Part 30

The sincere radical abolitionists, with whom Dr. Ross was labouring, were despised, hated and ostracised by the rich, the powerful and the so-called higher classes; but Dr. Ross always possessed the courage of his opinions, and prefers the approval of his own conscience to the smiles or favours of men. During the Southern rebellion he was employed by President Lincoln as confidential correspondent in Canada, and rendered very important services to the United States government. For this he received the special thanks of President Lincoln and Secretary Seward. When the war ended, with the downfall of the Confederacy, Dr. Ross offered his services to President Juarez, of Mexico, and received the appointment of surgeon in the Republican army. The capture of Maximilian, and the speedy overthrow of the empire, rendered Dr. Ross’s services unnecessary, and he returned to Canada and to the congenial and more peaceful pursuits of a naturalist. The object of his ambition now was to collect and classify the fauna and flora of his native country, a labour never before attempted by a Canadian. He has collected and classified five hundred and seventy species of birds that regularly or occasionally visit the Dominion of Canada; two hundred and forty species of eggs of birds that breed in Canada; two hundred and forty-seven species of mammals, reptiles, and fresh water fish; three thousand four hundred species of insects; and two thousand species of Canadian flora. The _Montreal Herald_ of August 19, 1884, says:—“Dr. Ross has been a member of the British Association of Science for the last fourteen years, and of the French and American Associations for the past ten years. The following brief sketch will, therefore, prove doubly interesting in view of the approaching gathering of scientific men (meeting of the British Association, Sept., 1884), in this city. He has devoted special attention to the ornithology, ichthyology, botany and entomology of Canada; has personally made large and valuable collections of the fauna and flora of Canada; has enriched by his contributions the natural history museums of Paris, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Rome, Athens, Dresden, Lisbon, Teheran and Cairo, with collections of Canadian fauna and flora. He is author of “Birds of Canada” (1872), “Butterflies and Moths of Canada” (1873), “Flora of Canada” (1873), “Forest Trees of Canada” (1874), “Mammals, Reptiles, and Fresh water Fishes of Canada” (1878), “Recollections of an Abolitionist” (1867), “Ferns and Wild Flowers of Canada” (1877), “Friendly Words to Boys and Young Men” (1884), “Vaccination a Medical Delusion” (1885), and “Natural Diet of Man” (1886). He received the degrees of M.D. (1855), and M.A. (1867); and was knighted by the Emperor of Russia (1876), King of Italy (1876), King of Greece (1876), King of Portugal (1877), King of Saxony (1876), and received the Medal of Merit from the Shah of Persia (1884), the decoration of honour from the Khedive of Egypt (1884), and the decoration of the Académie Française from the government of France (1879). He was offered (and declined) the title of baron by the King of Bavaria, in recognition of his labours as a naturalist, and was appointed consul to Canada by the King of Belgium and the King of Denmark. Dr. Ross was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Linnean and Zoological Societies of England; the Royal Societies of Antiquaries of Denmark and Greece; the Imperial Society of Naturalists of Russia; the Imperial Botanical and Zoological Society of Austria; the Royal Academy of Science of Palermo, Italy; a member of the Entomological Societies of Russia, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Bohemia and Wurtemburg; member of the Hygienic Societies of France, Germany and Switzerland; honorary member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and member of the European Congress of Ornithology. For several years past Dr. Ross has laboured with his characteristic zeal and energy in behalf of moral and physical reform. He is the founder (1880) of the Canadian Society for the Diffusion of Physiological Knowledge, and enlisted the sympathy and active support of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Earl Shaftesbury, the Archbishop of Toronto, and two hundred and forty clergymen of different denominations, and three hundred Canadian school-teachers in the work of distributing his tracts on “The Evils Arising from Unphysiological Habits in Youth”; over one million copies of these tracts were distributed among the youth of Britain and Canada, calling forth thousands of letters expressing gratitude from parents and friends of the young. Dr. Ross is one of the founders of the St. Louis Hygienic College of Physicians and Surgeons, in which he is professor of hygiene, sanitation and physiology. He is always on the side of the poor and the oppressed, no matter how unpopular the cause may be. He does his duty as he sees it, regardless of consequences to himself. The philanthropic Quakeress, Lucretia Jenks, thus speaks of Dr. Ross:—

No, friend Ross! thou art not old; A heart so true, so kind, so bold, As in thy bosom throbs to-day, Never! never! will decay.

Some I know, but half thy years, Are quite deaf to all that cheers; They are dumb when they should speak, And blind to all the poor and weak.

There are none I know, in sooth, Who part so slowly with their youth, As men like thee, who take delight In helping others to live right.

LUCRETIA JENKS. Rhode Island, 22, 11mo., 1885.

When Dr. Ross had attained his fiftieth birthday, he was the recipient of many tokens of regard and congratulations from friends and co-workers. From the poet Whittier the following:—

DEAR FRIEND—Thy fifty years have not been idle ones, but filled with good works; I hope another half century may be added to them.

From Wendell Phillips:—

MY DEAR ROSS—Measured by the good you have done in your fifty years, you have already lived a century.

From Harriet Beecher Stowe:—

DEAR DR. ROSS—As you look back over your fifty years, what a comfort to you must be the reflection that you have saved so many from the horrors of slavery.

During the small-pox epidemic in Montreal in 1885 Dr. Ross was a prominent opponent of vaccination, declaring that it was not only useless as a preventive of small-pox, but that it propagated the disease when practised during the existence of an epidemic. In place of vaccination, he strongly advocates the strict enforcement of sanitation and isolation. He maintains that personal and municipal cleanliness is the only scientific safeguard against zymotic diseases. When the authorities attempted to enforce vaccination by fines and imprisonment, Dr. Ross organized the Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League, and successfully resisted what he considered an outrage on human rights. Dr. Ross is a radical reformer in religion, medicine, politics, sociology and dietetics, and a total abstainer from intoxicants and tobacco. He is a graduate of the allopathic, hydropathic, eclectic and botanic systems of medicine, and a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the provinces of Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba.

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=Ellis, William=, Superintendent of the Welland Canal, St. Catharines, Ontario, was born near London, England, on the 31st August, 1826, and came to Canada in 1853, to take charge of the construction of an eighty-two mile section of the Grand Trunk Railway. His father and mother, Thomas and Margaret Ellis, were members of two old Yorkshire families. William Ellis received his education in Cheshunt, Herts, and London, England. Before coming to Canada, he acted in England as engineer and contractor’s agent on various railway works, and in Canada on the Grand Trunk Railway; and during the last seven years he has been superintendent of the Welland canal. While a resident of Prescott in 1861, he was elected town councillor; and in 1864, he was chosen mayor. For three years in succession he was president of the Prescott Mechanics’ Institute, the Grenville County Agricultural Society, the Prescott Board of School Trustees, and the Prescott Choral Society. At present he is and has been for the past three years president of the St. Catharines Philharmonic Society. Mr. Ellis belongs to the Episcopal church, and occupies a prominent position in the denomination. He was for three years churchwarden while in Prescott, and for twenty-one years lay delegate for that parish. For St. Catharines, he has been lay delegate for six years, and is also churchwarden of St. George’s Church, and warden of St. George’s Guild. During the Fenian troubles in 1866, Mr. Ellis served as lieutenant in the Garrison Artillery in Prescott, and retired from military service on the disbandment of his company. He has travelled a good deal, and has twice visited France. He has been married twice. First, in October, 1855, to M. E. A. Jessup, of Prescott, daughter of Edward Jessup, formerly M.P., for the Johnstown district. This lady died, leaving a family of two children. The son has graduated M.D. in McGill University. He married the second time in May, 1886, to M. A. A. Bryant, daughter of Shettelworth Bryant, of Blackheath (Eng.), and cousin of Colonel Bryant, St. Leonards, England.

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=Call, Robert Randolph=, Newcastle, New Brunswick, was born in Newcastle, Miramichi, N.B., September 12, 1837. His father, Obadiah Call, was a native of the state of Maine, having been born in the village of Dresden, August 1, 1800, and is still alive. Margaret Burke, his mother, was born in Limerick, Ireland, in 1810, and came to Miramichi with her father, who was a house-carpenter, shortly after the great fire in 1825. She died on the 10th of May, 1877. Robert, the subject of this sketch, was educated at the Grammar School of Newcastle, and soon after leaving this institution developed an aptitude for business. In 1871, in company with John C. Miller, he built the side-wheel steamer _New Era_, and established the first line of passenger steamers that ran on the Miramichi river. During the past twenty-five years he has been interested in the steamboat business, and occupied the position of agent for the Quebec and Gulf Ports Steamship Company, and for other lines of steamers that have called at the port of Newcastle. On November 26, 1866, he received the appointment of United States Consular Agent at Newcastle. In June, 1867, was elected chairman of the Northumberland County Almshouse Commissioners; and in January, 1874, was made a member of the board of Pilotage Commissioners for the Miramichi district of New Brunswick, under the Pilotage Act, which then came into force, and was chosen its secretary-treasurer. Mr. Call is owner of the gas works in his native town, and they are operated under his own immediate direction. On the 9th September, 1865, he was appointed a lieutenant in the 2nd battalion Northumberland County Militia; and on October 1st, 1868, at a public meeting held in the town of Newcastle for the purpose of organizing a battery, was chosen captain of the Newcastle Field Battery of Artillery, and was gazetted as such on the 18th December of the same year. On the 18th December, 1873, he was made major, and lieutenant-colonel on the 4th February, 1885. He still retains the command of this battery, which he was mainly instrumental in raising. In 1875 this corps was called into active service during the school riots in Caraquet, Gloucester county. Lieutenant-Colonel Call, with Lieutenant Mitchell second in command, and part of the battery, in all forty-six persons, with horses, sleds, two nine-pounder guns, ammunition, etc., left Newcastle on the afternoon of the 28th January for Bathurst, the shire town of Gloucester county, and had to traverse a distance of fifty-five miles through a comparatively desolate country. The weather was very unsettled, and more severe than it had been for years. The snow was fully four feet deep on the level, while in many places it was drifted so badly that the men had to shovel for hours before the teams could pass. They, however, after experiencing great fatigue, and with hard labour, succeeded in reaching their destination on the evening of the 29th, having accomplished the journey in twenty-eight hours, without resting, except while the horses were being fed on the road, the men in the meantime keeping their seats on the sleds, and eating the provisions they had brought from home with them. On their arrival in Bathurst they found that twenty-six of the leading rioters had been safely lodged in the jail there. The infantry that followed them proceeded to Caraquet. Here the battery remained for about six weeks, making the court house their barracks, until the excitement was calmed down and quiet was restored. Mr. Call became a member of Northumberland lodge, A. F. and A. Masons, in 1863, and in the years 1866 and 1867 was master of the lodge. In 1873 he was appointed representative to the Grand Lodge of New Jersey. He is also a member of the Northumberland Highland Society, and one of its vice-presidents. He has travelled a good deal, having visited England for his health in 1863, going over and returning in a sailing vessel. In 1881 he went, _via_ Lake Superior, to Rainy River, Lake of the Woods, Winnipeg, etc., to Portage la Prairie, then the extreme end of the Canadian Pacific Railway, for the purpose of having a look at this wonderful country, and has taken an occasional trip to the United States. Mr. Call is a Presbyterian, is one of the Trustees of St. James’ Church, and has been its secretary and treasurer since 1874. He was married, May 21st, 1862, to Annie Rankin Nevin, who was born in Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, Scotland, on 5th December, 1836.

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=Dowdall, James.=—The deceased, James Dowdall, who for many years practised as a Barrister-at-Law in the town of Almonte, Ontario, was born at Perth, county of Lanark, on the 31st December, 1853, and died on the 27th October, 1885. His father, Edward Dowdall, was a son of the deceased Patrick Dowdall, a reputable and well-educated magistrate of the township of Drummond, in the county of Lanark; and his mother, Mary O’Connor, was a daughter of an equally respected and literary farmer of Drummond township,—Denis O’Connor, who was successful in life, and died February, 1887. James Dowdall received his education at the Public and High schools of Almonte, to which town his parents removed when he was four years of age. In 1872 he commenced his law course with Joseph Jamieson, M.P., Almonte, and concluded his studies in the office of Hon. Edward Blake, at Toronto, and was called to the bar in 1877. He then formed a partnership with D. G. Macdonell, and the firm in a very short time attained to a high position in the legal fraternity, and secured a large share of public support. He was president of several literary, debating, benevolent and other societies, from his seventeenth year continuously until his death in 1885. He also occupied the position of president of the local Reform Association; was founder and president of the Almonte branch of the Catholic Mutual Benefit Association; chairman of the Separate School Board; had a seat on the High School Board; and for years sat in the town council. He had a very large law practice, and for years previous and up to his demise was Crown counsel for the counties of Lanark and Renfrew. Mr. Dowdall was a public spirited man, and took an active part in everything that went to improve his native place and the surrounding district. He was a staunch Reformer, and took an intelligent interest in politics. As a speaker, he was eloquent and argumentative, and travelled through Lanark and other counties in Ontario during several local and federal election campaigns, and did good work for his party. In 1879 he married Onogh T. Nogle, daughter of the late William Nogle, and left a family of children. The _Almonte Gazette_ thus alludes to his death:—“Mr. Dowdall was an able antagonist in court, quick to see the weak points in an opponent’s case, and no less expert in concealing his own. These qualities, as well as his careful study of the law in each case, made him a generally successful lawyer in court, while his knowledge of human nature gave him great advantage in cross-examination. Had his life been spared there is no doubt he would have risen to the highest point in his profession. His many good qualities more particularly demand our grateful recognition. Many a battler with the world can tell of a hand stretched out and aid given just at a time when a friend in need was a friend indeed. Many a struggling tradesman can tell how often he has mounted the office stairs to ask for help to meet a note or some other similar emergency, and that he did not ask in vain. Many a poor and perplexed one took up his time by recounting some act of another’s from which they were or had been suffering, and from him obtained as much attention and as carefully considered advice as though they had carried a large fee in their hands. The blank caused by the death of Mr. Dowdall will be a wide one: not all at once will it be discovered how much he is missed, but as the days and weeks glide by there will be many occasions when parties will long for the sound of a voice that is still, and it is safe to say in his case that take him for all and all it will be long before we look upon his like again. Mr. Dowdall was a Roman Catholic, and the Roman Catholic church of this town will miss his counsel and assistance greatly, but it can be said to his credit that though himself a devoted Catholic he was as broad-minded and liberal as he was zealous in religious matters. Throughout his career he always showed a warm feeling for his co-religionists, while nothing ever prevented his doing justice to those who differed from him. The Reform party, too, will greatly miss him.” The _Central Canadian_, of Carleton Place, also spoke of him in this kindly manner:—“As a member of the corporation of Almonte, he contributed of his judgment, knowledge, energy, and life to make everybody happy and everything prosperous. Mr. Dowdall’s prominent play in politics and his long sphere of operations as a lawyer of much discretion and accuracy brought out his innermost self in a way few other professions do, and showed what manner of man he was. Yet though thus so fiercely exposed to hostile criticism, he made iron-bound friends where-ever he went. He had a personality so attractive, a character so disarming in its tenderness and self-abnegation; he was so clear and candid that he broke down all barriers of prejudice. Moreover, among his intimates he possessed that mysterious gift of attraction which in colloquial symbolism is called magnetism. On the 28th September, Mr. Dowdall first complained and was advised by his physician to take rest, which he did, but contrary to advice he went out on Tuesday and drove up to the Reform meeting, and died on the 27th October, 1885.” Richard J. Dowdall, barrister, has succeeded to the practice of the late James Dowdall. He had just completed his law course at the time of his brother’s death, and at once commenced practice in the old offices at Almonte.

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=Crocket, William=, A.M., Chief Superintendent of Education for New Brunswick, Fredericton, was born in Brechin, in the north of Scotland, on the 17th of May, 1832. His parents were James Crocket and Martha Procter. William received his elementary education at the High School of his native parish, and then went to King’s College, Aberdeen, where he took the university course. His professional training he received at the Established Church Normal School in Glasgow. He came to New Brunswick in 1856, and from this date to 1861, filled the position of principal of the Superior School at Campbellton, New Brunswick. In 1861, he was appointed rector of the Presbyterian Academy, at Chatham, New Brunswick, and acted as such until 1870, when he was appointed principal of the Normal School of New Brunswick, and this office he held until 1883. On the 13th November of that year, he was appointed by the government of New Brunswick, its chief superintendent of education for the province, and this office he now holds, and is greatly respected by all with whom his official position brings him in contact. Mr. Crocket has been faithful to his profession; has laboured zealously to improve the method of teaching in the Public schools of the province, and has the satisfaction of knowing that his efforts have not been barren of results. He has also taken a deep interest in the higher education of the province, and has been for over ten years one of the examiners for degrees in the University of New Brunswick, and is likewise a member of the University Senate. He belongs to the church of his fathers, the Presbyterian; and was married to Marion, daughter of William M. Caldwell, of Campbellton, New Brunswick, on the 13th of April, 1858.

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