Capell Lane Weems (1860-1913)

Portrait courtesy of the Public Library of Steubenville and Jefferson County.

   Multi-term Ohio Congressman Capell Lane Weems takes center stage in the following article, and despite his representing Ohio in the United States Congress for three terms his name is all but forgotten today. While the Bioguide of the U.S. Congress (as well as Wikipedia) offer up two relatively brief biographies of Mr. Weems, the following lines aim to shed a bit more light on the life and public service of this once prominent Ohioan.

   A lifelong native of the Buckeye State, Capell Lane Weems was born in the small Noble County town of Whigville on July 7, 1860, being the eldest of four children born to David L. (a tobacconist and carpenter) and Hester Capell Weems. Inheriting his first name from his mother's maiden name, Capell Weems attended local schools as well as the Normal Academy at Caldwell, Ohio. He began teaching school at age sixteen and followed this vocation for several years, eventually becoming Superintendent of the Senecaville Public School in 1881.

    Weems would later turn his attention to law studies and was admitted to the Ohio bar in late 1881. He began practice with one of the men he had studied law under, J.M. McGinnis, their partnership continued until 1889. On November 6, 1883, Capell Weems married Mary Belle Nay, who died in 1904. The couple would later become parents to three children: Chester Nay (1887-?), Milton (birth-date unknown), and Lillian (birth-date unknown). 

   In 1884 the 24-year-old Weems was elected as Prosecuting Attorney of Noble County and would hold that post from 1885-88. Before the expiration of his term, Weems received a nomination for the Ohio State House of Representatives, winning the election in November 1887. During the 1888-90 term, Weems held a seat on the House committee on the Judiciary and after the session removed from Noble County to Belmont County. Settling in the village of St. Clairsville, he resumed his law practice and in 1893 began the first of two terms as Prosecuting Attorney of Belmont County. Following his time as prosecuting attorney Weems continued in private practice, with the Centennial History of Belmont County noting that:

"His interest in political questions is always active and during important campaigns his services are placed at the command of his party leaders, his oratorical powers making him a valued speaker."

Portrait from the Centennial History of Belmont County, Ohio, 1903.

   Further political honors were accorded to Weems in 1903, arising out of the resignation of U.S. Representative Joseph John Gill of Ohio. Capell Weems was elected to fill the vacancy caused by Gill's resignation and in November 1904 was elected to a term in his own right. During the 1905-07 session, he served on the house committees on Banking and Currency and Elections No. 2. In November 1906 Weems defeated Democratic nominee F.A. Summers to win a third term in Congress, garnering 14,712 votes to his opponent's 11,347. He continued service on the Banking and Elections committees and left office in March 1909. 

   Returning to his law practice after arriving home in Ohio, Weems began service as a solicitor for the Pennsylvania Railroad and continued in that role until his death. Widowed in 1904, Weems had remarried in 1908 to Ms. Emma McNash, with whom he had one daughter, Hester Ann (born ca. 1909.) Four years following his marriage Capell Weems died at his Steubenville, Ohio home on January 5, 1913. Just 52 years of age at the time of his death, the cause was recorded as "valvular heart trouble" in the Washington Times. This same death notice also misspells Weems' first name as "Chapel" not once, but twice! Following his passing Weems was interred at the St. Clairsville Union Cemetery in St. Clairsville, Ohio.

Weems' name is misspelled in his death notice from the Washington Times.

Calvary Morris (1798-1871)

Portrait from the "Athens Home Coming Reunion", published 1904.

   The state of Ohio has lucked into the good fortune of being represented in Congress by a great many oddly named figures, including such men as Eleutheros Cooke, Philadelph Van Trump, Adoniram Judson Warner, and Lycurgus Luther Marshall. Calvary Morris, a long time resident of Athens County, represented Ohio's sixth district in the U.S. House of Representatives for three terms, having earlier been a member of both houses of the Ohio legislature. With a truly one-of-a-kind name, Mr. Morris was for over thirteen years one of a great many "faceless" politicians that I've found, and despite many attempts at trying to locate a portrait of him, Morris continually stymied me out of a picture. As luck would have it, however, late yesterday a portrait of Mr. Morris was located (quite accidentally in fact) via Absolom Mattox's "Athens Home Coming Reunion", a 1904 work centering on the history of Morris' adopted home city of Athens, Ohio. The rare picture of Calvary Morris above marks the first time that I've seen a portrait of him, having first located his name via the "Political Graveyard" website way back in 2001.

   While he may have been a resident of the Buckeye State for a good majority of his life, Calvary Morris was not born in Ohio, his birth instead occurring in Charleston, West Virginia in January 15, 1798, being one of nine children born to John (1751-1818) and Margaret Droddy Morris (1758-1818). The meaning behind Morris' unusual first name is unknown at this time, but its origin may lie in an area called  "Calvary" (a Latinized name for the biblical land called Golgotha) which is noted as being a site outside the city walls of Jerusalem where Christ's crucifixion occurred. Whatever the origins of his name, it was certainly a peculiar name to give a child! 

   Morris's early life was spent in the state of his birth, where he is recorded as "laboring on a farm" as well as having limited educational advantages. He married in March 1818 to Athens, Ohio native Mary Polly Jewett (1797-1871) and fathered four children, Charles (1823-1919), Martha (born 1833), Jewett H. (born 1833), Emarine (1821-1827). A year following his marriage he relocated from Virginia to his wife's home county of Athens, where he would reside for the remainder of his life. Shortly after his arrival Morris established a homestead, as well as purchasing five acres of land on which to grow crops.  In mid-1819 he was offered a teaching opportunity in town, and despite his lack of formal education, took the post after being allotted three weeks time to study up on the subjects he was required to teach.

    After four years of teaching, Morris won election as Athens County sheriff in 1823 and was returned to that office two years later by a near "unanimous vote." In 1827 he was elected as one of Athens County's representatives in the Ohio General Assembly and was reelected the following year. The year 1829 saw Calvary Morris be elected to the Ohio State Senate, serving here until 1835. In his final year in the senate Morris won a third term in the house of representatives, and during this term became a leading voice in the assembly for the construction of the Hocking Valley Canal. His backing of a bill for the canal's construction was passed in February 1836 and in that same year was rewarded for his work by receiving the Whig nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives. In November of that year, Morris defeated his Democratic opponent Nahum Ward by a narrow vote of 3, 780 to 3, 703.

   Taking his seat at the start of the 1837 Congressional session, Morris would be reelected as a representative in 1838 and 1840, in the latter year besting Democrat nominee George House by a vote of 8,724 to 6, 882. During the 1841-42 term Morris served on the committee on Invalid Pensions, and was not a candidate for renomination in November, being succeeded in office by Henry St. John (1783-1869). 

   After leaving Congress Calvary Morris settled into private life in Athens, where he would engage in wool-growing, and was noted by the 1869 History of Athens County as having introduced "fine-wooled sheep into the county." He removed from Athens in 1847 and resettled in Cincinnati, where he resided for several years. Morris moved back to Athens in 1854 and was soon after elected as county probate judge, holding that office until shortly before his death, which occurred in Athens on October 13, 1871. He had been predeceased by his wife Molly in July of 1871 and both were interred at the West Union Street Cemetery in Athens.

Philadelph Van Trump (1810-1874)

A daguerreotype of Van Trump taken during his tenure in Congress.

  Born in Lancaster, Ohio (not Philadelphia as most would think) Philadelph Van Trump rose from humble origins to become a prominent figure in Buckeye State politics.. A man whose name is truly unique in the annals of American political history, Van Trump was born in Lancaster, Fairfield County, Ohio on November 15, 1810, the son of John Van Trump. The name of Philadelph's mother remains unknown at the time of this writing.

  After attending school in the Lancaster area, Van Trump learned the printing trade, and after a few years of apprenticeship became the editor of the Lancaster Gazette and Enquirer.  On January 16, 1837, Van Trump married to Ms. Marie Louisa Beecher (1816-1861), a daughter of former U.S. Senator and Representative from Ohio Philemon Beecher (1775-1839). Eight children were born to Van Trump and his wife and are listed as follows in order of birth: Frances (born circa 1837), Philemon Beecher (1839-1916), Maria Louisa (1841-1924), Charles (1843-1844), Mary E. (1847-1918), Henry Stanbery (died 1862) and Thomas Ewing (1852-1931) and Cornelia (died age one year.) Van Trump's second child Philemon went on to become an early American environmentalist and mountaineer who was one of the first men to successfully scale Mt. Rainer in Washington state (this occurring in 1870). 

  After deciding upon a career in law Van Trump studied under Philemon Beecher and was admitted to the Ohio state bar in 1838 and within a few years became a rising figure in the Ohio Democratic party. In 1852 Philadelph Van Trump was chosen as a delegate to the Whig National Party convention in Baltimore. Four years later he mounted an unsuccessful attempt for the Governorship of Ohio, not as a Democrat, but as the American Party candidate. This party stemmed from the earlier Know-Nothing party, which was anti-immigration and based most of its political ideas around nativism. Because of his American Party candidacy, Van Trump's political career was temporarily hampered, but, according to the book Ohio In Congress: 1803-1901, he received over 10,000 votes in the 1856 election for Ohio Governor, helping to draw votes away from the Democratic candidate. This in turn handed the election over to Salmon P. Chase, who was inaugurated as Ohio's first Republican Governor in 1856.

   

                                                         Another daguerreotype of Van Trump, late 1860s.

  Van Trump's political career rebounded in the coming years, and in 1862 he was elected as a common pleas judge for Ohio's Seventh Judicial District. He was re-elected as judge in 1865 and two years later won election as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio, serving three terms here. In 1869 he served as the chairman of the Ohio Democratic State Convention held in Columbus. He did not seek a fourth term in Congress during the 1872 election out of concern for his health and returned to his home in Lancaster, Ohio. He died at his home of heart disease on July 31, 1874, at age 63. Van Trump was subsequently interred in the Elmwood Cemetery in the city of Lancaster.

Van Trump's obituary as featured in the Stark County Democrat.

Eleutheros Cooke (1787-1864)

  This interestingly named gentleman is Eleutheros Cooke, a one-term U.S. Representative from Ohio during the Jacksonian Era. During the early part of the 19th century, Mr. Cooke gained the reputation as one of the leading residents of Sandusky, Ohio and the origins behind his very odd first name are worth mentioning! The first volume of the 1886 book Historical Collections of Ohio gives several interesting anecdotes on how exactly Cooke's first name came about. The author of this particular work, Henry Howe, states the following:

"Mr. Cooke had one trouble--it was lifelong--stuck to him closer than a brother. It was in his name, Eleutheros. He was born in 1787, the year of the framing of the Federal Constitution, and the name was given in commemoration: it was from a Greek term signifying to set free. It showed his parents must have been fanciful and so he got his name alike with poetical tendencies from them. But the name liked to have been his ruin, that is political ruin. He lost one election by its misspelling, more particularly by the German voters. They spelt it in various ways, taking with it most unwarrantable liberties spelling, "Luther, Lutheros, Eliutheros, Eliros."

    With that historical backstory concluded, we'll begin with the birth of the man at the center of this article, which took place in the small town of Granville, New York on Christmas Day, 1787. One of several children born to Asaph and Thankful (Parker) Cooke, Eleutheros Cooke studied at the Union College in Schenectady and after leaving school passed the New York bar. In December 1812 he married Martha Carswell (1792-1878) of Washington County. The couple were wed for over fifty years and later had three sons, including Pitt, Jay (1821-1909), and Henry D. 
   Within five years of his marriage, Cook had moved with his family to Indiana where they resided for a short time. Two years later he and his family resettled in the then-burgeoning Erie County, Ohio city of Sandusky, where his political and business ambitions were soon realized. Cooke would represent Erie and Huron County in the Ohio House of Representatives for three terms, 1822-23, 1823-24, and 1825-26, and in the last-named year Cooke managed to obtain the first charter ever granted to a railroad in the United States (the Mad River & Lake Erie Railroad.) The Ohio Legislature awarded this charter in 1826, but construction on this railroad didn't begin until the 1830s. Because of this, Cooke is rightly regarded as a pioneer in railroad development in this area of the United States. 

   Within a decade of arriving in Erie County, Ohio, Eleutheros Cooke had become a leading member of the Sandusky bar as well as a major figure on its political stage. In 183o Cooke was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Whig, defeating Democrat William Patterson "by over 1000 majority." He served one term in the House and during the 1831-33 term could count political luminaries John Quincy Adams and Edward Everett as fellow representatives, and voted with them:

"Against the tariff bill by which Clay and the comprimisers composed their differences with the nullifiers of South Carolina."

 Cooke's term in Congress also saw him challenged to a duel by an overzealous South Carolinian, who had been enraged by Cooke's vocal defense of William Stanberry, a fellow Ohio representative who had been hit with a cane by the Congressman Sam Houston of Texas. Cooke later brought up the threatening letter sent to him in front of Congress, where it appears to have been a "nine-day wonder", as no duel between the two men ever took place. Cooke was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election in 1832, losing by a narrow margin to the man he had defeated two years previously, William Patterson (1790-1868).

             This portrait of Eleutheros Cooke appeared in the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine.

   Recognized by his contemporaries as a leading legal and political figure in Erie County, Eleutheros Cook was also acknowledged as a man who could converse on a wide variety of topics, as well as having:

"A wonderful command of language, was an orator very flowery and imaginative, and indulged largely in poetical similes. "

   After leaving Congress Cooke returned to his business interests in Sandusky and would return to state politics, serving another term in the Ohio House of Representatives from 1840-1841. In 1857 he became a founding member of the Firelands Historical Society. Eleutheros Cooke died two days after his 77th birthday on December 27, 1864, and was originally interred on the grounds of his estate, "Ogontz", in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. However, several years following his son Jay Cooke's death in 1909 the family mausoleum was removed to Saint Paul's Episcopal Churchyard in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. 
    It is also worth mentioning that Eleutheros Cooke was the father of noted American railroad financier and businessman Jay Cooke (1821-1905), one of the biggest contributors to the Union war effort during the Civil War. After these hostilities ceased, Jay Cooke became a major player in the development of the American Northwest and helped finance the design and construction of the Northern Pacific Railway, completed in 1883.