Ceralvo Giddings McMillen (1846-1922)

From The Hotel World, May 13, 1922.

  One of the more exotically named mayors of a major Ohio city, Ceralvo Giddings McMillen served two terms as mayor of Dayton and gained additional repute in business, being the owner and operator of hotels in Dayton, Columbus, and Pennsylvania. The son of Asa and Sarah (Brown) McMillen, Ceralvo Giddings "C.G." McMillen was born in Dayton on December 10, 1846. McMillen's curious name was highlighted in the Dayton Herald shortly after his election as mayor, which notes:

"Mayor McMillen has a historical given name--Ceralvo Giddings, called for Colonel [Luther] Giddings, who was a hero of the battle of Ceralvo, Mexico, early in the war with that country, when the army under General Zachary Taylor was on the victorious march to the City of Mexico, and which he shortly afterward captured, to close the war. Colonel Giddings was a prominent Dayton lawyer when the war broke out, and he promptly enlisted a company, and joined the Third Ohio Regiment, Colonel Chas. H. Brough. He was soon promoted to be Colonel, and he covered himself and command all over with glory at Ceralvo. Mayor McMillen, was, we believe, born on the day of the battle, and was named for the hero and his victorious battlefield."

  Born "on the site of the old workhouse, Sixth and Main streets", McMillen resided in that area for a number of years afterward and during the Civil War was a drummer boy, serving in the Union Army. McMillen's long connection to the Ohio hotel industry began in the 1860s, with his time as chief clerk of the Phillips House in Dayton. Recognized for his "courteous and gentlemanly deportment", McMillen later left that employ to take charge of the Neil House hotel in Columbus, where he remained for an indeterminate period. In the mid-1870s he married Ella Gebhart (1851-1927),  with who he had one daughter, Roxie (1878-1958).

  In the early 1880s, McMillen relocated to Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, where he was the owner of the Broeckerhoff House. After a period of remodeling and renovation, the hotel was reopened in January 1882. His connection to the Broeckerhoff extended until at least 1887, and during his residency in Bellefonte was acknowledged as an "experienced hotellist" and a gentleman "of refinement and culture besides." McMillen's time in Pennsylvania also saw him as the founder of the McMillen Troubadours, an instrumental and vocal group that disbanded in Chambersburg in late 1886.

  On March 31, 1887, C.G. McMillen became the owner of the Hotel Lancaster in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He continued work in Bellefonte and Lancaster until early 1888, when he took charge of the Hotel Albemarle, located in Pittsburg. His lengthy connection to the hotel business saw McMillen hold memberships in several hospitality-related fraternal groups, including the Ohio State Hotel Men's Association, the Greeter's of America, the United Commercial Travelers, and was a founder of the Hotel Clerks' Association. He also attained high rank in the Knights of Pythias, the Royal Arcanum, and the Knights Templar.

  By October 1888 McMillen had removed back to Dayton, and became manager of the Dickey House hotel. He was subsequently elected as a member of the Dayton school board, and in 1891 he and a number of other citizens organized the Dayton Metropolitan Musical Company, a "musical stock company" that would comprise thirty musicians and a military band. McMillen was elected as its president and manager, and in the spring of 1892 was elected as mayor of Dayton "by a plurality of two votes." 

From the Dayton Daily News, July 29, 1899.

  Early in his term McMillen served a brief period on the Dayton Board of Police Commissioners, and in 1894 was elected to a second term. He "effected many improvements in the sanitary conditions of the city" during the 1894-96 term, and after leaving office returned to work as manager of the Hotel Dickey. He continued to be active in the Knights of Pythias, attaining the rank of Major of the first battalion, Fourth Regiment. In the March 1898 Democratic primary he was a candidate for city police judge, but was defeated.

  Following the 1907 death of his sister Imogene (remarked as an eccentric by several papers), McMillen and other relatives began a search of her property, where she was supposed to have buried money and valuables. The party would locate over $14,000 in gold secreted in two buried jars in the cellar, and were remarked as having "attracted countrywide attention" for their search. On the site of the old McMillen home C.G. McMillen constructed the new Giddings Hotel, which opened in November 1910. The "strictly modern and fire-proof" hotel originally consisted of forty rooms complete with running water and showers, and in the spring of 1913 had two more stories added to the original structure.

   McMillen continued ownership of the Giddings Hotel until his death, which occurred at his Dayton home on April 27, 1922. He had been ill for four months prior to his death, and was survived by his wife and daughter. Following her death in 1927, Ellaa Gebhart McMillen was interred alongside her husband at the Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum in Dayton.

From the Hotel World, 1922.

Moncure Woodson Camper (1846-1923)

 Moncure W. Camper.

    A newspaper publisher based in both Virginia and Alabama, Moncure Woodson Camper was affiliated with journalism and publishing for a good majority of his seventy-six years, and that long lifespan also saw him become politically active, serving as Mayor of Fincastle, Virginia as well as a term in the Virginia House of Delegates. Following his time in the legislature, Camper moved to Alabama to continue in journalism and would serve as President of the Alabama Press Association several years after his resettlement.

   The son of Henry and Elizabeth Camper, Moncure Woodson Camper was born in Fincastle, Virginia on August 8, 1846, He attended schools native to Fincastle and shortly after graduating from the Fincastle Academy enlisted in the Confederate Army in May 1864. Joining a contingent of "home guards", Camper would later be transferred to Company D. of the Eleventh Virginia Infantry, serving in the brigade of General (and future Virginia Governor) James Lawson Kemper, who was himself a brigade commander under George Pickett. Camper's tenure in "Pickett's Division" saw him in "all its movements around Richmond and Petersburg" and he served with that unit until being discharged at Lynchburg, Virginia at the war's conclusion.

   After re-entering civilian life Camper saw a bright future for himself in newspaper publishing, and with a partner established the Fincastle Herald in 1866. He would hold the posts of editor and publisher and later bought out his partner's interest, continuing to run the paper alone until its sale in 1889. Camper married in February 1879 to Amelia "Minnie" Browne (1855-1930), a native of New Orleans. The couple were wed for nearly fifty years and had two children, Julia Hartwell (1879-1963) and Ambrose Brown (1881-1956)

   Camper entered politics in December 1875 when he was elected as Mayor of Fincastle, an office that he'd continue to hold until January 1881. In November 1883 Camper was elected as one of Botetourt County's representatives to the Virginia State House of Delegates by "a clean majority of over 900." Serving in the 1884-86 session, Camper sat on the committees on Elections, the Military, and Public Printing. 

   In 1889 Moncure Camper sold off his interest in the Fincastle Herald and moved to Florence, Alabama. After a period of gathering funds, Camper purchased the Florence Wave, of which he would serve as editor. Some months later he would sell off his interest in that paper and founded the Florence Times, which issued its first pages in 1890.

Portrait from the Notable Men of Alabama, Vol. II, 1904.

   Camper's prominent reputation and stewardship of the Florence Times led to his being named as President of the Alabama Press Association in 1895. His time in that post concluded in 1897 and in the following year was selected as one of two Lauderdale County delegates to the upcoming state constitutional convention, but due to the repeal "of the law providing for the revision of the constitution", the convention of 1898 never came to fruition. 

   Active in several civic groups in Florence, Camper served seven years as president of the Florence Business Men's League, was a director of the Florence Merchant's Bank, and was a past worshipful master in the local Masonic lodge. In the latter portion of his life Camper served as postmaster of Florence and after eight years in that role died in office on January 14, 1923, at age 76. Camper was subsequently memorialized by his contemporaries as a:

"Unusually attractive man who drew about him a large circle of friends. He gave himself modestly, but untiringly, to the betterment of his community and State, and he will be missed by all those who knew him."

   Camper's widow Minnie survived her husband by seven years, dying on July 7, 1930. Both Camper and his wife were interred at the Florence Cemetery, as are their two children. 

Omon Hoar Lawrence (1846-1893)

   We continue our stay in Massachusetts for today's profile on Worcester County banker and legislator Omon Hoar Lawrence. Sporting an interesting name (and even more impressive cheek whiskers), Lawrence was a man of means in Fitchburg during the late 19th century but sadly that prominence didn't carry over into many historical resources, as I could locate very few biographical works that mentioned him at any great length.

   Omon Hoar Lawrence was born in Brimfield, Massachusetts on April 3, 1846, one of eight children born to David Brainard (1800-1864) and Sarah Atwood Lawrence (1811-1895). Nothing has been found in regards to Lawrence's early years in Massachusetts or education and as an adolescent removed from Massachusetts to Galva, Illinois, where he found employment as an assistant cashier at the bank of L.W. Beck in that town. Lawrence also served as a notary public in Galva during his residency here and is listed as such in the below snippet from the 1871 edition of Rummel's Illinois Handbook.

  Omon Lawrence married on August 10, 1870, to Schenectady, New York native Josephine Van Dyke (born 1846) and they later became the parents of one son, Herbert Oman Lawrence (born 1871). Omon removed from Illinois back to Massachusetts, eventually settling in the city of Fitchburg in the early 1870s. Shortly after his resettlement, he and his younger brother Albert Brainard established a successful hardware business in that city. After leaving this business around 1875, Omon Lawrence was named as assistant cashier of the National Bank of Northborough, succeeding George Seaver, who had died some weeks previously. The 1921 work Northborough History notes that Lawrence moved on to the post of cashier in July 1875 and served in this position until resigning in April 1878.

   After leaving Northborough, Lawrence became involved with the Wachusett National Bank of Fitchburg, which had been incorporated in 1875. Lawrence became President of this bank in mid-1878 and served in this post until his death. During his presidency, Lawrence also held important positions in a number of other corporations, including being a director of the Wachusett Electric Light Company and the vice presidency of the Newburgh, New York-based Consumer's Gas Company. Being a successful businessman and banker in Worcester County also enabled Lawrence to purchase the palatial homestead below, located on Summer Street in Fitchburg.

From "Fitchburg, Massachusetts Past and Present" published in 1887.

   While experiencing remarkable success in both business and banking, Omon Lawrence also found distinction in public office as well, being elected to a term in the Massachusetts State House of Representatives in November 1882. Along with fellow Fitchburg native Harris C. Hartwell, Lawrence became one of two residents of that town elected to the legislature that year, and both took their seats in January 1883. During his brief term, Lawrence was named to the Joint Standing Committee on Railroads, and a roster from the 1883 legislative session bearing his name is shown below.

From the 1883 Acts and Resolves of the Massachusetts General Court.

   After leaving the legislature in 1884 Omon Lawrence returned to his earlier banking interests in Fitchburg, while also continuing in his position as vice president of the Consumer's Gas Company of Newburgh. Lawrence died at age 47 sometime in late 1893, with the Boston Globe noting that he had been ill with "nervous prostration" on several occasions before his death. It should also be noted that Lawrence's first name of "Omon" also has a variation in spelling as "Oman" in a number of sources of the time. The rare portrait of him shown above appeared in the earlier mentioned Fitchburg, Massachusetts Past and Present, originally published in 1887.

Pharcellus Dean Bridges (1846-1940), Pharcellus V. Crittenden (1846-1933)

   A lifelong Massachusetts resident, Pharcellus Dean Bridges was a prominent farmer and businessman in Franklin County who served three terms in the Massachusetts General Court. Aside from a brief biographical write-up in an 1894 edition of A Souvenir of Massachusetts Legislators (where the above portrait was located) little else could be found on Bridges' life, which extended to the grand old age of 93.

   Born in the town of Deerfield on December 21, 1846, Pharcellus was one of thirteen children born to Benjamin Franklin and Mary Hubbard Bridges. Educated in the common schools of Deerfield, Pharcellus later went on to study at the Deerfield Academy in the early 1860s. After reaching adolescence, Bridges moved to Connecticut where he became involved in the grocery business. He eventually returned to Massachusetts where he and his twin brother Marcellus "conducted the home farm, while also buying and selling farm produce." In addition to this, Bridges was also one of the foremost political and civic leaders in Deerfield, serving as a member of the board of selectmen and later on the board of Overseers of the Poor. Beginning in 1875 Bridges served for 36 years as a member of the Deerfield school board. The Souvenir of Massachusetts Legislators also lists him as being the Captain of Company H, Second Regiment Militia from 1876-1888. 

  Bridges was elected to his first term in the Massachusetts State Senate in 1877, representing the county of Franklin. He was returned to this office in 1885 and in 1894 was elected to his first term in the state house of representatives. It was remarked that Bridges was the "only representative from Deerfield who has been elected to the legislature for a third time for more than thirty years", and during his stint in the house held a seat on the committee on military affairs.

                    Pharcellus Bridges as he looked late in life, found via the Find-a-Grave website.

   After leaving the Massachusetts legislature in 1895, Bridges returned to farming and produce sales, later serving as President of the Board of Trustees for the Deerfield Academy. He died at the age of 93 on August 26, 1940, in Deerfield and was later interred at the Pine Nook Cemetery in that town.

   Rochester, New York resident Pharcellus V. Crittenden is another man with this odd first name who made himself known in the public forum. A lifelong New Yorker, Crittenden was born in the town of West Brighton on August 6, 1846, being the last of eight children born to Austin and Sarah Crittenden. 

  Pharcellus received his education in the Monroe County district schools and later began studying at the Rochester Commercial School. Shortly after graduating from the latter institution, he joined up with the H. Austin Brewster grocery house of Rochester, eventually becoming a full partner in this business. This company would later become known under the name Brewster-Crittenden Co., with Pharcellus serving as its president for a number of years. Crittenden married on October 12, 1879, to Frances Baker, who predeceased him in 1931. The couple remained childless through the entirety of their marriage.

   In 1907 Crittenden was selected as a chief commissioner from New York to the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition being held in Hampton Roads, Virginia. In the following year he served as a Republican Presidential Elector for New York, and during the 1912 Presidential election was named as an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention in Chicago. Pharcellus Crittenden maintained an active involvement in business affairs well into his eighties and is also mentioned in his Rochester Democrat Chronicle obituary as serving as chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Central Presbyterian Church and as vice-president of the Monroe County Savings Bank.

   Pharcellus Crittenden died at age 87 on October 15, 1933, at his home and was interred alongside his wife Frances Delora at the Mt. Hope Cemetery in Rochester. The rare portrait of Crittenden shown above was featured in his obituary in the October 16, 1933 edition of the Rochester Democrat Chronicle.

Treverious Glorian Price (1846-1922)

From Stone's History of Colorado, Volume III.

  This intriguingly named man is Treverious Glorian Price, an obscure resident of Iowa who made his name (politically speaking) in the Colorado Territory. Despite his prominence in Colorado political circles, little information could be found on Price, and the majority of the information herein was discovered in the third volume of Wilbur Fisk Stone's masterwork History of Colorado, published in 1918 and the History of Clayton County, Iowa, published in 1882. Price's unusual first name is also recorded as being spelled three different ways, including "Trevereous" and "Trevious". With all of these spelling variations floating around, one should note that Price's name is abbreviated by a good majority of period literature as "T.G. Price."
   Treverious G. Price was born on June 27, 1846, in the town of Jefferson in Clayton County, Iowa, the fourth-born son of Judge Eliphalet (1811-1880) and Mary Cottle Price. While Eliphalet Price himself had an odd name, he obviously believed his children were bound for great things and decided to bestow fascinating names upon each of them. Besides our subject Treverious Glorian there was Realto Exzeque (born 1840), Valmah Valentine (1842-1864), Avalo Jersey (1844-1871), Eliphalet Inthe (born 1851), and Alpine Wherin (born 1855)......a truly impressive brood of interestingly named offspring!
   T. G. Price attended school in Clayton County and spent the majority of his adolescence working on his father's farm. In 1862 he entered the Upper Iowa University and after one year of study left to enlist in Co. A of the 47th Iowa Infantry. He was later deployed to Mississippi, where he was "principally on garrison duty" in the town of Holly Springs. After being mustered out of service in 1865, Price returned to Clayton County and studied law for a time before finding employment with the Northern Pacific railroad, helping to construct telegraph lines in the Dakota territory. In 1873 he took on a job as a railway postal clerk/mail agent and served in this capacity until the end of the 1870s. In November 1873 Price married Ms. Mary Hawn (1843-1879), with whom he had one son, Avalo Price. Treverious and Mary were married for only six years before she died at age 36 in Elkader, Iowa in August 1879.
   In 1878 Price made an attempt at his first political office, running as a Republican for the position of the recorder for Clayton County. Although he was "defeated at the polls by a coalition of Democrats and Greenbackers", Price eventually won out, later being appointed as the Postmaster for Elkader in February 1881. He served in this post for an indeterminate length, and in 1887 Price left Clayton County and relocated to the Colorado Territory. He would eventually settle in the area that became Kit Carson County and resided here for the remainder of his life.
   Price built a frame house in the town of Burlington and thereafter began the raising of cattle on his property. It was also during this time that he was elected as judge of the newly established Kit Carson County. Price later was elected to the Colorado State House of Representatives in 1892, and served in the next two sessions of the legislature in 1893 and 1894, holding a seat on the house committees on the State Penitentiary, Revision and Constitution, Stock, the World's Fair, and chaired the committee on Fees and Salaries.
  "T.G." Price was returned to the state house in the 1896 election year and served another term in the legislature from 1897-98, being named to the committees on Elections and Appointments, Insurance and Banking, and Road and Bridges. Following this term, he won election as the Mayor of Burlington, Colorado, and would hold that post for two terms. Price also held the offices of President of the Kit Carson County Board of County Visitors, clerk of the district court, and was a notary public for that county from 1907-1911.  In addition to being a prominent public official in Kit Carson, Price was an active Mason, being a longstanding member of the Burlington Lodge #77. 
   The latter portion of Price's life is a total mystery, although it has been found that he died sometime in 1922 (via a Find-a-Grave listing) when he would have been around 75 years of age. He was later interred at the Riverside Cemetery in Denver, Colorado.

From the Davenport Democrat Leader, April 30, 1922.

Chesselden Ellis (1808-1854), Chesselden Leland Ellis (1846-1936)

  Another infinitely obscure American congressman is profiled today, Chesselden Ellis of New York. Ellis was originally born in New Windsor, Vermont in 1808 (no exact date of birth could be found for him.) He migrated to New York in his adolescence and graduated from the Union College in Schenectady in 1823. 
 After passing the state bar exam in 1829, Ellis set up a law practice in Waterford, New York. Eight years after establishing his law office, Ellis was elected as the Saratoga County prosecuting attorney and served until the latter part of 1843. That same year he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from New York and served one term. Ellis was defeated for reelection by a Whig candidate named Hugh White (1798-1870) in 1844. The following year Ellis moved to New York City and there established another law office in which he was the senior partner. He died in New York City on May 10, 1854, at age 46.

  On December 13, 2011 another Chesselden Ellis was discovered, this one serving in the Massachusetts state government. Unlike the previous individual, this one has a face to place with the name!

From the Souvenir of Massachusetts Legislators, 1892.

  Chesselden Leland Ellis was born on March 17, 1846, in West Woodstock, Connecticut. He is listed in the 1893 Souvenir of Massachusetts as a shoe and boot manufacturer in the South Brookfield area. He later served as a foreman for the G.H. Burt and Co. at South Brookfield. Little else is known of his life, except his marriage to Ellen Frances Holbrook, who predeceased him in death in 1925. 
  Ellis's inclusion here is due to his service in the Massachusetts State House of Representatives from 1892 to 1893. Both Ellis and his wife are buried in the Brookfield Cemetery, and a "C.L. Ellis" is listed as dying in 1936, making him around 90 at the time of his death. One can also wonder if these two men are possibly related, as the name Chesselden is quite unique in all respects.