Part 31

“Ordered; That permission be given to the Rev. S. Hopkins Emery of Quincy, Ill., to pass within the lines of the United States forces to Savanna, Tennessee, and wherever the sick and wounded soldiers of the United States may be, together with any ladies and gentlemen that may be in his company, for the purpose of affording care and attendance to the sick and wounded. The quartermasters and commissaries will afford them transportation when required and all officers and persons in the service or employment of the United States will afford them courtesy, assistance and protection.

“(Signed) EDWIN M. STANTON, “Secretary of War.”

The Illinois Sanitary Fair, which was held in mammoth tents which covered Washington Park at Quincy, Illinois, attracted the attention of the nation. One of the things offered by them at auction was a book of autographs signed for the occasion by some of the most distinguished men and women of the time. The one from James Russell Lowell was accompanied by the following note and verses:

“I couldn’t send a bare signature to a state which has sent 200,000 men to fight the battles of us all and whose regiments bear on their tattered flags the names of our most glorious victories.

“Tears may be ours, but proud for those who win Death’s royal purple in the enemy’s lines. Peace, too, brings tears, and ‘mid the battle din, The wiser ear some text of God divines. For the sheathed blade may rust with darker sin.

“God give us peace, not such as lulls to sleep, But sword on thigh and brow with purpose knit And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep, Her ports all up, her battle lanterns lit And her hushed thunders gathering for their leap.

“(Signed) J. R. LOWELL.

“Cambridge, Mass., October, 1864.”

No grave of all the millions who maintained the Union cause on or off the battlefield deserves to be more gratefully remembered and strewn with flowers each recurring Memorial Day than that which in Taunton, Massachusetts, contains the remains of the patriotic Quincy Chaplain, Dr. S. Hopkins Emery. At the time of Doctor Emery’s death, his two sons were among the most prominent business men in Quincy, S. H. Emery, Jr., was vice-president and manager of the Straw Board Paper Company; J. W. Emery is president of one of our largest stove foundries, and father of an interesting, growing family. S. H. Emery, Jr., died shortly after his venerable father, leaving only a daughter, Mrs. Ellis, surviving him.

George Brophy came from Kilkenny, Ireland. He was an assistant in the county clerk’s office for many years. In 1868 he was himself elected as clerk and by repeated elections held the office for twenty-four years. He had but one son, who died at about the age of thirty years, and two years before the death of his father. His only daughter is the wife of Duke Schroer, now one of the editors of the Quincy Journal.

John Lawless was born in Stafford County, Virginia, June 20, 1795. His father was John Lawless of Irish blood and a slave holder. He served all through the Revolutionary War and was wounded at the battle of Cowpens. His mother was a Scotch lady. She was a devout Catholic and also a doctor who practised a little. The subject of our sketch, while still a boy, moved to Kentucky with his mother’s parents, where he received a common school education. On February 24, 1820, he married Margaret Skirvin, a devout Baptist, and settled in Grant County, Kentucky, on a farm. In 1835, with a family of seven children, they came to Adams County, Illinois, and settled on a farm twelve miles northeast of Quincy, where his descendants are still living. It required four weeks to come in an ox-wagon from Kentucky to Quincy. After coming to Adams County, three more children were born to them. John Lawless was a model pioneer. He was a fine rifle shot and enjoyed the use of a gun. He was a very successful farmer; a good business man; an excellent hand to write deeds and legal documents for his friends and neighbors. He was a consistent Old School Baptist. He died May 13, 1865. All of his ten children grew to maturity. Like their father, all may well be considered western pioneers. His oldest son, Henry Harrison, died at the age of twenty-one; Mary Ann, the second child, is still living at the age of eighty-six years at Columbus, Illinois. She was married in 1846 to William Judy, who died a year later. A son, William H., was born to them. Her daughter-in-law and three children are living in Pawnee, Oklahoma. Elizabeth Jane Lawless, born December 8, 1824, was married to John P. Yeargain April 9, 1849, and died April 15, 1899. Her descendants number thirty-two. John Quincy Lawless, born December 1, 1826, was married to Elizabeth Pearce, February 26, 1863. Both are living in Columbus, Illinois. They have two sons and two daughters, all married, and five grandchildren. William Conrad Lawless was born in 1828, and was married February 1, 1855, to Mary Ann Pierce. He died February 15, 1898. Their descendants, including sons and daughters, number twenty-six. Sarah Margaret Lawless was married to John Lummis, February 26, 1852. She still lives at Paloma, Illinois, a widow. She has eight children and twenty-three grandchildren. Thomas Lawless was born March 21, 1834; died February 28, 1897. He married Annie M. Ferguson, in 1874. They have three sons, a daughter-in-law and one grandchild. Susannah Lawless, born March 18, 1836, died November 25, 1876. She married James R. McBroom October 10, 1855. Their living descendants number twenty-eight. James Sanford Lawless lives on the farm where he was born seventy-one years ago. He married Clara Ferguson in 1871. They have seven children; two of them are married. Oliver Perry, the youngest, born July 20, 1841, married Margaret Gutherie, March 10, 1864. This branch numbers twenty-one. They have all followed farming, taking up much of their lands in a wild state when of but little value. They broke out the prairie sod, fought their way through the hardships known only to the early settler, and are now turning over these farms in a high state of cultivation to their children. But, better than this, they are leaving an example in their lives, which is worthy of imitation. The third generation numbers eighty-five. The most active of all at the present time running in age from children to sixty years of age. They represent various avocations of life, but the greater part are farmers. There are seventy-nine of the fourth generation, scattered among five states, and seven of the fifth generation, a total of one hundred and eighty-four. Very few families have held together so long in residence and association; comparatively few are living outside of Adams County, and those who are keep in close touch with the rest. On the twenty-first day of August, 1909, the Lawless family held a reunion at Columbus. It was the largest gathering of this kind ever held in Adams County. The Lawless family of Adams County and its branches are the only ones known in the West. It is known prominently still in Virginia.

Oan Piggott, father of the writer, came from near Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland, in 1844, with two sons and two daughters by a first marriage and one son by a second marriage. He came via New Orleans to St. Louis, Missouri. William was the oldest son. He was a steamboat mate on the lower Mississippi and was killed in the Confederate service during the civil war, as an officer in an Arkansas regiment. Michael, the next son, learned the bricklayers’ trade in St. Louis, and at the age of twenty moved to Quincy, where he commenced business for himself as a builder. When the war commenced, he enlisted in the Union Army in Company “F,” Birge’s sharpshooters, subsequently known as the Fourteenth Missouri Infantry, and finally as the Sixty-sixth Illinois Infantry, commanded by Col. Patrick E. Burk of St. Louis, Mo. At Fort Donaldson, he was promoted as Captain of his company. In February, 1864, his company reënlisted. On the fourteenth day of the following May, he lost a leg at the battle of Resace, Georgia, where Burk was killed. The older of the two girls, Honora, entered a Catholic convent at St. Louis, and died in 1865. The younger, Mary, died in St. Louis in 1847 from cholera. James, the youngest son, a stove moulder by trade, died at Louisville, Kentucky, since the civil war. Two children by the second marriage were born in St. Louis, Richard and Sarah, both now living, Richard in St. Louis, and Sarah in Calaway County, Missouri, the wife of Christopher Connell, a prosperous farmer. Richard served with Price in the Confederate service, until captured at the battle of Iuka, Mississippi, in 1863. Oan Piggott died on a farm in Warren County, Missouri, in 1876.

The Flynn, Kirby and Larkin families are well represented by grandsons, now able managers of the J. J. Flynn Company, extensive manufacturers of carbonated waters, syrups and extracts in Quincy.

To Joseph W. Stewart, son of the pioneer William Stewart, Sr., the State of Oregon is indebted for the scientific development of its fruit interests at Medford. It is said that every fruit tree in Oregon is a monument to the memory of Joseph Stewart. His brother William is a scientific fruit grower near Quincy and resides in the city.

The grandsons of these early pioneers are now forging their way to the front in the professions and in business. In the forties, a poor widow, by the name of Wall, came to Quincy, with two children, a boy and a girl. After coming from Ireland, she and her husband located at Baltimore, Maryland, where her children were born. There with her brother, who was a Welch, her husband commenced contracting in the building of railroads, moving west with the roads. They reached Danville, Illinois, where her husband died and left her in very poor circumstances financially. She came with her children to Quincy and raised both to respectable positions in society. The boy, who was named Edmond Wall, is now nearly seventy years of age and a bookkeeper for a tobacco manufacturing company. He is the father of four sons; the oldest is John E., a member of the law firm of Wilson & Wall. He is an eloquent advocate and has the promise of a great political future. J. W. Wall, a brother, is the active manager of the Gardner Governor Company, the largest institution of its kind, perhaps, in the world, and he has two younger brothers as assistants.

A grandson of an Irishman, C. B. McCrory, is judge of our County or probate court, while Erde Beatty, also a grandson of an Irishman, is clerk of our Circuit Court, and William Smith, another grandson, is an assistant clerk in the County Court. Major George W. Green, of Chicago, is the grandson of John McDade, a soldier of 1812. Major Green is the head of a large lumber company in Chicago. He was major of the Seventy-eighth Illinois Infantry during the civil war and was severely wounded. He is a prominent member of the Loyal Legion. The grandsons of Timothy Castle are successful managers of the Comstock Castle Stove Company in Quincy, Keokuk and other cities.

Barney Corrigan, with his wife and ten children, came to Quincy in 1840 from Tyrone County, Ireland. In 1843 he settled on a farm southeast of the city, purchased from a soldier of 1812 an Irishman by the name of Constantine Clark. His children all married after coming to America, and had large families, excepting Edward, who died a few years after his arrival. The old homestead is still in the family, having passed from Barney Corrigan to his son James, who raised a family of seven sons and two daughters. James occupied the farm for fifty-three years, and at his death it passed to his son Daniel, whose brother, James B. Corrigan, has been Treasurer of Adams County for two terms of four years and deputy treasurer for several terms.

Among the steamboats running from St. Louis on the upper Mississippi between 1827 and 1836 which were owned or commanded by Irishmen were the following: The Omega, by Captain Rafferty; the Shamrock, by Captain May; the Emerald, the Gypsy and the O’Connell, by the Reynolds Brothers, and the Josephine, by Captain Clark.

Our subject has run away with us and has taken us far beyond the limits we designed when we commenced these notes. The field occupied by the Irish-American pioneers of the upper Mississippi Valley, in even the vicinity of Quincy, is not exhausted by these notes.

REV. FRANCIS MAKEMIE—THE PAUL OF SEAGIRT ACCOMAC, THE KNOX OF CHESAPEAKE, AND FOUNDER OF ORGANIZED PRESBYTERIANISM IN AMERICA.

BY REV. HAVERGAL SHEPPARD, D. D., MINISTER OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH AT SCHENECTADY, N. Y.

Just fifty-five years after the accession of the House of Stuart to the British Crown; years born of those awful times of the Reformation, when men hated each other for their creed rather than for their conduct; in the year in which Cromwell died, 1658, Francis Makemie was born in that little out of the way village of the north of Ireland, Ramelton, County Donegal.

That beautiful arm of the Atlantic, called by the natives Lough Swilly, lay hard by his home and undoubtedly many were the times as a boy he played on its shores or swam in its clear, cool waters.

Like many of the world’s great preachers, he became hopefully pious at the age of fifteen, according to his own testimony in his answer to Keith’s “Libel Against a Catechism,” published by Francis Makemie, in Boston, 1694, he says:

“’Ere I received the imposition of hands in that Scriptural and orderly separation with my holy and ministerial calling, that I gave requiring satisfaction to Godly, learned and judicious, discerning men, of a work of grace and conversion, wrought in my heart at fifteen years of age, by and from the pains of a Godly schoolmaster; who used no small diligence in gaining tender souls to God’s service and fear.”

At seventeen he was enrolled in the University of Glasgow in the third class, with the ministry in view. Next we see him, January 28th, 1860, appearing before the Presbytery of Laggan at St. Johnstown, Ireland, with a recommendation from his Pastor, Mr. Thomas Drummond, and so began his theological training and examination; from time to time he presents himself before the Presbytery and is examined by a competent committee.

Mr. William Liston reports: “September 29th, 1680, that Mr. Francis Makemy desires some more time and that he is diligent.” Again, March 9th, 1681: “Upon the good report we get of Messrs. Francis Makemy and Mr. Alexander Marshall, the meeting think fit to put them upon trials in order to their being licentiates to preach and they name I. Timothy 1:5 to Mr. Makemy.”

Again, April 20th, 1681, Francis Makemy delivered his homily upon I. Timothy 1:5 and was approved. Matt. 11:28 was appointed to him for the next meeting.

May 25th, 1681, Mr. Francis Makemy delivered his private homily on Matt. 11:28 and was approved.

The last entry in the minute book of the presbytery of Laggan, previous to December 30th, 1690, was on July 31st, 1681. “The meeting see fit to lay aside their ordinary business at this extraordinary meeting, only, if time will permit, we will hear the exegeses of the two young men who are upon their trials.”

It is more than likely, as Dr. Briggs says in the appendix to American Presbyterianism: “That Mr. Makemy was probably licensed in the autumn of 1681 and after several appropriate trials and having preached for Mr. Hempton at Burt, April 2d, 1682, he was ordained to go out to America.”

Two years previous, or 1680, Colonel William Stevens laid before the Presbytery of Laggan by letter the desire of the Presbyterian families in the lower counties of Maryland on the eastern shore, for a minister to labor in that part of the country.

The clergy of the established church in Virginia and Maryland were not those who would appeal to earnest and pious nonconformists; Hammond in “Leah and Rachel or Two Fruitful Sisters, Virginia and Maryland” (London, 1656) used strong language in speaking of the supply of clergy from the old land, “Yet many came, such as wore Black coats, and could babble in a Pulpit, roar in a Tavern, exact from their Parishioners and rather by their dissoluteness destroy, than feed their Flocks;” to this may be added the testimony of Bishop Meade of Virginia (1829–1862) “Immense were the difficulties in getting a full supply of ministers of any character, and of those who came, how few were faithful and duly qualified for the station.”

It is a well established fact that some who were discarded from the English Church obtained livings in Virginia, there was not only defective preaching but most evil living among them. One of them was for years president of a Jockey Club and another fought a duel in sight of the very church in which he had performed the solemn offices of religion.

Governor Berkeley’s testimony in the matter has been frequently quoted, “As to religious teaching—we have forty-eight parishes and our ministers are well paid and by my consent should be better if they would pray oftener and preach less, but as of all other commodities, so of this, the worst are sent to us, and we have few that we could boast of since the persecution in Cromwell’s tyranny drove divers worthy men hither.”

Again, according to Meade, “It is not wonderful that disaffection should take place and dissent begin.” It was under these conditions and after Lord Howard of Effingham succeeded Culpepper in Virginia, having received royal instructions “to allow no person to use a printing press, on any occasion whatsoever,” that there came into Virginia the man whose influence in the cause of religious liberty in the colonies must be reckoned as second to that of but few others—this was Francis Makemie, the Irish founder of organized Presbyterianism in America. He came by the way of the Barbadoes and settled at Rehoboth by the river and founded the Presbyterian Church at Snow Hill, Maryland, 1683. He was earnest, fearless and indefatigable in his labors for the spiritual uplift of the people with whom his lot was cast, and it is worth noting that in those days of the intolerance of the established church, that the Presbyterian denomination began its existence in a colony founded by a Roman Catholic nobleman, Lord Baltimore. Having raised the blue banner in Maryland, he traveled by land as far as Norfolk and proceeded to Carolina, where it seems he labored among the people until the spring of the following year, as he was in North Carolina in May.

In a letter to Increase Mather, written July 22d, 1684, from Elizabeth River, Virginia, he speaks of a voyage engaged to South Carolina, but he met with contrary winds and was driven as far north as Delaware Bay and eventually had to put into Virginia, where he was persuaded by Colonel Anthony Lawson and other inhabitants of the Parish of Linhaven in lower Norfolk County to stay that season. Their pastor, formerly from Ireland, died the August before and left them without a leader.

Makemie seems to have remained at Elizabeth River for a considerable time. He writes again from there to Increase Mather, Boston, N. England, under date of July 28, 1685, in which he acknowledges the receipt of a letter and three books and refers to a Mr. Thomas Barret, a minister living in South Carolina and from whom he had received a letter from Ashley River, stating that he was about to take shipping for New England and for whom Makemie enclosed a letter. Just how long after this he remained with this people is not known, only that in the following year he made an extended preaching tour southward to Carolina, ministering to the spiritual necessaries of the people in neglected communities and performing the other duties devolving upon a true minister of the Gospel. It was no easy task that confronted him, while nearly three fourths of the population were dissenters from the established church.

“It is safe to say,” says Cobbs, “that no small proportion of the people were without any definite religion.” This was especially true of North Carolina.

As late as 1729 Colonel William Byrd wrote of Edenton, then capital of North Carolina: “I believe this is the only metropolis in the Christian or Mohammedan world where there is neither church, chapel, mosque, synagogue, or any other place of worship of any sect or religion whatever.

“They pay no tribute either to God or to Cæsar.”

With a knowledge of such conditions before him he put himself forward in 1686, with that fearlessness characteristic of his race, to preach the Gospel to the regions beyond.

How long he labored here is impossible to tell, but he returned and took up his residence on the eastern shore at Matchatauk, Virginia. His name appeared for the first time on the court records of Accomac County, Virginia, in 1690, and John Galbraith’s will, made August 12th, 1691, refers to Makemie as Minister of the Gospel at Rehoboth town. In that year he made a visit to England and returned either that autumn or the following spring, after an earnest endeavor to inspire interest in the religious life of the new colony. It was during the year 1692 that Makemie visited Philadelphia and planted the seed of Presbyterianism by preaching the first sermon in the Barbadoes store, northwest corner of Second and Chestnut streets, after which, in the autumn of this year, he sailed for the Barbadoes, where he remained several years, combining the life of a minister and a merchant, as shown by letters dated December 28th, 1696; January 17th, 1697, and, February 12th, 1697, which are still preserved.

It was either during the year 1697 or the early part of the succeeding, 1698, that he returned to his old home on the eastern shore and married Naomi Anderson, according to Dr. Hill’s “Rise of American Presbyterianism.”

In a will signed by William Anderson, July 23d, 1698, and recorded October 10th, he refers to Mr. Francis Makemie and Naomi, his wife, my eldest daughter. Again, the will says, “If my daughter Naomi have no issue,” showing that no children were born at that time.

In Virginia he suffered much annoyance from the authorities, but was the first dissenting minister to obtain a certificate under the toleration act, 1689, of William and Mary, having previously a certificate of his qualifications at Barbadoes, yet it was not until ten years later, 1699, that the Virginia legislature grudgingly granted this with licenses for two houses in Accomac, as places of dissenting worship, to which another was added in 1704.

How much he did for the cause he espoused through the years following cannot be computed, as he went in and out among the people, many of them Presbyterians from Scotland and Ireland, bringing the faith of their fathers with them, but in this new colony, in an environment opposed to religious feeling, they drifted into many sins and habits that fared well to spoil their early impressions of piety.