Hamilton County

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

HON. STANLEY MATTHEWS, justice of the Supreme court of the United States, is a native Cincinnatian, born July 21, 1824, son of Thomas J. and Isabella (Brown) Matthews. His father was a native of Leesburgh, Virginia; his mother a daughter of Colonel William Brown, a well-known pioneer of the Mi­ami country. She was a second wife, and Stanley was the first-born of this marriage. While he was yet an infant, the elder Matthews received an appointment as professor of mathematics in the Transylvania University, at Lex­ington, Kentucky, and removed thither, where he was al­so engaged as a civil engineer in some of the early rail­way enterprises of that State. In 1832 he was chosen a professor in the Woodward high school, and returned to Cincinnati. Young Matthews, although now but in his ninth year, became a pupil in the school, and remained an assiduous student there until 1839, when he ma­triculated as a junior in Kenyon college, from which he was graduated, after a single year's study, in August, 1840, when only seventeen years old. He began a course of law study in Cincinnati soon after, but in 1842 went to Spring Hill, Maury county, Tennessee, where he resided in the family school of the Rev. John Hud­son, a Presbyterian clergyman, which was known as the Union seminary, in whose management and instruction he assisted. Here he was united in marriage to Miss Mary, daughter of James Black, of the same county. While in this State he was admitted to practice at the bar, and opened an office at Columbia, on the Duck riv­er. He also engaged in political and general editorial writing for a weekly newspaper in that place called the Tennessee Democrat, his opinions then being in accord­ance with those indicated by its title. He remained in Columbia but a short time, however, returning to his native city in 1844. He was there again the next year admitted to practice, and formed a partnership with Sam­uel B. Keys and Mr. Isaac C. Collins, he, although as yet scarcely of age, becoming the head of the firm of Matthews, Keys & Collins. He was soon, through the influence of Judge W. B. Caldwell, then on the bench, appointed assistant prosecuting attorney for a single term of court, which proved a somewhat important stepping stone in his early advancement. He had become thor­oughly converted to the principles and policy of the an­ti-slavery agitation through the writings of Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, who was then conducting the Cincinnati Daily Herald, and when Dr. Bailey went to Washington to es­tablish the National Era in 1846, Mr. Matthews suc­ceeded to the editorial management of the Herald, re­maining in charge until the winter of 1848-9. His journalistic career had naturally given him some influ­ence and prominence in politics, and at the legislative session of that winter—the same at which Governor Sal­mon P. Chase was elected United States Senator—he was chosen clerk to the House of Representatives. In 1850 he returned to the practice of his profession in the Queen City, and the next year, while still less than thirty years old, was elected a judge of the court of common pleas. This position he resigned on the first of January, 1853, from inadequacy of salary, and joined his former preceptor at the law in the formation of the firm of Worthington & Matthews, which partnership lasted about eight years. At the fall election of 1855 he was elected to the State senate, and served through his two-years term. In 1858 he was appointed by President Buchanan United States attorney for the southern district of Ohio, but resigned soon after the accession of President Lincoln. To the outbreak of the war of the Rebellion he had been a consistent Democrat, with anti-slavery convictions; but thereafter identified himself with the Republican party, in whose faith he has since steadily reposed. Soon after the great conflict began he tendered his services to the Government through Governor Dennison, and was by him appointed lieutenant colonel of the Twenty-third regiment Ohio volunteer infantry, the same notable com­mand of which W. S. Rosecrans was colonel and Ruther­ford B. Hayes major. The regiment was then equipping and drilling at Camp Chase, but soon took the field in western Virginia. Lieutenant Colonel Matthews re­mained with it through the summer and fall campaign of 1861, and in October was promoted to a full colonelcy, and assigned to the Fifty-first Ohio infantry. With this he reported to General Buell at Louisville, and served under him and other commanders of the Army of the Cumberland until April, 1863, when, while absent in the field, he was elected by his fellow-citizens at home a judge of the supreme court of Cincinnati, and resigned his commission to accept this distinguished office. This he also resigned about a year thereafter, for the same cause which induced him to leave the bench of the common pleas. While in the Superior court, his colleagues were the eminent Judges Storer and Hoadly. Judge Mat­thews now remained a private practitioner, in large and lucrative business, until the summer of 1876, when he was nominated for Congress, but defeated at the fall election by a very small majority. This, it was confidently believed, had been obtained by fraud, and he served notice of contest upon his competitor, General Henry B. Banning. Greater things were in store for-him, however, than success in a contest for a seat in the lower house of Congress. Upon the appointment of Senator John Sher­man to the Secretaryship of the Treasury, in the cabinet of President Hayes, Judge Matthews was triumphantly elected to his seat in the United States Senate, General Garfield and other prominent gentlemen in the canvass withdrawing in his favor. Meanwhile, however, in Feb­ruary, 1877, Judge Matthews was called to make one of his most noteworthy public appearances, either profes­sionally or politically, as counsel for President-elect Hayes, before the electoral commission, in session at Washing­ton, to determine the questions raised by the election of the preceding year and the meetings of the electoral college. His argument on this occasion was one of the most masterly submitted to the commission, and justly added to the fame of its author.
At the expiration of his senatorial term, the Demo­crats having returned to power in the State Legislature and chosen the Hon. George H. Pendleton as his suc­cessor, he returned to private life, from which he was again summoned in the early part of 1881, by an appointment, first by President Hayes and then by President Garfield, to a place upon the Federal Supreme Bench. After some delay, caused mainly by the mem­orable dead lock in the United States Senate in the spring of that year, he was confirmed, and took his seat among his peers as a worthy representative of the first lawyers of the land. In his own State, it is needless to say, Justice Matthews has long shone as a luminary of the first mag­nitude at the bar, as well as in political and social life. For logical power, profound and varied learning, rare abilities of argument and persuasion, and high personal character, his has for more than a generation been clarum et venerabile nomen. A Presbyterian in his faith and de­nominational connection, he has upon occasions been eminently serviceable to the church and the country, as when, at the general assembly of 1864, in session at Newark, New Jersey, he wrote, presented, and secured the adoption of a committee report, with appended reso­lutions, which placed the Presbyterian church of the north squarely upon the platform of emancipation. The Queen City is justly proud of his character, his record, his name and fame.
Justice Matthews has had ten children, of whom but five survive—William Mortimer, Jeanie, Eva, Grace, and Paul Matthews.

COLONEL JOHN RIDDLE, of Cincinnati, was one of the most notable characters of the early day in the Miami purchase. He was of Scotch descent, but was a resident of New Jersey, whence he emigrated to this country in 1790, settling first in the little hamlet of Cincinnati. His earlier career in this place is noticed with some fullness in the annals of Cin­cinnati in this volume. He was five feet ten inches high, large and strong-boned, weighing two hundred and twenty-five pounds, and a man of herculean strength and great firmness of purpose, but withal of gentle disposition and rare kindness to the poor, as many persons still liv­ing can testify. He died at his homestead in the Mill Creek valley, near (the site of it now in) Cincinnati, on the old Hamilton road, at the age of eighty-seven, mourned by all who knew him. He left a brief memoir of the principal events of his life, which was printed in a pamphlet. It is now very scarce, and the following has been kindly copied for this volume by his grandson, Mr. John L. Riddle :

MEMOIR OF COLONEL JOHN RIDDLE.

In the month of April, 1778, I was called out, and entered the service of the United States at Elizabeth-town, New Jersey, on a tour of six weeks; also a cam­paign in the months of June and July the same year, when the British retired from Philadelphia, and passed through New Jersey to Sandy Hook. Was in a skirmish at the draw-bridge below Trenton, and at the battle of Monmouth, where there were six or seven hundred dead and wounded laid on the ground; I was com­manded by Colonel Frelinghuysen, afterward General Frelinghuysen, in the months of September and October. The same year I served another campaign at Elizabethtown, under Colonel Frelinghuysen and Captain William Logan. In the year 1782 I followed privateering under Captain Hiler (a brave and patriotic man), and sailed from New Brunswick, coasting around Sandy Hook and Long Island, as far as Cape May. The first vessel we captured was a sloop-of-war carrying two guns, having boarded her in the night and ransomed her for four hundred dollars. Same night boarded and took a six-teen-gun cutter, mounting ten eighteen-pounders and six six-pounders, having captured her in the midst of the | British fleet, then lying at Sandy Hook; after running j the prize past the guard-ship, up the bay towards Amboy, we ran her aground on a sandbar in the night. The next morning took off her fifty prisoners, and everything else we could, and then set fire to her magazine and blew her up. She was a double-decker, fitted out with provisions, ammunition, etc., for a cruise, with the in­tention of harassing and destroying our vessels. As we understood from the prisoners a hundred men were to have been put on board the day after we captured her; thirty of us boarded her. On another night the captain and fourteen of us, who had volunteered our ser­vices, sailed up the Narrows in New York bay, in a whale-boat, and on our return boarded a schooner, which we ransomed for four hundred dollars, and returned to our gunboats in Solsbury river, without injury or the loss of a single life. We had two skirmishes on Long Island; during the contest one man fell backward in my arms, mortally wounded. In one of these affairs, in our at­tack and defence, we came across a store of dry goods, etc, belonging to the British, the whole of which we car­ried away. On another occasion Captain Story, from Woodbridge, with a gun and whale boat, fell in with us in Solsbury river. Captains Hiler and Story, ascending the heights, observed four vessels at a distance, moored close to the Highlands, termed London traders—one of them, however, being an armed schooner, carrying eight guns, used as a guard-ship to protect the other three. There being a calm, and the tide being against them, we ran out on them, within a short distance of the British fleet. A severe cannonading commenced on both sides; at last the schooner having struck we captured the other two without difficulty. The guard-ship by this time coming up, poured her shot on us like hail, one shot cutting off the mast of our whale-boat, just above our heads; but at last we succeeded in running the schooner on a sand­bar, where we burnt her in view of the fleet; the others were bilged and driven on the beach. Not long after the commander of the whale boat, myself and another man, in the night, took a craft laden with calves, poultry, eggs, butter, etc., going to the British fleet. A prize of this kind, at the present day, would be considered of small amount; but at that time it was far otherwise to troops in a starving condition. After running out of Solsbury river, we attacked a large sloop and two schooners, one of them armed with two three-pounders. They gave us a warm reception. After a running fire of some time we came up with the schooner, and, when about to board her, Captain Hiler, damned the captain, said that if he put the match to another gun he should have no quarter. No sooner said, however, than the British captain seized the match from one of his men and directed a shot himself, which, owing to the rolling of the sea, did no execution. By force of our oars we soon were near enough to board, when Captain Hiler, springing aboard of the British vessel, aimed a blow at the head of the captain, who, springing backward, escaped, the sword merely passing down his breast Captain Hiler immediately made another pass which, the other receiving on his arm, saved his life, and then cried for quarter, which was granted him. After taking the sloop and two schooners, we sailed round the Jersey shore, where, having discovered another sail out at sea, our Captain cried out, "Men, yonder is another sail; we must have that." Springing to our oars as hard as we were able we came up with her, boarded her, and found her to be a prize that the British had taken at the capes, off the Delaware, and were sending her to New York. Three privateers coming up, which had been dispatched from the fleet in pursuit of us, we were ob­liged to cut and run, carrying with us the schooner last boarded, beaching the others (loaded with tar and tur­pentine), and running her into Sherk river. The next day we returned under British colors, and, coming along­side the fleet off Sandy Hook, dropped sail and ran into Solsbury. The same evening we passed through the narrow passage between Sandy Hook and the High­lands about sunset, when we spied a craft going across to the guard-ship, in pursuit of which our captain im­mediately sent the whale-boat. But perceiving a line of British soldiers marching down the beach, with the in­tention of waylaying us at the Narrows, we rowed to shore and landed fifteen men, who were to attack in the rear, the British having in the meantime crossed the beach on the side we lay with our boat. We were but thirty strong, including the fifteen we had landed; the enemy about seventy. While we were looking over the beach for them from our vessel, they came suddenly round a point within pistol-shot of us. The first thing we knew was a volley from a platoon, having come up in a solid column. Twelve of our men fired with muskets, and in such quick succession that the barrels began to burn our hands, the other three managed a four-pounder, which the captain ordered to be loaded with langrage, crying out: "Boys, land, land; we will have them all!" When the four-pounder went off, accompanied with the fire of our musketry, we raised the yell. An opening by our four-pounder being made through their column the enemy broke and ran, and the fifteen men before landed happening to come up, charged and took the captain and nine of his men. In fact every day at Sandy Hook af­forded a skirmish of some kind or other, either with small arms or cannon. At Toms river inlet we were twice nearly cast away; once at Hogg island inlet. On two occasions we narrowly escaped being taken prisoners by two different frigates; one the Fair American. Once in coming up from Sandy Hook to Amboy, with two gunboats and a whale-boat, Captain Hiler commanding, being in charge of a British gunboat, we ran in between an enemy's brig and a galley, that carried an eighteen-pounder in her bow; the gunboat had struck, but, before we were able to board her, an eighteen-pound ball passed through one of our gunboats, which obliged us to make the best of our way to the Jersey shore; and getting every thing out of the boat, under a continual fire of cannon and small arms (which lasted until 9 o'clock at night), we left her to the British, our ammunition be­ing all spent.

After peace I returned home and followed the trade of a blacksmith until the year 1790. In the spring of that year I sold out, and came, about the close of October, to what is now Cincinnati, but at the time pretty much in woods. Having cleared a four-acre lot situate about a mile from the river, in the year 1791, I was the first that raised a crop of wheat between the two Miamis. While attending church the settlers rested on their guns to be ready on the first alarm from the Indians. In the spring of 1791, while occupied with clearing the said lot I ran a narrow chance of losing my scalp. Joseph Cutter was taken in a clearing adjoining mine, and a Mr. VanCleve was killed at a corner of my lot. The Indians were con­stantly skulking around us, murdering the settlers or robbing the stables.

From General St. Clair I received an ensign's com­mission; was afterwards promoted to a lieutenantcy; next chosen captain of the company; then major, and com­manded the militia at Cincinnati and Columbia, seven miles up the river, during the time of Wayne's campaign. Afterwards elected colonel, and had the honor to com­mand the troops at Greenville during the treaty held with the Indians, General Harrison and General Cass being commissioners. Soon after the war I resigned my commission to General James Findlay. The time that elapsed from my appointment as ensign until elected a colonel, was between twenty and twenty-two years ; and during the whole of this period I never failed parading but one day, and that on account of sickness.