GILL, William B., telegraph manager, was born in Philadelphia, Dec. 27, 1847. His first earnings came by selling newspapers before school hours. At fourteen he entered the service of the Independent and Inland Telegraph Co., and soon after became a messenger boy for the American Telegraph Co. From 1866 to 1881 he was with the Western Union Co., rising through all the grades to the superintendency. On the reorganization of the companies in 1881 he resigned and accepted a contract to build the Bankers' and Merchants' Telegraph line between Philadelphia and New York. Completing this within four months, he took another to erect a line to Pittsburg for the American Rapid Co. After a few months as manager of the Mutual Union Co., he became, in July, 1882, general superintendent of the Delaware and Atlantic Telegraph and Telephone Co. This post he resigned on assuming, early in 1884, the superintendency of the sixth district of the Western Union Telegraph Co. This district embraces Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, and extends from Jersey City to Cumberland, Md., and Altoona, Pa. Mr. Gill is also vice-president and general manager of the Philadelphia Local Telegraph Co., vice-president of the Philadelphia Bell Telephone Co., and a director in a number of local telegraph and telephone companies in sundry towns within his district. To attend to so much business requires some knowledge of common law, and no little executive ability. An instance of the latter was afforded by the great fire in the Western Union building in New York, July 18, 1890. Two hours after it broke out Mr. Gill had loaded a special car at Philadelphia with machinery for an operatingroom outfit, and while the engines were still playing on the flames, he arrived on the ground with a large force of men ready with their switch-boards, quadruplex instruments, etc., to be placed wherever designated. For this service he received the thanks of the company. He has been director of the board of state charities, commissioner from the state to the Paris Exposition of 1889, and controller of the Board of Public Education from the 32d ward of Philadelphia.

WBBill

MCDOWELL, Joseph, member of congress and soldier, was born in Winchester, Va., Feb. 25, 1756. His father, Joseph McDowell, who had emigrated from Ireland in 1730, finally settled at Quaker Meadows, N. C. Joseph, who was distinguished from a cousin of the same name as "Quaker Meadows Joe," entered military service at an early age in the campaigns against the Indians on the frontier. In the revolutionary forces he served under his brother Charles, commander of the district, and fought in all the battles of western North Carolina that followed the invasion of the British in 1780. His brother's troops having disbanded, Joseph was made major and commanded the North Carolina militia in the battle of King's Mountain. He was subsequently made general of militia. Entering the service of the state at the close of the war, he was sent to the house of commons in 1787, serving until 1792. In 1788 he was a delegate to the North Carolina constitutional convention, in which he was a leader of the opposition that rejected the federal constitution. He passed from the house of commons to congress in 1792, where for seven years he was an active opponent of the federalists, serving in 1797 as a commissioner for settling the boundary line between Tennessee and North Carolina. He

wielded a strong influence as a republican leader in his section of the state and died in Burke county, August, 1801.

He

BURKE, John William, clergyman and publisher, was born in Watkinsville, Ga., Oct. 1, 1826. His father, Richard E. Burke, was born near Clonrael, Ireland, and his mother, Mary Elliott, was a native Georgian. He had an academic education. He began business life at fifteen years of age, with work in Athens, Ga., in the newspaper office of the "Southern Banner," of which Albon Chase was proprietor. When twenty-two years old he went to Cassville, Ga., and started the Cassville "Standard." This was in the time of such leaders as Gen. W. T. Wofford, Judges James Milner and A. R. Wright, Hon. Warren Akin, Abda Johnson, Dr. Underwood and Dr. Word, and when the supreme court was held at Cassville. He ran the paper until 1854, when he sold out and joined the Georgia Methodist conference, and traveled as an itinerant preacher until 1857, when he was sent to Macon by the conference, and placed in charge of the book and publishing department, and has been there ever since. published the "Christ: n Advocate" for twenty-five years. Mr. Burke has built up the largest publishing house in the South, and has had a branch house in Atlanta for five years. He has done this while doing regular and laborious church work, holding every position up to presiding elder, and yearly performing ministerial labor. He was grand master of the order of Odd Fellows in Georgia for three years, and was an alderman in the city council of Macon for two years, and mayor pro tem., and chairman of the finance committee. His house has published a large number of important works including "Georgia Supreme Court Reports," the "Georgia Code, Bacon's, Harris's and Jackson's Digests, the legislative records and nublic laws for years, Mr. Burke being public printer of the state, besides publishing religious, musica. ad educational books and a host of volumes for noted authors, like Goulding's "Young Marooners," Sparks's "Memories of Fifty Years," Judge Longstreet's "William Mitten," Dagg's Christian Works," Mell's "Parliamentary Practice," Dickson's "Farming," etc. Mr. Burke is one of Georgia's remarkable business men, of vast energy and tireless enterprise, thoroughly practical, of unvarying suavity, and never abating his ardent Christian zeal and interest. He married, in 1848, Caroline A. White, of Athens, and has six children.

BROOKS, David, member of congress, was born in 1756. He entered the revolutionary army in 1776, commanding the Pennsylvania line as lieutenant, and was made prisoner at Fort Washington the following Nov. 16th. At the close of two years he was exchanged, and was given the responsible position of assistant clothier-general, in which his valuable services secured him the friendship of Gen. Washington. After the close of the war he represented New York city, and later Dutchess county, in the legislature, serving for six years. He was elected to congress in May, 1797, and served until the following June, when he was appointed commissioner for making a treaty with the Seneca Indians, which was signed where Utica now stands. During the sixteen years following he was first judge of Dutchess county, and was an officer of the customs at the time of his death, which occurred Aug. 30, 1838.

DUTCHER, Silas Belden, banker, was born July 12, 1829, at Springfield, Otsego Co., N. Y. On his father's side he is of German and Puritan ancestry. His mother's ancestors were from Holland. His grandfather, John Dutcher, removed from Dover, Dutchess Co., to Cherry Valley soon after the close of the revoltionary war. His great-grandfather on his mother's side, Capt. Peter Low, removed from New Jersey to Cherry Valley about the same time, having received a tract of land in that heavily wooded country for his services in the war. Here his father, Parcefor C. Dutcher, and his mother, Johannah Low Frink, were born. Soon after their marriage his parents removed to Springfield and purchased a farm on the shore of Otsego lake, where Silas B. Dutcher was born. His education was acquired in the common schools

republican, and was engaged as a speaker in every campaign down to 1888. His duties as president of a large financial institution prevented him from taking an active part in that canvass, but an earnest appeal from the interior of the state was responded to by his making a few speeches. He was chairman of the young men's republican committee of the city of New York in 1858 and 1859; president of the Wide-Awake organization in that city in 1860, and for four years chairman of the Kings county republican committee. He was for many years a member of the state committee, and in 1876 chairman of its executive committee. He was several times a delegate to republican national conventions. For four years he was a member of the Brooklyn Board of Education. He was never an applicant for any office he ever held, either city, state or national. He has always taken an active interest in church and Sunday-school work, and for ten years was superintendent of the Sunday-school of the Twelfth street Reformed church of Brooklyn, which grew during his superintendency to be one of the largest schools

nary. From the age of sixteen to twenty-two he taught school winters and worked on the farm summers. From 1851 to 1855 he engaged in railroad business. In the latter year he removed to New York city and engaged in mercantile business, in which he remained until 1869, doing a large and profitable business, and possessing at all times the friendship and confidence of his customers. During this period he had but one lawsuit and that was decided in his favor. He believed that he could generally settle questions in dispute in which he was interested better than a court and jury. In 1860 he was chosen a supervisor of the city and county of New York. He held the office a year and a half, and then resigned because he could not give the time requisite for a faithful discharge of the duties. Before his resignation was acted upon he removed to Brooklyn, to make its acceptance certain. In November, 1868, without his solicitation, he was appointed supervisor of internal revenue. With great reluctance he accepted the office, which he held for four years. In 1870 he was nominated as a candidate for congress in the second district of New York. Although not elected, the majority of his democratic opponent was about 4,000 less than at the previous election. Near the close of 1872 President Grant appointed him pension agent in New York city. On the first day of the quarter he usually opened the office at two o'clock in the morning, that he might accommodate the veterans who gathered at the office door soon after midnight. This office he resigned in 1875 to accept a position in one of the prominent life insurance companies. Early in 1877 he was appointed appraiser of the port of New York by President Grant, which office he held until called by Gov. Cornell in 1880 to the office of superintendent of public works of the state of New York. At the close of Gov. Cornell's administration he returned to Brooklyn. President Arthur desired to appoint him commissioner of internal revenue, but he declined the position, alleging as a reason that he must devote the remainder of his life to business that would enable him to better provide for his family. He was soon after elected president of the Union Dime Savings Institution in New York, of which he had been a trustee from the date of its charter in 1859. The institution was very prosperous under his administration, and he continued in the office of president until he was called to the presidency of the Hamilton Trust Co., of Brooklyn, in 1891. At an early age he took an active interest in politics, and was a speaker, at the age of nineteen, for Gen. Zachary Taylor in the campaign of 1848. From the organ ization of the republican party he was a zealous

and during forty years of business life has not taken a vacation.

SIBLEY, Solomon, pioneer and jurist, was born at Sutton, Worcester Co., Mass., Oct. 7, 1769. He became a lawyer, migrated to Marietta, O., in 1795, next to Cincinnati, and in 1797 settled at Detroit, of which there was then little more than the fort, erected in 1778. The first legislature of the northwest territory met in 1799, and he was one of the members. Michigan was set off as a separate territory in 1805; Sibley was a delegate to congress from it in 1820-23, and a judge of its supreme court 1824-36. He died at Detroit Apr. 4, 1846.

BRADFORD, Ellen Knight, author, was born at Ypsilanti, Mich. When quite young her parents removed to Mt. Clemens, Mich., and later to Detroit. Here and at Williston Seminary, Easthampton, Mass., she received her education. She attained great proficiency in music, and taught in the Young Ladies' Institute in Marshall, Mich., in the N. Y. Juvenile Asylum, and in the Hudson Vale Institute in Lansingburg, N. Y. Following the death of her mother she became a member of the family of her uncle, H. G. Knight, of Easthampton, Mass., and was there married in 1865 to Rev. J. H. Bradford, who entered the army from Yale College and served as chaplain during the civil war. Mrs. Bradford wrote her first poem at the age of ten, and was for many years a frequent contributor to various newspapers and maga zines. Among the best known of her poems are the hymn "Over the Line," "Wearing the Blue," " 'Elberon," written at the death of President Garfield, and the Easthampton" Centennial" poem. "Songs of Real Children' was a collection printed, but not for general circulation. Mrs. Bradford's name is also well known in connection with the celebrated and original Ben Hur Tableaux, which, being suggested as an entertainment for the First Congregational church in Washington, D. C., were first arranged by her for its benefit. From this she was prevailed upon to present throughout the entire country these unique scenic representations which have been pronounced "the most classically artistic work ever seen upon the amateur stage.' Mrs. Bradford's residence since her marriage has been in Hudson, Wis., in Westboro and Palmer, Mass., in Middletown, Conn., and during the past ten years in Washington, D. C.

Cellen Knight Bradford

RICHARDSON, Charles H., manufacturer, was born at Northfield, Mass., Jan. 21, 1843. The youngest of nine children, he was early orphaned, and began to be self-supporting at nine. From 1854 to 1859 he worked on a farm near Lowell, and in 1859 entered a machine-shop as an apprentice. In April, 1861, he threw down his tools, enlisted in the "Old Sixth" Massachusetts, and was with them in the famous march through Baltimore Apr. 19th. He was in the army four years and five months, serving in the department of the Gulf under Butler and Banks until ordered north in 1864, and then before Petersburg, in the defence of Washington when threatened by Early, and in the Shenandoah Valley campaign under Sheridan. Mustered out in September, 1865, as a lieutenant, he returned to the Lowell machine-shop, where he finished his apprenticeship and worked for two years as a journeyman. He began his manufacturing life as an overseer of the Lawrence Corporation in September, 1869, and rose by degrees, becoming assistant superintendent in 1881. After some months in charge of a mill at Newark, N. J., he went back to Lowell as agent of the Appleton Co. He became a Mason in 1867, and has held the highest offices in lodge, chapter, council and commandery, with sundry posts in the grand lodge, chapter, and council of Massachusetts. He is also honorary past-grand master of the grand council of Louisiana F. and A. M. He has been twice an alderman of Lowell.

What. H.Khansons

SMITH, Mary, soldier, was born in Ohio in 1843. At the beginning of the civil war she was employed in a farmer's family in Ohio. During the fall preceding the attack on Fort Sumter, her father, with his family, had removed to Iowa, with the understanding that Mary was to join them in the spring. She did not start, however, for home until in September. When she reached Muscatine she found an infantry regiment in the barracks in that city, and she suddenly decided to go to war. She assumed male attire, burned her feminine garments and papers, and, without notifying her family, enlisted in the 24th Iowa. She was then eighteen, of large and heavy figure, and though her girlish appearance excited some comment, she was so prompt in the performance of her duties, and so useful in cooking and the nursing of the sick, that she soon became a favorite with officers and men. She went through all the campaigns with the regiment, and received only one slight wound in the hand, caused by a minie ball at Sabine's Cross Roads. She voted for president in 1864, and was mustered out of the service with her companions in arms at the close of the war. Upon her discharge she procured female apparel, obtained work in Illinois, and when the tan of five years' exposure in soldiering had worn off, and she had become used to woman's ways again, she returned to her family. From them she received a most joyous welcome, and to their questions she replied that she had been honestly employed. Of her story of soldier life they were most incredulous, until her father wrote to, and called on, Adjt.-Gen. Baker of Des Moines, when he found the records confirming Mary's account in every particular. When in the army she had saved her pay, several hundred dollars of which she invested in land which has rapidly increased in value, so that

to-day she is very well off. The remainder of the money she used to educate herself. She has since married a man who was in the same regiment.

PARKER, Amasa Junius, jurist, was born at Ellsworth, parish of Sharon, Litchfield Co., Conn., June 2, 1807, where his father, Rev. Daniel Parker, was for twenty years pastor of the Congregational church and parish. His parents removed to the state of New York when he was about nine years old, and he was trained under the personal supervision of his father. In 1823 he was appointed principal of the Hudson (N. Y.) Academy. In 1825 he presented himself at Union College, and successfully passed all the examinations for the degree of B.A., and was graduated with the class of that year. In May, 1827, he resigned his principalship, and devoted himself to the study of law under the direction of John W. Edmonds, at that time a celebrated lawyer, and later a judge. Mr. Parker then removed to Delhi, N. Y., and completed his legal course in the office of his uncle, Amasa Parker, a leading member of the Delaware county bar. In October, 1828, he was admitted to practice and became a partner of his uncle. The firm of A. & A. J. Parker proved to be one of the most eminent and successful in the state. The junior member practiced in all the state courts, and was familiar with the cir

cuits in Delaware, Greene, Amase & Parkii

Ulster, Schoharie, and even
Broome, Tioga and Tompkins
counties. In fact, it was said of him, when he
was called from the bar to the bench, that he had
tried more cases in the circuit courts than any
lawyer of his age in the state. Mr. Parker was a
democrat all his life. His remarkable skill as a law-
yer, his great eloquence, and his personal popular-
ity, fitted him for political leadership. In 1833 he
was elected to the state assembly without opposition.
Here he distinguished himself especially by his schol-
arly attainments, which led to his being chosen by
the legislature a member of the board of regents of
the University of the State of New York, a post
which he held for ten years, being the youngest per-
son ever elected a member of that body. In 1834
he was appointed district attorney of Delaware coun-
ty, and served three years. In 1836 he was nomi-
nated for the twenty-fifth congress to represent the
counties of Broome and Delaware, and was elected.
His congressional career was marked by boldness,
firmness, fairness, accuracy and dignity. In 1844 he
became judge of the third circuit and vice-chan-
cellor, and removed to Albany, N. Y., where he con-
tinued to reside to the time of his death. Judge
Parker was on the bench during the celebrated anti-
rent trials, when at one time, in 1845, 240 persons,
who had been arrested and indicted, were in custody
and awaiting trial at the oyer and terminer at Delhi.
Judge Parker disposed of all these cases in three
weeks. He was elected to the supreme court, serv-
ing one term, during one year of which he sat on the
bench of the court of appeals. In 1856 Judge Park-
er was nominated as the democratic candidate for
governor, being opposed by John A. King, republi-
can, and Erastus Brooks, native American. The
combination of a third party candidate and a repub-
lican tidal wave defeated Judge Parker, who, how-
ever, ran about 10,000 ahead of the Buchanan elect-
oral ticket. The president later appointed him U. S.
district attorney for the southern district of New
York, but he refused the position, as he also did that

ADAMS, Heury Herschel, iron merchant, was born at Collamer, O., July 9, 1844, in the eighth generation from Henry Adams who settled in Braintree, Mass., in 1634, and from whom John Adams of the revolution was directly descended. Henry Adams, eldest son of the first Henry, was born in England in 1604 emigrated to Medfield, and was killed by the Indians in his own doorway during their attack on Medfield, in 1676. His lineal descendants, Moses, James, James 2d and Benoni, settled in Sherborn, Mass. The family was connected with the artillery service in the revolutionary war. Lowell L. Adams, son of Benoni and father of Henry Herschel, was born at Dudley, Mass., served in the militia during the war of 1812, and removed to the Western Reserve of the Connecticut Land Company in Ohio. Henry Herschel, the subject of this sketch, attended Shaw Academy for a time, but owing to the death of his father was compelled to leave school at the age of thirteen and seek employment, which was obtained at Cleveland, O., where he remained until the civil war broke out. He entered the volunteer service at seventeen years of age, enlisting in Company G of the 125th Ohio volunteers, Col. Emerson Opdyke commanding. While at the front, two days before the battle of Chickamauga, he was bearer of the first despatch from Col. Anderson, apprising Rosecrans that Longstreet had joined Hood. Af ter the battle of Chickamauga he was stationed at Nashville, Tenn., and appointed special agent in charge of the military mails for the division of the Mississippi; and in 1864, having been taken prisoner at Athens, Ala., by the Confederate Gen. Forest, he was sent to Cahaba, Ala., a Confederate prison pen sixty miles from Andersonville, where he remained three months. At the close of the war he returned to Cleveland, O., and engaging in the iron business, soon distinguished himself as an expert, and won a national reputation as an iron merchant. His report to the Cleveland Board of Trade on "American Shipping and England's Trade Policy" was ordered printed by the board. The report was an elaborate review of American shipping and England's tariff legislation and impost laws. He was a member of the board of education at Cleveland, O., was delegate in 1881 to the Boston "free ship convention and was chosen one of a committee to lay the proceedings of this convention before the senate at Washington-by which presentation the famous "free ship" bill was defeated. In 1882 he removed to the East and became associated with the Coleraine Iron Co. at Redington, Pa., and three years later settled in New York city, engaging there in the iron business. He is a member of the Ohio Society, Lawyers' Social Club, Thatcher Chapter and Forest City Blue Lodge of Cleveland, O., and La Fayette Post of New York, and in 1890 was elected president of the Columbus and Hocking Coal and Iron Co., representing a syndicate of six of the largest coal and iron companies in Ohio, with an output of one million tons of coal per annum. In June, 1891, he was elected president of the Henry H. Adams Co. (incorporated), a stock company carrying on a large iron business. In October, 1891, he was appointed general Eastern agent for the De Bardeleben Coal and Iron Co., of Alabama for the disposition of the product of their seven modern blast furnaces. He established a national reputation for the celebrated "Norway'

iron which he handled for twenty years. In 1867 he married Helen E. Redington, of Cleveland, O. His eldest daughter, Mrs. J. D. Barrett, is a graduate of Wellesley College. He has one younger daughter living and a son, H. H. Adams, Jr.

John H. Hintors

HINTON, John Henry, physician, was born in New York city Jan. 1, 1827. His mother belonged to the old Holland stock, which was conspicuous in the colonial days. She was a Frazer, and her mother was an Edsall. His maternal great-uncle, Col. Richard Edsall, was an officer in the war of the revolution. Com. De Kay, who took the Macedonia to Ireland during the famine there, was another relative on his mother's side. Dr. Hinton, after receiving a thorough education in the elementary branches, became a clerk in his father's drugstore. A promise made to his mother at the age of fifteen that he would adopt the medical profession, led him to use every means to accomplish this end, and while serving in other capacities he continued his medical studies. He studied and practiced dentistry for three years, and was graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1852. He was for two years an assistant in the New York Hospital, and after practicing for two years, went abroad, and continued his medical studies in Paris. On his return he resumed his connection with the New York Hospital as resident surgeon. He then accepted the position of assistant in the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary with Dr. Agnew, and remained with him for several years. He was prosector with Prof. Alfred C. Post in the Medical Department of the New York University for several years, attending surgeon in the Presbyterian Hospital for four years, and consulting surgeon for two years; has been consulting surgeon in the Institution for the Blind since 1858. In 1884 he treated successfully a case of a pistol-shot wound of a young man who was shot through the body from behind, the ball passing through the stomachi, of which there is no similar case of recovery on record. Special mention is made of this case in the "Transactions of the New York State Medical Association," Vol. I., p. 482. He was among the first to treat diseases of the eye as a specialty, and particular mention is made of his work in the Institution for the Blind "Annual Report for 1858," where he was attending surgeon. He has been connected with both the Northern and Eastern Dispensaries, also with the Lying-in Asylum. A man strongly sympathetic in his nature, and deeply affected by the suffering of others, he has always been reluctant to accept any payment for his services, and his life has been largely devoted to the amelioration of the sufferings of others, for which he has declined to receive any compensation. He is a member of the New York State Medical Association; life member and treasurer of the Society for the Relief of Widows and Orphans of Medical Men; treasurer of the Pathological Society since 1876. He was acting assistant. surgeon of the United States army for ten months during 1863. He was one of the original members of the Union League; a life member of the New York Historical Society; life member of the Geographical Society; life member of the Academy of Sciences, and was its treasurer for twenty years; member of the Players' Club, of the Grolier Club, St. Nicholas Society; member and treasurer of the Folk Lore Society, and member of the Society for the Advancement of Science.