
cities in Rhode Island. He also traveled through 
New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Tennes¬ 
see where he started steam-driven textile facto¬ 
ries to use the nearby coal and became much 
interested in the development of Southern manu¬ 
facturing. During the decade of the forties he 
was responsible for starting twenty-three steam 
mills, sixteen of which were in New England, 
and one of which, the Naumkeag mill at Salem, 
was at the time the largest mill in the world in 
which the entire process of converting cotton 
into cloth was carried on under one roof. Return- 



James 


James 


ing to Rhode Island in 1848, he erected the Atlan¬ 
tic De Laine Mill at Olneyville, one of the im¬ 
portant new factories in that state, but a project 
which was shortly to involve him in financial 
ruin. 

James came from a family of Democrats and 
was much interested in politics, although his nu¬ 
merous business interests prevented for many 
years any personal participation. He became a 
major-general in the Rhode Island militia and 
United States senator from Rhode Island in 1851, 
when he was elected as a high-tariff Democrat by 
a maj ority of one on the eighth ballot, his victory 
being due to a combination of Whigs and Demo¬ 
crats in a legislature which contained a majority 
of Whigs. As senator his chief interest was in 
technical and economic problems; he was chair¬ 
man of the Senate Committee on Patents in the 
Thirty-fourth Congress. Although an excellent 
speaker, he was seldom heard in the Senate. The 
records, however, show his belief in upholding 
the compromise measures of 1850 and his opposi¬ 
tion to the Kansas-Nebraska bill. He refused to 
stand for reelection, chiefly because of the im¬ 
pairment of his fortune during his senatorial 
term, his lawyer, Caleb Cushing, later asserting 
that the management of the De Laine Mills had 
literally fleeced him of his property. 

After his retirement from the Senate, James 
devoted his chief attention to the improvement 
of firearms, an interest which had long been his 
hobby. The coming of the Civil War intensified 
this interest and he made important contributions 
in perfecting a rifled cannon, a cylindrical bullet 
with a conical head, and an explosive projectile. 
While he was experimenting with the latter at 
Sag Harbor, N. Y., on Oct. 16,1862, a shell upon 
which he was working exploded and mortally 
wounded him. His death occurred the following 
day. Above the average in height, James was a 
man of commanding presence, marked out to be 
a leader both by his appearance and his versatile 
talents. He left a wife and four children. 

[Biog. Dir. Am. Cong. 17U-1927U 9*8) ; Edward 
Field, State of R. I. and Providence Plantations at the 
End of the Century: A Hist. (1902), vol. I; Represen¬ 
tative Men and Old Families of Rhode Island (1908), 
vol. I; Malcolm Keir, Manufacturing (19^8); U. S. 
Circuit Court for the R. L District: James vs. The At¬ 
lantic De Laine Co., Sept. 19, 1866; Mr. Caleb Cush¬ 
ing's Argument for the Plaintiff (1867); De Bows 
Review, Dec. 1850; Boston Daily Advertiser , Oct. 20, 
1862; Springfield Republican, Oct. 18, 1862; N. Y. 
Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 18, 1862; Providence 
Daily Post, Oct. 18, 20, 1862.] H.U.F. 

JAMES, DANIEL WILLIS (Apr. 15, 1832- 
Sept. 13, 1907), merchant, philanthropist, was 
bom at Liverpool, England, where his father, 
Daniel James, a native of New York State, was 
resident partner of the American firm of Phelps, 


Dodge & Company, dealers in metals. His moth¬ 
er, Elizabeth Woodbridge Phelps, was also an 
American, a daughter of the head of the same 
firm. The close contacts of both parents with 
New York interests naturally resulted in giving 
the boy a distinctly American outlook and bent, 
even in an English environment. Until he was 
thirteen, he attended English country boarding 
schools. He was then sent to Edinburgh, where 
he was a student in an academy for three years 
and for one year at the University. While he 
was in Scotland his mother died, and in 1849, 
at the age of seventeen, he set out for New York, 
his father evidently expecting him to enter on a 
business career there with the help of family con¬ 
nections. Little time was lost in getting to work, 
and within five years he was admitted as a junior 
partner in Phelps, Dodge & Company, with 
which establishment he was connected for the 
rest of his life. The development of copper mines 
owned by his firm in Arizona led to the building 
of branch railroads and other pioneering opera¬ 
tions in the Southwest and in Mexico. In these 
activities he took a leading part 
While he was still in his thirties, before he 
could be counted as a capitalist on a large scale, 
he was active in philanthropic effort. For half a 
century of his life in New York there was never 
a time when his personal contributions to reli¬ 
gious and charitable causes were not far greater 
than was known to the public. Enough has come 
to light, however, in the records and reports of 
organizations to show that the sum total of the 
gifts that he made in his lifetime, if it could be 
computed, would place him in a high rank among 
the philanthropists of his generation. One who 
tried so persistently to keep one hand from know¬ 
ing what the other was doing easily escapes the 
imputation of selfish motives. Those who knew 
James well seem agreed that his affections were 
spontaneous and all-inclusive. Dr. Charles H. 
Parkhurst declared that he loved everything in 
the universe “from God down to the newsboy/* 
It was only natural that a man of such impulses 
should find on every side new channels of be¬ 
nevolence. The Children’s Aid Society of New 
York, founded by Charles Loring Brace [q.v.\ I, 
appealed with peculiar force to him and through¬ 
out his life continued to claim his interest and 
support. He was a trustee for thirty-nine years 
and president for ten. His gifts to the society 
from 1868 to 1907 were continuous. It was he 
who founded the Health Home of the society at 
Coney Island for the mothers of sick children. 
Many who never so much as heard his name have 
been helped back to health and strength by that 
institution. 


573 



James 

While his son was a student at Amherst Col¬ 
lege the elder James was elected a trustee of that 
institution and served as such during some of 
his busiest years. He was also on the governing 
board of the American Museum of Natural His¬ 
tory, He gave close attention to the problems of 
every board in which he held membership. Since 
1867 he had been a director of the Union Theo¬ 
logical Seminary in New York, and when it 
seemed necessary for the seminary to acquire a 
new site he spent months in studying New York 
real estate. Finding at last a suitable tract, he 
bought it and offered it anonymously, without 
conditions, to the seminary. The cost of the land, 
with funds provided for buildings and $300,000 
added by Mrs. James, totaled $1,900,000, the 
largest individual gift to a theological school 
then on record. In 1854 he had married Ellen 
Stebbins Curtiss, of New York. She, with a son, 
survived him. 

[ 0 . S. Phelps and A. T. Servin, The Phelps Family 
of America (1899), vol. II; Fifty-fifth Ann. Report of 
the Children's Aid Soc. for Year Ending Oct. z, 1907; 
C. H. Parkhurst, Address Memorial of the Late D. 
Willis James (1907); N. Y. Times, Sept. 14, 1907; 
Outlook, Oct. 5, 1907; W. A. Brown, Statement of 
... Facts ... Connected with the Hist, of Union Theol. 
Sem. (1909) ; Who's Who in America, 1906-07.] 

W—m.B.S. 

JAMES, EDMUND JANES (May 21, 1855- 
June 17, 1925), economist and university presi¬ 
dent, was born at Jacksonville, Ill., the son of 
Colin Dew James and his wife, Amanda Keziah 
Casad. His father, a Virginian by birth, was a 
presiding elder in the Illinois Methodist Confer¬ 
ence. After graduating from the high school of 
the Illinois State Normal University (1873), Ed¬ 
mund James spent a scant year at Northwestern 
University, and another (1874-75) at Harvard. 
The following autumn he entered the University 
of Halle, where he studied economics with Con¬ 
rad and took his doctorate (1877) with a disser¬ 
tation on the American tariff. In the Halle Uni¬ 
versity circle James also met Anna Margarethe 
Lange whom he married on Aug. 22, 1879. 
Three of their six children survived him. 

Returning to Illinois, full of enthusiasm for 
German scholarship, he taught first in the Evans¬ 
ton High School and later as principal of his old 
school at Normal (1879-82). He was an inspir¬ 
ing teacher and several of his pupils had success¬ 
ful academic careers. He also published educa¬ 
tional essays and in 1881 founded, with Charles 
De Garmo, the Illinois School Journal. Mean¬ 
time, his contributions to J. J. Lalor’s Cyclopae¬ 
dia of Political Science (1881-83) on such topics 
as “Factory Law's” and “Finance,” brought him 
recognition as a promising young economist, and 
in 1883 he became professor of Public Finance 


James 

and Administration in the new Wharton School 
of Finance and Economy at the University of 
Pennsylvania. He impressed his early Pennsyl¬ 
vania students by his “clear, vigorous and realis¬ 
tic” teaching, stimulating interest in higher stud¬ 
ies and productive scholarship. The recognized 
leader of the Wharton School faculty, he was also 
active in promoting commercial education else¬ 
where. Visiting Europe under the auspices of 
the American Bankers Association, he published 
his Education of Business Men in Europe 
(1893), which attracted much attention. He was 
one of the younger economists who were active 
in organizing the American Economic Associa¬ 
tion, and one of its first two vice-presidents 
(1885). The dissatisfaction of these younger 
scholars with “classical” economics is reflected in 
his preface to J. K. Ingram's A History of Politi¬ 
cal Economy (1888). His center of interest was 
shifting, however, from economics to politics 
with a special interest in municipal problems, and 
he was the first president of the Municipal 
League of Philadelphia (1891). More signifi¬ 
cant was his founding of the American Academy 
of Political and Social Science (1889-90); he 
was also its first president (1890-1901) and the 
first editor of its Annals (1890-96). 

In these varied activities, some friction devel¬ 
oped and in 1896 James went to the University 
of Chicago as professor of public administration 
and director of university extension—he had been 
president of the American Association for the 
Extension of University Teaching. His career at 
Chicago was short (1896-1901) but he estab¬ 
lished contacts which proved useful as he turned 
from intensive scholarship to educational admin¬ 
istration. After two years as president of North¬ 
western University (1902-04) he was elected to 
the presidency of the University of Illinois, 
where he spent fifteen years in active service 
(1904-19). He was exceptionally equipped for 
his new post. A native of the state, he knew’ its 
public school system at first-hand as pupil and 
teacher, while his knowledge of educational de¬ 
velopments at home and abroad gave him an un¬ 
usual perspective. Above all, he believed in the 
ability and willingness of a democracy, properly 
led, to build up a real university. His first appeal 
to the legislature brought the biennial appropria¬ 
tion to nearly a million and a half, and during the 
next decade this amount was increased to about 
five millions. Meantime, though admission re¬ 
quirements were advanced, student attendance 
increased more than eighty per cent.; the faculty 
was rapidly expanded; and several major build¬ 
ings were added. More significant was the en¬ 
largement of research equipment and the setting 


574 



James 

of higher standards. To a remarkable extent, 
the younger workers—whether in humanistic, 
scientific, or professional studies—were made to 
feel that their special problems were understood. 

Constantly involved in large projects, James's 
treatment of academic routine was sometimes 
open to criticism and during the later years of 
his administration his personal associations 
abroad made the World War a difficult ordeal for 
himself and his family, though his wife’s death in 
1914 spared her the realization of what was to 
follow. James hoped that American participa¬ 
tion might be avoided; but, though cosmopolitan 
in his interests, he was politically a strong na¬ 
tionalist, and when the United States entered the 
war, he was eager to help, both personally and 
through the expert services of the university. 
Never robust, however, he broke down under the 
stress of this trying period. After a year’s leave 
of absence he resigned the presidency in 1920. 
He died five years later at Covina, Cal. His keen 
sense of the dramatic may have verged at times 
on the theatrical; but he was essentially large- 
minded, dealing realistically with situations and 
with men while taking a human interest in indi¬ 
viduals. Though reserved in his expression of 
religious feeling, he retained his Methodist con¬ 
nections and took a catholic interest in religious 
education. 

[E. J. James, The James-Stites Gened. (1898), 
repr. from N. Y. Gened. and Biog. Record, Apr. 1898; 
Jour. III. State Hist. Soc Jan. 1917; Annals Am. Acad. 
Political and. Social Science, Jan. 1896, Mar. 1901; 
Who's Who in America, 1924-25 ; The Semi-Centennial 
Alumni.Record of the Univ. of III. (1918), containing 
select lists of publications; an exhaustive manuscript 
list in the Univ. of Ill. Library; biennial reports of the 
Univ. of Ill. trustees; World Today, Apr. 1911; In 
Memoriam Edmund Janes James (Urbana, Ill., 1925) ; 
A. H. Wilde, Northwestern University: A Hist. 1855 - 
1905 (1905); Allan Nevins, Illinois (1917); Sixteen 
Years at the Univ. of III.: A Statistical Study of the 
Administration of President Edmund J. James (1920); 
N. Y. Times, June 20, 1925; personal recollections, and 
correspondence with James’s contemporaries.] 

E.B.G. 

JAMES, EDWARD CHRISTOPHER (May 
1,1841-Mar. 24,1901), lawyer, was born at Og- 
densburg, St. Lawrence County, N. Y., the son of 
Amaziah Bailey and Lucia Williams (Ripley) 
James. Dr. Thomas James, his ancestor in the 
eighth generation, was one of the twelve original 
companions of Roger Williams. On his mother’s 
side his ancestors included Samuel Huntington, 
a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and 
the elder and younger William Bradford, early 
governors of Plymouth Colony. His grandfather 
and his great-grandfather were lawyers of estab¬ 
lished reputations and his father was for twenty- 
three years a justice of the supreme court of New 
York. His early education began at common 


James 

schools. Later he studied at the academy at Og- 
densburg and at Dr. Reed’s Walnut Hill School 
at Geneva, N. Y. He engaged in the study of law 
and at the age of twenty was preparing himself 
for admission to the bar when the Civil War be¬ 
gan. Abandoning his law studies, he promptly 
enlisted, being appointed adjutant of the 50th 
New York Volunteers. He was rapidly pro¬ 
moted. He became assistant adjutant-general 
and aide-de-camp to General Woodbury, major 
of the 60th New York Infantry, lieutenant-colo¬ 
nel of the 106th New York Infantry, and later 
colonel, serving in the West Virginia campaign. 
Although scarcely twenty-two years of age, upon 
several occasions he was in command of a bri¬ 
gade. Owing to physical disability incurred in 
the service, he was compelled to retire from the 
field in the spring of 1863. In later years he 
often stated he was a graduate of the University 
of the Army of the Potomac and knew* of none 
better for the making of men. 

Resuming his law studies upon his return to 
Ogdensburg, he was admitted to the bar in Oc¬ 
tober 1863 and began to practise at Ogdensburg. 
In 1864 he formed a partnership with Stillman 
Foote, surrogate of St. Lawrence County. After 
a successful practice for ten years, James en¬ 
gaged in practice alone for seven years. His suc¬ 
cess before courts and juries was winning him 
a growing reputation and a large practice of lo¬ 
cal important cases. In 1881 he again formed a 
partnership, associating himself with A. R. Her- 
riman, later a surrogate of St. Lawrence County. 
Feeling that his talents demanded a wider field, 
he left Herriman in charge of his Ogdensburg 
practice and in January 1882 went to New York, 
practically unknown. For some years he prac¬ 
tised alone but in 1896 he formed the'firm of 
James, Schell & Elkus, of which he remained a 
member until his death. His energy, natural tal¬ 
ents, and ability speedily won him recognition, 
and his practice embraced cases of every kind. 
His skill in cross-examination was especially 
noteworthy. Of all the cases which he tried pos¬ 
sibly that of Laidlaw vs. Sage (158 N. Y., 74) 
attracted the most attention. The action arose 
out of the explosion of a bomb in the office of 
Russell Sage. Laidlaw*, the plaintiff, represented 
by Joseph Hodges Choate, had shielded Russell 
Sage from possible danger, thereby incurring 
painful injuries. Popular sentiment plus Choate’s 
brilliancy won for' Laidlaw a favorable verdict 
and large damages in the lower court. This deci¬ 
sion was sustained by the judges of the appellate 
division. Undeterred, James, representing Rus¬ 
sell Sage, the defendant, carried the case to the 
court of appeals. The ultimate verdict, a com- 



James 


James 


plete reversal by the court of appeals, was prac¬ 
tically a personal triumph for James. In People 
vs. McLaughlin (150 N. Y., 365), a criminal ac¬ 
tion, he fought the case through two trials and 
finally successfully obtained for his client, the po¬ 
lice commissioner of New York, a reversal of 
conviction. In several damage suits he won large 
verdicts. In an action to recover broker’s com¬ 
mission upon the sale of a ferry ( Grade vs. Ste¬ 
vens, 56 A. D., 203), he won a verdict of $112,- 
500. Again in an action for libel against a news¬ 
paper (Crane vs. Bennett, 77 A . D., 102) he won 
a verdict of $40,000 which later was reduced to 
$25,000. His last notable case involved the con¬ 
struction of the will of Jay Gould (Dittmar vs. 
Gould, 60 A. D., 94). 

{Albany Law Jour., May 1901; Ann. Reports, Char¬ 
ter, Constitution, By-Laws, Officers, Committees, and 
Members of the Asso. of the Bar of the City of N. Y. 
(1902) ; N. Y. Times, Mar. 25, 1901.] L. H. S. 

JAMES, EDWIN (Aug. 27, 1797-Oct. 28, 
1861), explorer, naturalist, physician, was born 
at Weybridge,, Addison County, Vt., the young¬ 
est of the thirteen children of Daniel and Mary 
(Emmes) James. He attended the Addison Coun¬ 
ty Grammar School and Middlebury College, 
from which he was graduated in 1816. The next 
three years he spent in Albany studying botany 
and geology with Dr. John Torrey and Prof. 
Amos Eaton [ qq.v .] and medicine with his broth¬ 
er, Dr. John James. In the spring of 1820 he be¬ 
came botanist, geologist, and surgeon of the ex¬ 
pedition commanded by Maj. Stephen H. Long 
[q.v.], sent to explore the country between the 
Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. The expe¬ 
dition took the route along the Platte and South 
Platte and reached the Rockies in July 1820. On 
July 14, James and two companions reached the 
summit of Pike’s Peak, the first white men to ac¬ 
complish the feat. The mountain was christened 
James’ Peak by Major Long, and the name ap¬ 
pears on some of the earlier maps, but has since 
been supplanted by the name of the reputed dis¬ 
coverer. After exploring the Arkansas, Red, and 
Canadian rivers the expedition disbanded at Cape 
Girardeau, Mo. Using the notes of Maj. Long 
and other members of the party, James wrote an 
Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the 
Rocky Mountains Performed in the Years 1819 
and ’20 (2 vols. and atlas, Philadelphia, 1822-23, 
and 3 vols., London, 1823, each edition containing 
material not included in the other). In the ab¬ 
sence of any detailed narrative by Major Long, 
this work became the official report of the expedi¬ 
tion. While it is still valuable for its accounts of 
the native fauna and of the Indian tribes, the re¬ 
port “was not fitted to its purpose; it belonged to 
the scientific explorations of later times” (Chit¬ 


tenden, post, II, 584). Congress and the public 
looked for “a comprehensive view of the country 
from a practical standpoint” and found instead a 
geological survey. The unfavorable descriptions 
of the trans-Mississippi country by Long and 
James were “not welcomed by an expansive peo¬ 
ple” (Thwaites, post, XIV, 20-21) and for many 
years afterwards the report served as the most 
powerful weapon available in the hands of men 
like Daniel Webster “whenever they felt called 
upon to resist Too great an extension of our pop¬ 
ulation westward’ ” (Chittenden, post, II, 586— 
87). In 1823 James became an assistant surgeon 
in the United States army. He was appointed 
botanist, geologist, and physician of the second 
Long expedition (1823), but the news failed to 
reach him until after its departure. On Apr. 5, 
1827 he married Clarissa Rogers, of Gloucester, 
Mass. ( National Gazette, Philadelphia, Apr. 7, 
1827), by whom he had one son. Stationed at 
Fort Crawford (Prairie du Chien) and Mack¬ 
inac, he became interested in Indian languages 
and compiled several Indian spelling books, 
translated the New Testament into the 0 jibway 
tongue (1833), and wrote an article on Indian 
language for the American Quarterly Review 
(June 1828) and A Narrative of the Captivity 
and Adventures of John Tanner (1830). From 
these George Bancroft \_q.v.~\ drew freely in pre¬ 
paring the sections on the languages, manners, 
religious faith, and political institutions of the 
Indians in his History of the United States. Re¬ 
signing from the army (1833), James was for a 
time associated with Edward C. Delavan \_q.vJ\ 
in editing the Temperance Herald and Journal at 
Albany. In 1837-38 he was sub-agent for the 
Potawatamie Indians at Old Council Bluffs, 
Nebr., after which he settled on a farm at Rock 
Spring, near Burlington, Iowa. Here he spent 
the remainder of his life, running a station of the 
Underground Railroad (for he was “an aboli¬ 
tionist of the most ultra kind”) and giving thanks 
unto God “for raising up among us so great a 
man as John Brown.” He died at Rock Spring 
at the age of sixty-four. In an obituary he is de¬ 
scribed as a man of unorthodox religious and po¬ 
litical views. 

[C. C. Parry, in Am. Jour, of Sci. and Arts, May 
1862; Louis H. Pammel, in Annals of Iowa, Oct. 1907, 
Jan. 1908 ; G. W. Frazee and Chas. Aldrich, Ibid., July 
1899; W. H. Keating, Narrative of an Exped. to the 
Source of St. Peter's River (1824), I, 12 ; H. M. Chit¬ 
tenden, The Am. Fur Trade of the Far West (1902), 
vol. II; R. G. Thwaites, ed., Early Western Travels, 
vol. XIV (1905), preface; T. S. Pearson, Cat. of the 
Grads, of Middlebury College (1853) ; Cat. of the Of¬ 
ficers and Students of Middlebury Coll. (1901) ; J. C. 
Pilling, Bibliog. of the Algonquian Languages (1891); 
F. B. Heitman, Hist. Reg. of the U. S. Army (1890); 
Iowa Jour, of Hist, and Politics, July 1913; Burlington 
Daily Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Oct. 29, 1861.] 

F.E.R. 


576 



James 

JAMES, GEORGE WHARTON (Sept. 27, 
1858-Nov. 8, 1923), lecturer and writer on the* 
Southwest, continued an early American tradi¬ 
tion by being a self-made man of English birth. 
His parents were John and Ann (Wharton) 
James of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, where he 
lived until he was twenty-three. Born into an un¬ 
privileged non-conformist world and oftener ill 
than not, he made up for what he lacked by his 
precocity, his lifelong will to learn, his gift for 
human relations. In his youth he seemed to be 
destined for the church. After crossing the ocean 
in 1881 he was a Methodist minister in Nevada 
and California for seven years. But between 1883 
and 1888 he joined the Royal Historical, Astro¬ 
nomical, and Microscopical societies, the Geo¬ 
logical Society of London, and the Victoria In¬ 
stitute. In England not only Carlyle and Ruskin 
but Darwin, Tyndall, and Huxley influenced him. 
In America he knew John Muir, Joseph Le 
Conte, Major Powell of the Colorado River. The 
turning-point of his career came in 1889, in the 
form of a crisis more than physical. In the end 
he recovered his health and discovered the air he 
could breathe. 

He found it around him in the breezy South¬ 
west, which he made his peculiar province. He 
studied, rode, camped, and photographed with 
the greater zest, perhaps, because he had known 
a cloudier and more ordered land. In 1895 he 
married Emma (George) Farnsworth of New 
England and Pasadena. In the meantime he took 
but a step from the pulpit to the platform, lec¬ 
turing from coast to coast on the Chautauqua 
circuit, for the Brooks Humane Fund of Pasa¬ 
dena, in educational institutions, before scientific 
bodies. Writing, however, became his true voca¬ 
tion. For thirty years articles, pamphlets, and 
books poured from him with remarkable facility. 
Among his other activities he also found time to 
be editor of the Basket (1903-04), associate edi¬ 
tor of the Craftsman (1904-05), editor of Out 
West (19x2-14), and literary editor of the Oak¬ 
land Tribune (1919). He died in harness at the 
age of sixty-five. 

A man of hobbies, enthusiasms, and sympa¬ 
thies, rather than a scholar or an artist, James 
nevertheless fills a place of his own in American 
regional literature. In his way he represents the 
Ruskin-Browning tradition transplanted to the 
soil of Thoreau, and finding the sun not in Italy 
but in the Painted Desert. Of his more than forty 
volumes, revealing a wide range of interests, sev¬ 
eral are tracts in ethics or sociology. All of them 
reflect the American cult of optimism, and almost 
all celebrate the land the writer loved best. If he 
did not invent a patriotic slogan, he contributed 


James 

much to its propagation. Four of his best-known 
books, on California, Arizona, New Mexico, and 
Utah, were written for a See America First 
series. Similar in intent were Our American 
Wonderlands (1915), his books on the Grand 
Canyon and Lake Tahoe, and others. As a Cali¬ 
fornian by choice he took especial interest in the 
Hispano-Mexican “antiquities” of that state. In 
and Out of the Old Missions of California (1905) 
is the chief of half a dozen volumes in this field. 
He had the good taste to urge the preservation, 
rather than the restoration, of the missions. His 
records of their history, architecture, decoration, 
and furniture are indispensable for the anti¬ 
quarian. 

The Indians of the Southwest had no more 
constant or comprehending friend than James. 
He studied their dialects, customs, beliefs, and 
arts, was adopted into several of their tribes, 
maintained friendly relations with hundreds of 
tribesmen, and never lost an opportunity to ad¬ 
vance their interests. Of his books about them, 
those on Indian baskets and blankets and the sym¬ 
bolism of Indian design are among the earliest 
authentic works on the subject. He was almost 
the first white man to witness the Snake Dance of 
the Hopi and to appreciate its ritual significance. 
At the time of his death he was on the point of 
leaving for Washington, as member of an ad¬ 
visory committee called by the secretary of the in¬ 
terior to reconsider government policies toward 
the tribes. Perhaps the most touching of many 
tributes to his memory was that of a representa¬ 
tive California Indian (Pasadena Star-News, 
Nov. 16,1923). 

James collected one of the most notable libra¬ 
ries of the Pacific Coast. Thanks to his widow 
and step-daughter, the best of it is available to re¬ 
search students in the Southwest Museum at Los 
Angeles. Besides general literature on California 
or by Californians, and files of Californian and 
other western magazines, it includes complete 
sets of legislative and scientific reports of many 
kinds, explorations and histories of the West in 
English, French, and Spanish, and much rare 
material relating to the Franciscan missions and 
the Indians of the Southwest and Mexico. 

[Who’s Who in America, 1922-23 ; Am. Men of Scu 
(1910), ed. by J. M. Cattell; H. M. Bland, “Geo. Whar¬ 
ton James/’ Out West, May 1912; James’s Quit Your 
Worrying (1916), pp. 254-60; the Overland Monthly, 
May, Dec. 1923; San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 9, 
1923 ; and the Pasadena Star-News, Nov. 8, 9, 13, 1923, 
and Nov. 30,1928.] H.G.D. 

JAMES, HENRY (June 3, 1811-Dec. 18, 
1882), lecturer and writer on religious, social, 
and literary topics, was the second son of Wil¬ 
liam James, a merchant and leading citizen of 


577 



James 

Albany, N. Y., who had come to that place from 
Ireland in 1793, and his third wife, Catharine 
(Barber) James. During his schooldays at the 
Albany Academy, Henry met with an accident 
which necessitated the amputation of one of his 
legs, and two years of acute suffering, together 
with the permanent impairment of his physical 
powers, decisively affected his later career. His 
ancestry was mainly Scotch-Irish of a strictly 
Presbyterian persuasion, but his father's rigid 
orthodoxy repelled him. At the same time the 
state of comparative affluence into which he was 
born gave him an uneasy conscience, and led him 
to brood upon the injustice of the social system 
which had, as he thought, unduly favored him. 
After his graduation from Union College in 1830 
and brief ventures in law and business, he enter¬ 
ed the Princeton Theological Seminary in 1835, 
only to discover after two or three years how 
irreconcilable a difference divided him not only 
from Presbyterian orthodoxy, but from any in¬ 
stitutional form of religion whatsoever. Hence¬ 
forth he sought religious truth and salvation for 
himself in his own way. 

In 1837 he made his first visit to England; here 
he came under the influence of the teachings of 
Robert Sandeman, whose Letters on Theron and 
Aspasio he edited in 1838 after his return to 
America. In the early 1840's he sought a sup¬ 
port for his views in a mystic and symbolic inter¬ 
pretation of the Scriptures. At the same time he 
became acquainted with the doctrines of Sweden¬ 
borg through the writings of their leading Eng¬ 
lish exponent, J. J. Garth Wilkinson, who became 
an intimate and lifelong friend. The great crisis 
of his spiritual life occurred in 1844 in England 
and resulted from a further study of Sweden¬ 
borg. On July 28, 1840, he had married Mary 
Robertson Walsh, the sister of Hugh Walsh, a 
Princeton classmate. His two eldest children, 
William and Henry \_qq.v.\ were born in New 
York City in 1842 and 1843. Then he sailed for 
Europe with his young family upon his second 
voyage of discovery. Some months after his ar¬ 
rival in England, being in a state of general de¬ 
pression, he repaired to a water-cure, where an 
acquaintance prescribed Swedenborg. The works 
of this master moved him profoundly in two 
ways. In the first place, they produced the effect 
of a religious conversion. The moral anxiety and 
strain resulting from "‘the endless task of con¬ 
ciliating a stony-hearted Deity," was suddenly 
relieved by a sense of the nothingness of his pri¬ 
vate selfhood; and he was "lifted by a sudden 
miracle into felt harmony with universal man, 
and filled to the brim with the sentiment of in- 
destructible life" (Society the Redeemed Form 


James 

of Man, p. 53). In the second place, they enabled 
him to express his ideas in articulate and system¬ 
atic form, and to enter upon a career of literary 
productivity. He never became a literal or ortho¬ 
dox Swedenborgian, still less did he identify him¬ 
self with any sectarian organization, but he found 
in Swedenborg's interpretation of Christianity a 
framework for his thought, a terminology, and a 
method. 

He still lacked a social philosophy. This he 
found in the teachings of Fourier, which began 
to be actively propagated in New York about 
1840. The Brook Farm "Institute of Agriculture 
and Education" which had been founded in 1841, 
became a Fourierist ""phalanx" in 1845, an d be¬ 
gan the publication of the Harbinger as the organ 
of its doctrines. When Brook Farm was aban¬ 
doned in 1847, many of its leading members, in¬ 
cluding George Ripley, George William Curtis, 
Parke Godwin, and Charles A. Dana, migrated 
to New’ York where they became associated 
with Horace Greeley and Albert Brisbane, who 
were already proclaiming the Fourierist gospel 
through the pages of the Tribune . James, who 
had returned from Europe in 1845, and resumed 
his residence in New York in 1847, became an 
intimate of this circle and a frequent contributor 
to both papers. His acquaintance with Emerson 
began in 1842 and quickly ripened into enduring 
friendship. In England he had become an inti¬ 
mate of the Carlyle household and he had thus a 
wide acquaintance among contemporary men of 
letters. His published lecture on ""Emerson" 
(Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1904), and his "‘Recol¬ 
lections of Carlyle" (Literary Remains, 1885) 
record not only his personal experience, but his 
penetrating critical judgment. The bulk of 
James's writings, however, were devoted to the 
defense of his religious doctrines. The titles of 
his principal works indicate their central theme, 
—creation interpreted as the “divine natural hu¬ 
manity," or the immanence of God in the unity 
of mankind: Christianity the Logic of Creation 
( 1857) J Substance and Shadow: or Morality and 
Religion in their Relation to Life (1863); The 
Secret of Swedenborg, being an Elucidation of 
his Doctrine of the Divine Natural Humanity 
(1869); Society the Redeemed Form of Man, 
and the Earnest of God's Omnipotence in Human 
Nature (1879). his works, despite the fact 
that their subject-matter was often abstruse and 
argumentative, he displayed extraordinary gifts 
as a master of English prose. 

James made two more trips to Europe with his 
family, the education of his children coming now 
to be a dominant interest in his life. The three 
years 1855-58 were spent, chiefly for this pur- 



James 

pose, in Paris and Boulogne, with occasional vis¬ 
its to England and Switzerland. He returned to 
America in the spring of 1858, settled for a year 
in Newport, R. I., and then reembarked for Eu¬ 
rope in the late summer of 1859, spending the 
following year chiefly in Switzerland, where his 
boys attended school. At length, in the autumn of 
i860, he settled in Newport and resumed rela¬ 
tions with his New England friends. This circle, 
together with the educational and professional 
interests of his eldest son, William, drew him to 
Boston in 1864, and eventually to Cambridge, 
where the family was established in immediate 
proximity to Harvard College in the autumn of 
1866. His wife died in Cambridge on Jan. 29, 
1882, and his own end came on Dec. 18 of the 
same year. Most of the fellow enthusiasts and re¬ 
formers of his early days had died or had made 
terms with the world, but James, though few 
listened to him, fought on to the end for the 
truths of which he was so profoundly convinced. 

[The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James 
(1885), edited with an introduction by William James; 
The Letters of William James (1920), edited by his 
son Henry James, Introduction; E. W. Emerson, The 
Early Years of the Saturday Club (1918), pp. 322-33; 
J. A. Kellogg, Philosophy of Henry James (1883); 
C. E. Lackland, “Henry James, the Seer,” Jour, of 
Speculative Philosophy, Jan. 1885, p. 53; W. H. Kim¬ 
ball, “Swedenborg and Henry James,” Jour, of Specu¬ 
lative Philosophy, Apr. 1883, p. 113; Katherine B. 
Hastings, “Wm. James of Albany, N. Y. (1771-1832) 
and His Descendants” (1924), reprinted from N . F. 
Geneal . and Biog. Record, Apr., June, Oct. 1924.] 

R.B.P. 

JAMES, HENRY (Apr. 15, 1843-Feb. 28, 
1916), novelist, was born in New York City, the 
son of Henry James [q.v.~\ and of Mary Walsh 
his wife, and the younger brother of William 
James [q.vJ], The father had inherited from his 
father, a merchant of Albany, a fortune which 
not only permitted the elder Henry James to de¬ 
vote his own life to speculation and conversation, 
but which also enabled him to transmit to his 
children the advantages of a similar leisure. The 
younger Henry James seems to have accepted, 
perhaps to have comprehended, none of his fa¬ 
ther's metaphysical and theological ideas. From 
his early youth he was as positive in his interests 
as he was sensitive in his impressions. The range 
and variety of his impressions, however, and his 
special opportunity for forming them, he owed to 
one of his father's theories, which was that chil¬ 
dren who were being trained to be citizens of the 
world should not be allowed to take root in any 
particular religion, political system, ethical code, 
or set of personal habits. The future novelist was 
consequently brought up in a deliberate cosmo¬ 
politanism and made his choice of a national hab¬ 
itat only after he had arrived at maturity. 


James 

Such schooling as he had was given to him in 
strict accordance with the paternal theory. In 
Albany and in New York, where the family re¬ 
mained with few interruptions until 1855, various 
teachers came and went, and nothing was contin¬ 
uous but the boy's curiosity and his impressions, 
the best account of which is to be found in the 
remarkable autobiographical books, A Small Boy 
and Others and Notes of a Son and Brother . 
There can be no doubt that these boyish sensa¬ 
tions had been enlarged and routed by memory 
before they were set down as memoirs, but 
neither can there be any doubt that from the first 
they were acutely concerned with the subtle hu¬ 
man relationships which the novelist was all his 
life to observe and record. Had Henry James 
been kept in New York he might in time have 
come to the point of saturation with his native 
city and might have been content to study the 
world there. Instead, at the age of twelve he was 
removed with the family to Europe for a stay of 
three years, during which he gathered impres¬ 
sions successively at Geneva, London, Paris, 
Boulogne. Back to America, specifically to New¬ 
port, R. I., in 1858, he returned to Geneva in 1859 
and went to Bonn in i860, still changing teach¬ 
ers and localities almost with the seasons. Later 
in i860 the family was established in Newport, 
from which Henry James went to the Harvard 
Law School in 1862, to be followed, in a sense, by 
the family, which reestablished itself, again in a 
sense, in Boston in 1864 and then in Cambridge 
in 1866. Thereafter the novelist looked upon 
Cambridge as his American home, so far as he 
might be said to have one. 

Precocious enough in his sensibilities, James 
was not precocious in his decision as to what his 
aims were. Mathematics and drawing at the out¬ 
set engaged him nearly as much as literature. 
Only at Cambridge, where he came under the in¬ 
fluence of Charles Eliot Norton [q.v.J and Wil¬ 
liam Dean Howells [q.v.], did he gradually be¬ 
come aware of his profounder intentions. The 
Civil War, to which a physical infirmity kept him 
from going as two of his brothers went, had in¬ 
tensified his consciousness that the world was “a 
more complicated place than it had hitherto seem¬ 
ed, the future more treacherous, success more 
difficult ... a world in which everything hap¬ 
pens" ( Hawthorne, 1879, pp. I39"40). Troubled 
by the menacing world, he had developed in him¬ 
self the sense that his unavoidable role was to be 
that of a spectator of life. Encouraged in his 
detachment by the learned Norton and the gentle 
Howells, James gathered up his random energies 
and directed them all toward his art. He fol¬ 
lowed no profession. He took no part in affairs. 


579 



James 

He never married. He did not even succumb to 
the beguilements of verse, but was content with 
prose no less during his experimental years than 
afterward, when he had added new prose intrica¬ 
cies and harmonies to the language. 

The years 1865-69 saw him writing criticism 
for the Nation and stories for the Atlantic, with 
the encouragement of Howells, and other stories 
for the Galaxy, which was at the time the chief 
American rival of the Atlantic in literary pres¬ 
tige. The criticism showed a special admiration 
for George Eliot. The stories were more or less 
imitative, generally of Hawthorne or Balzac, and 
inclined to be romantic and melodramatic. The 
earliest story to reveal James’s essential traits 
was “A Passionate Pilgrim,” published in the 
Atlantic in 1871. It is true that the story carries 
a sensitive American to England to claim a for¬ 
tune, as Hawthorne’s Ancestral Footstep had 
done, but there is more of James than of Haw¬ 
thorne in the record of the sensations which the 
ardent traveler feels in the presence of the Eu¬ 
ropean charm which maddens, as so often in the 
later Henry James, the “famished race” of Amer¬ 
icans. The story-teller, trying various themes, 
had found one which he could study from his 
own experience. He himself was divided between 
the continents. Europe drew him in 1869 to a 
devout, excited pilgrimage. Once more in Cam¬ 
bridge during 1870-72, he returned for two fur¬ 
ther European years, then tried America again, 
and in 1875 finally decided that his future be¬ 
longed to Europe. At first he thought of Paris 
as his place of residence, but though he there met 
Turgenev and the Flaubert group, he felt him¬ 
self too much a foreigner for comfort, and in 
1876 settled for good in London, the natural 
home of his imagination. 

Patriotic critics in America have often cen¬ 
sured Henry James for his expatriate impulses 
and for what they regard as his regrettable yield¬ 
ing to them. But the love of an artist for his 
chosen themes is seldom guided by what he calls 
his will or by what others call his duty. James, 
the circumstances of whose upbringing had of¬ 
fered him an unusual range of choice, did not so 
much direct his imagination as discover that it 
was directed to Europe. For a time, indeed, he 
resisted the impulse, and throughout his life was 
moved now and then by longings for his native 
country. It would probably have been fatal for 
him to frustrate his instinct and live in America, 
just as it would have been fatal for Mark Twain 
whose Innocents Abroad belonged to the 
year of James’s passionate pilgrimage, to frus¬ 
trate his different instinct and live in Europe. 
For James though not a native was a natural 


James 

European. The accident which had assigned him 
a birthplace in the New World had not made 
impossible in him an instinctive nostalgia which 
would doubtless have driven him, sooner or later, 
to the Old even if his early training had not 
encouraged his “relish for the element of ac¬ 
cumulation in the human picture and the infinite 
superpositions of history.” 

There are no outer obligations upon the artist 
to choose one theme rather than another, but 
there are inner penalties. With James the pen¬ 
alty was an over-consciousness of national qual¬ 
ities, a trembling concern with matters which 
are hardly of the first moment for the novelist. 
Something of this appears in his further auto¬ 
biographical fragment The Middle Years (1917), 
but it appears still more strikingly in the stories 
and novels which mark the first period of his 
European residence: Roderick Hudson (1876), 
The American (1877), Daisy Miller (1879), An 
International Episode (1879), The Madonna of 
the Future and Other Tales (1879), The Por¬ 
trait of a Lady (1881)—to name only a few of 
the many books which he rapidly wrote and pub¬ 
lished. The Europeans (1878) and Washington 
Square (1881) had their scenes laid in America, 
and The Bostonians (1886) was, after the close 
of this period, to return somewhat unsatisfacto¬ 
rily to the use of American material; but what 
really interested James was the plight of his 
fellow-countrymen in a world of greater intri¬ 
cacy than they were accustomed to. Roderick 
Hudson, a young sculptor from Massachusetts, 
loses his original integrity, which turns out to 
have been based upon a provincial narrowness 
rather than upon a definite talent, when he ex¬ 
changes his Puritan discipline for the richer cul¬ 
ture of Rome. Newman in The American, hav¬ 
ing gone to take his ease in Paris, falls in love 
with a French woman, is defeated by the opposi¬ 
tion of her family, and gives her up with a ges¬ 
ture of renunciation which shows that he can 
neither accept the European nor rid himself of 
the American code. Daisy Miller comes to grief, 
and indirectly to her death, through the false 
conception of her character which her purely 
American manners put in the mind of a Euro¬ 
peanized American who loves her and whom she 
loves. Only in The Portrait of a Lady, the mas¬ 
terpiece of these years, does James rise more or 
less clearly above the international and superfi¬ 
cial elements in his favorite theme. Isabel Archer 
is but incidentally an American finding her way 
in the European world. She is primarily a wo¬ 
man outgrowing her simple girlhood amid such 
enlightening shocks as any girl might have to 
endure in any world. The action, instead of be- 



James 

ing determined by the scenes through which it 
moves, advances under the momentum of a hu¬ 
man experience which is universal, however 
varied and enriched in this case by the interna¬ 
tional complications. 

The five prolific years 1876-81 James spent 
largely in London, with occasional visits to his 
London friends when they were in the country, 
and with relieving excursions to the English sea¬ 
side and to France or Italy. While his letters 
to his family were often caustic enough about the 
islanders among whom he had settled, he in¬ 
creasingly developed a profound affection for 
them. As a people of action, as explorers, col¬ 
onizers, traders, soldiers, the British hardly ex¬ 
isted for him, any more than his compatriots 
had done. These were matters which interested 
him very little. He confined himself to the life 
of fashion and of leisure, to domestic adventure 
and routine, to the affairs of hearts and minds 
for the most part withdrawn from hampering 
contact with the rougher phases of existence. 
This is what James would presumably have done 
had he stayed in America. London, with its 
larger world of fashion and leisure, with its 
fixed and ordered habits of private life, furnished 
him with an easier and more abundant, and there¬ 
fore more congenial, universe to study and rec¬ 
ord than he had been able to discover in New 
York or Boston. 

For some time he now and then thought of his 
status as resembling that of Turgenev, in that 
each of the two novelists, writing in a cosmopoli¬ 
tan capital, had elsewhere a vast native province 
to draw upon. James, however, less American 
than Turgenev was Russian, gradually lost this 
sense of America as a kind of spiritual reservoir. 
His recollections of New York and New Eng¬ 
land, never profound, grew dim with his absence 
from them. Perhaps it w’as less his country than 
his family that he remembered. Though he made 
two visits to America during 1881-83, the death 
of his mother and of his father during these 
years so reduced his interest in the scenes and 
persons of his youth that he did not come back 
again till 1904. He had even lost his interest in 
the international contrasts which had so long en¬ 
gaged him. The Princess Casamassima (1886), 
purely European as to setting and characters, 
was evidence how far James had gone in his 
saturation with English life. The theme was 
suggested to him, he later wrote, by his habit of 
walking the streets of London and reflecting upon 
the possible lot of some young man who should 
have been produced by this civilization and yet 
should be condemned, as James had decidedly not 
been, to witness it from without—that is, from 


James 

without the world of grace and intelligence. 
James’s representation of the world to which 
Hyacinth Robinson is introduced and by which 
he is seduced from his enthusiasm for the rights 
of men in general is James’s tribute to the soci¬ 
ety which, less melodramatically, had won the 
American from his own native allegiances. And 
whereas The Bostonians , published the same 
year, Was a little angular and schematic, The 
Princess Casamassima was ripe and full, if not 
precisely full-blooded. 

This novel may be said to mark the high point 
of James’s idealization of English life, in which 
for ten years he had been involving himself with 
an affectionate admiration not without its ro¬ 
mantic elements. In The Tragic Muse (1890), 
his next long work, he showed a more critical 
attitude. Nicholas Dormer resigns his seat in 
Parliament to become a mere portrait painter, to 
the horror of his family and friends who have 
expected him to be as political as they. In the 
same book Miriam Rooth prefers becoming a 
great actress to becoming the wife of a brilliant 
diplomat. In both characters the conflict is be¬ 
tween art and the world, even the fascinating 
London world. The sympathy in the narrative 
is on the side of the artists, who to James now 
seemed to belong to an aristocracy more impor¬ 
tant and more desirable than anything in those 
“dense categories of dark arcana” which he had 
come to Europe to penetrate. From thinking 
about the consequences of where one lives he had 
moved on to thinking about how one might live 
best. “It’s the simplest thing in the world,” he 
makes one of his characters say; “just take for 
granted our right to be happy and brave. What’s 
essentially kinder and more helpful than that, 
more beneficent ? But the tradition of dreariness, 
of stodginess, of dull dense literal prose, has . . . 
sealed people’s eyes” ( The Tragic Muse, 1908, 
p. 170). Like Walter Pater, James was urging 
the claims of intensity and joy as against regu¬ 
larity and complacency. But whereas Pater had 
felt obliged to look for his examples in the past, 
James was content, and able, to find them in the 
immediate present. 

His shift of emphasis was the outcome of an 
experience of which he had become increasingly 
aware. Except in the case of Daisy Miller he 
had won almost no popular success, though he 
had confidently expected something of the sort 
from The Bostonians and The Princess Casa - 
massima. Nor had England greeted his books 
more eagerly than the United States had done. 
The London world of fashion and leisure either 
neglected his tribute or else took it casually for 
granted. There was personal resentment in his 


581 



James 

siding with fellow-artists against the public. The 
ten years after 1886 saw his resentment grow, 
struggle, and finally surrender to a kind of philo¬ 
sophic acquiescence. During those years he pub¬ 
lished, except for The Tragic Muse , no long 
novel, but confined himself to plays, essays, and 
short stories. 

His plays met with no success whatever. A 
dramatic version of The American was produced 
in 1891, ran for two months in London, and fig¬ 
ured for some time in the provincial repertory 
of the producing company, which in the later 
life of the play insisted upon a happy ending, 
much against James's will. In 189s another play, 
Guy Domville, was more elaborately produced 
in London, ran for a month, failed, and has never 
been revived or even printed. The hostility of 
the audience the first night so shocked and hurt 
the author that he could not afterward bear the 
least reference to it. Concluding that “you can’t 
make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse,” he gave 
up the theatre for good, though four of his com¬ 
edies were published in the two volumes called 
Theatricals (1894-95). James wanted both the 
immediate success and the money that the stage 
can bring, but he was too sensitive to endure the 
discomforts associated with writing for it, and 
he lacked the gift of dramatic force and emphasis 
which might have enabled him to win enough 
recognition to offset the discomforts which were 
his only return for his efforts. 

As an essayist James had already, before the 
period of his resentment began, achieved a gen¬ 
uine distinction in the opinion of his proper audi¬ 
ence. French Poets and Novelists (1878), Haw¬ 
thorne (1879), Portraits of Places (1883), A 
Little Tour in France (1885), contain critical 
and descriptive writing which is still fresh and 
valuable. If Partial Portraits (1888), Picture 
and Text (1893), and Essays in London and 
Elsewhere (1893) a **e generally less well known 
than the earlier books, they are nevertheless of 
the same scrupulous quality and texture. James’s 
literary criticism is notably that of one artist 
studying another, pointing out how the other has 
done his work, analyzing it with gravity and 
subtlety, but always in the end estimating it, 
though with urbane good temper, with reference 
to the aims and methods which the critic prefers 
because, as artist, he himself practises them. So 
with James’s description of places, which are 
richly pictorial studies of such backgrounds as 
he might have used for stories, studied no less 
deliberately and harmoniously than they would 
have been if they had served, as some of them 
were to serve, to set the stage for imagined ac¬ 
tions. Yet there was little in the essays to catch 

58 


James 

the attention of that wider world which James, 
because of his occasional loneliness in the world 
of his creation, desired to interest. 

Nor was there much more of that attractive 
power in the short stories—or short novels—of 
the period, which for discerning readers never¬ 
theless make up a body of brief narrative su¬ 
perior in their combination of delicacy, dexter¬ 
ity, beauty, and variety to any similar works 
ever written in English by a single hand. The 
Siege of London (1883), Tales of Three Cities 
(1884), The Author of Beltraffio (1885), Sto¬ 
ries Revived (1885), The AspernPapers (1888), 
A London Life (1889), The Lesson of the Mas¬ 
ter (1892), The Real Thing and Other Tales 
(1893), The Private Life (1893), The Wheel of 
Time (1893), Termination (1895), Embarrass¬ 
ments (1896), though they have been overshad¬ 
owed by the longer novels, have not deserved to 
be. In writing them James had a fairly definite 
purpose. “I want,” he told Stevenson in 1888, 
“to leave a multitude of pictures of my time, 
projecting my small circular frame upon as many 
different spots as possible, ... so that the num¬ 
ber may constitute a total having a certain val¬ 
ue as observation and testimony” ( Letters , I, 
138). He wanted, that is, to serve as an his¬ 
torian. His short stories play an important part 
in this service, which is greater than most of his 
critics, concerned first of all with his art, have 
pointed out. That he was a specialist in his re¬ 
searches need not, in an age of specialism, be 
held against him. To write histories of the 
hearts and nerves and moods of an age, histories 
of intricate situations, is still to write history. 
And Janies remains the principal historian of 
the latter part of the nineteenth century, so far 
as that is to be studied in the lives of his special 
types of character in his chosen circles of soci¬ 
ety. 

James’s sense of the plight of the artist in the 
world appears frequently in these stories. The 
Author of Beltraffio exhibits the wife of a writer 
as so afraid of his influence upon their son that 
she actually—if not intentionally—lets the boy 
die to save him from contamination. The Aspern 
Papers recounts the strife between the former 
mistress of the famous Jeffrey Aspern and the 
critic who wants to publish the poet’s letters. 
The Lesson of the Master argues that perfection 
in art may not be reached by an artist who lets 
his powers be drawn away by wife and children. 
The Death of the Lion is about a genius who 
dies neglected in a country house while his host¬ 
ess gets credit for being his patron; The Coxon 
Fund is about a literary parasite, in some re¬ 
spects like Coleridge at Highgate, sponging on 

Z 



James 

the rich and devoted and foolish; The Next Time 
is about a novelist who fails in his struggles to 
make money by his work because he is incapable 
of writing anything less than masterpieces. “The 
Figure in the Carpet” (in Embarrassments), 
which may be said to end this series of stories, 
says the last word which may be said by any 
writer to his critics. They must look, the hero 
says, in the whole of the writer's work for his 
“primal plan,” the string his pearls are strung 
on, the complex figure in the Persian carpet of 
his art. “If my great affair's a secret, that's 
only because it's a secret in spite of itself . . . 

I not only never took the smallest precaution to 
keep it so, but never dreamed of any such acci¬ 
dent” ( The Novels and Tales, XV, 232). 

This is, of course, James speaking about him¬ 
self no less than in behalf of his character. He 
had not sought the esoteric reputation which he 
had won. Obscurity was his destiny not his de¬ 
sign. He had set out to identify and represent 
certain subtle relationships which he perceived 
binding men and women together in the human 
picture before his eyes, and he would not call it 
his fault if his perceptions had proved more deli¬ 
cate than those of the reading public at large. 
He had tried to make national contrasts inter¬ 
esting; he had tried to diversify his matter in the 
long novels of the eighties; he had tried a new 
literary form in his plays; he had, restricting 
himself for a time as to dimensions, written about 
the artistic life as no Anglo-Saxon had ever done. 
Nothing had availed him with the wider audi¬ 
ence which he, not altogether logically, sought to 
please. He now’, after his decade of concession, 
reconciled himself to his limited fate, discovered 
the house at Rye which was thereafter to be his 
residence, left London, and settled down to the 
untrammeled practice of his art. 

Absorbed as he was in his great enterprise, 
James had experienced, much less invited, no 
striking outer events in his life. Quiet work in 
London or at the seaside, with yearly visits to 
France or Italy, made up his existence. His 
sister Alice, who had come to England after the 
death of their parents, died in 1892. Except with 
her, Henry James had few ties that could be 
called intimate, though he had numerous friends, 
most of them also men of letters: Robert Louis 
Stevenson, Edmund Gosse, Sidney Colvin, A. C. 
Benson, and his old American friends and cor¬ 
respondents Howells and Norton, and his broth¬ 
er William. Though he wrote many letters, he 
did not write them to many persons. More than 
half his published letters for the period between 
1882 and 1897 were to William James, Howells, 
Norton, Stevenson, and Gosse. And yet he was 


James 

a literary figure of increasing prestige, a kind of 
distinguished legend, among a very considerable 
circle. The founders of The Yellow Book, to 
which he contributed three stories in 1894-95, 
regarded it as one of their chief triumphs to have 
obtained his cooperation. These adventurous art¬ 
ists, it was plain, valued him no less than did 
the scholars of a more academic tradition who 
w'ere his special friends. 

During the five years 1898-1903 James, hap¬ 
pier in his house at Rye than he had ever been 
anywhere else, abandoned himself with serene 
completeness to his art. Always prolific, he now 
became even more so, thanks not only to the 
habit of dictation which he had acquired, but 
also to—what was more important—the mood of 
resignation which had succeeded his mood of re¬ 
sentment and which now allowed him to write, 
without conflict, in his own way for his own 
audience. The period saw written the further 
short stories included in The Two Magics (1898), 
The Soft Side (1900), The Better Sort (1903) ; 
the shorter novels with which he turned back 
from his experiments in brevity: The Spoils of 
Poynton (189 7), What Maisie Knew (1897), In 
the Cage (1898), The Awkward Age (1899), 
The Sacred Fount (1901); and the three great 
novels in which he brought his art, in its most 
characteristic aspects, to its peak: The Wings 
of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), 
The Golden Bowl (1904). And as if it were not 
enough to produce a greater quantity of imag¬ 
inative prose of such quality than any other nov¬ 
elist had ever produced in an equal length of 
time, James prepared in addition the admirable 
William Wetmore Story and His Friends ( 1903) 
and carried on a constantly extending corre¬ 
spondence. 

Again and again in these later books James 
concerned himself with the adventures of ex¬ 
quisite souls among the pitfalls and conspiracies 
of the rough world. In The Spoils of Poynton , 
an English widow', in accordance with the hard 
English law, must give up her beautiful house, 
filled with beautiful objects collected by her, to 
her insensitive son and his stupid bride. In What 
Maisie Knew, “The Turn of the Screw” (from 
The Two Magics), and The Awkward Age the 
tender spirits upon which the world presses are 
children or very young persons. In the three 
major novels, by a romantic reversion which is 
not so surprising as it seems at first thought, the 
sensitive characters are Americans, who bring 
into a fast-and-loose society certain old-fashioned 
virtues and graces, such as simplicity, truthful¬ 
ness, monogamy, solvency. Not that James in 
these stories undertook to pass moral judgments 


583 



James James 

as such. What interested him was the delicacy, tored in France and visited Italy and published 
the fineness of these virtues, in contrast to the Italian Hours (1909). In 1910, following a seri- 
vulgar vices which assail them. In two of the ous illness, he returned once more to America, 
three cases virtue is reasonably triumphant. The with his brother William, who died soon there- 
Golden Bowl comes to an end as soon as the after. Deeply disturbed by these domestic losses 
truth about the evil-doers in the action has been he proceeded to write A Small Boy and Others 
found out. The Wings of the Dove shows the (1913) and Notes of a Son and Brother (1914). 
pure whiteness of its heroine putting to shame He received an honorary degree from Harvard 
and confusion the blackness of those who plot in 1911 and from Oxford in 1912, and on his 
against her. And if in The Ambassadors the seventieth birthday was asked by three hundred 
hero from Massachusetts yields to the loveliness English friends to allow his portrait to be painted 
of Paris, that is because provincialism, no mat- for the National Portrait Gallery by John S. 
ter how virtuous, could not, for James, be quite Sargent. 

a virtue. Strether is not merely an American Early in 1914 James again took up his plan, 

who goes to Europe. He is a man, sufficiently dropped in 1909, for a long novel to have its 

universal in his experience, who has been brought scene laid in America and to be called The Ivory 
up in a limited community and then discovers, Tower. The World War put an end to his ca- 
not altogether too late, what joy and content- reer, much as the Civil War had done to Haw- 
ment might have awaited him in a fuller exist- thorne’s. The Ivory Tower was never completed, 
ence. “Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to/ 1 nor were The Sense of the Past and the auto- 
Strether says in an essential passage ( The Am - biographical The Middle Years; all three were 
bassadors , 1903, p. 149). “It doesn’t so much still fragments when they appeared (1917) after 
matter what you do in particular so long as you his death. In the vast turmoil and danger of the 
have your life. If you haven’t had that what time James’s imagination could not fix itself 
have you had?” James seldom reduced the im- upon things imagined. He had rarely troubled 

plications of his dramas to such simple terms, but himself over public affairs, but this war was an 

they were always actually simple, however elab- affair which, he felt, menaced everything he most 

orately they might be involved in the multitude prized. As he saw the conflict, the barbarians 
of subtleties which gave his work its substance were pounding at the gates and might at any 

and proportions. moment break in to violate the shrines of his 

In 1903 James wrote a letter to a French sacred city. His own country seemed to him to 
friend: “Europe has ceased to be romantic to -be refusing to lift a hand in the indispensable 
me, and my own country, in the evening of my cause. There was, he concluded, no other way 

days, has become so; but this senile passion too for him to signify his allegiance and his protest 

is perhaps condemned to remain platonic” (Let- than by becoming a British citizen, as he did in 
ter,?, 1,411). It did not remain platonic. During 1915, No doubt this was only a romantic ges- 
1904-05 James, again in America, traveled from ture, but it was at the same time an outward act 
New Hampshire to Florida, and by Chicago, In- which expressed the whole tendency of his inner 
dianapolis, St. Louis, to California. The conti- life. The native American who was a natural 
nent, of which heretofore he had known only a European had taken the one further step which 
corner, now overwhelmed him, and he fled back he could take to offset the accident of his birth- 
to Europe with his hands to his ears. The next place. 

two years he spent in writing The American Though James was bom in America, lived in 
Scene (1907) and in thoroughly revising, re- England, and wrote in the language common to 
arranging, and (in many cases) discarding what the two countries, he must be thought of as 
he had already written for his collected novels something more than a merely Anglo-Saxon phe- 
and tales (1907-09). His prefaces to this edi- nomenon. The French Balzac and the Russian 
tion not only explain his own work as well as it Turgenev furnished the examples in which he 
will ever be explained, but also throw a pro- found what his own art needed to employ or 
found and valuable light upon the whole art of avoid. His originality lay, first, in his choice of 
fiction. Thereafter James’s life was less unified his terrain, that international triangle which has 
than it had been. He resumed his theatrical am- New York, London, Paris at its points and 
bitions, though without high hopes, and wrote which embraces a tolerably homogeneous civili- 
three plays, of which only one, The High Bid , zation which before James had never had a great 
Was produced (1908). He completed two vol- novelist concerned with the territory as a whole, 
umes of short stories. The Altar of the Dead The first novelist of this world, James is still the 
{1909) and The Finer Grain (1910). He mo- best. There was originality, too, in his attitude 

584. 



James 

toward the English-American novel, which he 
found a largely unconscious and which he left a 
fully conscious form of art. There had been, of 
course, many excellent novels before him, but he 
more than any other writer, both by his narra¬ 
tives and in his criticisms, called attention to 
the finer details of craftsmanship, generalized 
individual practices into principles, and brought 
the whole art into the region of esthetics. His 
influence upon numerous followers, in Europe 
and in America, has been weighty and persistent. 
As historian he runs the risk of losing his credi¬ 
bility with the passing of the delicate codes by 
which the manners of his own age were regu¬ 
lated; but as an artist he must long be highly 
regarded for his invaluable services to a form of 
literature which shows no sign of declining from 
the eminence which he helped to give it. 

[There is no extended or authoritative biography of 
Henry James. The Letters of Henry James (2 vols., 
1920) are the principal source of information, along 
with the autobiographical works listed above: A Small 
Boy and Others (1913)1 Notes of a Son and Brother 
(1914), The Middle Years (1917)—which last work is 
not to be confused with the short story by the same 
title. Further information may be found in The Letters 
of Wm. James (1920)1 Letters of Chas. Eliot Norton 
(1913), and The Letters of Robt. Louis Stevenson 
(1899) ; in the Life in Letters (1928) of Wm. Dean 
Howells; and in Memories & Notes of Persons & 
Places (1921) by Sidney Colvin. The following bio¬ 
graphical or critical studies may also be consulted: The 
Method of Henry James (1918) by Jos. Warren Beach; 
The Pilgrimage of Henry James (1925) by Van Wyck 
Brooks; The Novels of Henry James (1905) by Elisa¬ 
beth Luther Cary; Henry James: Man and Author 
(1927) by P elh a m Edgar; Henry James et la France . 
(1927) by Marie-Reine Gamier; Henry James: A Crit¬ 
ical Study (1915) by Ford Madox Hueffer; Theory and 
Practice in Henry James (1926) by Herbert Leland 
Hughes; The Early Development of Henry James 
(1930) by C. P. Kelley; Henry James (1916) by Re¬ 
becca West. The Cambridge Hist, of Am. Lit . (1917- 
21), IV, 671-75, contains a careful bibliography of the 
writings by and about James but this brings the ac¬ 
count down only to 1921, since when there have ap¬ 
peared several volumes of his early stories and nu¬ 
merous briefer discussions and memoirs.] QV_j). 

JAMES, JESSE WOODSON (Sept. 5,1847- 
Apr. 3,1882), desperado, was born near Kearney 
(then Centerville), Clay County, Mo., the son 
of Robert and Zerelda (Cole) James. The par¬ 
ents were Kentuckians who moved to Missouri 
shortly after their marriage. The mother was a 
Catholic and the father a Baptist minister who 
supported his family mainly by farming. About 
1851 the father went to California, where short¬ 
ly after his arrival he died. The widow remar¬ 
ried, but soon divorced her husband, and in 1857 
married Dr. Reuben Samuels, a fanner and phy¬ 
sician. Jesse and his brother Alexander Frank¬ 
lin (Jan. 10, 1843-Feb. 18, 1915) were reared 
as farm boys and though trained in religious doc¬ 
trine and observance received little education. 
Both were known as good boys. The mother and 


James 

step-father were openly Southern in their sym¬ 
pathies, and during the Civil War their home 
was twice raided by Federal militia. Both boys 
became Confederate guerrillas under the leader¬ 
ship of William Clarke Quantrill [ q.v .]. For 
perhaps a year after the close of the war, while 
Jesse was recovering from a severe wound, they 
seem to have been law-abiding. In 1866, with 
Coleman Younger [ q.v .] and others, they formed 
a band of brigands, of which Jesse was usually 
regarded as the leader, and which in its various 
transformations continued its activities for more 
than fifteen years. At first it specialized in bank 
robberies, but on July 21, 1873, initiated a novel 
enterprise by holding up and robbing a train on 
the Rock Island railroad at Adair, Iowa. 

For the first ten years the operations of the 
band were uniformly successful. The attempted 
robbery of the bank at Northfield, Minn., Sept. 
7, 1876, proved, however, a supreme disaster. 
Of the eight bandits engaged, three were killed, 
three (Coleman, Robert, and James Younger) 
were shot down and captured, and only Jesse 
and Frank James escaped. For more than three 
years thereafter the brothers were in retire¬ 
ment In 1879, w i^ a new following, they 
robbed a train and in 1881 two trains. The elec¬ 
tion in 1880 of William H. Wallace as prosecut¬ 
ting attorney of Jackson County, Mo., on a plat¬ 
form demanding the arrest of the outlaws, marked 
a change in the local sentiment that had pro¬ 
tected them and the beginning of a relentless 
prosecution. Three of the company were ar¬ 
rested and convicted; another, after killing one 
of his fellows, gave himself up; and another was 
killed by Jesse James on suspicion that he was 
unfaithful. In the spring of 1882 Jesse, who for 
about six months had been living in St. Joseph, 
Mo., as Thomas Howard, was treacherously shot 
in the back of the head by a member of his band, 
Robert Ford, and almost instantly killed. Six 
months later Frank James surrendered. He was 
twice brought to trial and each time acquitted. 
His later life was in all respects honorable. 

Jesse James was married, Apr. 24, 1874, to 
his cousin, Zerelda Mimms, by whom he had a 
son and a daughter. He was of medium height, 
of slender but solid build, with a bearded, narrow 
face, and prominent blue eyes. Till his later 
days, when he became abnormally suspicious and 
moody, he was good-natured and jocular, though 
quick-tempered. He always justified his out¬ 
lawry on the alleged ground that he had been 
driven into it by persecution. In 1868 he joined 
the Baptist Church, and to the end of his life he 
was a devout believer in the Christian religion. 

[Robertas Love, The Rise and Fall of Jesse James 
(1926); Jesse E. James, Jesse James, My Father 



James 

(1899); R, F. Dibble, “Jesse James,” in Strenuous 
Americans (1923); George Huntington, Robber and 
Hero, the Story of the Raid on the First National Bank 
of Northfield, Minn . ... in 1876 (1895) ; Frank Trip¬ 
lett, The Life, Times, and Treacherous Death of Jesse 
James (1882) ; Robertas Love, articles on Frank James, 
in St. Louis Republic, Feb. 19, 20, Mar. 7, 19x5; Eve¬ 
ning News (St. Joseph, Mo.), Apr. 3, 1882; St. Joseph 
Gazette, Apr. 4, 1882.] W. J. G. 

JAMES, LOUIS (Oct. 3, 1842-Mar. 5,1910), 
actor, made his debut in a minor character at 
Macaulay’s Theatre, Louisville, Ky., in January 
1864, after serving for two years in the Union 
army. He was born in Tremont, Ill., the son of 
Benjamin F. and Almira H. James, and his ca¬ 
reer on the stage was uninterrupted from his 
first appearance until his death, which occurred 
during one of his many tours throughout the 
country. Through the influence of Lawrence 
Barrett [g.z/.], with whom he later acted, he was 
enabled to join the stock company at the Arch 
Street Theatre in Philadelphia, then under the 
management of Mrs. John Drew [q.v.], and dur¬ 
ing his ’prentice days he fortunately had the 
benefit of her practical advice and instruction. 
Among the characters he acted during this en¬ 
gagement of six years were George D’Alroy in 
Caste, Joseph Surface in The School for Scandal, 
and Edgar in The Bride of Lammermoor. A 
service of four years followed with Augustin 
Daly [q.vfl at the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New 
York; his first part there, which he acted on 
the opening night of Daly’s season, Sept. 5,1871, 
was Captain Lynde in Divorce. Thereafter he 
was seen in many varied characters in a wide 
range of light comedies. He was an excellent 
representative of Manly in The Provoked Hus¬ 
band, Henri Delille in Article 47 , Doricourt in 
The Belle's Stratagem, Mr. Page in Merry 
Wives of Windsor, Tom Coke in Old Heads and 
Young Hearts, Joseph Surface, and of other 
parts in Daly’s extended repertory of classic and 
modern plays. At the new Fifth Avenue Theatre 
in Twenty-eighth Street, which Daly opened 
after the destruction of the other house by fire, 
James increased his popularity and enlarged his 
style by playing, among other characters, such 
varied parts as Longaville in Love's Labour's 
Lost, Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist, Ludington 
Whist in Saratoga, Yorick in Yorick's Love, 
Young Marlow in She Stoops to Conquer, and 
Bassanio to the Shylock of Edward L. Daven¬ 
port [q.v.] and the Portia of Carlotta Leclercq. 
It seems to be the universal testimony of play¬ 
goers of that day that he was an actor of un¬ 
questioned natural ability and eclectic style, and 
it is said by observers who followed his acting 
carefully through many years that his best work 
during his long life on the stage was accom- 


James 

plished under the Daly management. Miscel¬ 
laneous engagements followed his departure from 
Augustin Daly’s company after the close of the 
season of 1874-75, his tours taking him to far- 
separated parts of the country, from Boston to 
Chicago and thence to San Francisco. Proof of 
his repute and skill is shown by the fact that he 
was entrusted with the task of supporting Edwin 
Booth as Othello to that actor’s Iago, and in 
playing Macbeth to Mary Anderson’s Lady Mac¬ 
beth. For five years, beginning in the autumn 
of 1880, he was Lawrence Barrett’s leading man 
in such plays as Francesca da Rimini, The King's 
Pleasure, and The Blot in the 'Scutcheon. Dur¬ 
ing several seasons in the late eighties he starred 
in association with Marie Wainwright in a re¬ 
pertory of Shakespeare’s and other plays. Fol¬ 
lowing an engagement with Joseph Jefferson, he 
began in 1892 a series of starring tours by him¬ 
self and in association at various time with 
Frederick Warde, Charles B. Hanford, Mile. 
Rhea, and Kathryn Kidder, that continued until 
his death, which came suddenly of heart trouble 
at Helena, Mont., when he was preparing to go 
on as Cardinal Wolsey in Shakespeare’s King 
Henry VIII. His first wife, Lillian Scanlan, 
whom he married in 1871, died in 1876. He 
later married Marie Wainwright, from whom 
he was divorced, and his third wife, Aphie Hen¬ 
dricks of Philadelphia, to whom he was married 
Dec. 24,1892, survived him. He had one daugh¬ 
ter, Millie James, who became an actress. 

[Illustrated American, Mar. 19, 1892; N. Y. Dra¬ 
matic Mirror, Oct. 5, 1895; E. A. Dithmar, Memories 
of Daly's Theatres (privately printed, 1897) ; Who's 
Who in America, 1908-09; J. B. Clapp and E. F. Ed- 
gett, Players of the Present, pt. II (1900); obituary 
notices in Boston Transcript, Mar. 5, 1910, and N. Y. 
Dramatic Mirror, Mar. 12, 1910.] E. F.E. 

JAMES, OLLIE MURRAY (July 27, 1871- 
Aug. 28,1918), representative and senator from 
Kentucky, was born in Crittenden County, Ky., 
the son of L. H. and Elizabeth J. James. He 
attended the public schools and read law in his 
father’s office. In 1891 he was admitted to the 
bar. He had begun his political education when 
he became a page in the Kentucky legislature at 
the age of sixteen. When he was twenty-five he 
served as chairman of the Kentucky delegation 
to the Democratic National Convention at Chi¬ 
cago, where he enthusiastically supported Bryan 
and free silver. Although originally an oppo¬ 
nent of William Goebel [ q.vf\ in the Kentucky 
gubernatorial campaign of 1899 he accepted the 
decision of the regular party convention, be¬ 
came one of the attorneys to contest the election 
before the legislature, and fought skilfully un¬ 
til the assassination of Goebel ended that phase 


586 



James 

of political conflict. In 1900 he was chosen chair¬ 
man of the state convention to select delegates 
for the national convention at Kansas City. In 
1903 he was elected to the national House of 
Representatives. On Dec. 2 of that year he mar¬ 
ried Ruth Thomas of Marion, Crittenden Coun¬ 
ty, Ky., which he had already made his home. 

During his five terms in the lower house of 
Congress he established himself in state and na¬ 
tional politics. With his huge frame surmount¬ 
ed by a glistening bald head, and his boyish 
charm he was one of the most picturesque as well 
as one of the most popular figures in Congress 
and was known to every one as “Ollie.'' He was 
one of the most popular campaign orators of the 
day and, whenever he spoke, drew large audi¬ 
ences in spite of the fact that his eloquence be¬ 
longed to the rather florid fashion of an older 
generation. In 1904 and, again, in 1908 he 
served as chairman of the state delegation to the 
Democratic National Convention. In 1908 he 
made a speech seconding the nomination of 
Bryan. He was one of the leaders of the oppo¬ 
sition in Congress that drove Ballinger from the 
cabinet, but he supported the administration in 
advocating the constitutional amendments for an 
income tax and for the direct election of sena¬ 
tors. 

In July 1911 he was nominated for the Senate 
in a state-wide primary and elected by the legis¬ 
lature on Jan. 9, 1912. At the Democratic Na¬ 
tional Convention in Baltimore that year he was 
chosen permanent chairman. Although he had 
preferred the nomination of Champ Clark, he 
presided over the long contest to the satisfaction 
of all contestants, and, later, delivered the speech 
of notification to Wilson ( Speech of Governor 
Wilson Accepting the Democratic Nomination 
for President of the United States . Together 
with the Speech of Notification delivered by 
Hon . Ollie M. James, 1912). In the Senate he 
became an ardent supporter of the administra¬ 
tion and its policies. In 1916 he was. again 
chosen permanent chairman of the nominating 
convention, where he delivered a brilliant speech 
on the achievements of Wilson's first adminis¬ 
tration ( Address of Ollie M. James .. . Perma¬ 
nent Chairman . Democratic National Conven¬ 
tion of St Louis , Mo., June 15 , 1916 , 1916). 
Also it fell to him once more formally to notify 
the candidate of his nomination ( Speech of N0 - 
tification by Senator Ollie M . James and Speech 
of Acceptance by President Woodrow Wilson , 
1916). On Feb. 14,1918, he made his last great 
speech, denying the charge that the executive 
machinery had broken down under the stress of 
war and urging the Senate to give its whole- 


James 

hearted support to the administration in the 
prosecution of the war. He was renominated 
to the Senate by his party primary, but he was 
already fatally ill and did not live out the month. 

[Nation (N.Y.), June 22, 1916 ; Memorial Addresses 
Delivered in the Senate and the House of Representa¬ 
tives, 65 Cong., 3 Sess. (1920) ; Who's Who in Amer¬ 
ica, 1918-19; A/. Y. Times, Aug. 29, 1918, obituary and 
editorial; Courier-Journal (Louisville), Aug. 29-30, 
1918; Lexington Leader and the Lexington Herald, 
Aug. 28-30, 1918.] C.M.K. 

JAMES, THOMAS (1782-December 1847), 
trader, trapper, author, was born in Maryland, 
the son of Joseph Austin and Elizabeth (Hos- 
ten) James. In 1803 the family moved to Illi¬ 
nois and four years later to Florissant, Mo., 
near St. Louis. Nothing is known of James's 
youth. In 1809 he accompanied the St Louis 
Missouri Fur Company's first and most impor¬ 
tant expedition up the river. At Fort Mandan 
he quarreled with Lisa and quit the company, 
but later, at Fort Raymond, joined Menard and 
Henry's detachment for the first organized in¬ 
vasion of the hostile Blackfeet region. On the 
abandonment of the venture he returned with 
Menard's party, arriving in St. Louis in Au¬ 
gust 1810, He spent two years in Pennsylvania, 
where he married, and for the following two 
years was engaged in river trade and transport 
between St. Louis and Pittsburgh. In 1815, at 
Harrisonville, Ill., he opened a branch store for 
McKnight & Brady of St. Louis, which he con¬ 
ducted for several years. 

Early in 1821 the return from New Mexico 
of several members of the Robert McKnight 
trading party of 1812, all of whom had been im¬ 
prisoned by the Spanish authorities for nine 
years, prompted him and John McKnight to or¬ 
ganize an expedition for Santa Fe. Leaving in 
May, proceeding by way of the Mississippi, the 
Arkansas, and the North Fork of the Canadian, 
and undergoing extreme hardships and many 
perils in the Comanche country, they arrived on 
Dec. 1. James asserts that he was the first Amer¬ 
ican trader to reach Santa Fe after the revolu¬ 
tion, but if the dates given by himself and Wil¬ 
liam Becknell [q.v.~\ are correct, the latter was 
two weeks ahead of him. In June 1822, the 
party, with Robert McKnight, whose brother 
had found him in Durango, joined.the Glenn- 
Fowler party and returned. Late in the year 
James and the McKmghts took a trading party 
into the Comanche country, in the present Okla¬ 
homa, but after many disasters, including the 
death of John McKnight, they made their way 
back in 1824. For some years James operated a 
mill in Monroe County, III, at what became 
known as James' Mills and later Monroe City. 


5 8 7 



James 

He served two terms in the legislature (1825- 
28); in 1825 he was made a general of militia; 
in 1827 was appointed postmaster of James’ 
Mills, a place he retained till his death, and in 
the Black Hawk War commanded a spy battal¬ 
ion. He died at Monroe City. In the year before 
his death he published in book form the story of 
his frontier experiences (Three Years among 
the Indians and Mexicans , Waterloo, Ill., 1846), 
edited, probably written, by a local teacher-law¬ 
yer, Nathaniel Niles. The book was, however, 
immediately suppressed (apparently because of a 
quarrel between Niles and James) and most of 
the copies were destroyed. A copy found about 
1909 was reprinted by the Missouri Historical 
Society in 1916, with annotations and additions 
by Judge Walter B. Douglas. 

James was six feet tall and of powerful frame. 
His portrait in the Douglas volume reveals (if 
there is anything in physiognomy) intelligence, 
will, and candor, and refutes an unfriendly char¬ 
acterization of him as “an ordinary looking 
man ... of the pioneer or coon-hunter type.” 
His book, though sometimes faulty as to both 
dates and facts, is perhaps the most fascinating 
first-hand record of early experiences on the 
Far Western frontier and is besides invaluable 
for its information regarding episodes and per¬ 
sons elsewhere slighted or ignored. 

[Thos. James, Three Years Among the Indians and 
Mexicans (1916), by W. B. Douglas; manuscript notes 
supplied by Jessie P. Weber, librarian Ill. State Hist. 
Lib.; Elliot Coues, ed., The Jour . of Jacob Fowler 
0898)*] W.J.G. 

JAMES, THOMAS CHALKLEY (Aug. 31, 
1766-July s, 1835), physician, teacher, of Welsh 
stock, was born in Philadelphia, the youngest 
son of Abel and Rebecca (Chalkley) James, and 
a grandson of the Quaker preacher Thomas 
Chalkley [g.z/.]. He was educated in a Quaker 
school under Robert Proud, the historian. His 
early religious education had a persistent influ¬ 
ence on his character. He studied the Bible con¬ 
tinually, not only in English, but in the original 
Hebrew and Greek. From the doctrine of origi¬ 
nal sin and human depravity he developed a 
sense of inferiority which made him shy and 
self-critical. He studied medicine at the Univer¬ 
sity of the State of Pennsylvania under Dr. 
Adam Kuhn, receiving his bachelor’s diploma in 
1787, and became doctor of medicine in 1811. 
After a voyage, 1788-90, as ship’s surgeon, to the 
Cape of Good Hope and Canton, he went to Lon¬ 
don and became a pupil of Dr. John Hunter, 
through the friendship of a fellow countryman, 
Dr. Philip Syng Physick [q.vJ]. As Physick 
was the connecting link in medicine between 
English training and American practice so was 


James 

James in obstetrics. In London, at the Story 
Street Lying In Hospital, he spent a winter un¬ 
der Doctors Osborne and John Clark, two fa¬ 
mous obstetricians, continued his studies in Ed¬ 
inburgh, but took no degree there, and in 1793 
returned to Philadelphia, shortly before the 
city’s appalling epidemic of yellow fever. 

His marriage in 1802 to Hannah Morris was 
fortunate. His wife gave him social position, 
and her decided character formed a useful com¬ 
plement to his own shyness and lack of self- 
confidence. In November 1802, in connection 
with Dr. Church, he began the first regular 
course of lectures on obstetrics. In 1810, these 
lectures were given at the University of Penn¬ 
sylvania, the first time that such a course was 
offered. James was appointed physician to the 
Pennsylvania Hospital in 1807, but in 1810, at 
his own request, he was transferred to the post 
of obstetrician, the duties of which position he 
discharged punctiliously until 1832. Two of his 
papers, read before the Philadelphia College of 
Surgeons, had especial significance. One was a 
description (1810) of the first successful case 
of premature labor artificially induced at the end 
of the seventh month on account of contracted 
pelvis. The other (1827) dealt with extra-uter¬ 
ine pregnancy, proving that so-called abdominal 
pregnancy is a myth and that when the fetus is 
found in the peritoneal cavity, it has reached 
that position from the ruptured tube or uterus 
in which it was originally conceived. James was 
also for eleven years an editor of the Eclectic 
Repertory . Before he w'as sixty he began to 
develop an impairment of speech and a muscu¬ 
lar tremor which interfered greatly with his 
teaching. He resigned in 1834, but was still 
president of the Philadelphia College of Sur¬ 
geons when he died in 1835. 

He was greater as teacher than as scientist 
or practitioner. His morbid sensitiveness and 
dread of responsibility kept him from succeeding 
in his general practice. Physically, he was digni¬ 
fied, well proportioned, and possessed unusual 
beauty of facial expression. From a mental 
standpoint he had an unusual intelligence, kindly 
and generous emotions, but was constantly in¬ 
hibited by his distrust in himself and in all hu¬ 
man relations. His knowledge of the classics, 
of medical history, and of modern languages was 
unusual for his time. He published anonymous¬ 
ly, verses and essays; also a versified transla¬ 
tion of the Idyls of Solomon Gessner (Port 
Folio , Feb. 21-May 30, 1801). He is especially 
noteworthy for his service to obstetrics. Before 
his time the lives of many mothers and children 
were sacrificed to the false modesty that refused 


588 



James 

to allow a man to deliver a child. The midwives 
were inexperienced and careless. James had a 
definite feminine streak in his character, and 
his delicacy and modesty made it possible for 
him to break down gradually the antagonism of 
pregnant women. He was fitted by temperament 
for the work that he w*as called to do. He suc¬ 
ceeded in laying a firm foundation for the prac¬ 
tice of scientific obstetrics in America. 

[H. L. Hodge, in Am. Jour. Medic. Set., July 1843; 
H. A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Am. Medic . Biogs. 
(1920) ; Caspar Morris, in S. D. Gross, Lives of Emi¬ 
nent American Physicians and Surgeons (1861); Au¬ 
gust Hirsch, Biographisches Lexikon, III (1886), 380; 
J. R. Tyson, in Hist. Soc. of Pa. Memoirs, vol. Ill, pt 
2 (1836) ; R. C. Moon, The Morris Family of Phila. 
(1898), II, 616; Henry Simpson, The Lives of Emi¬ 
nent Philadelphians (1859); Poulsoris Am. Daily Ad¬ 
vertiser, July 7, 10, 1835.] J.R.O. 

JAMES, THOMAS LEMUEL (Mar. 29, 
1831-Sept. 11, 1916), postmaster general, a na¬ 
tive of Utica, N. Y., was the son of William and 
Jane Maria (Price) James, both of whose grand¬ 
parents were emigrants from Wales. Though 
in mature life he attained several honorary de¬ 
grees, he had no formal education beyond the 
common school and a short term at the Utica 
Academy. “His great schooling,” someone has 
written, “was in a printer's office” ( Bankers 
Magazine, March 1910, p. 513). He began his 
career in the shop of the Utica Liberty Press . By 
1851 he was an owner of the paper, and that 
year he bought the Madison County Journal , a 
Whig newspaper of Hamilton, N. Y., which he 
merged, five years later,- with another Whig 
journal, the Democratic-Reflector, and published 
until 1861 as the Democratic-Republican . In 
1854-55 he was collector of tolls at Hamilton 
on the Erie Canal, and from 1861 to 1864 was 
inspector of customs for the port of New York. 
For six years, beginning in 1864, he occupied 
the office of weigher, and from 1870 to 1873 he 
was deputy collector for the port. In this posi¬ 
tion he made a reputation for thoroughness and 
dispatch, and Chester A. Arthur [q.v.], then 
collector, made him chairman of the Civil Ser¬ 
vice Board of the collector's and suveyor's of¬ 
fices. 

James's greatest achievements, however, were 
to be in the postal service. In 1873 Grant ap¬ 
pointed him postmaster of New York. He held 
office eight years, for President Hayes reap¬ 
pointed him in 1877. Hayes would have made 
him postmaster-general that year, but James re¬ 
fused the honor. His Work in the New York 
post-office was engrossing him. He eliminated 
the lax methods of his predecessor, a typical 
easy-going Irish politician, and strove to make 
merit, not influence, the criterion for the per- 


James 

sonnel. His success was such that the New York 
post-office became a model of efficiency, and Eu¬ 
ropean countries sent delegations to study it. 
In 1880 James declined another invitation from 
President Hayes to become postmaster general, 
but the next year, when Garfield was elected, he 
was again offered the place and accepted it. He 
plunged into his new work with his customary 
zeal, and in cooperation with the attorney gen¬ 
eral put an end to the so-called Star-Route 
frauds. He succeeded in eliminating an annual 
deficit of two million dollars and thus made pos¬ 
sible the reduction of letter postage from three 
to two cents. His term, however, lasted only 
ten months, for after Garfield's assassination, he 
resigned, and on Jan. 4, 1882, retired perma¬ 
nently from public life. 

In 1885 James moved to Tenafly, N. J., but 
some years later again returned to his native 
state. At the time of his death he was chairman 
of the board of directors of the Lincoln National 
Bank, which office he had held since 1882. He 
was also a director of the Metropolitan Life In¬ 
surance Company and a vestryman of the Church 
of Heavenly Rest, from which he was buried. 
He contributed an article on “The Railway Mail 
Service” to Scribner's Magazine (March 1889), 
which was printed also in pamphlet form and in 
The American Railway (1889) by T. C. Clarke, 
John Bogart and others. A lecture, The Postal 
Service of the United States , delivered at Union 
College, Schenectady, was published in 1895, 
and the same year he contributed an article to 
C. M. Depew's One Hundred Years of American 
Commerce. He was also the author of a curious 
article (published in the Independent , Oct. 13, 
1892) in which he maintained not only that 
America was discovered by Prince Madoc of 
Wales in 1170 A.D., but that many of the primi¬ 
tive American red men were perfectly conver¬ 
sant with the Welsh tongue. 

James was married four times. His first wife 
was Emily Ida Freeburn, a niece of Thurlow 
Weed [ q.v .] ; his second wife was her sister, the 
widow of Dr. E, R. Borden, of Aiken, S. C. He 
married, third, Edith Colbourne, daughter of a 
hotelkeeper of Stratford-on-Avon; and fourth, 
Mrs. Florence (MacDonnell) Gaffney, who 
survived him. 

[Bankers Mag., Mar. 1910; Who's Who in America, 
1016-17: N. Y. Times, article and editorial, Sept. 12, 
1916; C. E. Fitch, Encyc. of Biog . of N. Y., vol. IV 
(1916); James’s own writings, mentioned above,] 

E.P.S. 

JAMES, THOMAS POTTS (Sept, i, 1803- 
Feb. 22, 1882), botanist, was born at Radnor, 
Pa. His parents, Dr. Isaac James and Henrietta 
(Potts) James, were both from families of prom- 


589 



James 

inence in the early history of the American colo¬ 
nies. A paternal ancestor, David James, an 
emigrant from Wales, bought land from William 
Penn in 1682, and settled at Radnor. James’s 
grandfather on the maternal side, Thomas Potts, 
attained the rank of colonel in the Continental 
Army and was active in public affairs at the time 
of the formation of the new government. A few 
years after his marriage at Radnor, Isaac James 
moved his family to a place near Trenton, N. J., 
where there were better facilities for educating 
his two sons, of whom Thomas was the younger. 
Financial reverses prevented his sending them 
to Princeton, as had been planned, and they be¬ 
gan early to support themselves. They studied 
pharmacy, and in 1831 started a wholesale drug 
business in Philadelphia, which they continued 
for thirty-five years. Thomas studied medicine 
also, and was for many years professor and ex¬ 
aminer in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. 
He probably found his first notable interest in 
botany while studying the materia medica, and 
soon saw in the higher cryptogams (mosses and 
liverworts) a fertile field for original investiga¬ 
tion. 

In 1851 he married Isabella Batchelder, at 
Cambridge, Mass. Mrs. James had a natural in¬ 
terest in botanical science and proved to be en¬ 
tirely sympathetic and helpful in all of her hus¬ 
band’s work. In 1866 James was able to sell out 
his share of the drug business and move to Cam¬ 
bridge, where he lived the remainder of his life, 
devoting all his time to his study of mosses. 

His earlier works included a section on mosses 
and liverworts in Dr. William Darlington’s third 
edition of Flora Cestrica (1853); an article on 
the flora of Delaware County, Pa., in Dr. George 
Smith’s history of that county (1862); “An 
Enumeration of the Mosses Detected in the 
Northern United States, which are not Com¬ 
prised in the Manual of Asa Gray, M.D.,” in 
Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences 
of Philadelphia, vol. VII (1856); and a list of 
mosses in J. T. Rothrock’s “Sketch of the Flora 
of Alaska” (Smithsonian Report for 1867). He 
published a catalogue of western mosses in Vol. 
V (1871) of the Report of the Geological Ex¬ 
ploration of the Fortieth Parallel and in Vol. VI 
(1878) of the Report of the United States Geo¬ 
graphical Surveys West of the One Hundredth 
Meridian in Charge of Lt. Geo. M. Wheeler . 
These papers set a high standard of excellence 
and contained a vast amount of pioneer work: 
Soon after beginning his studies he started a cor¬ 
respondence with Charles Leo Lesquereux {g.vfl 
which later led to their collaboration. 

To restore his broken health he made a jour- 


James 

ney to Europe in 1878, during which he spent 
many profitable hours with the great European 
student of mosses, W. Ph. Schimper, making 
comparisons of American and old-world species. 
He was soon recognized as the foremost special¬ 
ist on American mosses, and undertook, with 
Lesquereux, the preparation of a Manual of 
North American Mosses . At his death he left 
his share of this labor in such a condition that 
it could be finished by other workers, and it was 
published in 1884, a classic in the bryology of 
the new’ world. 

James was a modest, retiring individual, gen¬ 
erous and self-denying, spending little on him¬ 
self except for instruments and books with which 
to carry on his work. He was a fellow of the 
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and 
of the American Association for the Advance¬ 
ment of Science; secretary of the Pennsylvania 
Horticultural Society for twenty-five years; 
treasurer for twenty-seven years and one of the 
founders of the American Pomological Society; 
and an active member of the American Philo¬ 
sophical Society, the American Pharmaceutical 
Society, and the Boston Society of Natural His¬ 
tory. 

[See Mary Isabella James Gozzaldi, “Thomas Potts 
James/ 7 Bryologist , Sept. 1903; J. T. Rothrock, in 
Proc . Am. Phil. Soc., vol. XX (1883 ); Asa Gray, in 
Am. Jour. Set ., Apr. 1882, and in Proc. Am. Acad., 
n.s. IX (1882); Isabella B. James, Memorial of Thomas 
Potts, Jr. (1874); Boston Transcript , Feb. 27, 1882. 
James’s collections are housed in the Farlow Herba¬ 
rium of Cryptogamic. Botany at Harvard University, 
and his letters, including his extensive correspondence 
with Lesquereux, are in the library of that herbarium.] 

H. M.R. 

JAMES, WILLIAM (Jan. 11, 1842-Aug. 26, 
I 9 I0 )» philosopher and psychologist, was the son 
of Henry James, 1811-1882 [q.vJ], and Mary 
(Walsh) James. His humor, elasticity, and 
genial temper were evidently not unrelated to the 
fact that both of his grandfathers were of Irish 
blood. He resembled his father in his exuber¬ 
ance, his candor, his tenderness, and in his ner¬ 
vous sensitiveness and instability. He was pro¬ 
foundly influenced by his father’s indifference 
to worldly success, his courageous honesty, and 
above all by his lifelong preoccupation with the 
deeper problems of life and religion. Member¬ 
ship in this family circle was an important factor 
in the schooling of its junior members, who con¬ 
sisted, in addition to William, of his younger 
brothers Henry, 1843-1916 [q.v.~\, Wilkinson, 
and Robertson, and his sister Alice. They were 
all talented, and the spirit of freedom and tol¬ 
erance which pervaded the household encour¬ 
aged them to act and react vigorously upon one 
another. William’s formal schooling was irreg¬ 
ular and intermittent owing in part to the acci- 


59° 



James 

dents of residence, and in part to the father's 
scrupulous regard for the genius of his children 
and his desire that they should develop from 
within rather than be moulded from without. 

William was born in New York City, prob¬ 
ably at the Astor House. In October 1843 he 
was carried off to Europe, where the family re¬ 
mained for a year and a half. After a two years' 
sojourn in Albany, they took up their residence 
again in New York City. William and his broth¬ 
er Henry attended three or more different 
schools before 1855. In June of that year the 
family again sailed for Europe, this time for 
expressly educational purposes. There followed a 
series of experiments each of which was deemed 
a failure in itself, but the total effect of which, 
if one is to judge by the results, seems to have 
been remarkable. The younger of the two broth¬ 
ers referred many years later to the “incorrigible 
vagueness of current in our educational drift." 
There was drift in the form of mobility, and a 
vagueness arising from the ambiguous aptitudes 
of youth. First, a residence at the polyglot Pen- 
sionnat Roediger at Chatelaine, Geneva, was 
terminated rather abruptly by a return to Eng¬ 
land in the autumn of 1855. The next winter was 
spent in London, where the boys were entrusted 
to the tutelage of a Scotchman, Robert Thomp¬ 
son. Then came a year of Paris with M. Leram- 
bert of Rue Jacob as pedagogue, followed, after 
some months, by the Institution Fezandie, con¬ 
ducted somewhat after the manner of a “pha¬ 
lanstery" by an ex-disciple of Fourier. During 
this winter William, whose interest in painting 
was becoming more and more dominant, also at¬ 
tended the atelier of Leon Cogniet. In the sum¬ 
mer of 1857 the family moved to Boulogne, where 
in the autumn the boys entered the College 
Communal. This period of discipline and lean¬ 
ness was followed in June 1858 by a return to 
America and a residence for a year in Newport, 
R. I. Next, in the late summer of 1859, there 
occurred another migration to Switzerland, and 
this time with more permanent results. William 
was installed in the Academy at Geneva, where 
he was subsequently joined by his brother 
Henry. The summer of i860 was spent in Bonn, 
where William lived and continued his studies 
in the house of a certain Herr Stromberg. 

He had now acquired the fragments of a liberal 
education. In addition to his schooling he had 
stored up a fund of memories which he esteemed 
lightly, but which had nourished his mind and 
stimulated his imagination. Though he had 
learned little but languages and the rudiments 
of mathematics, he had experienced much,—gal¬ 
leries, spectacles, literature, the theatre, places, 


James 

landscapes, and people,—all unconsciously as¬ 
similated, and giving to his mind a characteris¬ 
tic urbanity and ready adaptability. Before he 
reached manhood he was already uprooted, or 
had in fact formed the habit of perpetual up¬ 
rooting, of oscillation between ennui and the rel¬ 
ish of adventure. Meanwhile the question of his 
vocation had resolved itself into a choice be¬ 
tween painting and science. His father, who had 
long since recognized his eldest son's exception¬ 
al endowment, cherished the hope that he would 
prefer the less “narrowing" career of the scien¬ 
tist. But he was willing to bide his time, and 
meanwhile the artistic interest asserted itself to 
a degree that forbade its being dismissed with¬ 
out a trial. So, trailing in the wake of budding 
but uncertain genius, the family returned in Sep¬ 
tember i860 to Newport, where the new experi¬ 
ment was begun in the studio of William M. 
Hunt, and where John LaFarge was conducting 
a more auspicious experiment at the same time. 
A year sufficed to convince William (though it 
did not convince others) that distinguished at¬ 
tainment in the field of art was beyond his reach. 
In the autumn of 1861, therefore, he entered the 
Lawrence Scientific School and thus inaugu¬ 
rated that career of science, and that connection 
with Harvard University, which continued until 
the day of his death. 

Although the chosen field was science its nar¬ 
rower delimitation was attended by further 
doubts and experiments. Three years were spent 
at the Lawrence Scientific School, devoted main¬ 
ly to chemistry under Charles W. Eliot 
and comparative anatomy and physiology under 
Jeffries Wyman. In the autumn of 1864 James 
entered the Harvard Medical School, but in 
April 1865 his studies were interrupted for nine 
months by the Thayer expedition, headed by 
Louis Agassiz, for the collection of zoological 
specimens in the basin of the Amazon. Although 
James soon discovered that he was not destined 
to be a field naturalist, the association with 
Agassiz, like that with Wyman, gave him a re¬ 
spect for facts and for the mastery of first-hand 
observation, which became one of the fixed ele¬ 
ments in his composition. He resumed his medi¬ 
cal course in March 1866, first at the Massa¬ 
chusetts General Hospital, and in the autumn at 
the Harvard Medical School. In April 1867 he 
sailed for Europe in pursuit of health, experi¬ 
mental physiology, and the German language. 
The next eighteen months, spent mainly in Dres¬ 
den, Berlin, and at cures in Teplitz and Divonne, 
were a period of discouragement and indecision, 
but at the same time of efflorescence. He soon 
became convinced that he was not physically 


591 



James 

equal to the demands of laboratory research in 
physiology. Unable to engage continuously in 
systematic instruction or research, he read wide¬ 
ly both in science and in German literature, 
and was at the same time profoundly stirred by 
his visits to the Dresden and Berlin galleries. 
He was, as always, fascinated by the manifesta¬ 
tions of human nature and of national character¬ 
istics in the life about him. The effect of this 
scattering of interests, together with the brood¬ 
ing induced by his unstable health, deepened the 
philosophical interests which he had caught from 
his father and to which he was predisposed by 
temperament. 

James returned to Cambridge in November 
1868, and obtained his medical degree in the fol¬ 
lowing June. There followed a prolonged period 
of ill-health and nervous depression, which, like 
most such intervals in James's career, bore 
abundant fruit. It was clear that his interest was 
in the biological sciences rather than in medical 
practice, yet the weakness of his eyes and back 
forbade the use of the microscope or long hours 
of standing in a laboratory. But the amount and 
the quality of the reading on science, literature, 
and philosophy which James accomplished dur¬ 
ing these years of supposed incapacity exceeded 
the aspirations of most able-bodied men. In the 
midst of this period (probably in 1870) there 
occurred a crisis which was in part neurasthenic 
and in part intellectual. He was delivered from 
melancholia, and also from philosophic doubt. 
The latter effect he attributed to the reading of 
Charles Renouvier's Traite de Psychologie Ra - 
tionelle (1859), which converted him to a belief 
in moral freedom as an hypothesis to be actively 
adopted. 

In the fall of 1872 James was appointed in¬ 
structor in physiology in Harvard College and 
for the next ten years he taught comparative 
anatomy, comparative physiology, and hygiene. 
Lest the discontinuity of his development be ex¬ 
aggerated it must be remembered that biological 
science was at this time closely connected with 
both philosophy and psychology, as was indi¬ 
cated by the vogue of Herbert Spencer. The 
theory of evolution which w'as the central topic 
in general biology raised the issue of philosophi¬ 
cal materialism, and James's attention to biology 
thus prepared him for the course on the “Phi¬ 
losophy of Evolution," which he inaugurated in 
1879. Psychology, on the other hand, was get¬ 
ting a fresh impulse from the physiology of the 
senses and the nervous system, topics on which 
James placed special emphasis both in his study 
and in his teaching, and to which his attention 
bad already been drawn, while in Germany in 


James 

1868, by the work of Helmholtz and Wundt. In 
1875 be announced in the department of natural 
history a course for graduates on the “Rela¬ 
tions between Physiology and Psychology," and 
in the following year he added an undergraduate 
course on the same subject. These courses were 
transferred to the department of philosophy in 
1877, and in 1880 James himself was similarly 
transferred and became assistant professor of 
philosophy. This instruction in physiological or 
biological psychology was recognized as a new 
departure and was viewed with some suspicion 
by philosophers of the older schools. In connec¬ 
tion with these courses, perhaps as early as the 
autumn of 1876, James created what best de¬ 
serves to be called the first American laboratory 
of psychology, and one of the first in the world. 
It was during this and the following year that G. 
Stanley Hall [g.z/.] carried on his studies at 
Harvard, under Bowditch and James. Hall's in¬ 
terests were more consistently experimental than 
James's, and the former founded a better 
equipped and more active laboratory at the Johns 
Hopkins University in 1882. Through the in¬ 
fluence of James and Hall, and that of the con¬ 
temporary German movement upon visiting 
American students, psychological laboratories 
began to multiply rapidly in the United States 
towards 1890. 

James married Alice Howe Gibbens on July 
10, 1878. She was distinguished by the serenity 
of her disposition, as well as by her wit and 
beauty; and the companionship and protection 
which his family life provided were in no small 
measure responsible for the fruitfulness of 
James's subsequent career. Of his five children, 
one died in childhood, three sons and a daughter 
survived him. In June of the year of his mar¬ 
riage he had contracted with Henry Holt & 
Company to prepare a book on psychology. This 
finally appeared in 1890, as The Principles of 
Psychology , and during the twelve years' inter¬ 
val it was the author's major task. James's trips 
to Europe were too frequent to enumerate, but 
that taken during the summer of 1880 and his 
longer residence abroad during the year 1882- 
83 were of peculiar importance in his develop¬ 
ment He was already known in Europe, in 
France through his articles in the Critique Phi- 
losophique , in England through his articles in 
Mind. He had entered into correspondence with 
many of his European colleagues. The visits of 
1880 and 1882 brought him for the first time, 
however, into personal contact with them; and, 
as was characteristic of James's social relations, 
acquaintance quickly ripened into affectionate 
and enduring friendship. In August 1880 he 


592 



James 

stopped at Avignon to see Renouvier. The lat¬ 
ter had acquired a warm interest in his young 
American disciple, many of whose articles he 
translated and republished in France. In the 
autumn of 1882 James visited Prague and there 
made the acquaintance of Ernest Mach, whose 
later books on sensation and on scientific method 
so closely approached his own way of thinking; 
and of Carl Stumpf, with whom he maintained 
more sympathetic relations than with any other 
European psychologist. In England, where he 
settled for a more protracted stay, he became a 
member of the circle which at that time repre¬ 
sented the defense of the empirical tradition 
against the invading Hegelianism. This circle 
comprised Shadworth Hodgson, George Croom 
Robertson, the editor of Mind, James Sully, Les¬ 
lie Stephen, Frederick Pollock, Edmund Gur¬ 
ney, and Henry Sidgw'ick. Of these men Hodg¬ 
son, an acute intellect but an obscure and prolix 
writer, exercised a powerful influence on James, 
who was fond of coupling him with Renouvier 
as one of the two foremost thinkers of his time. 
Association with this group confirmed James's 
inheritance and held him on the whole, despite 
Continental influences in the tradition of British 
empiricism. In 1889 he attended the Interna¬ 
tional Congress of Physiological Psychology in 
Paris, and still further extended his European 
connections. It was here that he first met Theo¬ 
dore Flournoy of Geneva, who became one of his 
lifelong and most intimate friends. 

Although The Principles of Psychology was 
not completed until 1890, it began to appear in 
the form of articles immediately after the proj¬ 
ect was undertaken. In “Remarks on Spencer's 
Definition of Mind as Correspondence" ( Jour¬ 
nal of Speculative Philosophy, Jan. 1878), he 
emphasized the essentially active and interested 
character of the human mind, an emphasis which 
is the key to his entire thought. In an article 
entitled, “Are we Automata?" Mind, Jan. 
1879), he defended the causal efficacy of con¬ 
sciousness against the prevailing scientific ma¬ 
terialism; and in “The Spatial Quale" ( Journal 
of Speculative Philosophy, Jan. 1879) he vigor¬ 
ously advocated the “nativistic" view, to the ef¬ 
fect, namely, that there is an immediate impres¬ 
sion (rather than an acquired or inferred idea) 
of spatial depth. “The Feeling of Effort,” con¬ 
tributed in 1880 to the Anniversary Memoirs of 
the Boston Society of Natural History, set forth 
the author's view of will, in which he rejected 
the prevailing doctrine of the “feeling of inner¬ 
vation" ; and adopted a position close to that of 
Renouvier, according to which will is essential¬ 
ly an act of attention by which ideas come into 


James 

exclusive possession of consciousness. Two arti¬ 
cles of epoch-making importance appeared in 
Muid in 1884, “On Some Omissions of Intro¬ 
spective Psychology” and “What is an Emo¬ 
tion?” The former presented for the first time 
James's thorough-going rejection of associa- 
tionism, his recognition of “feelings of relation," 
and his insistence on the continuity of the stream 
of consciousness. The second article contained 
the so-called “James-Lange Theory” (advanced 
independently in the same year by James and by 
the Danish psychologist, C. Lange), to the ef¬ 
fect that emotion consists essentially in the 
visceral and other organic sensations associated 
with its expression. According to this view the 
fundamental fact in fear, for example, is the 
bodily response, internal and external, to danger, 
the subjective emotion being simply the accom¬ 
panying awareness of this response. These were 
the most novel and influential of the specific 
doctrines comprised in the Principles, but even 
taken in the aggregate they do not account for 
the book's remarkable success. This was due in 
part to the fact that, owing to the author's erudi¬ 
tion and skilful use of citation, it summed up and 
will always significantly represent the state of 
the science of psychology at the close of the nine¬ 
teenth century. Furthermore, the author broke 
definitely with the past and with the philosophi¬ 
cal alliance, declaring the right and purpose of 
psychology to enjoy the privileges and immuni¬ 
ties of a special science. James was peculiarly 
qualified to utter such a pronouncement because 
of his physiological and clinical experience, and 
because his name was publicly identified with 
the scientific standpoint and method. Above all, 
the book was widely read, and will always com¬ 
mand attention, because of its style. It revealed 
the author's genius for catching the elusive and 
fugitive states of human experience and trans¬ 
fixing them with a telling phrase. It was daring 
in its humor, in its use of colloquial speech, and 
in its picturesqueness of metaphor and illustra¬ 
tion ; so that though many doubted whether any¬ 
thing so interesting could possibly be scientific, 
nobody ignored it. 

The period during which James was compos¬ 
ing the Principles was also the period of his 
greatest activity in an allied but somewhat dubi¬ 
ous field of inquiry. Members of the group with 
which he was associated in London in 1882 were 
engaged at that time in the organization of the 
parent Society for Psychical Research. The dis¬ 
favor which the subject enjoyed among ortho¬ 
dox scientists would have been sufficient to en¬ 
list his sympathy. He was loyal to the interests 
of his friends, notably Edmund Gurney, Henry 


593 



James 

Sidgwick, and afterward Frederic Myers. Fur¬ 
thermore, he was profoundly curious, disposed 
to give all new ideas the benefit of a hearing, 
and hopeful that evidence might be found which 
would lend a genuinely scientific support to reli¬ 
gious beliefs. In 1884 James participated in the 
formation of an American Society for Psychi¬ 
cal Research, and for some years he cooperated 
with its secretary, Richard Hodgson, in making 
investigations. In 1894-95, he was president of 
the English society, and he remained one of its 
vice-presidents and an occasional contributor to 
its Proceedings throughout his life. He credited 
the movement with bringing to light the great 
part played by the subconscious factor in the 
mental life, and in this sense with having meta¬ 
physical as well as psychological fruitfulness. 
As to mediumistic phenomena, he took a non- 
commital and speculative attitude, believing that 
there were data to be explained, but questioning 
the adequacy of spiritism, telepathy, and other 
like hypotheses to explain them. 

Before the Principles was completed James 
had become weary of his task, and eager to turn 
to philosophy; but the next few years were 
largely occupied by a psychological aftermath. 
In 1892 he published an abridged form of the 
Principles , the so-called “Briefer Course” (Psy¬ 
chology; American Science Series, Briefer 
Course ), which was for many years the most 
popular textbook on the subject in America. In 
1899 he published his Talks to Teachers on Psy¬ 
chology, a book which not only spread the vogue 
of his ideas but gave a powerful impulse to the 
new subject of educational psychology. James 
never ceased to read and to think about psycho¬ 
logical subjects. To suppose the contrary is as 
mistaken as to suppose that he had ever lived 
without philosophy. The two interests were 
parallel and intersecting, not consecutive. He re¬ 
fused to respect barriers which he took to be 
artificial, and he often followed a psychological 
problem to its philosophical roots, or a philo¬ 
sophical problem to its psychological ramifica¬ 
tions. After the publication of the Principles 
there was a shifting of emphasis in his teaching 
and writing, culminating in 1897 in the change 
of his title from professor of psychology to pro¬ 
fessor of philosophy, but just as a complete ac¬ 
count of his psychology would carry us down to 
the year of his death, so a complete account of 
his philosophical development would begin with 
his student years in Germany. 

• The central motives which actuated James's 
philosophizing were the same throughout his 
life. He was solicited on the one side by religion 
and on the other by science. He felt the appeal 


James 

of both religion and science, and his central in¬ 
tellectual compulsion was the necessity of pro¬ 
viding for both. He was without any sectarian 
affiliations, and, although he was for a time a 
regular attendant at the Harvard College Chap¬ 
el, organized and institutional worship as such 
did not interest him; nor was he, as was his fa¬ 
ther, versed in the language of traditional the¬ 
ology. He did, however, feel, in behalf of others 
even more strongly than for himself, the need of 
some hopeful faith. He had, furthermore, a 
nervous and emotional organization that predis¬ 
posed him (like his father, though in a lesser de¬ 
gree) to religious mysticism. His training, on 
the other hand, was in science; and this point of 
view was commended to him by exemplars who 
greatly impressed him in his younger days, such 
as his teacher Jeffries Wyman and Louis Agas¬ 
siz, and his friend Chauncey Wright, a hard- 
headed exponent of positivism. His first step 
toward a philosophy was to reject the decrees of 
science, both its pretensions and its negations. 
He had too much respect for science to relish 
such verbal and metaphysical stretchings of it 
as the system of Spencer; and he knew it too 
well to be intimidated by it. He valued his scien¬ 
tific education as a means of delivering him from 
the spell of scientific authority. Turning to the 
philosophy of the schools, he was confronted by 
two leading alternatives, the rationalistic-monis¬ 
tic way of Hegel and the post-Kantians, and the 
empirical-pluralistic way of Mill and the Brit¬ 
ish empiricists. The champions of the former ob¬ 
tained a respectful hearing, especially his Har¬ 
vard colleague, Josiah Royce in earlier 

years, and later F. H. Bradley of Oxford. But 
though it took James many years to answer 
Hegelianism, and though its ghost never ceased 
to haunt him, his bias of mind and temperament 
were from the beginning on the side of the em¬ 
piricists. Mill, revered as the latest representa¬ 
tive of the empiricist dynasty, needed to be de¬ 
fended against himself. His system, like Hume's, 
was fticurably tainted with associationism, and 
on the side of metaphysics it was timid and fal¬ 
tering. What was needed was an empiricism 
that was more empirical, plus royaliste que le roL 
Such a confident and fruitful empiricism seem¬ 
ed to have found an exponent in Shadworth 
Hodgson, whose dictum that “realities are only 
what they are known as,” became one of James's 
philosophical axioms. James applauded Hodg¬ 
son's scrupulous avoidance of unwarranted as¬ 
sumptions and profited by the refinement and 
acuteness of his analysis of conscious experi¬ 
ence, especially his analysis of the experience of 
time. But he was repelled by his determinism, 


594 



James 

and by other vestiges of intellectualism in both 
his doctrine and his style. Hodgson's later re¬ 
jection of pragmatism widened the philosophical 
gap between them, though without in the least 
chilling the warmth of their friendship. To Re- 
nouvier, James was attracted both because, like 
Hodgson, he proposed that philosophy should 
concern itself with the phenomena of conscious 
experience, and because, unlike Hodgson, he 
provided for the efficacy and freedom of the will. 
It had been characteristic of later British em¬ 
piricism, as exemplified by Hume and J, S. Mill, 
to recognize the operation of practical motives 
in determining belief. While experience is the 
only ground of what can strictly be regarded as 
knowledge, this does not wholly satisfy man's 
moral and emotional nature and must be supple¬ 
mented by faith, which is legitimate provided it 
be recognized as such. Hodgson accepted faith, 
in this sense, as affording access to an “unseen 
world” beyond matter. Renouvier found in Kant 
authority for a similar philosophy of faith, but 
gave it a wider extension and more radical inter¬ 
pretation. Even knowledge is not complete with¬ 
out belief, which as definitive acceptance or re¬ 
jection is an act of will; and is always, in the 
last analysis, governed by subjective motives. 
Experience provides the content of knowledge, 
logic excludes contradictory impossibilities, but 
will seals and delivers it. The first step, there¬ 
fore, in the cognitive as well as in the moral 
life, is’to affirm one's own freedom. It was to 
this inspiriting challenge that James had re¬ 
sponded in 1870. But Renouvier went further in 
his provision for freedom. Rejecting the notion 
of a completed infinite (or innumerable quan¬ 
tity), he concluded that natural processes really 
begin and end discontinuously. He was, in other 
words, a pluralist in his conception of nature; 
and nature so conceived was consistent with the 
novelty and creativity implied in that doctrine 
of free will which he had adopted on other 
grounds. It was this prospect of a philosophy 
that should be at once empirical, metaphysical, 
coherent, and auspicious which saved James 
from his doubts and convinced him that he had 
something to say to his day and generation. In 
the course of time he became more and more 
alienated by Renouvier's “scholastic manner and 
apparatus,” and by what seemed to be his apos¬ 
tasy to the professions of his earlier years; nev¬ 
ertheless, the last systematic work which he 
composed ( Some Problems of Philosophy) was 
dedicated to Renouvier's memory, and testified 
to the “decisive impression” which that philoso¬ 
phy had made upon him in the crucial period 
between 1870 and 1880. 


James 

James's philosophy was thus a union of em¬ 
piricism and voluntarism. It differed from ear¬ 
lier empiricisms and voluntarisms in being more 
radical: he found experience to be a richer and 
more adequate source of knowledge, and he found 
the will to be its more fundamental and per¬ 
vasive condition. It was the radical voluntarism, 
which was first developed, in The Will to Be¬ 
lieve and Other Essays, published intermittently 
from 1879, and collected in a single volume in 
1897. The radical empiricism had been antici¬ 
pated in the Principles, and it was formally an¬ 
nounced in the Preface of The Will to Believe . 
Of this volume it affords, however, the back¬ 
ground and frame rather than the subject-matter. 
It was elaborated and freshly emphasized some 
years later. 

Of the essays represented in The Will to Be¬ 
lieve the most significant for the understanding 
of James's philosophy as a whole is “The Senti¬ 
ment of Rationality,” which was made up of 
two of his earliest philosophical publications, an 
article of the same name which appeared in 
Mind in July 1879, an d an article entitled “Ra¬ 
tionality, Activity and Faith,” which had also 
been written in 1879 but did not appear until 
1882 ( Princeton Review ). These two articles, 
together with “Reflex Action and Theism” ( Uni¬ 
tarian Review), which had appeared in Novem¬ 
ber 1881, and w’as also republished in The Will 
to Believe, were parts of a work that was never 
completed in systematic form, a work “on the 
motives which lead men to philosophize.” The 
“Sentiment of Rationality” dealt with “the pure¬ 
ly theoretical or logical impulse,”—comprising 
the “passion for simplification” and the opposite 
passion for making distinctions. The remaining 
chapters of the work were to treat of “practical 
and emotional motives,” and of the comparative 
“soundness of different philosophies,” as judged 
by all of the philosophical motives, theoretical, 
practical, and emotional, taken together. This 
was announced as a purely psychological project. 
But the titular essay, “The Will to Believe,” took 
the more advanced position that philosophies 
might legitimately be adopted from such motives. 
James afterwards regretted the title because it 
suggested a wilful credulity which was far from 
his intention, and said that his central idea would 
have been better expressed by a title such as 
“The Right to Believe.” When, as in the case 
of philosophy and religion, men go beyond the 
evident facts, they not only will, but rightly may, 
allow their “passional nature” to decide. The 
only alternative is to avoid decision and adopt 
a timid and non-committal attitude; which is, 
however, equivalent to a negative belief having 


595 



James 

no justification at all, either intellectual or pas¬ 
sional. So James urges the course which is both 
adventurous and profitable, a positive belief in 
freedom, in the triumph of righteousness, and 
in the God which guarantees them. Such a God 
cannot be equated with the whole of things,— 
both moral evil and human freedom must lie 
outside him; but he may be worshiped without 
compromise of conscience, and he may be trusted 
as offering assurance of an ultimate victory to 
which the moral forces of mankind themselves 
decisively contribute. 

This volume also presents in a brilliant and 
persuasive style the author's moral ideals; his 
acceptance of the humane and individualistic tra¬ 
dition of liberalism (“The Moral Philosopher 
and the Moral Life"); his Puritan inheritance, 
revealing itself in his hatred of evil, and in his 
unqualified subordination of esthetic to moral 
standards (“The Dilemma of Determinism"); 
and his gospel of strenuousness and heroism (“Is 
Life Worth Living?"). The years immediately 
before and after the publication of this book 
were the years of James's greatest preoccupa¬ 
tion with the problems of American life. In 1894 
and 1898 he scandalized his medical colleagues 
by opposing bills then before the Massachusetts 
legislature which would have compelled Spir¬ 
itualists and Christian Scientists to qualify as 
regular physicians in order to employ their own 
peculiar methods. He was moved to take this 
step by his belief in the results and the future 
possibilities of “mental healing,” by his desire 
to deliver science from its own doctrinaire and 
bureaucratic tendencies, and by his habit of de¬ 
fending unpopular causes, especially when they 
were repugnant to his own personal tastes and 
class prejudices. The outbreak of the Spanish- 
American War in 1898 made a profound im¬ 
pression on him. James was most influenced in 
his political views by his lifelong friend E. L. 
Godkin [g.z/.], who was at this time editor of 
the Nation and of the New York Evening Post 
He became engaged, together with Godkin and 
others, in a vigorous campaign against McKin¬ 
ley's policy in the Philippines and against the 
whole imperialistic enterprise upon which the 
country seemed to be embarked. Imperialism to 
him signified a disloyalty to the older American 
ideals, a worship of mere “bigness and great¬ 
ness," and a hypocritical concealment of motives 
of plunder under the pretence of spreading “civi¬ 
lization." The contemporary Dreyfus scandal in 
France, and the earlier Venezuelan message of 
Cleveland aroused similar sentiments, and im¬ 
pressed Janies with the menace of war, and with 


James 

the terrible power of the human emotions which 
it liberated. 

In the summer of 1896 James undertook an 
extensive lecturing tour, in which he gave the 
lectures afterward published under the title of 
Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Stu¬ 
dents on Some of Life's Ideals (1899). Through 
this tour, together with a trip to California in 

1898, he became acquainted with his own coun¬ 
try. He felt both the “greatness of Chicago" 
and the “flatness" of the Chautauquan “middle- 
class paradise." His most notable impression, 
however, was a sense of the wealth of signifi¬ 
cance and heroism in “the common life of com¬ 
mon men." This impression inspired the two 
essays which best express his social creed, “On 
a Certain Blindness in Human Beings" and 
“What Makes A Life Significant?" Their theme 
is the inherent preciousness of each unique hu¬ 
man life, viewed from within; the unsuspected 
presence under a drab exterior, of adventure, 
courage, and emotional warmth; and hence the 
need of tolerance and imaginative sympathy in 
human relations. In these ideas James's philo¬ 
sophical “pluralism" and his practical democ¬ 
racy found common ground. 

As early as 1897, with a course of Gifford 
Lectures at Edinburgh in prospect, James had 
begun to collect material on the psychology and 
philosophy of religion. It was with the expecta¬ 
tion of completing the lectures for delivery in the 
spring of 1900 that he sailed for Europe in July 

1899. In the previous month, however, while 
walking in his beloved Adirondack wilderness, 
he had lost his way and overstrained his heart. 
This accident, combined with the cumulative 
nervous fatigue of several years of extraordi¬ 
nary activity, brought about a serious break¬ 
down. The next year was spent at Bad-Nauheim 
or in visits to Switzerland, England, and South¬ 
ern France, seeking now by cures and now by 
rest to recover his health. Although rarely able 
to work more than two or three hours a day, 
and that often in bed, he was ready with his first 
series of lectures in the spring of 1901. The 
achievement was the more remarkable in that his 
material was gathered from a great variety of 
documentary sources, at a time when he was not 
only crippled, but also often without a settled 
abode or convenient library facilities. The suc¬ 
cess of the lectures had a most favorable effect 
upon his health, and he was able during the fol¬ 
lowing winter to conduct a course at Harvard 
on the psychology of religion and at the same 
time prepare his second course of Gifford Lec¬ 
tures. These were delivered in the Spring of 
1902 and shortly afterward both series were pub- 


596 



James j ames 

lished under the title, The Varieties of Religious by which his “causes” received corroboration. 
Experience (1902). ^ ^ ^ . As to the mystical experience, he was disposed 

t ^ been Janies s original intention to di- to accept it not because of any such experience 
vide his attention equally between the psycho- of his own, but rather because he felt “normal” 
logical and the philosophical aspects of religion, or “sane” consciousness “to be so small a part 
The author’s liberal, varied human sympathies, of actual experience,” and because he felt the 
his sensitiveness to the nuances of the emotional cumulative force of the religious history of man- 
life, and that vividness of style and genius for kind. On the whole the most important effect 
citation which he had already exhibited in the of the publication of the Varieties was to shift 
Principles, resulted in a masterly exposition of the emphasis in this field of study from the dog- 
conversion, saintliness, and other states charac- mas and external forms of religion to the unique 
teristic of man’s religious life. The book was mental states associated with it; and to strength- 
not only widely read but gave a great impetus en the opinion that there is a religious experi- 
to further and more systematic research in the ence sui generis, whose noetic claims deserve a 
psychology of religion. Its chief significance, respectful and sympathetic consideration, 
however, lay in those philosophical intimations James’s interest in abnormal experiences 
and prospects which, though they had been con- found expression not only in his study of reli- 
fined to a small space, had by no means been gion, but in two celebrated essays which ap- 
crowded out. An empiricist looks for knowledge peared later. One of these on “The Energies 
to experience, and there is an implication that of Men” ( Philosophical Review, Jan. 1907) 
the “religious experience” will be the source to dealt with the unexpected reserves which human 
which one should turn for religious knowledge, nature brings into play in emergencies; the 
The central religious experience is the mystical other, entitled “The Moral Equivalent of War” 
state which claims to know God. James sup- ( International Concilium, No. 27 , Feb. 1910 ), 
ported this claim by the hypothesis of a sub- discussed the possibility of devising some social 
liminal self through which an individual may measure, such as a universal conscription of 
become aware of a sphere of life and a sustaining youth for useful labor involving physical toil 
power beyond his normal consciousness. This and hardship, by which the martial virtues and 
is the religious datum, the further interpretation satisfactions could be secured without destruc- 
of which must be left to philosophy, guided by tion and without cruelty. In connection with 
the “pragmatic” principle. Religious beliefs these essays James collected a considerable 
must be fruitful, and must be in agreement with amount of material which was apparently de¬ 
man’s moral and esthetic demands. The reli- signed for a work on “the varieties of military 

gious hypothesis has, in other words, two types experience.” 

of proof, the proof by immediate experience and Between 1902 and 1907 James’s health was 
the proof by life. This distinction not only so far restored as to permit of a great multipli- 

reaches back to James’s original coupling of cation of his activities. His Harvard teaching 

empiricism and voluntarism, but affords the best was now limited to a single course but the time 
clue to his philosophical development after 1902. and strength which were saved were freely ex- 
Seeking a final metaphysics, and hoping to write pended upon incessant reading, lecturing, and 
it down in a definitive and systematic form, he writing, together with a voluminous correspond- 
oscillated between these two methods: a deep- ence. The honorary degree of LL.D. was be- 
ening and broadening of the notion of experi- stowed upon him by his own university in 1903, 
ence so as to provide an immediate apprehension and he took this occasion to give memorable ex- 
of reality, and an elaboration of the practical and pression to his idealization of Harvard^ ( The 
emotional demands which a true conception of True Harvard,” reprinted in Memories and 
reality must satisfy. Studies, 1911). In 1905 he attended the philo- 

The Varieties was one of the most widely pop- sophical congress in Rome, and was made hap- 
ular of James’s works, and despite the fact that pily aware of his growing fame. In January 
its primary intent‘was scientific rather than de- 1906 he made his second trip to California and 
votional it brought to many readers a confirma- became visiting professor for the second half of 
tion or new assurance of religious faith. In the the academic year at Stanford University, where 
correspondence with friends, new and old, which he gave the introductory lectures which he later 
followed the publication of the book, James’s revised and amplified, and which were published 
spoke candidly of the grounds and content of after his death, under the title of Some Problems 
his own personal faith. God to him was a “pow- of Philosophy . His enthusiasm for the young 
erful ally” of his ideals, and religion a belief civilization of the Pacific coast was character- 

597 



James 

istic of his quick response to every sort of nov¬ 
elty and idealism. He was deeply moved not 
only by the human suffering and heroism which 
the earthquake of 1906 occasioned in California, 
but by the earthquake itself,—a new variety of 
experience, to be relished and described {Mem¬ 
ories and Studies ). During the years 1904 an< 3 
1905, he published the remarkable series of arti¬ 
cles which he designed as parts of a larger work 
and which was brought together after his death 
under the title, Essays in Radical Empiricism 
(1912). James was prepared to take reality for 
what it appeared to be, even when this ran 
counter to the usual philosophical bias. In this 
sense his pluralism and “tychism” were radical, 
as manifesting a willingness to accept the prima 
facie multiplicity and waywardness of things de¬ 
spite their offense to the philosophic norms of 
unity and order. His empiricism was radical, 
in the second place, in its rigorous adherence to 
the maxim that things shall be assumed to be 
what they are experienced as ; the effect of this 
maxim being the exclusion from existence of 
all substances, unknowables, and abstractions. 
Thirdly, James’s empiricism was radical in the 
more positive and fruitful sense of finding expe¬ 
rience to be richer and philosophically more ade¬ 
quate than was customarily supposed. Thus ex¬ 
perience itself provides conjunctions as well as 
disjunctions, and does not need to be pieced out 
by a Kantian apparatus of intellectual forms; 
it is structurally self-sufficient, and does not need 
to be supported by a metaphysical substructure 
or frame such as the “Absolute” of the idealists. 
Finally, experience is more fundamental than 
either mind or matter, and provides the common 
measure in terms of which this duality can be 
understood and overcome. Consciousness is not 
an entity but a kind of relationship. The terms 
which enter into it are the same as those which 
in other relationships compose the so-called 
physical world. This view, set forth in the essay, 
“Does f Consciousness’ Exist?” ( Journal of 
Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 
Sept. 1, 1904), was one of James’s most original 
and significant philosophical contributions. It 
had been approximated by others, and anticipated 
by Ernst Mach, in his Beitrage zur Analyse der 
Empfindungen (1886); but it remained for 
James to give it effect, and to deal a decisive 
blow at the Cartesian dualism which had infect¬ 
ed European philosophy for two centuries. 

These active and fruitful years culminated in 
the famous Pragmatism, published in 1907, and 
consisting of public lectures given in that year 
at Columbia University, and in the preceding 
yim before the Lov^ell Institute in Boston. In 


James 

1898 James had given a lecture at Berkeley, Cal., 
entitled “Philosophical Conceptions and Prac¬ 
tical Results,” the central idea of which he at¬ 
tributed to his old friend and fellow student 
Charles S. Peirce [g.v.]. This writer had also 
{Popular Science Monthly, Jan. 1878) used the 
name “pragmatism,” and despite Peirce’s just 
protest that he meant something different by it, 
and the various misunderstandings to which it 
gave rise, this became the label by which James’s 
teaching was thereafter known. Pragmatism 
was not a new departure, even for James him¬ 
self. It can be found in the concluding chapter 
of the Principles of Psychology, and in every 
book of James published after that time. It is 
the doctrine that the meaning of an idea consists 
in the particular consequences to which it leads. 
Particular consequences may be perceptual, 
practical, or emotional. If an, idea has no such 
consequences, it means nothing. If the conse¬ 
quences of two ideas are the same then there is 
really only one idea. Stress the perceptual conse¬ 
quences and one finds James’s empiricist maxim, 
that a thing is what it is experienced as; stress 
the practical and emotional consequences, and 
one finds his voluntaristic doctrine that subjec¬ 
tive motives play, and deserve to play, an im¬ 
portant part in human beliefs. These more gen¬ 
eral doctrines now received, however, a new 
and striking application to the problem of 
“truth.” This term, said James, should properly 
be applied, not to reality, but to our beliefs about 
it. There are then two important things to note: 
first, a particular truth must be “about” some¬ 
thing in particular; second, it must “work,” 
that is, satisfy the purpose or interest for which 
it was adopted. Now in what does this relation 
“about” consist? James answered that an idea 
is about a certain object,—that object “of” which 
it is true, if it is true at all—only, when directly 
or indirectly, it “leads” to that object. Even to 
be false an idea must have a specific reference of 
this sort,—a reference that can be construed, he 
argued, only in terms of future behavior. Then 
if the belief is to have not only objective refer¬ 
ence, but also truth, the dealings to which it 
leads must be prosperous , whether in terms of 
fulfilled expectation, control, or emotional tone. 

The publication of Pragmatism at once gave 
rise to active controversy. James himself was 
anxious to make converts, and was greatly 
cheered by the agreement of G. Papini in Italy, 
as well as F. C. S. Schiller in England and John 
Dewey in America. There was, however, a 
storm of criticism, to which James replied in 
innumerable letters as well as in the articles 
afterwards collected and published under the 


598 



James 

name of The Meaning of Truth (1909). As a 
result of this controversy it became clear, as 
no one knowing James should ever have doubt¬ 
ed, that pragmatism did not signify an emphasis 
on sordid or worldly success, such as was sup¬ 
posed to be peculiarly esteemed in America. 
The doctrine that the truth of ideas is relative 
to the interests which generate them, implies 
nothing whatsoever regarding the character of 
these interests, whether high or low. At the 
same time, in reply to F. H. Bradley and others, 
James explained that he had never meant to deny 
the existence of theoretical interests, or their 
right of way over others, but only to insist that 
they were interests. In using the term “prac¬ 
tical” he had not meant to exclude any ac¬ 
tive, human motive, whether moral, intellectual, 
or esthetic. The commonest charge brought 
against him, however, was that of sceptical sub¬ 
jectivism. He seemed to his critics to have ex¬ 
posed himself to this charge by allying himself 
with the humanism” proclaimed by F. C. S. 
Schiller, who had emphasized the “making of 
reality” by thought, and had interpreted so- 
called “facts” as the precipitate of past thinking. 
In reply James repeatedly affirmed that his po¬ 
sition was “realistic,” in the sense of presuppos¬ 
ing an external environment to which thought 
was obliged to conform. 

James met his last Harvard class on Jan. 22, 
1907. Having been invited to give the Hibbert 
Lectures at Manchester College, Oxford, he de¬ 
cided after some hesitation to take this oppor¬ 
tunity of giving a systematic presentation of his 
metaphysical position. The lectures were given 
in May 1908, and were published in the follow¬ 
ing year under the title, A Pluralistic Universe . 
For some years there had been talk of James’s 
forthcoming metaphysics, alluded to in the Fa- 
rieties. This project as originally designed was 
never executed, for James had meant a treatise 
that should be technical enough, and perhaps 
dull enough, to satisfy the critics who had cav¬ 
iled at his lightness of speech. The Hibbert 
Lectures found him again before a mixed audi¬ 
ence and irresistibly impelled to be interesting. 
But though this volume is again popular in style, 
it affords the best and the final synopsis of his 
Weltanschauung and of his general philosoph¬ 
ical orientation. He pays his respects .to Hegel 
and to the absolutists generally, setting^forth 
the failure of their arguments, and the “thin¬ 
ness” of their results. To reject the absolute 
does not imply the rejection of every hypothesis 
of a “superhuman consciousness.” But instead 
of the dialectical method used by the Hegelians 
to establish such a consciousness, James com- 


James 

mended the method of empirical analogy and 
free speculation used by Fechner in his doc¬ 
trine of an “earth-soul”; and, instead of a super¬ 
human consciousness that is in some unintel¬ 
ligible sense “all-embracing,” James proposed 
that it should be finite like human consciousness. 
In that case it may without contradiction have 
those relations to an environment other than it¬ 
self, and that freedom from evil, which have in 
fact always been attributed to it by the religious 
worshipper. It was far from James’s intention 
to increase the distance between man and God. 
Man is a part, or is capable under certain con¬ 
ditions of becoming a part, of an enveloping 
spiritual life; and that life is like his own,—dif¬ 
ferent in degree, but similar in kind. The prob¬ 
ability of such a hypothesis is supported by the 
mystical state, and by allied abnormal and super¬ 
normal experiences to which modem psychol¬ 
ogy has called attention, as well as by the moral 
and emotional demands which it satisfies. 

James did not reach this metaphysical conclu¬ 
sion lightly. He was keenly alive to its logical 
difficulties, and especially to the difficulty con¬ 
nected with “the compounding of consciousness.” 
In view of the peculiar unity of the conscious 
life, how can several lesser consciousnesses form 
parts of a greater? Supposing them to have 
distinct individualities of their own, how can 
they ever unite? Or, supposing them to be 
united, how can they possess any distinctness? 
It was in the solution of this problem that James 
felt himself to be both illuminated and confirmed 
by Bergson, with whose work he became famil¬ 
iar as early as 1898, and which he had hailed in 
1902 as of epoch-making importance. He now 
credited Bergson with giving him the courage 
to break with the traditional logic which had 
hitherto prevented his acceptance of the com¬ 
pounding of consciousness. Bergson, as had 
James in his account of “the stream of con¬ 
sciousness” in the Principles, stressed the con¬ 
tinuity of living experience. Its adjacent parts 
coalesce and inter-penetrate, each reaching be¬ 
yond itself and merging into the other. The 
logical conception of a serial order of distinct 
terms, each of which is exclusively and forever 
itself, is a product of conceptual abstraction,— 
an artificial diagram created for practical pur¬ 
poses. It affords no proper index of reality it¬ 
self, for which one must plunge into the con¬ 
crete flux of immediacy. Reality so apprehended 
is homogeneous, and connected from next to 
next; there are possible transitions from.every 
part to every other part. Most things in the 
world are only indirectly, and so externally, 
connected; mutually accessible, but not mutual- 


599 



James 

ly implicated; capable of entering into now one 
and now another type of union, and capable of 
entering into the one without entering into the 
other. Thus James ends upon the note of plural¬ 
ism, in which the “each” is preferred to the 
“all,” and the world is a “multiverse”; which 
corresponds to the actual appearances of things 
and satisfies the creed of individualism and 
freedom, but without that complete disintegra¬ 
tion that has usually been supposed to be the 
only alternative to monism. This was James’s 
solution of that problem which he had set him¬ 
self at the beginning of his philosophical ca¬ 
reer, the union, namely, of the empirical temper 
and method of science with the essential ideals 
and beliefs of religion. 

During these last years of his life James had 
received many honors. He had been elected to 
the French Academy of Moral and Political 
Sciences, and to the Prussian Academy of Sci¬ 
ences, and had been the recipient of many hon¬ 
orary degrees at home and abroad. In the 
spring of 1910 a return of his cardiac symptoms 
together with the illness of his brother Henry 
led him to undertake another trip to England 
and to Bad-Nauheim, Although he felt that his 
health was now hopelessly impaired, there was 
no decline in his esprit and intellectual activity. 
His last publication, characteristic of the caste 
of his mind and of his loyalty to old friends, was 
an article on Benjamin P. Blood which ap¬ 
peared in the Hibbert Journal (July 1910), un¬ 
der the title, “A Pluralistic Mystic.” He sailed 
for home in mid-summer, and died shortly after 
his arrival at his country home in Chocorua, 
N. H., on Aug. 26, 1910. 

James is commonly grouped with, Edwards 
and Emerson as one of the American philoso¬ 
phers whose place in history is secure. His 
fame is due in no small part to his cosmopolitan¬ 
ism, his literary style, and his personal traits. 
His many and long visits to Europe, his com¬ 
mand of modern languages, and his conversa¬ 
tional powers secured him a host of friends in 
England, Germany, France, and Italy, and 
paved the way for the reading of his books. 
This cosmopolitanism was achieved without loss 
or even diminution of his Americanism, and his 
loyalty to his native tradition and creed en¬ 
hanced his influence among Europeans, who saw 
in him a manifestation of the genius of the 
American people. His style was that of a bril¬ 
liant talker,—-vivacious, concrete, witty, and in¬ 
stinct with a sense of human presence. These 
effects were not achieved without effort, but 
their effect was that of spontaneity and inex¬ 
haustible wealth of resources. His style was 


James 

peculiarly personal, and his personality was 
memorable. He lavished affection upon others 
and was repaid in kind. His profound moral 
earnestness was softened and humanized by his 
love of fun, and by a total absence of self-con¬ 
sciousness and self-righteousness. He had a 
delicately balanced nervous organization, and 
suffered from rapid oscillations of mood and 
frequent periods of depression. His tempera¬ 
ment gave him a ready and, in the judgment of 
many, an excessive sympathy with lonely souls 
and lost causes. But his ineradicable good taste, 
his right feeling and incorruptible intelligence, 
preserved his own balance and moderation and 
kept him sound. Although he was slight in 
build, easily fatigued, and subject to illness 
throughout his life, he was incessantly active 
and spent himself with a prodigal generosity. 
Two traits stand out above all others, his warm 
response to humanity in all its forms, and the 
gallantry with which he attacked life and served 
his ideals. These are traits which would have 
distinguished him among his contemporaries. 
To understand the place which he holds in the 
history of thought it is necessary to go further, 
and to credit him with that genius or happy des¬ 
tiny which relates man harmoniously to the 
major currents of human progress. Comparing 
the tendencies of James’s youth with those of 
today it is clear that on the whole the direction 
of his thought coincided with that of his pos¬ 
terity. The importance of an empirical study of 
human nature, and its applications to human af¬ 
fairs ; the recognition of the significance of the 
experience of religion, and a comparative neg¬ 
lect of its dogmatic and ecclesiastical aspects; a 
truce between science and religion, through the 
increased tolerance of science and empiricism of 
religion; a shifting of emphasis in philosophy 
from the pure intellect to perception; and an 
acknowledgment of the play of will and feeling 
in the formation of belief: these are some of the 
major items in the record of James’s permanent 
achievement. 

[The Letters of William James (1920), edited by his 
son Henry James; Henry James, A Small Boy and 
Others (1913), and Notes of a Son and Brother 
(1914); Th. Flournoy, The Philosophy of William 
James (1917) ; R. B. Perry, Annotated Bibliography 
of the Writings of William James (1920) ; J. E. Tur¬ 
ner, An Examination of William James’s Philosophy 
(1919) ; H. M. Kallen, William James and Henri Berg - 
son (1914), and The Philosophy of William James 
(1925) ; Emile Boutroux, William James (1912) ; J. S. 
Bixler, Religion in the Philosophy of William James 
(1926) ; A. Menard, Analyse et Critique des Principes 
de la Psychologie de W. James (1911) ; Josiah Royce, 
William James and Other Essays (1911) ; H. V. Knox, 
The Philosophy of William James (1914); George 
Santayana, Character & Opinion in the United States 
(1920), ch. III.] R.B.P. 


600 



Jameson 

JAMESON, HORATIO GATES (1778-Aug. 

26, 1855), physician, surgeon, and teacher, was 
born in York, Pa., the son of Dr. David and 
Elizabeth (Davis) Jameson. He attended no 
medical school, but studied medicine under his 
father and began practice at seventeen in Som¬ 
erset County, Pa. Moving to Baltimore in 1810, 
he followed lectures at the University of Mary¬ 
land, taking the degree of M.D. in 1813. Like 
many early American physicians he combined 
the practice of medicine with the business of a 
druggist. He became a prominent citizen of 
Baltimore, serving as surgeon to the federal 
troops in 1812, physician to the City Jail, sur¬ 
geon, 1814-35, and consulting physician, 1821- 
35, to the Board of Health. He had before him 
a promise of an unusual medical career, but was 
over-ambitious and unwilling to wait. He quar¬ 
relled with the faculty of the University of 
Maryland Medical School, insisting that they 
had refused him due consideration, and founded 
a medical school of his own, the Washington 
Medical College. The University attempted to 
prevent the granting of a charter to the new in¬ 
stitution but failed. The new college opened 
(1827) on North Holliday Street and flourished 
for a time. Under Jameson’s ambitious influence 
it, expanded too rapidly, securing a university 
charter in 1839 and erecting a hospital and col¬ 
lege on North Broadway on the site of the pres¬ 
ent Church Home. In 1849, it moved again to 
the southeast corner of Hanover and Lombard 
Streets, but it was heavily in debt. The build¬ 
ings were sold and the college closed in 1851. 
Jameson was greatly humiliated by its gradual 
failure. A secondary result of his activity in this 
connection was a criminal trial ( American Med¬ 
ical Recorder, January 1829, pp. 209-32) in 
which Jameson sued Dr. French Hintz for defa¬ 
mation of character. Jameson was finally vindi¬ 
cated and his opponent fined, but the inheritance 
of enmity and bitterness endured for many years. 

Jameson was a voluminous writer. He pub¬ 
lished accounts of many unusual operations, such 
as extirpation of the upper jaw after ligation of 
the carotid artery, which he performed for the 
first time in 1820 ( American Medical Recorder , 
April 1821), and the first removal in America 
of uterine scirrhus (Ibid., July 1824). After 
Dorsey and Post, he was the third surgeon to 
ligate successfully the external iliac artery 
(Ibid., January 1822). He also edited (1829- 
32) the Maryland Medical Recorder, contrib¬ 
uting many papers himself, published four pa¬ 
pers on yellow and typhus fevers (1825-30), 
American Domestic Medicine (1817; 2nd ed., 
1818), and a more ambitious Treatise on Bpi- 


Jameson 

demic Cholera (1855). He left a memoir of his 
father. In 1830, by invitation, he visited Ger¬ 
many and Scandinavia to read a paper before a 
society of German physicians, being the first 
American member of such a congress and the 
only representative on this occasion from the 
United States. During the cholera epidemic he 
had charge of several hospitals. He became in 
1832 superintendent of vaccination, and by pass¬ 
ing the virus through the cow improved the 
process. In 1835-36 he was for one term pro¬ 
fessor of surgery at the Medical College of Ohio, 
Cincinnati (Otto Juettner, Daniel Drake and 
His Followers, 1909, pp. 194-95). He possessed 
the physical qualities necessary for a great sur¬ 
geon, a habit of meticulous cleanliness, mechan¬ 
ical ability, and boundless energy. His faults 
were those of an ambitious man who tried to 
force circumstances to his will instead of mold¬ 
ing them patiently. Probably his most impor¬ 
tant contribution to surgery was his use of the 
animal ligature: a distinction which he shares 
with Dr. Philip Syng Physick of Philadelphia 
(Medical Recorder, January 1827). He died 
while visiting New York City, in 1855, and was 
buried in Baltimore. By his first wife, Cath¬ 
erine Shevell of Somerset County, Pa., whom he 
married Aug. 3, 1797, he had seven children. 
All his sons became physicians, but died without 
issue. Following his wife’s death, in 1837, he 
married, in 1852, Hannah (Fearson) Ely, a 
widow, by whom he had no children. 

[H. A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Am. Medic . Biogs. 
(1930) ; H. 0 . Marcy, in Trans. Southern Surg. and 
Gynecol. Asso. t vol. XIX (1907); E. F. Cordell, Univ. 
of Md., 1807-1907 (2 vols., 1907), and The Medic. An¬ 
nals of Md. (1903), with portrait; A. C. P. Callisen, 
Medicinisches Schriftsteller-Lexicon (Copenhagen), vol. 
IX (1832), pp. 402-05, art. 780, nos. 2532-57 ] F. H. 
Garrison, An Introduction to the Hist, of Medicine (4th 
ed, 1929) ; J. R. Quinlan, Medic. Annals of Baltimore, 
1608-1880 (1884) ; E. O. Jameson, The Jamesons in 
America, 1647-1900 (1901); Evening Post (N. Y.), 
Aug. 28, 1855; Baltimore Sun, Aug. 28, 1855.] 

J.R.O. 

JAMESON, JOHN ALEXANDER (Jan. 
25, 1824-June 16, 1890), jurist, was bom in 
Irasburgh, Vt. His parents were Thomas and 
Martha (Gilchrist) Jameson, Thomas being a 
descendant of Hugh Jameson, of Scotch ances¬ 
try, who emigrated from Ulster, Ireland, in 1746 
and finally settled in Londonderry, N. H. John’s 
character was crystallized in an atmosphere of 
dignity, uncompromising uprightness, industry, 
rigorous morality, social reticence, and quiet 
domesticity; and while the orthodox Calvinism 
of his childhood gave way to religious liberalism 
in his adult years, the solid framework of his 
heritage remained formidable to the end. His 
father had been honored with the office of sheriff 


601 



Jameson 


Jamison 


of the home county and with membership in the 
constitutional convention of Vermont (1850). 
In the accumulation of earthly possessions the 
parents, in spite of their traditional frugality 
and thrift, were not very successful, and it was 
only under the most severe hardships and sac¬ 
rifices that the son was able to secure an educa¬ 
tion. His final preparation for college was com¬ 
pleted in Brownington, and he entered the Uni¬ 
versity of Vermont in 1842, originally intending 
to prepare for the ministry in conformity with 
the desires of his parents. He was graduated in 
1846 at the head of his class. After teaching 
for four years in an academy at Stanstead, Can¬ 
ada, he returned to the University of Vermont 
and spent two years there as tutor. During these 
same years he earned the degree of master of 
arts (1849), read extensively in many fields, 
and began to concentrate his interests on the 
study of law. Before entering the Harvard Law 
School in the autumn of 1852, he spent a few 
months in the law office of Governor Underwood 
in Burlington. In the spring of 1853 he re¬ 
sumed his tutoring while he was making the final 
preparation for his admission to the Vermont 
bar. 

In the autumn of 1853 he went to Chicago and 
began the practice of law with H. N. Hibbard 
as his partner. In the winter the firm moved to 
Freeport, Ill., in search of a more lucrative field. 
On Oct. 11, 1855, he married Eliza, daughter of 
Dr. Joseph A. Denison, Jr., of Royalton, Vt., 
descendant of Capt. George Denison of Ston- 
ington, Conn. He reestablished his law office in 
Chicago in 1856 and practised with cumulative 
success until he was elected to a judgeship on 
the superior court of Chicago (later of Cook 
County) in 1863. On the chancery division of 
this court he served for three successive terms 
covering a period of eighteen years. His tem¬ 
perament, traditions, and scholarship made him 
preeminently qualified for the equity field, and 
to him came the rare distinction of having vir¬ 
tually all of his decisions from which appeals 
were taken confirmed by the higher courts. In 
what was probably his most famous case his de¬ 
cision was reversed by the supreme court of Illi¬ 
nois in 1871 ( Samuel Chase et al. vs. Charles E . 
Cheney , 58 III., 509), but the principles of law 
which were the basis of his reasoning ultimately 
prevailed. 

In 1867 appeared his monumental work on 
The Constitutional Convention; Its History, 
Powers, and Modes of Proceeding . He was 
moved to make this exhaustive and scholarly 
study, as he explains in the preface, by certain 
claims made in the constitutional convention of 


Illinois in 1862 that the convention had inherent 
powers amounting to absolute sovereignty, and 
by certain rumors that a secret group hostile to 
the Union was trying to control the convention. 
His contribution was the first comprehensive 
treatise on the subject and, as far as it is possible 
in such a field, a definitive one; it received gen¬ 
eral recognition. The old University of Chicago 
made him a professor of equity and constitu¬ 
tional law for the year 1867-68. He resumed 
the private practice of law in 1883 and was con¬ 
spicuously successful. In 1888 he was elected 
president of the board of trustees of Hyde Park, 
the suburb in which he lived with his wife, his 
two daughters, and his son. His interests were 
much wider than his profession. He taught his 
son the Greek and Latin necessary to admit him 
to college; he gave addresses from time to time, 
some of them in fluent German; he wrote many 
articles and was an assistant editor of the Amer¬ 
ican Law Register . He was also active in the 
founding and maintenance of the Literary Club 
of Chicago, the Prisoner’s Aid Association of 
Illinois, and the American Academy of Social 
and Political Science. He collected the material 
which now constitutes the John Alexander 
Jameson Library in American History in the 
University of Pennsylvania. A Republican, he 
refrained, however, from political activity. His 
death occurred in Hyde Park. 

[E. 0 . Jameson, The Jamesons in America (1901); 
Gen. Cat. of the Univ. of Vt. . . . 1791-1900 (1901); 
F. N. Thorpe, In Memoriam: John Alexander Jameson 
(1890), supp. to Annals Am. Acad. Pol. and Social Set., 
Jan. 1891; Chicago Law Times, Oct. 1888; Chicago 
Legal News, June 21, 1890; Chicago Tribune, June 17, 
l8 9 °d A.J.L. 

JAMISON, CECILIA VIETS DAKIN 
HAMILTON (1837-Apr. 11, 1909), artist and 
author,daughter of Viets and Elizabeth (Bruce) 
Dakin, great-grand-daughter of Rev. Roger 
Viets, vicar general of Canada, and great-niece 
of Rt Rev. Alexander Viets Griswold [g.z\], 
was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and lived 
there until she was in her mid-teens, at which 
time the family moved to Boston. She was edu¬ 
cated in private schools in Canada, New York, 
Boston, and Paris; her early ambition was to be 
an artist, and she received the best instruction 
America afforded. While working in a studio 
in Boston, she met, and later married, George 
Hamilton. Regarding this first marriage noth¬ 
ing more is known; shortly after it took place, 
Mrs. Hamilton, then in her late twenties, went 
to Europe for further study in portrait painting, 
and lived for three years in Rome. Writing had 
been only a favorite avocation with her up to 
this time, but while she was in Rome, the poet 


602 



Jamison 

Longfellow met her, read the manuscript of 
her first book, Woven of Many Threads, com¬ 
mended it highly, and became enough interested 
in the novel to arrange for its publication, which 
was not until 1872. It was favorably received 
by the reading public. The manuscript, correct¬ 
ed in Longfellow’s hand, is now in the rooms of 
the Massachusetts Historical Society with sev¬ 
eral of his letters to her. 

Upon her return she devoted herself for sev¬ 
eral years to painting and literature, maintain¬ 
ing studios in both New York and Boston. She 
published successively Something to Do: A 
Novel (1871), A Crown from the Spear (1872), 
Ropes of Sand, and Other Stories (1873)? & n d 
My Bonnie Lass (1877), and began writing 
short stories and articles for popular magazines. 
Perhaps the two best-known portraits which she 
painted are those of Agassiz, which now hangs 
in the rooms of the Boston Society of Natural 
History, and of Longfellow, which was present¬ 
ed by the artist to Tulane University, New Or¬ 
leans. On Oct. 28, 1878, she married Samuel 
Jamison (1848-1902), a graduate of the Uni¬ 
versity of Edinburgh and a prominent lawyer 
of New Orleans, then maintaining an office in 
New York. Immediately following the mar¬ 
riage, the Jamisons went to live on the Live 
Oak Plantation near Thibodeaux, La., where 
they resided until 1887, when they moved to 
New Orleans. Here Mrs. Jamison’s most suc¬ 
cessful books were written: The Story of an 
Enthusiast (1888), Lady Jane (1891), T Orn¬ 
ette's Philip (1894), Seraph, the Little Vio - 
liniste (1896), Thistledown (1903), and The 
Penhdlow Family (1905). The first-named was 
her professed favorite among her works for 
older readers. Although she had no children of 
her own, it was her charming stories of child 
life, in which she drew extensively from pictur¬ 
esque local backgrounds for their settings, that 
made her most noted. Lady Jme (1891) has 
been translated into French, German, and Nor¬ 
wegian, and put into the Braille type for the 
blind. Mrs. Jamison received letters from chil¬ 
dren in all parts of the world who had read her 
stories. She also contributed to Harper's , 5 * crib - 
net's, Appleton's Journal, and St. Nicholas • 
Along with such writers as Lafcadio Hearn, 
Grace King, George W. Cable, Eugene Field 
[qq.v.’], and Madam Blanc of France, she at¬ 
tended the last famous salon in America, that of 
Mollie Moore Davis in New Orleans. She was 
also much interested in the social welfare work 
of the city. During the latter part of her life, 
she spent her summers at the summer home of 
her sister in Nahant, Mass., and upon the death 


Jamison 

of her husband on July 13,1902, she returned to 
Massachusetts. A great sufferer during these 
last years from a disease of the heart, she died 
on Easter Sunday at midnight, Apr. 11,1909, in 
Roxbury, Mass. 

[F. H. Viets, A Geneal. of the Viets Family (1902) ; 
Olive Otis, in Lib. of Southern Lit., vol. XV (1910) ; 
St. Nicholas, Apr. 1894; Henry Rightor, Standard 
Hist, of New Orleans, La. (1900); Who's Who in 
America, 1908-09; Boston Transcript, Apr. 13, 1909; 
Daily Picayune, New Orleans, Apr. 13, 1909; Harper 
Brown, “Mrs. Cecilia Viets Jamison: A Critical and 
Biographical Study” (1931), thesis (MS.), in Tilton 
Lib., Tulane Univ.; information from Miss Grace 
King, Miss A. R. Jamison, Dr. W. W. Butterworth, 
Mrs. Reuben Bush, Mrs. R. S. Woods, and Miss Anne 
C. Dakin.] H. B. 

JAMISON, DAVID (1660-July 26, 1739)1 
colonial lawyer, was bom in Scotland, received 
a collegiate education, and while young com¬ 
pelled attention by association with a company 
of religious iconoclasts known as the "Sweet 
Singers,” from their manner of reciting the 
Psalms. This group rejected the received trans¬ 
lations of the Bible, the Psalms in metre, the 
catechisms, and the Confession of Faith. Their 
crusade apparently embraced the entire frame¬ 
work of religious and civil society, and was con¬ 
ducted with astonishing virulence. Under the 
Stuart regime the leaders were cast into the Tol- 
booth, Edinburgh, Jamison sharing their afflic¬ 
tion, and, when in 1685 they were shipped to 
New Jersey and sold to service for their passage 
money, he was their companion in exita He 
was bound to the Rev. Mr. Clarke, chaplain of 
the fort in New York City, but patrons of edu¬ 
cation purchased his time and placed him at the 
head of a Latin school. 

In a new atmosphere the young man’s mind 
was cleared of fanaticism, and a large field of 
public usefulness opened before him. The con¬ 
test between the friends and the foes of Jacob 
Leisler [q.vJ\ still disturbed the political air, 
and David Jamison’s combative nature did not 
permit him to remain aloof from the struggle. 
Six years after his arrival in America he was a 
deputy secretary and clerk of the council, study¬ 
ing law in spare hours. As an adherent of Gov¬ 
ernor Fletcher, he gained the unfavorable no¬ 
tice of Fletcher’s successor, Governor Bello- 
mont, who gave currency to a report that when 
in Scotland Jamison "was condemned to be 
hanged ... for blasphemy and burning the 
bible” ( Documents, post, IV, 400). 

Jamison won distinction when Lord Com- 
bury’s regard for devotional regularity led to 
the prosecution, in 1707? of the Rev. Francis 
Makemie Iq.v.], a Presbyterian, for preaching 
without a license in a private house. Jamison, 
as one of the attorneys for the defense, urged 


603 



Jamison 

the political necessity for toleration in such a 
colony as New York, “made up chiefly of For¬ 
eigners and Dissenters,” and advanced the legal 
argument that the acts of Uniformity and Tol¬ 
eration did not apply to the colonies. He point¬ 
ed out—being himself one of the original ves¬ 
trymen of Trinity Church—that “when we did 
set about erecting a Church of England Congre¬ 
gation ..it was the care of those members who 
promoted it [the charter] to get such clauses in¬ 
serted in it as should secure the Liberty of the 
Dutch and French congregations.” Makemie 
was acquitted, but he had spent two months in 
prison and was obliged to pay costs. (See A 
Narrative of a New and Unusual American Im¬ 
prisonment of Two Presbyterian Ministers and 
Prosecution of Mr. Francis Makemie, 1707.) 

In 1711 Jamison was appointed chief justice 
of New Jersey by Gov. Robert Hunter [#.z/.], in 
whom the executive functions of New York and 
New Jersey were united, and in the following 
year he was named recorder of New York City, 
and was commissioned to execute the office of 
attorney-general of New York, some years later 
receiving the commission in full. In 1723 he 
was removed from the chief justiceship of 
New Jersey, that province demanding a resident 
chief justice. For seventeen years he held al¬ 
ternately the offices of vestryman and warden 
of Trinity Church. Governor Hunter, in a letter 
to the Lords of Trade, Oct. 2, 1716, pronounced 
him “the greatest man I ever knew; and I think 
of the most unblemished life and conversation of 
any of his rank in these parts” ( Documents, V, 
479). He added the assertion that it was due to 
Jamison’s zeal and management that the Church 
of England had any establishment in New York. 
His enemy Bellomont accused Jamison of big¬ 
amy (Ibid., IV, 400), but Hunter refuted the 
charge, though admitting that “there was a wo¬ 
man by whom he had a child in his wild days” 
(Ibid., V, 479). He married Mary Harden- 
brook in New York City, May 7, 1692, and a 
decade later, Jan. 16, 1703, married Johanna 
Meech (or Meek). He left several descendants. 

[E. B. O’Callaghan, Docs . Relating to the Colonial 
Hist . of the State of N . Y., vols. IV-VI (1854-55) I 
records of Trinity Church; Wm. Smith, The Hist . of 
the Late Province of N. Y., I (1829), 161-64; Calendar 
of Council Minutes, 1668-1783 (1902) ; N. Y. Geneal. 
and Biog . Record, Oct. 1874; Colls. N. Y. Hist. Soc., 
Pub. Fund Ser., vols. I (1868), XXVI (1894); R* S. 
Field, “The Provincial Courts of New Jersey,” Colls. 
N . J. Hist. Soc.j vol. Ill (1849) ; Robert Wodrow, 
Hist, of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland (2 
vols., 1721-22), vol f II (bk. Ill), pp. 220-21, App., 
79-82; E. B. O’Callaghan, in Mag. of Am. Hist., Jan. 
1877; E. 0 . Jameson, The Jamesons in America 

R.E.D. 


Jamison 

JAMISON, DAVID FLAVEL (Dec. 14, 
1810-Sept. 14, 1864), author, South Carolina 
leader, was the son of Van de Vastine Jamison, 
a physician and planter of Orangeburg District, 
and his wife, Elizabeth (Rumph) Jamison. He 
was descended from Henry Jamison, of Scottish 
birth, who came from the province of Ulster, 
Ireland, to Philadelphia about 1708. From Platt 
Springs Academy in Lexington District, David 
entered the sophomore class at the South Caro¬ 
lina College, but did not graduate. He practised 
law for two years, but in 1832, when he married 
his first cousin, Elizabeth Ann Carmichael 
Rumph, he gave up his practice and was for the 
rest of his life a planter. In 1836 he was elected 
to the state House of Representatives from 
Orange Parish, Orangeburg District, and served 
in that body till 1848. For almost the whole of 
this period he was chairman of the committee 
on military affairs. In his fourth term he in¬ 
troduced the bill for the formation of the South 
Carolina Military Academy. In 1844 he voted 
with the minority against the resolutions de¬ 
claring that the annexation of Texas was of 
paramount importance and the tariff of 1842 un¬ 
constitutional. It was probably this attitude that 
led to his retirement; in the election of 1846 he 
ran second, instead of first as in 1844, and in 
1848 gave place to the fiery Lawrence M. Keitt 
[«•»•]. 

Meanwhile Jamison had been pursuing what 
was perhaps his chief interest—historical studies. 
In the Southern Quarterly Review for January 
and July 1843, January, April, and October 1844, 
and October 1849 there were reviews of Guizot, 
Mignet, Herder, Michelet, and Lamartine which 
either by signature or internal evidence are to 
be ascribed to him. They are lengthy and schol¬ 
arly essays, elaborately fortified with references, 
chiefly to French authors and sources. To the 
Southern planter the lessons of modern Euro¬ 
pean history seemed plain, and it was doubtless 
these studies as much as the long controversy 
over the Wilmot Proviso that matured his po¬ 
litical philosophy. In articles for the Review 
for September and November 1850 he argued 
that slavery was the indispensable basis for a 
successful republic, and that the abolition cam¬ 
paign and the excesses of Northern democracy 
made separation as necessary as it was desirable. 
He was a delegate to the Nashville Convention 
of 1850, and during 1851 and 1852 was active in 
the movement for separate action by South Caro¬ 
lina. In 1859 he bought a plantation in Barn¬ 
well District and became the near neighbor as 
he was already the intimate friend of William 
Gilmore Simms [q.v.']. He represented Barn- 



Janauschek 

well in the secession convention. His election 
on the fourth ballot to the presidency of this 
body, the most distinguished in the history of 
the state, he regarded as the crowning point in 
his life. From December i860 to the following 
April he was a member of the Executive Council. 
In December 1862 he was appointed presiding 
judge for the military court of Beauregard’s 
corps, holding this position till his death of yel¬ 
low fever in September 1864. He was buried at 
Orangeburg. 

Jamison used the interval of release from pub¬ 
lic service in 1861 and 1862 to finish his Life 
and Times of Bertrand Du Guesclin (2 vols., 
London and Charleston, 1864). Even during 
the great struggle of his own people, the stately 
figures and stirring episodes of the Hundred 
Years’ War retained their appeal for him, and 
the footnotes in the volumes, many of them to 
rare and difficult sources, bear witness to his 
patient industry and careful analysis. The work 
was printed in England, and thus twice ran the 
blockade. 

[Sources include a manuscript article on Jamison by 
I. L. Jenkins, Anderson, S. C.; and notes on the South 
Carolina Jamisons by A. S. Salley, Columbia (pub¬ 
lished in part in E. 0 . Jameson, The Jamesons in Amer¬ 
ica, 1647-1900, 1901, in -which the name is mispelled). 
See also Charleston Daily Courier, Oct. 18, 1844, Oct. 
17, 1846, Sept 15, 1864; Charleston Mercury, Oct. 
10, 1851, Dec. 8, 1864; Harper's Weekly, Feb. 2, 1861; 
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Feb. 9, 1861; 
Southern Presbyterian Review, Mar. 1866.] 

R.L.M—r. 

JANAUSCHEK, FRANZISKA MAGDA- 
LENA ROMANCE (July 20, 1830-Nov. 28, 
1904), actress, better known as Fanny Janaus¬ 
chek, was born in Prague, Bohemia, one of nine 
children in a humble family. As a child she 
showed musical talent, but this was soon over¬ 
borne by her histrionic gifts. When still in her 
teens, Julius Benedix trained her in Cologne, 
and made her his leading actress in Frankfurt- 
am-Main in 1848. During the next two decades 
she became one of Germany’s leading trage¬ 
diennes, played successfully in Russia and else¬ 
where on the Continent, and received many gifts 
of jewels from various rulers. In 1867 she came 
to America, acting in German. Augustin Daly 
saw her at the Academy of Music in New York, 
playing in Deborah , and persuaded her to learn 
English. She devoted the year 1869 to this task, 
taking “four professors” to the country, for 
“reading,” “grammar,” “pronunciation,” and the 
study of her roles. But meanwhile, on Nov. 7, 
1868, she appeared in Boston with Edwin Booth, 
in Macbeth, he of course acting in English, she 
in German. Such things were permitted in those 
days—even encouraged. On Oct. 13, 1870, she 


Janauschek 

began her career in English, under Daly’s ihafc- 
agement, at the New York Academy of Musk^ 
acting in Mary Stuart, The New York papers 
compared her English favorably with Fechter’s 
and praised her acting highly. She also won 
great favor with her Deborah and other of her 
transplanted roles and is said to have cleared 
$20,000 on the season. 

She remained in America, acting in English, 
for four years, going back to Germany in 1874. 
But in 1880 she returned and thereafter made 
America her home. Meanwhile, however, pub¬ 
lic taste and the styles of drama were changing 
rapidly, and Janauschek, who was now a woman 
of fifty, trained in the old German school, would 
not and probably could not change with them. 
Hers was the “bold, broad school” of acting, and 
her roles included such parts as Medea, Mary 
Stuart, Catherine II, Brunhilde (in which Long¬ 
fellow greatly admired her), Lady Macbeth, and 
the dual role of Hortense and Lady Dedlock in 
a dramatization of Bleak House . When she add¬ 
ed to her repertoire Meg Merrilies, once a fa¬ 
mous part of Charlotte Cushman’s, the play al¬ 
ready seemed to the critics “a long, tiresome 
melodrama.” Janauschek had been further handi¬ 
capped by bad business management. F. J. Pil- 
lot, styled a German baron, had conducted—or 
misconducted—her early tours of the country, 
and was said by some to be her husband, but both 
denied it. He was a victim of drink, and the 
actress, after dismissing him, made him an al¬ 
lowance during his latter years, which he passed 
in Boston, sometimes making empty threats of 
blackmail against her, and dying there in 1884. 

As the years crept on, and her popularity 
waned with the changing times, Janauschek 
sought to recapture attention by acting in ex¬ 
travagant melodramas, or else had to be content 
with subordinate parts. In 1895 she played 
Mother Rosenbaum in The Great Diamond 
Robbery, which her grandiloquent style fitted; 
but she despised the play and declared that she 
“hoped Booth wasn’t looking down at her.” At 
this time A. C. Wheeler, the critic, wrote, “We 
come to the grim facts of an otherwise resplen¬ 
dent career, and see a woman of sixty-five, grown 
gray in the service of the public, wrinkled and 
spectacled, wearing her memories with a mantle 
of reproach, but still proudly capable of asserting 
her birthright and her authority when the chal¬ 
lenge comes—the only Mary Stuart left to 
the Western world.” Thereafter she attempted 
vaudeville, and once at least made a tour as Meg 
Merrilies with a very bad company and shabby 
scenery. The present writer saw her in Wash¬ 
ington, in 1899, like a strange and pathetic ap- 



Janes 

parition from the past, both play and playing no 
longer capable of moving an audience. She suf¬ 
fered a stroke in her Brooklyn home in 1900, 
and was moved to Saratoga. Fellow players 
arranged a benefit for her in 1901 and raised 
$S,ooo, but this was soon gone, and her collection 
of rich costumes and jewels were then sold to 
support her last years. She died at a home in 
Amityville, Long Island, and it is recorded that 
scarce twenty people attended the funeral. 

Janauschek was plain and rugged of feature, 
like Charlotte Cushman, and had to conquer her 
audiences by the quality of her voice, the com¬ 
manding sweep of her gesture and pose, and the 
tragic intensity of her impersonations. There is 
no doubt but she embodied with both passion and 
keen intelligence a style of tragic acting once 
popular, but that she neither could nor would 
change that style to meet the changes in taste. 
Hence she became a brave, stubborn, unhappy 
old woman, and died alone and almost forgotten 
in an alien land. 

[Fritz A. H. Leuchs, The Early German Theatre in 
N. F. (1958) ; J. B. Clapp and E. F. Edgett, Players 
of the Present, pt 2 (1900), 171-74; Brockhaus* Kon- 
versations-Lexikon, vol. IX (1902); AT. F. Dramatic 
Mirror, Dec. 10, 1904; Current Lit., Oct. 1902; N. F. 
Times, N. Y. Evening Post, Nov. 30, 1904; Theatre 
collection, Harvard Coll. Lib.; Robinson Locke collec¬ 
tion, N. Y. Pub. Lib.] p t 

JANES, LEWIS GEORGE (Feb. 19* 1844- 
S'ept. 4, 1901), author, educator, was born in 
Providence, R. I., the son of Alphonso Richards 
Janes, a highly respected merchant and a pi¬ 
oneer in the anti-slavery movement, and Sophia 
,(Taft) Janes. On his father’s side, he was de¬ 
scended from William Janes, who came to New 
England in 1637, and was one of the first set¬ 
tlers of the New Haven Colony. William’s great- 
grandson, Jonathan, married Irene Bradford, 
grand-daughter of Gov. William Bradford, of 
the Plymouth Colony. On his mother’s side, 
Janes claimed descent from Peregrine White, 
who was bom on the Mayflower in Massachu¬ 
setts Bay. 

Young Janes was educated in the public 
schools of Providence, graduating from the high 
school in 1862. He was about to enter Brown 
University when he was stricken with an illness 
which continued for four years. Upon his re¬ 
covery, perhaps moved by his own bitter experi¬ 
ence, he went to New York to study medicine. 
An interest in questions of health remained with 
him to the end of his life, but he was early di¬ 
verted to scientific and religious studies, and 
thus never practised medicine. In Brooklyn, N. 
Y., where he brought his first wife, Gertrude 
Pool, whom he married in Rockland, Mass., June 
2,1869, and who died in 1875, and where on June 


Janes 

17,1882, he married his second wife, Helen Hall 
Rawson, he began his influential career. “It was 
a happy day,” wrote John White Chadwick 
[<7.z\], minister of the Second Unitarian Church 
of Brooklyn, “when I secured him as a teacher 
in our Sunday School. Soon the class outgrew the 
allotted space in the Sunday School room and 
came up into the church. But the morning hour 
was not enough for the breadth of the discus¬ 
sion, and resort was had to evening meetings at 
the house of one friend or another. . . . Again 
the company outgrew the space and there was 
migration to the church, which was often filled 
to overflowing on Sunday evenings with an 
eager throng” of followers. In 1886 Janes pub¬ 
lished his first book, A Study of Primitive 
Christianity . The Brooklyn Ethical Association 
was formed in 1885, and Janes was made its 
president (1885-96). On the platform of this 
society he delivered lectures on a wide variety 
of subjects, many of which were printed in pub¬ 
lished volumes of the proceedings of the Asso¬ 
ciation, and became widely known as an exponent 
and defender of the Spencerian philosophy. In 
*893-96 he served as lecturer on sociology and 
civics in the School of Political Science of the 
Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. From 
1894 to 1895 he was instructor in history at 
Adelphi College, Brooklyn, and in 1896 he pub¬ 
lished Samuell Gorton: A Forgotten Founder of 
Our Liberties, First Settler of Warwick, R. /. 
Changing his residence to Cambridge, Mass., he 
now devoted his life to three major interests: to 
the Cambridge Conferences, held during a series 
of winters for the study of ethics, philosophy, 
sociology, and religion; second, to the Green- 
acre Conference School, at Eliot, Me., where 
through a series of summers he gathered dis¬ 
tinguished scholars and eager students for the 
study of comparative religion; and third, to the 
Free Religious Association, organized by Ralph 
Waldo Emerson and others for the fostering of 
religion freed from theological dogma and eccle¬ 
siastical control, of which he was elected presi¬ 
dent upon the retirement of Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson [q.v.’] in June 1899. During this 
same period he was busy with his pen, writing 
numerous pamphlets, magazine articles, and his 
most popular book, Health and a Day (1901). 
Happily engaged in these activities, just at the 
close of the annual summer school, he died sud¬ 
denly at Greenacre. He was survived by his 
widow, and by three of his four children, a son 
by his first wife, and two daughters by his sec¬ 
ond wife. Largely self-educated, Janes was a 
man of fine scholarship and utter dedication to 
the spirit of free inquiry. He had an aptitude 


606 




for scientific and philosophical studies, and a 
consuming interest in the progress of knowl¬ 
edge. 

[Frederic Janes, The Janes Family (1868); bio¬ 
graphical sketch, MSS., in possession of the family; 
Lewis G. Janes: Philosopher, Patriot, Lover of Man 
(1902), a volume of memorial addresses, letters, and 
other tributes; A. J. Ingersoll, Greenacre on the Pisca- 
taqua (1900) ; New Eng. Mag., June 1903; Who’s Who 
in America, 1901-02; Boston Transcript, Sept. 5, 1901; 
Boston Herald, Sept. 6, 1901.] J.H.H. 

JANEWAY, EDWARD GAMALIEL (Aug. 
31, 1841-Feb. 10, 1911), a physician, medical 
diagnostician and consultant, was born in New 
Brunswick, N. J. Among his ancestors were 
William Janeway, a British naval officer who 
was stationed in New York in the late seven¬ 
teenth century, George Janeway, a New York 
alderman, and Jacob Jones Janeway, a clergy¬ 
man of distinction. His father was George 
Jacob Janeway, a physician, and his mother was 
Matilda Smith, the daughter of Gamaliel Smith 
of New York. Edward Janeway took a degree 
in arts at Rutgers College in i860 and at once 
began the study of medicine at the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons, New York, but dur¬ 
ing 1862-63 he served as acting medical cadet at 
the United States Army Hospital at Newark, 
N. J. Having received his medical degree in 
1864 he settled in the metropolis and for some 
years was junior partner of an established prac¬ 
titioner. In 1866, with Francis Delafield and J. 
W. Southack, he was appointed curator to Belle¬ 
vue Hospital, the trio having begun jointly the 
systematic keeping of the hospital records. In 
1868 he received the appointment of visiting 
physician to Charity Hospital and was made 
chief of staff in 1870, resigning in 1871 to be¬ 
come visiting physician to Bellevue Hospital. 
In 1870 he had also been appointed physician to 
the Hospital for Epileptic and Paralyzed. His 
first teaching position was the professorship of 
physiological and pathological anatomy in die 
medical department of the University of the City 
of New York, which he held for one year (1871- 
72), resigning to accept the professorship of 
pathological anatomy at Bellevue. There also he 
lectured on materia medica, therapeutics, and 
clinical medicine. In addition he served at Belle¬ 
vue from 1872 to 1879 as demonstrator of an¬ 
atomy and at about this time was giving special 
courses to graduate students in physical diag¬ 
nosis. 

In 1875 Janeway was appointed health com¬ 
missioner of New York City, serving until 1881, 
in which year he was chosen associate professor 
of medicine and professor of diseases of the mind 
and nervous system at Bellevue. In 1883 he was 


appointed visiting physician to Mt. Sinai Hos¬ 
pital, an honor extended to but few physicians 
who were not Jews, and in 1886, following the 
death of the elder Austin Flint [g.z/.], he suc¬ 
ceeded to the chair of the principles and practice 
of medicine and clinical medicine at Bellevue. 
He was president of the New York Acad¬ 
emy of Medicine during 1897-98 and on the 
consolidation of the University and Bellevue 
medical colleges in 1898 he was made dean, serv¬ 
ing in this capacity for seven years. He served 
as president of the American Association of 
Physicians and was consulting physician to a 
number of hospitals in New York and vicinity. 
His death occurred from an acute ailment at 
Summit, N. J., after several years of failing 
health. His wife was Frances Strong Rogers, 
the daughter of the Rev. E. P. Rogers; Theo¬ 
dore Caldwell Janeway was their son. 

During many years his practice was limited al¬ 
most entirely to continuous consultation work 
which made it difficult for him to take part in 
the numerous professional and social activities 
of the average successful physician, but his pub¬ 
lic spirit was so great that he never neglected 
charitable and welfare work. 

Janeway’s professional eminence was due 
largely to his originality and to his intelligent 
use of unusual opportunities. He owed so little 
to others that he may almost have been termed 
a self-taught man. He was entirely without the 
advantages of European post-graduate instruc¬ 
tion, then regarded as almost indispensable to 
success, and even at home he seems to have owed 
little to any professional prototype or master. 
Doubtless as an undergraduate he profited by the 
teachings of Alonzo Clark, who like himself was 
both pathologist and diagnostician, but as Wil¬ 
liam Welch insists, his real school of learning 
was the wards and deadhouse of Bellevue, where 
for many consecutive years he checked his clini¬ 
cal with autopsy findings, utilizing to.the full 
his double role of pathologist and clinician. He 
is supposed to have made few contributions to 
medical literature but Welch was able to find a 
record of sixty-six such communications. It is 
known that he regarded the promiscuous publi¬ 
cation of books and papers as much overdone 
and too often motivated by the desire for pub¬ 
licity. He dominated his colleagues less by his 
personality than by his mental powers and his 
high standards. 

[H A. Kelly and W. L. Burrage, Am. Medic. Biogs. 
(1920); N. Y. Medic. Jour., Feb. 18, 1911, Ja*- fp, 
1912; Medic . Record, Feb. 18, 19x1; Boston Medic, 
and Surgic. Jour., Feb. 16, 1911 ; Memorial Meeting to 
Edward G. Janeway (1911), N. Y. Acad, of Medicine; 
J B. Dark, Some Personal Recollections of Dr. Jane¬ 
way (1917); Medic. Pickwick, Nov. 1915; F. B. Lee, 


607 



Janeway 

Geneal. and Memorial Hist, of the State of N. J. 
(1910), vol. Ill; N . Y. Tribune, Feb. 11, 1911.] 

E.P. 

JANEWAY, THEODORE CALDWELL 

(Nov. 2, 1872-Dec. 27, 19x7), physician, the 
son of Edward Gamaliel Janeway [q.v.’] and 
Frances Strong* Rogers, was bom in New York 
City. After leaving the Cutler School the son 
entered the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale 
College, taking the special premedical course. 
Having received the degree of B.Ph. from Yale 
in 1892, he at once began the study of medicine 
at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 
New York City and after receiving his medical 
degree in 1895 he entered his father’s office in 
preference to taking the usual post-graduate 
study abroad. Here he received an intimate 
training and always remained in perfect accord 
with his father. At this period (1895-96) he 
served as instructor in bacteriology at his alma 
mater. In 1898 he was appointed an instructor 
and later lecturer on medical diagnosis at Belle¬ 
vue Hospital Medical College which about this 
time merged with the medical department of 
New York University and became the Univer¬ 
sity and Bellevue Hospital Medical College. He 
resigned in 1907 to become associate professor 
of clinical medicine at the College of Physicians 
and Surgeons and two years later he succeeded 
Walter B. James as Bard Professor of Medicine. 
His first hospital appointment was at the City 
Hospital, Welfare Island, the status of which 
was at the time very low. With Horst Oertel he 
reorganized the staff and also introduced the 
clinico-pathological conference, an innovation 
which was widely copied. He became interested 
in the problem of the worker incapacitated by 
disease or accident and was active in the work 
of the Charity Organization Society. He was 
for years visiting physician to the Presbyterian 
and St. Luke’s hospitals and much of the credit 
for the merger of the former with the College 
of Physicians and Surgeons is assigned to him, 
this consolidation forming the nucleus for the 
medical center on Washington Heights in New 
York City. In 1907 he was made secretary of 
the Russell Sage Pathological Institute and in 
1911, following the death of Christian Archi¬ 
bald Herter [q.v.], he was made one of the sci¬ 
entific directors of the Rockefeller Institute for 
Medical Research. During his career in New 
York he wrote little, but a work on the blood 
pressure published in 1904 calls attention to the 
fact that he was perhaps the first American phy¬ 
sician to make routine use of this resource in 
the clinic, while he is also credited with the in¬ 
troduction of the first practicable apparatus for 
this purpose. 


Janin 

In 1914 Janeway was called to Johns Hopkins 
Hospital and School of Medicine to become the 
first of the full-time professors of medicine un¬ 
der the Welch Endowment Fund. At the same 
time he was placed at the head of the hospital. 
As the income from such positions was far short 
of what he might have earned as a private prac¬ 
titioner he was allowed to do a certain amount 
of consultation work and is reputed to have 
charged very high fees. He took part in estab¬ 
lishing the post-graduate school for the study of 
tuberculosis at Saranac Lake and was for three 
years president of the Laennec Society of Johns 
Hopkins Hospital for the study of tuberculosis. 
When the United States entered the World War 
he promptly volunteered his services and at the 
request of General Gorgas, then surgeon-gen¬ 
eral of the army, he took charge of the section 
of cardio-vascular diseases of the Division of 
Internal Medicine, with the rank of major of 
the United States Reserve Corps. This work in 
addition to his regular duties threw a heavy 
burden of labor upon him and is believed to have 
been indirectly responsible for his premature 
death. His military duties included the plan¬ 
ning of special hospitals both at home and over¬ 
seas, the selection of internes and assistants for 
medical service in hospitals and cantonments, 
the selection of a corps of experts in the diag¬ 
nosis of cardiac diseases, and the inspection of 
camps and cantonments. He worked in collab¬ 
oration with Maj. W. T. Longcope who was to 
become his successor. His death took place af¬ 
ter a week’s illness with pneumonia. In addi¬ 
tion to his book, The Clinical Study of Blood 
Pressure (1904), he wrote an unpublished vol¬ 
ume on diseases of the heart and bloodvessels. 
He was survived by his wife, Eleanor C. Alder- 
son, and five children. 

[Boston Medic, and Surgic. Jour., Nov. 7, 1918; 
Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, June 1918 ; Jour. Am. 
Medic. Asso., Jan. s, 1918; Science, Mar. 22, 1918; 
Johns Hopkins Alumni Mag., Mar. 1918 ; N. Y. Medic. 
Jour., Jan. 5, 1918; Lancet, Jan. 12, 1918; the Sun 
(Baltimore), and the N. Y. Times, Dec. 28, 1917.] 

E.P. 

JANIN, LOUIS (Nov. 7,1837-Mar. 6, 1914), 
mining engineer, was a notable influence in the 
development of western metal mining. He was 
born in New Orleans, the son of Louis and Juliet 
(Covington) Janin. His grandfather had been 
an officer in the French army. The father came 
to America in 1833 and became a successful 
lawyer in New Orleans. Young Louis was the 
oldest of six sons, of whom three became mining 
engineers, perhaps because of their father’s con¬ 
nection with litigation over the New Almaden 
quicksilver mines in California. The two oldest 
sons, Louis and Henry, after several terms at 


608 



Janin 

Yale, sailed for Europe in 1856 and the next 
year entered the mining academy at Freiberg, 
Saxony, where they studied for three years. 
Then came a trip of observation through Bo¬ 
hemia and Hungary with Professor Bernhard 
Cotta, and a short course at the school of mines 
in Paris before they sailed for home in 1861. 
They followed their original intention of going 
to California to practice mining engineering in 
spite of the Civil War in which a brother in the 
Confederate army was killed in battle. 

An encounter with Apache Indians in Arizona 
was among the early experiences of Louis, in 
which he displayed courage and coolness. A 
narrative of this affair is given by J. Ross 
Browne in Harper's Magazine (February 1865) 
and also in his Adventures in the Apache Coun¬ 
try (1869). After a brief term in charge of the 
Enriquita quicksilver mine in the Coast range, 
Janin turned to the treatment of silver ores, 
particularly on the Comstock lode in Nevada. 
The wasteful methods of extracting silver from 
these rich ores were overcome by the ingenious 
efforts of Janin and his brother, in spite of dif¬ 
ficulties which included local conservatism and 
a disastrous flood that swept away thousands of 
tons of the crushed ore in which his money was 
invested. Later came miscellaneous and suc¬ 
cessful practice in Mexico and the West, where 
he engaged in examining, testing, and develop¬ 
ing mines. Janin was called often to testify in 
court about disputed titles to mineral veins. In 
these lawsuits, as at the Pacific-Union club in 
San Francisco, he was recognized as a man of 
brilliant and worldly wisdom. During the seven¬ 
ties he spent a year in Japan advising the gov¬ 
ernment officials about the development of their 
gold, silver, and copper mines. Somewhat non¬ 
plussed by their courteous payment of his salary 
in gold without applying his advice, he finally 
exerted his influence to induce them to send 
Japanese students to America and Europe to 
learn technology. His generous and cultured 
nature attracted many young engineers to him 
for training, among them Herbert Hoover and 
John Hays Hammond. He recommended Hoo¬ 
ver in 1897 to the British firm of Bewick, More- 
ing & Company for the work in Australia that 
gave Hoover his start in a successful career. 
Janin was married on Dec. 26, 1865* to Elizabeth 
Marshall of Virginia City, Nev., and acquired 
a ranch at Santa Ynez in southern California, 
where the family lived. In later life he suffered 
ill health and partial blindness. He died in Santa 
Barbara of heart disease. His three sons were 
also mining engineers. 

[For biography, see obituary article by R. W. Ray- 


Janney 

mond, in Trans . Am, Inst. Mining Engineers, vol. 
XLIX (1915) ; Mining and Scientific Press, Mar. 14,’ 
1914; Engineering and Mining Journal, Mar. 21, 1914; 
San Francisco Chronicle, Mar. 8, 1914. An account of 
the contributions of the Janins to the metallurgy of the 
Comstock ores is included in A. D. Hodges, “Amalga¬ 
mation at the Comstock Lode, Nevada,” in Trans . Am. 
Inst Mining Engineers, vol. XIX (1891), and in an 
article in the Mining and Scientific Press, May 21, 

X » X °J P.B.M. 

JANNEY, ELI HAMILTON (Nov. 12,1831- 
June 16, 1912), inventor, was born in Loudoun 
County, Va., the son of Daniel and Elizabeth 
(Haines) Janney. His youth was spent on his 
father's farm and it was in the local country 
school that he obtained his primary education. 
Upon completing this, he was sent to the Oneida 
Conference Seminary, Cazenovia, N. Y., where 
he was a student from 1852 to 1854. He then 
returned to his home, engaged m farming for 
several years with his father, and eventually ac¬ 
quired a farm of his own. With the outbreak of 
the Civil War, he enlisted in the Confederate 
army and served throughout that struggle as a 
field quartermaster, first on the staff of General 
Lee and then with General Longstreet, rising to 
the rank of major. The war left Janney penniless 
—too poor to operate his farm—and he moved 
with his family to Fairfax County, just outside 
of Alexandria, Va. Here he found employment 
as clerk in a drygoods store. In 1863 his atten¬ 
tion was turned to the necessity of improving 
the method of coupling railroad cars automati¬ 
cally. Converting his ideas into small models 
whittled with his penknife—for Janney had no 
mechanical experience—he obtained his first 
patent for a coupler on Apr. 21, 1868 ( House 
Executive Document No. 52 , 40 Cong., 3 Sess., 
vol. I, p. 843). The succeeding years found him 
at work on improvements of his original idea, 
and on Apr. 29, 1873, he obtained his second 
patent for what was the basic invention of the 
railroad car couplers of the present day ( Speci¬ 
fications and Drawings of Patents Issued from 
the United States Patent Office, April 1873, pp. 
1052-53). With the financial aid of friends, he 
had some couplers made in Alexandria, Va., 
which were applied to two cars on what is now 
the Southern Railroad. They worked so success¬ 
fully that he was able shortly afterward to or¬ 
ganize the Janney Car Coupling Company, of 
which he retained control until the expiration of 
its last patent. During the first fifteen years of 
the company's life little progress was made 
toward having the Janney coupler adopted by 
the railroads. Exhaustive tests were made by 
the Pennsylvania Railroad between 1874 and 
1876 and its adoption was decided upon, but it 
was not until the Master Car-Builders' Asso- 


609 



Janney 


Janney 


ciation in 1888, after many tests, made the Jan¬ 
ney coupler, as improved by Janney’s patents of 
1874, 1879 and 1882 (Ibid., October 1874, PP- 
428-30, February 1879, pp. 1031-34, February 
1882, pp. 1115-16) the standard for the rail¬ 
roads, that Janney’s company prospered. Even 
so, the railroads were reluctant to make a stand¬ 
ard of a patented device until Janney, acting for 
his company, agreed to waive the patented rights 
on the contour lines of the coupler. The com¬ 
pany did not make the couplers but entered into 
contracts with manufacturers on a royalty basis. 
Upon the expiration of his first patents Janney 
retired from active part in the work of introduc¬ 
ing the coupler but continued to invent improve¬ 
ments, and at the time of his death had pending 
a patent known as the “knuckle pin-protector.” 
On Jan. 6, 1857, he married Cornelia Hamilton 
of Loudoun County, Va,, and at the time of his 
death, in Alexandria, he was survived by three 
children. 

[Ann. Cat. of Oneida Conference Seminary, 1852- 
54; War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); 
Report of the Proc. ... of the Master Car-Builders 
Asso., 1887-88; Set. American, July 13, 19x2; Iron 
Age, June 20,1912; Alexandria Gazette, June 17,1912; 
Washington Post, June 17, 1912; Nat. Museum rec¬ 
ords.] C.W.M. 

JANNEY, OLIVER EDWARD (Mar. 8, 
1856-Nov. 17, 1930), physician and philan¬ 
thropist, the youngest child of Henry and Han¬ 
nah Russell (Scholfield) Janney, was bom in 
Washington, D. C., and died in Baltimore, Md. 
He was a descendant of Thomas Janney, Quaker 
minister, and his wife, Margery, of Cheshire, 
England, who migrated to Pennsylvania in 1683. 
His early life was spent in the country, where 
his primary education was carried on largely at 
home under the tuition of an aunt and his older 
sister, Elizabeth. He attended the Friends Ele¬ 
mentary and High School conducted by Elizabeth 
Lamb in Baltimore and the State Normal School 
at Millersville, Pa., graduating from the latter 
in 1875. He then became an apprentice in a 
Baltimore drug store, where he served for six 
years. Graduating as a pharmacist from the 
University of Maryland in March 1879, he en¬ 
tered the medical department of that institution 
and in 1881 received the degree of M.D. In 
October of that same year he was admitted to 
the senior class of the Hahnemann Medical Col¬ 
lege, Philadelphia, from which he graduated in 
1882. Returning to Baltimore, he engaged in 
the practice of medicine. In 1891 he was ap¬ 
pointed to the faculty of the Southern Homeo¬ 
pathic Medical College. On Oct. 22, 1885, he 
married Anne B. Webb, daughter of William 
Barber and Rebecca Turner Webb of Philadel¬ 
phia, by whom he had three children. 


During all these years of many professional 
engagements, Janney entered energetically into 
the activities of the Friends Meeting, and into 
many of the social reform movements of his 
time. From 1900 to 1920 he was chairman of 
the Friends General Conference. For many 
years he took an active part in the work of the 
American Purity Alliance, succeeding Aaron M. 
Powell as its president in 1900. In 1906 with 
other interested Friends and philanthropic citi¬ 
zens, he organized the National Vigilance Com¬ 
mittee, which had for its object the suppression 
of the white slave traffic in women, then prev¬ 
alent throughout the civilized world; Janney 
was made chairman and Elizabeth Stover, sec¬ 
retary. He attended several conventions abroad 
convened to consider the problems of degraded 
womanhood, and was appointed by President 
Taft an official delegate from the United States 
to the International White Slave Congress held 
at Madrid in October 1910. He also took an 
active part in the work of the Society for the 
Suppression of Vice in Baltimore; early iden¬ 
tified himself with the temperance, woman suf¬ 
frage, interracial relations, and other movements 
for the benefit of humanity; and for many years 
prior to his death, he was an active member of 
the headquarters committee of the Anti-Saloon 
League of Maryland. In 1917 he was one of fif¬ 
teen called together to initiate the peace service 
of Friends in time of war, a gathering which 
resulted in the organization of the American 
Friends Service Committee. He represented 
the Friends on the peace committee of the Fed¬ 
eral Churches of Christ, and was active in its 
work. In 1907, with full approval of his wife, 
he gave up the practice of medicine to devote 
all his time and energy to reform and religious 
work. He worked devotedly and whole-hearted¬ 
ly to advance the principles of the Society, par¬ 
ticularly in his own Yearly Meeting. In 1910 
the Baltimore Yearly Meeting appointed an Ad¬ 
vancement Committee with Janney as chairman; 
from 1914 to 1928 he served as secretary, re¬ 
signing to become chairman of the Joint Co¬ 
operating Committee of the two Baltimore Year¬ 
ly Meetings. Among his published writings are: 
The White Slave Traffic in America (1911); 
The Making of a Man (1914); Quakerism 
and Its Application to Some Modern Problems 
(1917). He was also the author of several 
booklets and pamphlets. 

[W. A. Cooke, A Vision and its Fulfilment (1910) ; 
Who's Who in America, 1928-29; T. L. Bradford, Biog. 
Index of the Grads, of the Homeopathic Medic. Coll . 
of Pa. and the Hahnemann Medic. Coll, and Hospital 
of Phila. (1918); E. F. Cordell, Univ. of Md., 1807- 
igo? (1907), vol. II; Sun (Baltimore), Nov. 18, 19, 
1930; Friends Intelligencer, Dec. 13, 1930; minutes 


610 



Janney 

and records in proceedings of the Society of Friends 
in Baltimore Monthly Meeting, Baltimore Yearly Meet- 
ting, and Friends* General Conference; an unpublished 
autobiography; information furnished by Anne (Webb) 
Janney.] c.B. 

JANNEY, SAMUEL McPHERSON (Jan. 
ii, 1801-Apr. 30, 1880), author and Quaker 
minister, was born in Loudoun County, Va., son 
of Abijah Janney, whose ancestors had been 
identified with the Society of Friends since its 
beginnings, and his wife Jane (McPherson), 
also of Quaker stock. At fourteen he left school 
to work in the counting-house of an uncle at 
Alexandria, but continued to seek an education; 
he attended night schools, organized a local sci¬ 
entific society, and wrote regularly for a literary 
club, meanwhile reading avidly and devoting 
himself to private study. On Mar. 9, 1826, he 
married a third cousin, Elizabeth Janney, and 
in 1830 he became partner in a cotton factory at 
Occoquan. This never-flourishing venture was 
abandoned in 1839 and Janney returned to Lou¬ 
doun County to open a boarding school for girls. 
Fifteen years later, having paid the debts ac¬ 
cruing from his business failure, he retired, to 
devote himself to literature and philanthropy. 

For almost half a century preceding his death 
he was an eloquent, liberal, and devout minister 
in the Hicksite division of his sect, influential in 
its councils, tirelessly active in evangelical work. 
At the same time, his humanity knew neither 
creed nor color. He labored to found Sunday 
schools and day schools for negro children, was 
among the first to advocate the abolition of slav¬ 
ery within the District of Columbia, and zeal¬ 
ously supported emancipation and colonization 
societies, on one occasion his opinions concern¬ 
ing slavery causing his presentment by a Lou¬ 
doun County grand jury. With the dual aim of 
enlightening the white electorate and of further¬ 
ing anti-slavery sentiment through education, he 
was earnest in promoting free public schools for 
Virginia, although his efforts bore little immedi¬ 
ate fruit. During the Civil War he supported 
the Union, but ministered at his home to the 
wounded of both armies and aided his afflicted 
neighbors, regardless of their sympathies. His 
early interest in the Indians led him to serve, at 
some sacrifice, as superintendent of Indian af¬ 
fairs in the Northern Superintendency (May 
1869-September 1871) until enfeebled health 
caused him to resign. 

He had contributed verses to several peri¬ 
odicals before the appearance of his first volume, 
The Last of the Lenape, and Other Poems, in 
1839, and subsequently published others, but his 
poetical work was mostly undistinguished: his 
verses, although decorous, correct, and varied, 


Jansen 

lack wings. His reputation as an author de¬ 
servedly rests on his prose works. His biog¬ 
raphies, The Life of William Penn (1852) and 
The Life of George Fox (1853), went through 
repeated editions, and are still esteemed for their 
scholarship and their valuable material; in them, 
as well as in his four-volume History of the Re¬ 
ligious Society of Friends, from its Rise to the 
Year 1828 (1860-67), his simple, direct style, 
careful study, and abundant quotation from origi¬ 
nal sources show to advantage. His remaining 
publications, most of them brief, deal with vari¬ 
ous doctrinal or sociological subjects, but es¬ 
pecial mention should be made of his autobi¬ 
ographical Memoirs (1881), which furnishes a 
clear picture of the author’s gentle, modest, and 
charitable nature. 

[Friends Intelligencer, May 22, 29, 1880; Lib. of 
Southern Lit., vol. VI (1909); F. V. N. Painter, Poets 
of Va. (1907) ; R. W. Kelsey, Friends and the Indians, 
1655-1917 (1917) ; Evening Star (Washington), May 
i» 1880.] A. C. G., Jr. 

JANSEN, REINIER (d. Mar. 6, 1706 n.s.), 
the printer who operated the first Quaker press 
in America, is believed to have been a native of 
Alkmaar, Holland, from which place he came to 
Pennsylvania in 1698. On his arrival, he went 
first to Germantown, where he was described as 
a lace-maker, but within a year he was settled 
in Philadelphia as a merchant Jansen reached 
America about the time that a press and supplies 
for a printing office were received from England 
by the Quakers. There was then no printer in 
the Province, and in answer to the request of 
the Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends 
in Philadelphia, Jansen agreed to operate the 
press for the Society. He was a Quaker and 
may have been responsible for the Dutch trans¬ 
lation of Marmaduke Stephenson’s Call from 
Death to Life, published in Holland in 1676, 
which bears the imprint: “Gedrukt voor Reyner 
Jansen.” The first books he printed for the 
Quakers in his adopted city bear the date 1699. 
Three of these have survived: An Epistle to 
Friends, by Gertrude Dereek Niesen; The Dy¬ 
ing Words of William Fletcher, and God's Pro¬ 
tecting Providence. That he was inexperienced 
in the printing art is confessed in the preface 
written by Caleb Pusey to Satan's Harbinger 
Encountered (1700), which bears Jansen’s im¬ 
print It is explained as an excuse for the typo¬ 
graphical errors in the tract “that the printer 
being a man of another nation and language, as 
also not bred to that employment,” was “conse¬ 
quently something unexpert both in language 
and calling” and that “the correctors” were not 
“so frequently at hand as the case required.’ 

When he came to America, Jansen left a son 



Janson 

in Holland, evidently in charge of his original 
business of lace-making. He was not without 
funds, for he made at least two purchases of land 
in or near Philadelphia. His death occurred in 
Philadelphia and he was buried in the Friends’ 
Burial Ground. 

Jansen’s Christian name was spelled in vari¬ 
ous ways, appearing in his imprint as Reinier, 
in his will as Rener, and in other places as Rey- 
nier and Reyner. 

[Nathan Kite's anonymous “Antiquarian Researches 
Among the Early Printers and Publishers of Friends' 
Books,” in The Friend (Phila.), Tenth Month 21, 1843 ; 
S. W. Pennypacker, “The Settlement of Germantown,” 
and J. W. Wallace, “Early Printing in Philadelphia,” 
in Pa. Mag. of Hist, and Biog., vol. IV (1880), nos. 
1, 4; Isaiah Thomas, The Hist, of Printing in America 
(1874), I, 223, 225; and the minutes of the Phila. 
Monthly Meeting of Friends.] j, j. 

JANSON, KRISTOFER NAGEL (May 5, 
1841-Nov. 17, 1917), poet, novelist, Unitarian 
clergyman, was born of an old commercial family 
in Bergen, Norway, his parents being Consul 
Helmich Janson and Constanse Fredrikke Jan¬ 
son (nee Neumann). In manhood he never used 
his middle name. He received his early school¬ 
ing in the Cathedral School, Bergen, whence he 
was admitted to the University, Christiania 
(Oslo), in 1859, matriculating in the theological 
department. He did not finish his training for 
the Lutheran ministry, however, because he had 
come to hold certain liberal views that were dis¬ 
approved by the church. During the next four¬ 
teen years he devoted himself exclusively to 
writing. Though his literary taste and method 
had been largely determined by Danish and Nor¬ 
wegian Romanticists, the then new language 
movement ( landsmaal ) in Norway had a power¬ 
ful appeal for him, and until 1881 he wrote 
mostly in this literary form. His Fraa Bygdom 
(1866) contains the masterly story “Liv,” per¬ 
haps his chief contribution to Norwegian fiction. 
A volume of poems, Norske Dikt, also in the 
landsmaal > was printed in 1867. In 1869 he 
became a teacher in Chr. Bruun’s public high 
school in North Sel, Gudbrandsdalen. A few 
years later this school was moved to Gausdal, 
Janson remaining with it until 1878, when he 
was forced to resign because he had gone over 
to Unitarianism. The experiences that led to 
this step are portrayed in the story Ensom 
(“Alone”), published in 1903, which is largely 
autobiographical. In 1879 Janson went to Amer¬ 
ica and remained some time at Harvard, read¬ 
ing Channing and Parker, then went to Minne¬ 
sota, where in 1879-80 he delivered some eighty 
lectures in the Norwegian settlements under the 
auspices of the Unitarian Church. In the sum- 
mer of 1880 he returned to Norway, but was in- 


Janson 

vited by the American Unitarian Association to 
establish a mission in Minnesota, and in 1881 
began preaching in Minneapolis, where he or¬ 
ganized the Nazareth Unitarian Society. He 
also organized societies in St. Paul, Hanska, and 
Underwood, Minn., and Hudson, Wis. His mis¬ 
sionary work continued until 1893, when he re¬ 
turned to Norway. He lived thereafter at Chris¬ 
tiania and in Copenhagen until his death. 

During his American years he traveled and 
lectured extensively, published a volume of ser¬ 
mons, edited the Unitarian organ Saamanden , 
carried on investigation about Norwegian im¬ 
migration and settlements, and wrote many books 
based on the materials gathered, including: 
Amerikanske Forholde (1881) ; Prairiens Saga 
(1885); Nordmaend i Amerika (1887). He 
wrote novels, translated titles of which are: 
From the Danish Period (1876); Our Grand¬ 
parents (1881); Sara (1891); The Spellbound 
Fiddler (English edition, 1892) ; The Outlaw 
(1893); Aspasia (1914); a drama, Asgeir 
Kongsson (1902); and a second volume of 
poems, Digte (1911). A popularization of 
Norse mythology, Ved Mimes Br 0 nd (1917), 
appeared about the time of his death. His own 
life he has described in Hvad Jeg har Oplevet , 
issued in 1913. Our Grandparents is based on 
the events that preceded the union of Norway 
and Sweden in 1814, and as an interpretation of 
that troubled era is a work of major importance. 
About 1866 Janson was married to Drude Krog, 
the daughter of a clergyman near Bergen, Nor¬ 
way; they separated in 1893. In 1895 he founded 
a Unitarian Society in Christiania, and he re¬ 
mained its pastor to the year of his death, con¬ 
tinuing also to write and to lecture. He was a 
man of great learning. His knowledge of the 
eighteenth century, the French Revolution, and 
the Napoleonic era was that of a specialist. 
Though deeply religious and a man of great 
earnestness of purpose, he was often unjust in 
his attacks upon the church from which he 
had withdrawn. Most of his stories written 
after 1878 contain, in conversations and char¬ 
acterizations, propaganda against the Lutheran 
Church. 

[Idar Handagard, in Syn og Segn (1925); Ung- 
Norig . Tidskrift (Risor, Norway, 1923) ; Anton Aure, 
Prestar som talar nynorsk (Risor, 1924) ; letters from 
R. B. Anderson and Carl G. O. Hansen and other un¬ 
printed matter; Anton Aure, Nynorsk Boklista (1916); 
P, Botten-Hansen, Norske Studenter derhair Absolveret 
Examen Artiumved Christiania Universitet (1893-95); 
0 . N. Nelson, Hist, of the Scandinavians ... in the 
U. S. (1893), vol. I; O. M. Norlie, Hist, of the Nor¬ 
wegian People in America (1925); Aftenposten (Chris¬ 
tiania), Nov. 18, 1917; Politiken (Copenhagen), Nov. 
18, 1917; J. B. Wist, Norsk-Amerikanemes Festskrift , 
1914 (1914)*] G.T.F. 


612 



Janssens 

JANSSENS, FRANCIS (Oct. 17, 1843-June 
10,1897), Catholic archbishop, the son of Corne¬ 
lius and Josephine Anne (Dawes) Janssens, was 
bom in Tilburg, North Brabant. The youngest 
son of a wealthy and prominent Catholic family, 
he early resolved to devote his life to the service 
of God. In this desire he was encouraged by his 
parents. At the age of thirteen he entered the 
preparatory seminary at Bois-le-Duc and was 
ordained sub-deacon in 1866. Since his wish 
was to become a missionary in America he was 
sent to the American college attached to Louvain 
University, where he was ordained as a priest 
Dec. 21, 1867. 

In September 1868 he landed at Richmond, 
Va., where he served successively as pastor of 
the cathedral, vicar general, and administrator 
of the diocese. He was consecrated bishop of 
Natchez in 1881. His administrative ability was 
at once manifest New parishes were estab¬ 
lished, schools and convents opened, and the 
general interest of Catholics in religious mat¬ 
ters awakened. Through his efforts the Choctaw 
Indians living in the northern part of Missis¬ 
sippi were Christianized. An extensive farm 
was bought in 1884 and divided into tracts dis¬ 
tributed among Indian families; a church and 
a school were built. On the death of Mon¬ 
seigneur Leray of New Orleans, Janssens was 
appointed his successor (1888). The diocese 
was in a very unsettled condition owing to the 
large debt, and to the need of additional priests, 
churches, and schools. One of his first acts as 
archbishop was to call a meeting of the clergy 
and the laity to consider plans for the gradual 
liquidation of the debt. In order to provide 
priests, a little seminary was opened at Pontcha- 
toula. The lynching of a group of Italians who 
had assassinated the city chief of police, im¬ 
pressed Janssens with the especial need of mis¬ 
sionary work in the Italian section, and in 1892 
he brought to New Orleans the Missionary Sis¬ 
ters of the Sacred Heart, who opened a mission, 
a free school, and an asylum for Italian orphans. 
Through the generous assistance of Thorny 
Lafon [q.v.], a colored philanthropist, the Arch¬ 
bishop was enabled to provide for the needs of 
the aged colored. He also did much to further 
the work of the colored sisters of the Holy Fam¬ 
ily, whose convent and boarding school was in 
the ancient quadroon-ball room of ante-bellum 
days. In addition to the establishment of new 
parishes, schools, and convents, the Louisiana 
Lepers’ Home was established and the Catholic 
Winter School of America was organized. Jans¬ 
sens was an indefatigable worker. After a cy¬ 
clone which devastated the coast in 1892, he 


Janvier 

personally visited the island settlements to aid 
and comfort the stricken people. His arduous 
duties told upon his health, and in June 1897 he 
planned to go to Europe to take a much-needed 
rest and to arrange for the final liquidation of 
the debt. He died on board the steamer Creole 
on the way to New York, June 10, 1897. His 
body was brought to New Orleans and buried in 
the St. Louis Cathedral on June 15. Contempo¬ 
rary accounts unite in his praise. “His uni¬ 
versal kindliness of disposition, unostentatious 
manners and unfailing courtesy to all men, ir¬ 
respective of creed, race or condition in life/’ 
said the Daily Picayune (June 13, 1897), “. . . 
made him universally dear to the people of New 
Orleans.” 

[Alcee Fortier, Louisiana (1909), vol. I; Cath. 
Encyc.,vol.Xl (1911) ; Daily Picayune, Sept. 17, 1888, 
Apr. 23, 26, 1893, June 13, 1897; Daily States, June 
12, 13, 16, 1897; Times~Democrat, Sept. 17, 1888, 
Apr. 23, 25, 1893, June 13, 1897; archives of the 
Diocese of New Orleans; archives of the St. Louis 
Cathedral.] jl. 

JANVIER, CATHARINE ANN (May 1, 
1841-July 19, 1922), painter, author, wife of 
Thomas Allibone Janvier was bom in 

Philadelphia, Pa., the daughter of Susannah 
Budd Shober and Sandwith Drinker, a sea cap¬ 
tain engaged in the East India trade. At an 
early age she was taken to Hong Kong where 
her father established himself as a merchant. 
There she was educated, excelling in mathe¬ 
matics and languages, especially French. In 
later years she was pleased to recall some of the 
events of these years: her first offer of marriage 
at the age of ten made by a Chinese merchant 
in behalf of his son, and her long talks with 
Townsend Harris [<?.#.], with whom she long 
corresponded. On the death and burial of Cap¬ 
tain Drinker in Macao in 1857, the family sailed 
from the Orient to Baltimore. During part of 
the voyage on the Storm King, Catharine, trained 
in navigation by her father, navigated the ship 
when the captain became incapacitated with 
drink and the mate proved incompetent. In 
Baltimore Mrs. Drinker opened a girls’ school 
of which Catharine took charge on her mother’s 
death in 1858. At the same time she became the 
sole support of the family comprising her broth¬ 
er Henry Sturgis Drinker, a sister Elizabeth 
Kearny Drinker, and her grandmother Shober. 
She studied art at the Maryland Institute and 
later under Van der Whelen and at the Pennsyl¬ 
vania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia 
where the family moved in 1865. At the Acad¬ 
emy she won a prize with her painting “The 
Guitar Player," now hanging in Peacedale, R. I., 
where another, “The Romp/’ may also be found. 


613 



Janvier 

Several of her lithographs, signed “C. Drinker,” 
are in the collection at the New York Public 
Library. In connection with her study and teach¬ 
ing at the Academy she wrote Practical Kera - 
mics for Students (1880). 

On Sept. 26, 1878, she married Thomas Alli- 
bone Janvier and with him traveled widely in 
Mexico, England, and France, where 4 for long 
periods they resided in Provence, principally at 
Saint-Remy. She met Felix Gras at Saint- 
Remy and in 1896 published The Reds of the 
Midi, Gras’s Revolutionary romance, which she 
translated'irom the manuscript. The translation 
was made with great success although Mrs. 
Janvier refused any portion of the financial re¬ 
turns. Subsequently she published The Terror 
(1898) and The White Terror (1899), trans¬ 
lated from the writings of the same author. In 
recognition of her services to Provencal litera¬ 
ture she was elected with her husband to honor¬ 
ary membership in the Society of the Felibrige 
with Gras, Mistral, Roumanille, and others. The 
Janviers had already attracted to themselves 
William Sharp who met them in New York in 
1892 and corresponded with them frequently, 
especially with Mrs. Janvier, until his death, 
and visited them several times in Provence, 
Mrs. Janvier was the first person on either side 
of the Atlantic to penetrate Sharp’s disguise as 
Fiona Macleod, and she received a letter (Jan. 
5, 1895) admitting the identity. Her promise 
of secrecy was broken only after Sharp’s death 
when she read a paper on the subject before the 
Aberdeen Branch of the Franco-Scottish Soci¬ 
ety, June 8, 1906, the substance of which ap¬ 
peared in the North American Review , Apr. 5, 
1907, under the title “Fiona Macleod and Her 
Creator William Sharp.” Her other writings 
include a book of pictures and verse entitled 
London Mews (1904), an essay, “Cocoon-husk¬ 
ing in Provence,” Harper's Magazine, Novem¬ 
ber 1911, and, in manuscript, “Captain Dioni- 
sius,” the tale of an ancient voyage rich in ar¬ 
cheological lore. Mrs. Janvier died at the home 
of her brother at Merion, Pa., and was buried 
with her husband at Moorestown, N. J. Her 
collection of Provencal books and some of her 
letters she gave to the New York Public Library. 

[The sketch was prepared with the assistance of Dr. 
Henry Sturgis Drinker, Mrs. Barclay Hazard, and 
Caroline Hazard, whose sketch of Mrs. Janvier's life 
appeared in the N . Y . Times, Oct. 1, 1922. Other 
sources include: Who’s Who in America, 1922-23; H. 
D. Biddle, The Drinker Family in America (1893); 
Cecilia Beaux,. Background with Figures (1930), pp. 

71J Elizabeth A. Sharp, Wm. Sharp (Fiona 
Macleod): A Memoir (1910); Public Ledger (Phila.), 
Juty 20,1922.] a L B 


Janvier 

JANVIER, MARGARET THOMSON (Feb- 

ruary 1844-February 1913), author, daughter 
of Francis de Haes and Emma (Newbold) Jan¬ 
vier and sister of Thomas Allibone Janvier 
[q.z/.], was born in New Orleans, La. The Jan¬ 
viers were of Huguenot descent. Francis Jan¬ 
vier wrote verse and compiled prose and poetry 
on patriotic subjects, and his wife wrote stories 
for children. Perhaps inspired by the parents’ 
example, the younger Janviers began to write 
early. Margaret was educated at home and in 
the public schools of New Orleans. From the 
beginning she used the pseudonym Margaret 
Vandegrift in her writing, which was almost 
entirely juvenile literature, stories, and verse. 
Some of her best-known works are: Clover Beach 
(1880), a story of a family of children and their 
doings at a summer resort; Under the Dog Star 
(1881) ; Holidays at Home (1882) ; The Queen’s 
Body Guard (1883) J Doris and Theodora 
(1884), which contains good negro dialect and a 
description of Santa Cruz; Little Bell and Other 
Stories (1884); The Absent-Minded Fairy 
(1884); Rose Raymond’s Wards (1885), a 
rather tiresome story of New England family 
life; Ways and Means (1886); Little Helpers 
(1889); The Dead Doll and Other Verses 
(1889), many of which were previously pub¬ 
lished in St Nicholas, Harper’s Young People, 
the Youth’s Companion and Wide Awake ; and 
Umbrellas to Mend (1905), a sprightly romance 
of princes and princesses, with an allegorical 
element. The verse of Margaret Vandegrift, 
often published in leading magazines for adults 
as well as for children, has metrical vivacity and 
good rhythm. It shows love of nature and a 
philosophical turn of mind. One of her best 
poems is To Lie in the Lew (leeward of a hedge), 
published in Scribner’s Magazine, April 1913, 
The popular Dead Doll, supposed to be the la¬ 
ment of a child for her doll, is inferior to much 
of her other work, not childlike in thought, and 
expressed in unnatural “baby talk.” Her prose 
style varies. In some of her earlier work it is 
stilted and full of old-fashioned phrasing; in her 
later work it is more easy and modern. Her sto¬ 
ries are of simple, quiet events, with considerable 
sentiment and moral instruction. Children to¬ 
day are only moderately fond of them. In fail¬ 
ing health for several years, Margaret Janvier 
was from April 1910 to January 1913 at Christ 
Church Hospital, Philadelphia. Shortly before 
her death she was taken to her home in Moores¬ 
town, N. J., where she had lived most of her 
life, and there died. 

[Who’s Who in America, 1912-13 J Woman’s Who’s 
Who of America, 1914-15; The Home Book of Verse 


614 



Janvier 

(1912), ed. by Burton E. Stevenson; A Diet, of Am. 
Authors (ed. 1905), ed. by Oscar Fay Adams; private 
i&fonQ&tioni J S 0 S 

JANVIER, THOMAS ALLIBONE (July 
16, 1849-June 18, 1913), journalist, author, was 
born in Philadelphia, Pa., the second child of 
Francis de Haes and Emma (Newbold) Jan¬ 
vier, and was descended through Thomas Jan¬ 
vier, a refugee in 1683, from an old Huguenot 
family seated in western France. His father 
published books of poetry and verse and his 
mother was the author of a number of stories 
for children. His sister, Margaret Thomson 
Janvier [g.w.], under the name Margaret Vande- 
grift, wrote stories and poems for children. In 
Philadelphia Janvier received a common-school 
education and entered business, which he soon 
abandoned for journalism. From 1871 to 1880 
he did editorial work for the Philadelphia Times, 
the Evening Bulletin , and the Press, and mean¬ 
while, in 1878, he married Catharine Ann 
Drinker [see Janvier, Catharine Ann] of Phil¬ 
adelphia, painter and author. For three years, 
1881-84, he traveled as a journalist in Colorado, 
New Mexico, and Mexico, accumulating mate¬ 
rial for short stories and sketches, subsequently 
printed in Harper’s, and for at least three books: 
The Mexican Guide (1886), a standard guide¬ 
book to Mexico which reached a fifth edition in 
1893; The Aztec Treasure House (1890), an 
adventure story for juveniles; and Stories of 
Old New Spain (1891). 

On returning to the East Janvier settled in 
New York where he lived until his death, except 
for several and at times prolonged visits to 
France, England, and again to Mexico. He 
was known among the writers and artists of the 
city, but in general he was singularly unattached 
to newer New York. His interests turned 
rather to the quaint and the old, and to the 
exotic Bohemianism of Washington Square. 
The life of the art colony just north of the 
Square yielded stories written under the name 
Ivory Black and collected as Color Studies 
(1885), his first book. The simple, old-fashioned 
French quarter to the south he pictured in 
stories published currently in Harper's and col¬ 
lected posthumously in At the Casa Napoleon 
(1914) which includes a photograph of the au¬ 
thor and an appreciative memoir. Concerning 
old Greenwich Village itself west of the Square 
he wrote popular historical sketches later incor¬ 
porated in In Old New York (1894). These to¬ 
gether with two other volumes, The Dutch 
Founding of New York (1903), and Henry 
Hudson (1909), both popularly historical, place 
him among the chroniclers of New York. 


Jaquess 

In the spring of 1893 Janvier and his wife 
left America for what became a visit of seven 
years to England and France. At Saint-Remy 
in Provence they entertained William Sharp, 
became intimate with the poet Mistral and with 
Felix Gras, and at Avignon they read with en¬ 
thusiasm the manuscript of Gras's romance and 
conceived the idea of translating his works. The 
natives of the Midi fascinated Janvier who 
seems to have had in himself a strong dash of 
French sentiment which responded naturally to 
the warm generosity and expansiveness of Prov¬ 
ence. His Embassy to Provence (1893), The 
Christmas Kalends of Provence (1902), a col¬ 
orful description of the Christmas festivals, and 
From the South of France (1912), were sym¬ 
pathetic studies of the region and its people and 
in recognition of his interest in Provence he was 
awarded honorary membership in the Society of 
the Felibrige. His other literary works included 
The Uncle of an Angel and Other Stories 
(1891); In the Sargasso Sea (1898), a novel; 
Legends of the City of Mexico (1910), and nu¬ 
merous shorter articles. Janvier died in New 
York, childless, and was buried at Moorestown, 
N. J. He appears to have been a man of great 
personal charm, picturesque and humorous in 
his speech, and “preeminently civilized.” His 
writing confirms the record of his contempora¬ 
ries. It is throughout graceful and polished, 
only rarely too apparently so, and his fiction, 
except for the unique volume of tragedies, In 
Great Waters (1901), is light and amusing. He 
ranks among the local colorists who flourished 
in America at the turn of the century, by no 
means eminent but certainly not inconspicuous. 

[See J. H. Harper, The House of Harper (1912); 
Outlook, June 28, 1913; N. Y. Times, N. Y. Tribune, 
June 19, 1913d A.L.B. 

JAQUESS, JAMES FRAZIER (Nov. 18, 
I 8i9“June 17,1898), Methodist clergyman, edu¬ 
cator, soldier, was bom near Evansville, Ind. 
He was one of the numerous children of a fer¬ 
vent and wealthy Methodist, Jonathan Garrett- 
son Jaquess, and Mary Wood (Smith) Jaquess, 
who named their offspring after Methodist bish¬ 
ops. His grandfather, Jonathan, had moved to 
Indiana from Kentucky in 1815. James attend¬ 
ed Indiana Asbury University, from which he 
received the degree of A.B. in 1845. Before his 
graduation he married Mary Sciple, who died 
only two years later. After studying law, and 
being admitted to the bar in 1846, he deserted 
that profession and in 1847 became an ordained 
Methodist preacher. About this time he mar¬ 
ried his second wife, Sarah E. Steel He never 
had an extensive circuit rider's career, for in 



Jaquess 

1848 he was chosen president of the Illinois Fe¬ 
male College, a Methodist school at Jackson¬ 
ville, and after a presidency of six years, he ac¬ 
cepted a similar position at Quincy College, 
Quincy, Ill., a new co-educational sectarian in¬ 
stitution. 

At the outbreak of the Civil War his friend, 
Gov. Richard Yates, commissioned him chap¬ 
lain of the 6th Illinois Cavalry. His experi¬ 
ences at Shiloh roused his military ardor, how¬ 
ever, and determined him to drop this strictly 
clerical role. Accordingly, he recruited and 
commanded as colonel, the 73rd Illinois Volun¬ 
teers, known as the “preacher’s regiment,” be¬ 
cause of its numerous minister-officers. By the 
summer of 1863 he persuaded himself that he 
might be an instrument in bringing the war to 
a peaceful conclusion. The sight of fellow Meth¬ 
odists slaying each other depressed him. He 
proposed, “no compromise with traitors—but 
their immediate return to allegiance to God and 
their country” (Nicolay and Hay, post, IX, 
202). The intensity of his belief impressed in 
turn his commanding officer, General Rosecrans, 
James R. Gilmore [g.z/.J, and finally Abraham 
Lincoln; and in the summer of 1863 he was per¬ 
mitted on his own responsibility to enter Con¬ 
federate territory. He reached Petersburg but 
did not have the opportunity of summoning Jef¬ 
ferson Davis to repentance in a personal inter¬ 
view. Returning to his regiment, he fought with 
distinction in the battles around Chattanooga. 
In the summer of 1864, in company with Gil¬ 
more, he went to Richmond on a more preten¬ 
tious peace mission. They actually held a con¬ 
ference with Jefferson Davis on July 17, and 
obtained from him the statement that the South 
was fighting for freedom or annihilation. Upon 
his return North, Jaquess lectured on his inter¬ 
view with Davis as part of the presidential cam¬ 
paign of 1864. For one reason or another, he 
did not return to his regiment until April 1865. 
After the war, he was employed by the Freed- 
men’s Bureau in the South. Subsequently he 
cultivated cotton, first in Arkansas and later in 
northern Mississippi. In 1876 he engaged in 
business pursuits which took him with increas¬ 
ing frequency to London. He died in St. Paul, 
Minn. 

[]. R. Gilmore, Personal Recollections of Abraham 
Lincoln and the Civil War (1898) ; A Hist of the 
Seventy-third Regiment of III . Infantry Volunteers 
(1890) ; E. C. Kirkland, The Peacemakers of 1864 
(1927) ; J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lin¬ 
coln: A Hist . (1890), vol. IX; War of the Rebellion: 
Official Records (Army); St. Paul Globe , June 18, 
1898; information as to certain facts from a great- 
grand-daughter. ] E C. K 


Jarratt 

JARRATT, DEVEREUX (Jan. 17, 1733- 

Jan. 29, 1801), Episcopal clergyman, was born 
in New Kent County, Va., the son of Robert and 
Sarah (Bradley) Jarratt. His grandfather Jar¬ 
ratt was a native of London, and his grand¬ 
mother, of Ireland. Before the death of his par¬ 
ents he received some schooling, but later, under 
the guardianship of an older brother, he spent 
the most of his time in training horses for the 
turf, preparing gamecocks for match and main, 
and cultivating the plantation. Fond of study, 
however, he educated himself sufficiently to find 
employment as a teacher. While tutoring in the 
family of a Mr. John Cannon he encountered 
Presbyterian influences, and his mind turned 
strongly to religion. Urged to become a min¬ 
ister, when he was about twenty-five years old 
he put himself under the instruction of Alexan¬ 
der Martin [q.v.], later governor of North Caro¬ 
lina and United States senator, then teaching 
in the home of a Cumberland gentleman. Al¬ 
though at first prejudiced against the Estab¬ 
lished Church because of the Presbyterian agen¬ 
cies which had brought about his conversion, 
and also because of the loose lives of the Vir¬ 
ginia clergy, he finally decided to enter that 
body. Accordingly, in October 1762 he sailed 
for England where he was ordained deacon by 
the Bishop of London, Dec. 25, and priest by the 
Bishop of Chester on Jan. 1, 1763. Returning 
to Virginia, on Aug. 29, 1763, he became rector 
of Bath parish, Dinwiddie County, and retained 
that position until his death almost thirty-eight 
years later. 

In a period of formalism and decay in the 
Church, he stood forth, at first almost alone, as 
the apostle of vital religion. He concerned him¬ 
self solely with spiritual things, never meddling 
in politics, though he quietly encouraged the 
struggle for American independence. The man¬ 
agement of his affairs he left largely to a capable 
wife, Martha, daughter of Burnell Claiborne 
and Georgiana Poythress Claiborne, nee Ra- 
venscroft (G. M. Claiborne, Claiborne Pedigree . 
A Genealogical Table of the Descendants of Sec¬ 
retary William Claiborne , 1900, pp. 13, 14, 39, 
40). From the beginning of his ministry, he 
preached the need of repentance and a new birth, 
and condemned the worldliness into which both 
laity and clergy had fallen. By the latter he was 
called a dissenter, Presbyterian, visionary, and 
fanatic. His labors were not confined to his own 
parish or to the regular services of the church 
calendar. Anticipating some of the methods of 
the Wesleyans, he carried on evangelistic work 
in many of the counties of Virginia and also in 
North Carolina, often preaching five days in the 


616 



Jarratt 


Jarves 


week. As a result of his zeal from 1764 to 1772 
there was a notable and widespread awakening 
of religious interest. Francis Asbury [q.v.lt 
who had the warmest affection for him, says in 
his journal under date of Dec. 29, 1781, “I am 
persuaded there have been more souls convinced 
by his ministry than by any other man in Vir¬ 
ginia.” In 1776 Jarratt wrote A Brief Narra¬ 
tive of the Revival of Religion in Virginia in a 
Letter to a Friend, which was sent to John Wes¬ 
ley and later printed in London, a second and 
third edition being issued there in 1778. It also 
appears in The Journal of the Rev . Francis As¬ 
bury (1821) under date of Dec. 19,1776. When 
the Methodist preacher Robert Williams [ q.v .] 
came to Virginia in 1773, Jarratt entertained 
and assisted him. Assured that the Methodists 
did not contemplate leaving the Established 
Church, he cooperated with them cordially. At 
the Methodist Conference of 1782 the following 
action was taken: “The conference acknowledge 
their obligations to the Rev. Mr. Jarratt, for his 
kind and friendly services to the preachers and 
people, from our first entrance into Virginia: 
and more particularly for attending our confer¬ 
ence in Sussex, both in public and private; and 
we advise the preachers in the south to consult 
him, and to take his advice in the absence of 
brother Asbury” (Jesse Lee, A Short History 
of the Methodists, in the United States of Amer¬ 
ica, 1810, p. 81). When the Methodists organ¬ 
ized themselves into an independent body his 
attitude toward them was less cordial. Al¬ 
though deeply attached to the Episcopal Church, 
he was treated with coolness by many of its 
clergy, and attended few of its conventions. At 
one held at Richmond, May 3, 179 *, However, 
he preached an earnest, evangelical sermon 
which was printed, a fourth edition appearing 
as late as 1809. In 1791 he published Thoughts 
on Some Capital Subjects in Divinity in a Series 
of Letters to a Friend, which was reprinted in 
The Life of the Reverend Devereux Jarratt, 
Written by Himself, in a Series of Letters Ad¬ 
dressed to the Rev . John Coleman (1806). He 
also published Sermons on Various and Impor¬ 
tant Subjects, in Practical Divinity, Adapted to 
the Meanest Capacities, and Suited to the Fam¬ 
ily and Closet (3 vols., 1793 - 94 )- An Argument 
Between an Anabaptist and a Methodist on the 
Subject and Mode of Baptism, “published by a 
member of the Church of England,” reprinted in 
1814, is also attributed to him. During his last 
years he suffered from a cancer of the face 
which ultimately caused his death. Under date 
of Apr. 19, 1801, Asbury wrote “there had been 
put forth a printed appointment for me to preach 


the funeral sermon of the late Rev. Devereux 
Jarratt; who had lately returned to his rest.” 

[In addition to the Life mentioned above, see The 
Jour, of the Rev. Francis Asbury {3 vols., 1821) under 
dates of Nov. 28, 1775; Jan. 10, Dec. 19, 1776; June 1, 
1780; Dec. 29, 1781; Apr. 19, 1782; Apr. 19, 1801; 
Nathan Bangs, Hist, of the M. E. Ch., vol. I (1839); 
Wm. B. Sprague, Annals Am. Pulpit, vol. V (1859) ; 

J. W. Smith, ‘‘Devereux Jarratt and the Beginnings pi 
Methodism in Virginia,” The John P. Branch Hist. 
Papers of Randolph-Macon Coll., no. 1 (1901) ; L. M. 
Lee, The Life and Times of the Rev. Jesse Lee (1848), 
pp. 388-94; and E. L. Goodwin, The Colonial Ch. in 
Va. (1927).] H.E.S. 

JARVES, DEMING (1790-Apr. 15, 1869), 
chemist, inventor, organizer and manager of 
three Massachusetts flint-glass houses, was the 
son of John and Hannah (Seabury) Jarves and 
was baptized at the New South Church, Boston, 
on Dec. 9, 1790. He became one of the leaders 
in the glass industry in America during the first 
half of the nineteenth century. In 1817 the Bos¬ 
ton Crown Glass Company of Cambridge, Mass., 
which since 1815 had specialized in the produc¬ 
tion of lime-flint glass, was sold at public auc¬ 
tion to Deming Jarves, Amos Binney, Daniel 
Hastings, and other associates, Jarves con¬ 
trolling the stock. As the New England Glass 
Company, the firm was granted charter rights 
to manufacture “Flint and Crown Glass of all 
kinds, in the towns of Boston and Cambridge.” 
The situation confronting native glass manu¬ 
facture at this time was precarious in that Eng¬ 
lish manufacturers controlled American trade 
because of their use of secret formulae in metal 
compounding, especially as it related to the proc¬ 
ess of making red-lead or litharge. Jarves con¬ 
structed a set of furnaces for experimental pur¬ 
poses and was successful in compounding lith¬ 
arge upon his initial attempt. From that time, 
for more than thirty years, he not only sup¬ 
plied native flint-glass houses with red-lead, but 
held the monopoly of galena, or painters’ red- 
lead, in the United States. His discovery en¬ 
abled the New England Glass Company, and 
subsequently other firms, to compete with for¬ 
eign trade after expert glass cutters were 
brought from Europe. 

A temperamental genius, Jarves soon quar¬ 
reled with his associates, and later on with the 
stockholders of other enterprises in which he 
was interested. It is claimed that he was dis¬ 
posed to appropriate the discoveries and patents 
of other glass technicians, assuming credit for 
numerous ideas which were actually developed 
by others. In 1824 he went to Pittsburgh, and by 
a prolonged visit to the Bakewell firm, acquired 
an insight into their methods of operation, which 
were the most advanced in the country. He then 
returned to Boston, broke with the Cambridge 


617 



Jarves 

house, and organized a new company, a site for 
which was purchased at Sandwich, Mass. Here 
the Flint Glass Manufactory, incorporated in 
1826 as the Boston and Sandwich Glass Com¬ 
pany, started its first run of glass on July 4, 
1825, and immediately advertised that the fac¬ 
tory was equipped to turn out apothecary and 
chemical supplies, table-ware, chandeliers, and 
vase and mantle lamps. 

A patent was taken out for the first mechanical 
crude-glass pressing-machine on Nov. 4, 1826, 
by James Robinson and Henry Whitney of the 
Cambridge factory. In 1827 Jarves and one of 
his employees at Sandwich improved it and at¬ 
tempted to claim its invention. The courts up¬ 
held Robinson and Whitney, however. This 
mechanism revolutionized glass production and 
temporarily almost wrecked the European mar¬ 
ket, although pressed glass did not supersede 
blown glass in the popular fancy until about fif¬ 
teen years later. Jarves most successfully ex¬ 
perimented with color compounding, improved 
furnace construction, used barytes earth in the 
mix for a more shimmering grade of metal, and 
introduced the secrets of certain colorings from 
Europe. He also took out patents for the open¬ 
ing of metal molds, and in 1829, for the making 
of glass knobs, but later he could not protect 
them. In 1828 he compiled directions for the 
building and firing of kilns, and in 1854 he wrote 
and privately printed a pamphlet entitled Remi¬ 
niscences of Glass Making, a treatise which was 
later enlarged and reprinted. He continued as 
manager of the Boston and Sandwich firm until 
1858, at which time difficulties arose which 
caused his withdrawal and his immediate erec¬ 
tion of the Cape Cod Glass Company on a near¬ 
by plot of ground. His son John was taken into 
the new firm. In an attempt to break the Sand¬ 
wich company he introduced a competitive wage 
scale, but this only reacted against him. John 
Jarves died shortly after the industry got under 
way, and the father lost heart in the enterprise. 
Deming Jarves died in Boston, Apr. 15, 1869, 
and that night his partner, William Kern, stoked 
the fires under the furnaces for the last time. 
His wife, whom he had married in 1815, was 
Anna Smith Stutson. James Jackson Jarves [q.v.] 
was their son. 

[T. F. McManus, A Century of Glass Manufacture, 
1818-1918 (1918); J. D, Weeks, Report on the Manu¬ 
facture ■ of Glass (1883) ; Bangs Burgess, Hist, of 
Sandwich Glass (1925) ; F. T. Irwin, The Story of 
Sandwich Glass (1926); N. H. Moore, Old Glass, Eu¬ 
ropean and American (1924) ; Rhea Mansfield Knittle, 
Early Am . Glass (1927) ; Doris Hayes-Cavanaugh, 
“Early Glass-making in East Cambridge, Mass.,” Old 
Time New England, Jan. 1929 ; Antiques, Apr., Dec. 


Jarves 

1925, Oct. 1931 ; Independent Chronicle (Boston), May 
2 9, 1815: Boston Transcript, Apr. 16, 1869*] 

R.M.K. 

JARVES, JAMES JACKSON (Aug. 20, 
1818-June 28, 1888), editor of the first news¬ 
paper published in the Hawaiian Islands, author, 
critic, and pioneer art collector, was born in 
Boston, Mass., the son of Deming Jarves [q.v.'j 
of “Sandwich glass” fame and of Anna Smith 
(Stutson) Jarves. His youth was spent in Bos¬ 
ton and Sandwich, on Cape Cod, where his fam¬ 
ily had a country home. Although he attended 
Chauncy Hall School in Boston this studious, 
inquisitive, and sensitive boy’s education was 
largely acquired by wide reading, and by the 
collection and observation of natural objects. At 
one time he wished to become a historian, and at 
another a physician; however, at the age of fif¬ 
teen he was forced by illness and impaired eye¬ 
sight to abandon his studies. Although his bitter 
disappointment at his inability to enter Harvard 
College lasted throughout his life, he was of too 
adventurous and enthusiastic a spirit to be long 
daunted. His extensive travels to California, 
Mexico, Central America, and the Hawaiian Is¬ 
lands were duly recorded in a number of vol¬ 
umes. In 1840, during his stay in Honolulu, he 
founded and became the editor of a weekly news¬ 
paper, the Polynesian, and four years later he 
became director of the government press, his 
journal becoming the official organ of the Ha¬ 
waiian government. As he was commissioned 
to negotiate commercial treaties with the United 
States, Great Britain, and France, he returned 
home in 1848 and visited Europe a few years 
later. He found European, and particularly Ital¬ 
ian, atmosphere so congenial that he settled in 
Florence, never wishing to leave it again for any 
length of time. He immediately began to set 
down his observations and impressions with his 
usual meticulous care and eventually published 
a dozen volumes, dealing largely with the early 
Italian art. As if this were not enough, Jarves 
served as United States vice-consul at Florence 
from 1880 to 1882. He is said at one time to 
have been approached by the presidential candi¬ 
date, James G. Blaine, to see whether he would 
accept the post of minister to Italy should the 
former be successful at the election. 

Jarves began his active collecting, with his 
art criticism, early in the fifties. His paintings 
formed the largest and most important collection 
of early Italian masters which had up to that 
time been brought to America, for the Bryan 
Collection, which had arrived in 1853 and was 
presented to the New York Historical Society 
in 1867, contained only about thirty examples. 
The reception of his pictures, however, was dis- 


618 



Jarves 

appointing from the first. In i860, ten years 
before the incorporation of the Metropolitan Mu¬ 
seum of Art, New York, and the Museum of 
Fine Arts, Boston, they were exhibited at the 
Derby Galleries, 625 Broadway, and again, in 
1863, in the rooms of the New York Historical 
Society. Jarves himself prepared the catalogue, 
fortifying it with a long list of documents from 
the chief European and American critics. The 
pictures were then removed to Boston, “where 
also there was no will to buy them.” Some were 
“sold to pay expenses of transfers and general 
cost of keeping the collection as intact as possi¬ 
ble.” He could have sold them piecemeal, but 
he “was not disposed to scatter a collection so 
valuable in its collective character as an illus¬ 
tration of the development of early Christian art 
and a school for the American art student” (New 
York Tribune, Nov. 10, 1871). The genuine¬ 
ness of the pictures, too, was “questioned by 
critics who had never gone abroad to study such 
work.” In 1866 “popular indifference, misun¬ 
derstanding, misliking and even hostility” was 
such that Jarves contemplated taking his collec¬ 
tion, which he hoped might form “the nucleus of 
a Free Gallery in one of our large cities,” to 
England. After his friend, Charles Eliot Nor¬ 
ton, failed to interest either Boston or Harvard 
in the collection, Jarves, who was embarrassed 
financially, agreed to deposit his pictures, for a 
period of three years as security for a loan, in 
the newly completed art school building at Yale. 
This arrangement, chiefly due to the effort of 
Professor John F. Weir and Professor (later 
President) Noah Porter, has been described as 
“one of the most irregular pieces of University 
finance on record and certainly one of the most 
brilliant” (Yale Alumni Weekly, May 22, 1914* 
p. 965). When in 1871 Jarves was unable to pay 
off this mortgage, he permitted the collection of 
119 paintings to be sold at auction to the Uni¬ 
versity, which made the only bid. A later col¬ 
lection of early Italian pictures was exhibited in 
the Boston Foreign Art Exhibition in 1883-84. 
Most of these, fifty-two in all, were sold in 1884 
to his friend, Liberty E. Holden of Cleveland, 
and were subsequently given to the Cleveland 
Museum of Art by Mrs. Holden. Neither the 
Yale nor the Cleveland pictures were greatly es¬ 
teemed by the public until some fifty or sixty 
years after their purchase by Jarves, fully thirty 
years after his death. 

In 1881 Jarves gave his collection of Venetian 
glass in memory of his father to the Metropoli¬ 
tan Museum of Art, at considerable sacrifice to 
himself and to his family, thus practising what 
he nad so long preached. He sold his collection 


Jarves 

of embroideries, laces, costumes, and Renais¬ 
sance fabrics in New York in 1887. These were 
shortly afterward acquired for the Farnsworth 
Museum at Wellesley College, Mass. Had he 
been wealthy he would have become a great 
patron of art; as it was he exhausted his entire 
fortune. In spite of many disappointments and 
vicissitudes, he attained his chief aim—“the dif¬ 
fusion of artistic knowledge and aesthetic taste 
in America”—though not until a generation had 
passed away. Jarves was married to Elizabeth 
Russell Swain at New Bedford, Mass., on Oct. 

2,1838, and to Isabel Kast Hayden at Boston on 
Apr. 30,1862. He survived them both and four 
of his six children. He died in Switzerland at 
Tarasp in the Engadine and was buried in the 
English Cemetery at Rome. Although a modest, 
retiring, and unworldly man, he was decorated 
with the Order of Kamehameha I by the King 
of Hawaii and was created a Chevalier of the 
Order of the Crown of Italy by King Humbert I 
in recognition of his work in helping Italian art 
and artists. He was also an honorary member of 
the Academia delle Belle Arti of Florence, a 
corresponding member of the American Oriental 
Society, and a patron of the Metropolitan Mu¬ 
seum of Art. 

Jarves was a voluminous writer and his books 
contain much of biographical interest. Among 
them are: Account of the Visit of the French 
Frigate VArtemise at the Sandwich Islands (Hon¬ 
olulu, 1839, extracted from an article in the 
Hawaiian Spectator ); History of the Hawaiian 
or Sandwich Islands (1843, *844, an< ^ *847); 
Scenes and Scenery in the Sandwich Islands, and 
a Trip Through Central America (Boston, 1843, 
1844, London, 1844); Scenes and Scenery in 
California (1844), a volume written before the 
course of conquest by the United States and the 
discovery of gold, and having, therefore, a pe¬ 
culiar interest and value; Parisian Sights and 
French Principles Seen Through American Spec¬ 
tacles (2 vols., first published anonymously, New 
York, 1852, and London, 1853, then in 1855 
under the author’s name); Art-Hints, Architec¬ 
ture, Sculpture and Painting (1855); Italian 
Sights and Papal Principles SeenThrough Amer¬ 
ican Spectacles (1856); Why and What am I? 
The Confessions of an Inquirer . In three parts. 
Part I, Heart-Experience, or the Education of 
the Emotions (1857, part III was never pub¬ 
lished) ; Kiana: A Tradition of Hawaii (1857), 
a romance; Descriptive Catalogue of “Old Mas¬ 
ters” (i860); Art-Studies; the “Old Masters” 
of Italy: Painting (1861); The Art Idea, Part 
second of Confessions of an Inquirer (1864), re¬ 
printed in 1865 under the title: The Art Idea: 


619 



Jarvis 

Sculpture, Paintings, and Architecture in Amer¬ 
ica, with later editions following; Art Thoughts, 
the Experiences and Observations of an Ameri¬ 
can Amateur in Europe (1869,1871, and 1879) ; 
“Museums of Art, Artists, and Amateurs in 
America” the Galaxy, July 1870; A Glimpse at 
the Art of Japan (1876) ; Italian Rambles: Stud¬ 
ies of Life and Manners in New and Old Italy 
(1883, 1885); Retrospective Art Catalogue of 
the Boston Foreign Art Exhibition (1883); 
Hand Book for Visitors to the Hollenden Gal¬ 
lery of Old Masters, Exhibited at the Boston 
Foreign Art Exhibition in 1883-84 (1884); 
and Pepero, the Boy Artist; A Brief Memoir of 
James Jackson Jarves, Jr. (1891), a tribute to 
his son, an artistic genius, who died at the age 
of fifteen, written the year of Jarves’ death and 
published three years later. 

[For Jarves' career in Hawaii see the Polynesian 
during his editorship, 1840-48; the Report of the Case 
of Peter Allen Brinsmade vs. James Jackson Jarves, 
Editor of the Polynesian, for Alleged Libelous Publi¬ 
cation (Honolulu, 1846), and Laura Fish Judd, Hono¬ 
lulu, Sketches of Life Social, Political, and Religious, 
in the Hawaiian Islands from 1828 to 1861 (1880). 
For the Jarves collection at Yale see Letters Relating 
to a Coll, of Pictures made by J. J. Jarves (p.p. 1859), 
with introductory note by C. E. Norton; Russell Stur¬ 
gis, Jr., Manual of the Jarves Coll, of Early Italian 
Pictures (1868) ; Osvald Siren, A Descriptive Cat. of 
the Pictures in the Jarves Coll Belonging to Yale Univ. 
(1916) ; and Richard Offner, Italian Primitives at Yale 
Univ., Comments and Revisions (19 27). For the Cleve¬ 
land pictures see Stella Rubinstein, Cat. of the Coll, of 
Paintings Presented to the Cleveland Museum of Art 
by Mrs. Liberty E. Holden (1917), and for the Welles¬ 
ley Coll, textiles see List of the Jarves Coll, of Laces, 
Stuffs, Embroideries (1887). Other sources include: 
family records in possession of Mrs. W. R. (Annabel) 
Kerr, a daughter by Jarves' second marriage; infor¬ 
mation as to certain facts from Miss Flora Jarves, 
Kingston, R. I.; scrap-books in the Gallery of Fine 
Arts at Yale; records of the Yale Corporation, the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, N. Y., the N. Y. Hist. 
Soc., in the State Dept., Washington, D. C., and in the 
City Hall, Boston; and the Boston Daily Advertiser, 
July 2, 1888. Facts regarding Jarves' marriages were 
taken from the vital records of New Bedford, Mass., 
and from the records of the Church of the Advent, Bos¬ 
ton. There is a bronze bas-relief bust of Jarves by 
Larkin Goldsmith Mead in the “Jarves Room" at the 
Yale Gallery of Fine Arts.] T. S. 

JARVIS, ABRAHAM (May 5,1739 o.s.-May 
3,1813), Episcopal clergyman, second bishop of 
Connecticut, was a native of that state, his par¬ 
ents, Samuel and Naomi (Brush) Jarvis, having 
moved to Norwalk from Huntington, Long Is¬ 
land, some two years previous to his birth. He 
prepared for college at Stamford, Conn., under 
Rev. Noah Welles, a Congregational minister, 
and graduated from Yale in 1761. In November 
1763, having in the meantime acted as lay-reader 
in Middletown, Conn., while preparing for the 
Episcopal ministry, he sailed for England where 
he was ordained deacon by Frederick Keppel, 
bishop of Exeter, on Feb. 5, 1764; and priest 


Jarvis 

by Charles Lyttelton, bishop of Carlisle, on Feb. 
19. Returning to Connecticut, he became rector 
of Christ Church, Middletown. During the agi¬ 
tation which preceded the Revolution he was the 
object of no little abuse, because in common with 
other Episcopal clergymen, he felt that rebellion 
against the King was violation of his ordination 
vows. He seems to have conducted himself with 
much discretion, however, for in a letter pub¬ 
lished in the Connecticut Journal, Oct. 21,1774, 
he disowns any desire to heighten the “gloomy 
aspect that now lowers over the face of our 
country and our common interests. . . . This,” 
he affirms, “we have not designedly done, and 
mean not to do.” He was chairman of the con¬ 
vention of Episcopal clergymen, held in New 
Haven, July 23, 1776, at which they decided to 
suspend all public worship in their churches, 
and thus avoid the reading of the liturgy with 
its prayer for the king. 

After the Revolution he was among those who 
took the lead in the organization of the Epis¬ 
copal Church in Connecticut. He was secretary 
of the secret meeting held at Woodbridge late in 
March 1783, when it was decided to send a 
clergyman to England to be made bishop, and 
prepared the letter to the Archbishop of York 
which Samuel Seabury [q.v.’] later took with 
him on his quest for consecration. At the con¬ 
vention held at Middletown, August 1785, in 
behalf of the clergy he received and acknowl¬ 
edged Seabury as their bishop; and was ap¬ 
pointed one of a committee to make with the 
bishop the changes in the liturgy that existing 
conditions required. In order that the canonical 
number of bishops of the Scottish line might be 
established in New England, he was appointed 
February 1787, to proceed to Scotland for con¬ 
secration, but subsequent events made such ac¬ 
tion unnecessary. After the death of Seabury, 
however, he was unanimously elected on June 7, 
1797, to succeed him, a previous election in 
17961 which was not unanimous, having been 
declined. He w’as consecrated at Trinity Church, 
New Haven, by Bishops White, Provoost, and 
Bass on Oct 18, 1797. He continued to reside 
in Middletown until 1799, when he removed to 
Cheshire. After 1803 his home was in New 
Haven. His first wife, Ann, daughter of Samuel 
Farmer of New York, whom he married May 
25, 1766, died in 1801; and on July 4, 1806, he 
married Lucy, widow of Nathaniel Lewis of 
Philadelphia. He was a man of solid attainments 
and old-fashioned dignity of demeanor, slow in 
making up his mind, tenacious in seeking his 
ends, sometimes arbitrary, and often prone to 
emphasize small details. He performed his duties 



Jarvis 

as bishop faithfully and with ability, but was not 
sufficiently inclined to activity to be a great 
leader. 

[G. A., G. M. Jarvis and W. J. Wetmore, The Jarvis 
Family (1879) > S. F. Jarvis, “Memoir of Bishop Jar¬ 
vis,” Evergreen , Apr., May, and June 1846; Lorenzo 
Sabine, Biog. Sketches of Loyalists of the Am. Rev. 
(1864), vol. I; W, B. Sprague, Annals Am. Pulpit, vol. 
V (1859) * F. B. Dexter, Biog. Sketches Grads. Yale 
Coll, vol. II (1896), containing a list of his published 
addresses; E. E. Beardsley, The Hist, of the Episc. Ch. 
in Conn. (2 vols., 1865, 1868) ; The Diocese of Conn., 
the Jarvis Centenary . . . 1897 (n.d.); Conn. Courant, 
May 11, 1813.] H.E.S. 

JARVIS, CHARLES H. (Dec. 20, 1837-Feb. 
25, 1895), pianist and teacher, was born in Phil¬ 
adelphia, where he lived his whole life and died. 
His father, Charles Jarvis, an Englishman from 
Leicester, was for twenty years prominent in 
Philadelphia musical circles as a pianist and 
teacher, and served as organist at the Protestant 
Episcopal Church of the Epiphany. When Charles 
was four years old, his father began teaching 
him to play the piano. It was his purpose to 
make his son an accomplished sight-reader and 
in this he succeeded to a remarkable degree. He 
also insisted that any passage that was to be 
played with the right hand must be practised 
with the left hand as well until equal facility 
with the latter was achieved. This discipline 
made the boy practically ambidextrous. In De¬ 
cember 1844, at the age of seven, he appeared in 
his first concert, at Musical Fund Hall. His 
father had arranged for four hands a pot-pourri 
of themes from Don Pasquale by H. Rosselen, 
and the treble part of this arrangement young 
Jarvis played, with Caroline Branson, while 
standing up at the piano. His education was 
obtained in the public schools of Philadelphia 
while he continued his piano study with his fa¬ 
ther and studied theory with Leopold Meignen. 
In February 1854 he was graduated from the 
Philadelphia high school, where he had excelled 
in mathematics. His father died the same year 
and, though the son was only seventeen years 
old, he began at once a career as a teacher which 
continued throughout his life. In 1857 Thalberg 
toured the United States, and his quality of tone 
and great technique strongly impressed Jarvis, 
who made the great pianist his model for both 
playing and teaching. 

In addition to winning fame as a teacher, 
Jarvis was undoubtedly one of the best American 
pianists of his time. He had almost unlimited 
capacity for work and was an untiring recitalist. 
He played often with the Philadelphia Sym¬ 
phony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic 
Society, and the Theodore Thomas Orchestra, 
and had a large concert repertoire. In 1862 he 
instituted and financed a series of chamber- 


Jarvis 

music and historical piano recitals, the latter 
with Dr. Hugh A. Clarke as lecturer. These and 
other series of recitals were continued for over 
thirty years, the last one taking place on Feb. 9, 
1895, a few weeks before his death. During this 
time he performed some eight hundred different 
compositions. He was a decided classicist and 
though he played Liszt compositions now’ and 
then, he spoke of them as being too cacophonous. 
He disliked Brahms, Tschaikowsky, and other 
Romanticists, and attributed their “careless writ¬ 
ing to the bad example of Schumann and Wag¬ 
ner.” He seemed to lack the breadth of vision 
which an open-minded study of Romanticism 
would have given him. He was married in New 
Haven, Conn., July 17, 1861, to Lucretia Hall 
Yale of Wallingford, Conn. She died in 1875, 
and in 1879 married Josephine E. Roebling. 
His valuable music library, started by his fa¬ 
ther, was presented by one of his daughters to 
the Drexel Institute. 

[R. H. Yale, Yale Gened. (1908); T. C. Whitmer, 
“Charles H. Jarvis: Man and Musician,” Music, May 
1900; Phila . Press and Public Ledger, Feb. 26, 1895.] 

F L G C 

JARVIS, EDWARD (Jan. 9, 1803-Oct. 31, 
1884), physician and statistician, was born in 
Concord, Mass., the fifth of seven children bom 
to Francis and Milicent (Hosmer) Jarvis whose 
ancestors had resided continuously in New Eng¬ 
land since the middle of the seventeenth century. 
Although a baker and farmer by trade, Francis 
Jarvis was a man of wide reading and the owner 
of a large library. As a boy Edward was inter¬ 
ested in mechanics and inherited his father's ap¬ 
preciation of books. He was educated in the 
town schools of Concord, in the academy at 
Westford, and entered Harvard College in 1822. 
He was graduated with the class of 1826 and 
served as its secretary for more than half a cen¬ 
tury, While teaching school in Concord in 1827, 
he began to study physiology and anatomy with 
Dr. Josiah Bartlett. In the fall of this year he 
attended lectures at the Massachusetts Medical 
College (now the Harvard Medical School) and 
was later a student assistant in anatomy at the 
University of Vermont After his graduation in 
1830 from the former institution he took up gen¬ 
eral practice in Northfield, Mass., where he was 
but moderately successful financially. His inter¬ 
est in vital statistics began while he was prac¬ 
tising in Concord when he came under the in¬ 
fluence of Lemuel Shattuck, one of the able vital 
statisticians of the period. On Jan. 9, 1834, 
Jarvis married Almira Hunt of Concord. She 
afterward became his constant assistant in the 
treatment of insane patients. 

In 1837, at the suggestion of New England 


621 



Jarvis 

friends, Jarvis went to Louisville, Ky., where he 
engaged in general practice until his return to 
Dorchester, Mass., in 1843. While in the South, 
he frequently contributed to the Louisville Medi¬ 
cal Journal , corrected medical abuses in the Ma¬ 
rine Hospital, and aroused interest in the estab¬ 
lishment of a historical library. Though his 
financial success in Louisville was greater than 
it had been in the North, his antipathy to slavery 
and his fondness for New England people and 
customs induced him to return to Dorchester. 
There he opened his house for the treatment of 
the insane and was so successful that he soon 
began to devote his entire time to this branch of 
medicine and was in demand by other physicians 
for consultation purposes in the healing of men¬ 
tal disease. His interest in anthropology and 
vital statistics led him to an analysis of census 
statistics. In studying the returns of the census 
of 1840 he was astonished at the large amount 
of insanity appearing among the free negroes. 
He attributed this largely to carelessness in the 
compilation since some towns which had no negro 
population were reported as having colored luna¬ 
tics. Accurate by nature, he immediately pre¬ 
sented the facts as he saw them to the American 
Statistical Association which memorialized Con¬ 
gress to amend the returns in this respect. De¬ 
spite the fact that Congress refused to correct 
the enumeration, the incident served to bring 
Jarvis’ statistical ability to public notice. In 

1849 the superintending clerk of the census of 

1850 consulted him frequently about questions of 
procedure. Jarvis wrote hundreds of pages in 
answer to these inquiries. He was closely identi¬ 
fied with the census of i860 and prepared the 
volume on vital statistics at Dorchester with a 
clerical staff of high school girls. In 1869 
was asked to report a plan for the ninth census 
to the House committee on the census under Gen. 
James A. Garfield. His suggestions were cour¬ 
teously received and the greater part of them 
incorporated in the committee’s report to Con¬ 
gress. For the last half of his life Jarvis devoted 
himself very largely to the many public health 
activities in which he was interested. 

In 1854 Jarvis was appointed member of a 
commission to inquire into the number and con¬ 
dition of the insane and idiots in Massachusetts 
and the necessity for a new’ insane asylum. He 
made a thorough survey and prepared a six- 
hundred-page report which resulted in an appro¬ 
priation for a new hospital. Although his health 
was seriously impaired by his arduous work on 
the commission, he felt that it was the most suc¬ 
cessful work of his life. He was a voluminous 
and painstaking author and estimated his writ- 


Jarvis 

ings and correspondence at more than one hun¬ 
dred thousand pages. He was the author of 175 
printed speeches, articles, and pamphlets, two 
books on physiology, Practical Physiology (1847 ) 
and Primary Physiology (1848), and two manu¬ 
script histories of Concord. He prepared a man¬ 
uscript autobiography of 348 pages which he 
gave to the Harvard College library. He wrote 
extensively for medical magazines and other pe¬ 
riodicals on physiology, vital statistics, sanita¬ 
tion, education, and insanity. Through corre¬ 
spondence and exchange with other statisticians 
in the United States and abroad he collected one 
of the best statistical libraries in the country, 
most of which he gave to the American Statis¬ 
tical Association. He was a member of several 
medical and statistical societies. He died of 
paralysis in Dorchester on Oct. 31, 1884. His 
wife died two days later and they were buried 
in one grave in their native town of Concord. 

[Jarvis’ manuscript autobiography; Concord Social 
Circle Memoirs, 2 ser. (1888); G. C. Whipple, State 
Sanitation (1917), vol. I; Proc. Am. Antiquarian Soc., 
n.s. Ill (1885) ; Proc. Am. Acad. Arts and Sci. f n.s. 
XII (1885) ; R. W. Wood, Memorial of Edward Jarvis 
(1885); A. P. Peabody, “A Memoir of Edward Jar¬ 
vis,” New-Eng. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July 1885; 
G. A. Jarvis and others, The Jarvis Family (1879) ; 
Boston Transcript, Nov. 1, 1884; Boston Post, Nov. 
3 > 1884.] W.R.L. 

JARVIS, JOHN WESLEY (1781-Jan. 14, 
1839), portrait painter, was born at South 
Shields, England, the son of John and Ann 
Jarvis. There is no record of the exact date of 
his birth, but since he was baptised on July 1, 
1781, at St. Hilda’s church, South Shields, it is 
probable that he was born six weeks prior to that 
date. His parents, emigrating to America soon 
after his birth, left him in charge of his ma¬ 
ternal relative (probably his great-uncle), John 
Wesley, the founder of Methodism, until he 
reached the age of five. He was then brought to 
Philadelphia, where his father had found em¬ 
ployment. The boy appears to have been left to 
himself most of the time, and out of school hours 
he fell in with Matthew Pratt, the portrait paint¬ 
er, Clark, a miniaturist, and three others, un¬ 
known to fame, who made a living by painting 
signs, but who also occasionally essayed portrait 
painting. Young Jarvis, delighted to be able to 
make himself useful to these men, worked for 
all of them from time to time in such wise as 
he was able. In his own words, "such was my 
introduction to the fine arts and their profes¬ 
sors.” He was an enterprising and self-con¬ 
fident boy, and having been impressed by the 
prints displayed in the Philadelphia shop win¬ 
dows, he shortly informed his father that he 
wished to become an engraver. Accordingly he 


622 



Jarvis 

was apprenticed to the print publisher, Edward 
Savage, who, in 1800, moved from Philadelphia 
to New York, taking his employees with him. 

David Edwin, a young English engraver, who 
had just arrived in America, was a fellow- 
apprentice in Savage's shop, and from him Jarvis 
derived most of his knowledge of drawing and 
engraving. As soon as the time of his appren¬ 
ticeship expired Jarvis began to engrave on his 
own account, and it was not long before he 
turned to portrait painting. About 1805 he en¬ 
tered into a sort of partnership with another 
young artist, Joseph Wood, and they took a 
studio in Park Row, New York. They made 
miniatures, having had some slight instruction 
in this branch of work from Edward Malbone; 
they also made profile portraits on glass, which 
were popular at that time. Their success was 
so great that they often took in as much as one 
hundred dollars a day. A little later Jarvis set 
up a studio for himself in Broadway and for 
a while was busily employed in making por¬ 
traits on bristol board at five dollars each, “very 
like and very pretty.” He also produced portraits 
in oil or miniatures on ivory when they were 
preferred. In 1807 Thomas Sully, being without 
work, was taken on as an assistant by Jarvis, 
but this arrangement was of short duration. They 
parted, and Sully went to Philadelphia, while 
Jarvis continued on his way in New York. 
Jarvis was married in 1808, but the match was 
apparently unhappy, for his wife eventually left 
him, taking the children with her. 

About this time he made a successful trip to 
Baltimore to paint portraits. In 1810 he went to 
Charleston, S. C., and a few years later he 
pushed on as far as New Orleans, taking with 
him young Henry Inman [q.v.], who was then 
his apprentice and assistant. These southern 
trips became a regular fixture each winter. Jarvis 
was accustomed to receive six sitters a day, and 
with Inman’s aid he turned out half-a-dozen por¬ 
traits a week. His facility was prodigious. His 
income grew to impressive proportions. But he 
was extravagant and reckless ; moreover, as he 
advanced in years, he became a hard drinker. 
William Dunlap, who knew him, relates many 
amusing and some pathetic tales of his way of 
life. He was a typical bohemian—talented, bril¬ 
liant, and popular, a picturesque figure, fond of 
notoriety and enjoying a great reputation as a 
story-teller and practical joker. He associated 
with such men as Irving, Fulton, Verplanck, and 
Van Wyke, but in his latter days, owing in part 
to his intemperance and in part to illness, he 
gradually lost his hold on his clientele, sank into 
comparative obscurity, and finally died in pov- 


Jarvis 

erty at the home of his sister, a Mrs. Childs, in 
New York. 

He was generally considered the foremost por- 
trait painter of his time in New York, and he 
enjoyed a national reputation. His work was, 
however, very uneven. The most important ex¬ 
amples, dating from the thirties, comprised a 
series of full-length portraits of the military and 
naval heroes of the War of 1812 made for the 
City Hall of New York and the notable series of 
portraits owned by the New York Historical 
Society. Among these were portraits of Perry, 
Hull, Swift, McDonough, Bainbridge, and Brown. 
He also painted the portraits of Henry Clay, 
John Randolph of Roanoke, DeWitt Clinton, 
Robert Morris, J. Fenimore Cooper, Thomas 
Paine, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and James Law¬ 
rence, who was mortally wounded in the duel 
between the Chesapeake and the Shannon off the 
Massachusetts coast. Isham thought that Jarvis* 
painting suffered from his manner of life. His 
work, he remarks, shows the haste of production, 
not so much in lack of finish as in lack of in¬ 
spiration. His color is dull and monotonous, but 
he drew well, and he had great facility in catch¬ 
ing a likeness. 

[The main source, almost the only source of infor¬ 
mation about Jarvis, is Wm. Dunlap’s Hist, of the Rise 
and Progress' of the Arts of Design in the U. S. 
(1834)5 in which a whole chapter is devoted to a ram¬ 
bling but interesting account of Jarvis’ life. See also; 
Samuel Isham, The Hist, of Am. Painting (1905) ; H. 
T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists (1867); Theodore 
Bolton, Early Am. Portrait Painters in Miniature 
(1921) ; J. W. Harrington, “John Wesley Jarvis, Por¬ 
traitist/’ in the Am. Mag. of Art , Nov. 1927; D. McN. 
Stauffer, Am. Engravers upon Copper and Steel (1907) ; 
catalogues of the Hudson-Fulton exhibition, New 
York, 1909 ; Panama-Pacific exposition, San Francisco, 
1915. The date of Jarvis’ death, which is variously 
given, is taken for this sketch from Stauffer, ante.] 

W.H.D. 

JARVIS, THOMAS JORDAN (Jan. 18,1836- 
June 17,1915), governor of North Carolina, was 
born at Jarvisburg, Currituck County, N. C., the 
son of Bannister Hardy Jarvis, a Methodist min¬ 
ister, and Elizabeth Daly. They were poor, but 
Thomas worked his way through Randolph- 
Macon College and received the degree of A.B. 
in i860 and M.A. in 1861. At the outbreak of 
the Civil War he was teaching in Pasquotank 
County. He enlisted, soon became a lieutenant 
in the 8th North Carolina Regiment, rose to 
captain in 1863, and was permanently disabled 
at Drewry’s Bluff. After the war he opened a 
store in Tyrrel County and began to read law. 
He was a delegate to the convention of 1865 
from Currituck. In 1867 he was licensed and in 
1868 was elected to the lower house of the legis¬ 
lature. He was also a candidate for elector on 
the Democratic ticket. In the legislature he 


623 



Jarvis 

voted for the ratification of the Fifteenth Amend¬ 
ment, but he was one of the small group of 
young Democrats who, contesting every move 
of the majority, and putting them on record in 
their misgovernment, hastened the overthrow of 
the Carpet-bag government. His courage, abil¬ 
ity, and force attracted attention, and he was 
speaker of the House in the reform legislature of 
1870: There he showed himself as constructive 
and restrained as he had been bold in the years 
1868-70. In 1872 he moved to Greenville. In 
that autumn he was candidate for elector on the 
Greeley ticket and canvassed the entire state. 
Three years later he was a member of the con¬ 
stitutional convention and exerted a large influ¬ 
ence upon its work. Elected lieutenant-governor 
in 1876, he became governor upon the resigna¬ 
tion of Vance in 1879 an d was elected in 1880 
for a full term. As governor he began executive 
leadership in North Carolina. Regarding him¬ 
self as the responsible head of his party, he 
sought successfully to direct the work of the 
legislature. He was aggressive in behalf of pub¬ 
lic education, industrial development, and the 
relief of the unfortunate, and was an advocate of 
the construction of railroads. To facilitate rail¬ 
road development, he persuaded the state to sell 
its interest in two roads. This meant the aban¬ 
donment of state railroad operation. He was 
deeply interested in the welfare of the negroes 
and did much to lessen race antagonism. During 
his administration two hospitals for the insane, 
one of them for negroes, were built and other 
public works undertaken. He did much to se¬ 
cure increased appropriations for the University. 
From 1885 to 1889, by Cleveland’s appointment, 
he was minister to Brazil, and in 1894 he was 
appointed to fill a vacancy of one year in the 
United States Senate. As a man he was plain 
and unassuming, thoroughly human, and had 
sound though not brilliant abilities. Tall and 
engagingly ugly, he was an impressive figure. 
He was married, Dec. 23, 1874, to Mary Wood- 
son of Virginia, who survived him. 

[S. A. Ashe, Biog. Hist . of N. C., vol. I (1905); 
Jour . of the Convention of the State of N, C. (2 vols. 
in 1, 1865-66); Jour, of the Constitutional Convention 
of the State of N. CHeld in 1875 (1875) ; J. G. de R. 
Hamilton, N. C. Since i860 (1919) ; Charlotte Daily 
Observer , News and Observer (Raleigh), June 18, 
WS-l J.G.deR. H. 

JARVIS, WILLIAM (Feb. 2, 1770-Oct 21, 
1859), merchant, consul, agriculturist, was bom 
in Boston, Mass., the son of Dr. Charles Jarvis, 
a well-known physician of that city, by his first 
wife, Mary (Clapham) Jarvis. He was a de¬ 
scendant of Capt. Nathaniel Jarvis, a native of 
Wales, who settled in Boston in 1668. When 


Jarvis 

William was about three years old his father mar¬ 
ried his second wife, Mary Pepperrell Sparhawk, 
a grand-daughter of Sir William Pepperrell. 
After attending schools in Boston, young Jarvis 
was sent, at the age of fourteen, to Bordentown 
Academy in New Jersey; a year later he became 
a pupil in the school conducted by William War¬ 
ing of Philadelphia. When he was twenty-one, 
having had four or more years’ experience as 
clerk and bookkeeper for mercantile firms in 
Norfolk and Portsmouth, Va., he established a 
business of his own on Long Wharf, Boston, 
with a young Virginian, at the outset, as partner. 
The venture prospered and, being well connected, 
Jarvis was prominent in the social life of the 
city. Through the endorsement of notes, how¬ 
ever, he was involved in financial disaster. He 
was arrested, but was insured his liberty upon 
obligating himself to pay $14,500 in five years. 
He then went to sea as a supercargo of a vessel, 
but the year following, 1797, he purchased a 
third interest in a brig, which he himself com¬ 
manded. As a trader he was shrewd, venture¬ 
some, and successful. His experiences made him 
well acquainted with the complicated problems 
of foreign commerce arising out of the struggle 
between France and England, and Jefferson ap¬ 
pointed him consul and charge d’affaires at Lis¬ 
bon, then an important trade center. He accepted 
with reluctance but entered upon his duties with 
much vigor, continuing as consul from 1802 to 
1811, at the same time conducting a profitable 
commission house of his own. In his official 
capacity, he promptly undertook the protection 
of American seamen and persuaded the Portu¬ 
guese government to put a stop to the activity of 
the press gangs and the impressment on the 
streets of Lisbon. He also obtained important 
modifications of the rules of quarantine against 
yellow fever for ships from northern countries 
and prevented the adoption of burdensome duties 
on American flour. When Napoleon conquered 
Spain in 1808, seizing and confiscating property 
and pushing on into Portugal, Jarvis’ command 
of money and credit enabled him to buy 3,500 
selected Merino sheep with license to export 
them to the United States. For centuries these 
very profitable animals had been jealously guard¬ 
ed against export by the Spanish government. 
David Humphreys [q.v .], Jarvis’ predecessor at 
Lisbon, had brought out a few, but it remained 
for Jarvis to introduce them in large numbers 
and distribute them throughout the different 
states. Jefferson commended him highly for his 
services, assured him that he was giving special 
attention to promoting the increase of the Me¬ 
rinos sent to Virginia, and invited him to “Mon- 


624 



Jarvis 

ticello” to test the excellence of the Carrasguiera 
and other wines which Jarvis had procured for 
him in 1803. 

After his return to the United States in 1810 
he bought a farm at Weathersfield, Vt., on the 
Connecticut River, and devoted himself with 
meticulous care to its cultivation, although the 
condition of his business in Lisbon compelled him 
to make a hazardous visit there (1813-15). He 
continued to take an active interest in public 
affairs; he was an ardent protectionist and in 
1827 was a delegate to the Harrisburg Conven¬ 
tion. In 1808 he had married at Lisbon, Mary 
Pepperrell Sparhawk, a niece of his step-moth¬ 
er: she died in 1811 and in 1817 he married her 
cousin, Ann Bailey Bartlett. By his first wife 
he had two children, and by the second, ten. His 
contribution to the economic history of the coun¬ 
try is commemorated by a sheep carved on his 
headstone at Weathersfield. 

[Mary Pepperrell Sparhawk (Jarvis) Cutts, his 
daughter, published a memoir of Jarvis in the Christian 
Register (Boston), Feb. 26, 1859, The Life and Times 
of Hon . Wm. Jarvis of Weathersfield, Vt. (1869), 
and “Sketch of Mrs. Wm. Jarvis of Weathersfield, 
Vt.,” in Esses; Inst. Hist. Colls., vol. XXIV (1888). 
Hampden Cutts, his son-in-law, published “The Life 
and Public Service of the late Hon. Wm, Jarvis,” New- 
Eng. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July 1866. See also 
Usher Parsons, “Pepperrell Geneal.,” Ibid., Jan. 1866; 
Zadock Thompson, A Gazetteer of the State of Vt. 
(1824), p. 276; J. P. Gunnell, “Farming in the New 
England States,” in Senate Ex. Doc. No. 39, 37 Cong., 
2. Sess., p. 259 ; U. S. Merino Sheep Reg., voL I (Zanes¬ 
ville, Ohio, 1876) ; Spanish Merino Sheep, Their Im¬ 
portation from Spain, Introd. into Vt., vol. I (1879); 
Reg. of the Ohio Spanish Merino Sheep Breeders’ 
Asso., vol. I (1885) ; E. A. Carman, H. A. Heath, and 
J. Minto, Special Report on the Hist, and Present Con¬ 
dition of the Sheep Industry of the U. S. (1892) ; G. A. 
Jarvis, The Jarvis Family (1879) '» Jarvis* Consular 
Reports, 1802-10, in the Dept, of State, Washington; 
Daily Evening Traveller (Boston), Oct 26, 1859.] 

W.E.L. 

JARVIS, WILLIAM CHAPMAN (May 13, 
1 855-July 30, 1895), physician, pioneer laryn¬ 
gologist and rhinologist, was born at Fortress 
Monroe, Va,, the son of an army physician, 
Nathan Sturges Jarvis. Following the death of 
his father in 1862 he went to Baltimore where 
he was educated at private schools. Early in life 
he showed mechanical skill and inventive in¬ 
genuity and was a good draftsman; he also 
owned a microscope and was an amateur pho¬ 
tographer. Having decided upon a medical ca¬ 
reer, he took the degree of M.D. at the University 
of Maryland in 1875 aT1 d then devoted two years 
to post-graduate work at Johns Hopkins, study¬ 
ing biology under Henry Augustus Rowland and 
Henry Newell Martin and chemistry under Ira 
Remsen. In 1877 he settled in New York City 
as a general practitioner on the East Side. Hav^ 



Jarvis 

ing obtained an assistantship in Professor Frank 
H. Bosworth’s nose and throat service in the 
Bellevue Hospital out-patient department he de¬ 
cided to confine his work to this specialty, al¬ 
though he always retained his interest in general 
medicine and in all ways sought to counteract 
the narrowing influence of specialism. He worked 
without any effort at publicity, without the pres¬ 
tige of a trip abroad, and with practically no 
backing, and in 1881 published a description of 
his famous “snare” or cold wire ecraseur which 
revolutionized the treatment of intranasal tu¬ 
mors. It was then that he was offered and ac¬ 
cepted a lectureship in laryngology in the medi¬ 
cal department of the University of the City of 
New York (later New York University) and in 
1886 he was given a professorship. 

From the early eighties until the failure of his 
health, Jarvis* career was marked by a series 
of innovations in the diagnosis and treatment of 
nasal and laryngeal diseases. None was of the 
importance of his snare and some would have 
come about at the hands of others, but he was 
first in the field. In 1884, soon after the intro¬ 
duction of cocaine, he reported his application of 
it as a local anesthetic and at about the same time 
he made use of Edison’s newly invented mignon 
lamp to illuminate the larynx. Three years later 
he applied electrically-driven drills to intranasal 
bone work. Other well-known devices which he 
invented were a laryngeal applicator for cauter¬ 
izing the ulcers of laryngeal tuberculosis and an 
operating nasal speculum. Every instrument in 
use in his office was in some way modified by 
him for his own work. During the years 1880- 
92 he contributed thirty-one papers to periodical 
literature on his special subjects, all brief with 
the exception of the section on intranasal sur¬ 
gery in Volume II of Charles Henry Burnett's 
System of Diseases of the Ear, Nose and Throat 
(1893) • After years of intense application Jarvis* 
health began to fail and he was found to be suf¬ 
fering from an obscure abdominal ailment. He 
resigned his active teaching in 1893 but was 
given an emeritus professorship. His death took 
place while he was visiting his brother at Wil- 
let’s Point, N. Y. It may be said of him that his 
honors came to him unsought, that he was quite 
indifferent to publicity and was very conserva¬ 
tive and modest in his claims,, allowing his in¬ 
novations to speak for themselves. 

{Trans. Am. Laryngol. Ass£, vol. XVII (1896); 
Medic. Record, Aug. 31, 189s:; Revue Internet, de 
Rhinol., Otolet Laryngol., Jufi# 1897 > Gen* A« Jarvis 
and others, The Jarvis Family (1897 ); “Biog. and 
Bibliog. of Wm. Chapman Jarvis*”'an anonymous MS. 
in the library of the N. Y. Aca$. of Medicine; N . Y. 
J^nes, Aug. 1, 1895.] \ E.P.