Part 86

CAPTAIN,—Having learned that you are about to retire from the military service of the United States government, I avail myself of what may be the only opportunity I shall have of communicating to you an expression of the high regard I entertain for you as a brave, competent, efficient and gentlemanly officer, and of the regret that you are to be even temporarily lost to the service which you have honored on so many occasions by your gallant conduct. As chief of staff of the brigade which I had the honor to command at the late battle at Hatcher’s Run, you in no small degree contributed to that success which won for our brave troops the encomiums of the generals commanding. To the consciousness of having faithfully discharged your whole duty, which you will carry with you to private life, I desire to add the assurance that you also have the confidence and kindest regards of your old comrades in arms, who still hope, at no very distant period, to welcome you again to the tented field.

I am, Captain, very truly yours, JAS. M. WILLET, Col. 8th N. Y. H. Art’y, Comdg. 1st Brigade.

In 1867, Captain Fitch came to Canada with the intention of organizing the business he is now engaged in, that of manufacturing match splints, and settled at Montmorency, Quebec, but was burnt out there. He then removed to Etchemin, county of Levis, where he established his business, and has had a most successful career. Twice he has seen his factory destroyed by fire, but his indomitable pluck and perseverance have carried him through. The business of manufacturing match splints is one the magnitude of which few outsiders can realize. The factory owned by Mr. Fitch is the largest of its kind in the world, making nearly ninety millions of matches in a single day To reach this almost inconceivable result, five hundred hands are employed, and no less than twenty millions of feet of timber are cut up in the course of a single year. Early in life Mr. Fitch connected himself with Masonry, having, in 1861, been initiated in Senate lodge, No. 456, G.R. of N.Y., held at Glen’s Falls. In 1868, desiring further knowledge in Masonry, he applied for the Royal Arch degrees to Stadacona Chapter, No. 2, G.R.Q., and was exalted in that chapter on 22nd October, 1868. In 1873, he affiliated with Tuscan lodge, No. 28, G.R.Q., held at Levis, and occupied the worshipful master’s chair in that lodge in 1876 and 1877. In 1877 he was elected grand senior warden of the Grand Lodge of Quebec, and in 1880 was appointed D.D.G. Master for Quebec and Three Rivers district, and held that office two years and a half. In 1882 he was unanimously elected deputy grand master of the Grand Lodge. In 1884, the Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons chose him as their grand third principal; in 1885 and again in 1886 as grand second principal, and at the last meeting of the Grand Chapter, held in the city of Montreal, in January, 1887, he was placed, by the voice of the companions assembled, in the exalted position of grand first principal. He was one of the charter members of William de la More, the Martyr Preceptory of Knights Templars at Quebec, with which body he is still connected. He has been chairman of the Committee of Benevolence and Charity of the Grand Lodge since 1882. He is representative in Quebec of the Grand Lodge of California and Grand Chapter of Indiana. And he has always taken an active part in all matters pertaining to the craft in his district and province, and is an ardent supporter of the principle of Grand Lodge sovereignty. In politics Mr. Fitch is a Liberal; and in religion is an adherent of the Baptist church. He was married to Mary A., second daughter of the late James Bowen, of Quebec.

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=Badgley, Rev. Prof. E. I.=, M.A., B.D., LL.D., Victoria University, Cobourg.—Professor Badgley, of United Empire loyalist descent, was born in Prince Edward county, which county was also the birth place of his father and mother. At the time of the American revolution his great-grandfather owned a large landed property in the state of New Jersey, but having espoused the royalists’ cause, his property was confiscated. Preferring citizenship under the British Crown rather than in the Republic, he determined to find a home in the then wilderness of Canada. Pursued as an enemy and a fugitive, he suffered many hair-breadth escapes. For several days he lay concealed in his hayloft, where more than once the enemy searched for him, repeatedly walking over him as he lay buried beneath the hay. From this place of concealment he escaped to find refuge for three days in a potato pit. After many adventures scarcely less perilous, he finally was enabled to reach Canada, whither his family in due time followed him. They settled about six miles from Belleville, in what is now the township of Thurlow. Dr. Canniff, in his work on the “Settlement of Upper Canada,” mentions him and his sons as among the first settlers north of the village of Cannifton. His wife’s name was Lawrence, whom he married in England, and through that connection repeated efforts have been made to secure for the heirs a supposed fortune lying to their credit, so far, however, without any success. One of the sons, Professor Badgley’s grandfather, finally settled in Prince Edward county, from which place he went to Kingston to do service for his country, in 1812. By an exchange of property the family removed to Thurlow, where his mother, whose maiden name was Howard, still lives. With an ardent desire for a better training than the public school could furnish, Professor Badgley left the farm when seventeen years of age, and entered as a student at Belleville Seminary, afterwards Albert University. He graduated with the second-class in 1868, and immediately entered upon the work of the ministry, in connection with the late Methodist Episcopal church. After three years of successful labor, he returned to Albert College as an adjunct professor in metaphysics and mathematics. Three years later, on the election of Dr. Carman, president of the university, to the episcopacy, Professor Badgley was appointed to the chair of mental and moral philosophy, which he satisfactorily filled for a period of ten years. While in the ministry, and during the period he served as adjunct professor, he pursued a definite line of reading, and regularly graduated in both theology and law. As a result of Methodist union, Albert University was consolidated with Victoria, in 1884, since which date he has held the chair of mental philosophy and logic in the latter university. For several years Professor Badgley was a regular contributor to the editorial columns of the _Canada Christian Advocate_, and has frequently written for the “Canadian Methodist Magazine.” He was a delegate to the Ecumenical Methodist Conference, in London, in 1881, where he read an important paper on ministerial education. At different times and places he has delivered several addresses on metaphysical and philosophical subjects, the publication of which has been frequently requested. In May, 1887, he delivered the tenth annual lecture before the Theological Union of Victoria University, on “Faith, _vs._ Knowledge.” In 1870 he was married to Emma Bell, daughter of John S. Bell, Napanee, whose father was an officer in the British army, and on whose confiscated property a part of the city of Albany now stands. They have three children, two sons and a daughter.

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=McConnell, John=, M.D., M.C.P.S.O., Toronto, Lieutenant 12th Battalion York Rangers, was born in the township of Scarboro’, on the 4th March, 1846. His father, John McConnell, served under Mr. Howard, of High Park, in the defence of Little York (Toronto), during the time of the William Lyon McKenzie rebellion. He was an adherent of the Methodist church, and acted in the capacity of local preacher for about forty years; he was also a justice of the peace, and a man greatly respected in his day. His mother, Elizabeth McGaw, was a daughter of the late Andrew McGaw, of Port Hope. Both families first settled in Scarboro’ about 1836. Dr. McConnell’s father, after a residence of about ten years there, bought the farm, lot twenty-three, second concession, of Markham, and removed there in 1849. The subject of our sketch was the fourth son of the above union, born in the old homestead in Scarboro’, and accompanied his parents to their new home. He received his primary education in the public schools of Markham, where he remained until 1859. Then he began to entertain ideas of supporting himself, and hired out to a farmer at $10 a month, for the summer season. This engagement completed, he returned home, and his father sent him to the Grammar School, Richmond Hill, then under the charge of the late Rev. John Boyd, B.A. Soon after he entered this school, Mr. Boyd resigned, and was succeeded by L. H. Evans, B.A., of Trinity College, under whose able tuition young McConnell remained for three years. Early in 1863 he underwent an examination, and succeeded in gaining a second-class A. certificate, which gave him great satisfaction. He then applied for a situation as teacher in a number of school sections, but owing to his youth, he did not succeed until December of that year, when he obtained a school in York township, with a salary of £67 10s. per annum, when he began his real battle with the world. During the following year he undertook the somewhat difficult task of preparing himself for a matriculation examination in the Toronto University, and also to prepare for a first-class certificate as a teacher. He succeeded in both, and moreover, secured an advance of £10 to his salary for the next year, which was of great use to him. During 1864 he commenced the study of medicine. In 1866 he left York township and removed to Scarboro’, where he secured a school at £90 a year. From here he was in the habit of driving thirteen miles four days a week to prosecute his medical studies in Toronto, and the following spring he matriculated in medicine. He continued teaching until October, when he relinquished his school and became a student in the Toronto School of Medicine. In the spring of 1867 he passed his primary examination at the University of Toronto, and was admitted as an undergraduate in the Toronto Hospital, and also placed in charge of the Burnside Lying-in Hospital, Sheppard street. Notwithstanding these somewhat onerous duties, he attached himself to the military school in connection with the 13th Hussars, a British regiment of cavalry then stationed at the New Fort, Toronto, under the command of the late Colonel Jennings, one of the heroes of the Light Brigade, and from whom he received many evidences of respect and kindness. He was attached as an officer of the Oak Ridge troop of cavalry, to which he had belonged from 1860, when, on the occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales, it was stationed in Toronto, and was with this troop, under arms, at Richmond Hill (headquarters) during the Fenian troubles, in 1866. Before leaving the Military School, in the autumn of 1868, he received from Colonel Jennings a first-class certificate, which he is proud still to possess. He then returned to his lectures in the university—still retaining his position in the hospital—and worked hard both in and out of school, so that when the examination came on in the spring, he passed a most critical examination, and succeeded in securing the degree of M.B. He received his diploma on the 11th June, 1869, and commenced to practise his profession at Thornhill, township of Vaughan, York county, where he practised for fifteen years, when he removed to Brockton, in 1882, then a suburb of, and now part of, the city of Toronto. Shortly after taking up his residence in Brockton, he was elected reeve of the village by acclamation; and in 1884, when it was annexed to Toronto as St. Mark’s ward, the doctor represented it in the city council. He is coroner for the county of York, and has held the position of president of the West York Reform Association, and also of the Reform Association of Vaughan. In June, 1886, Dr. McConnell was gazetted second lieutenant of the 12th Battalion York Rangers, and in June, 1887, was attached to “C.” Royal School of Infantry, New Fort Barracks, Toronto, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Otter, and was awarded a second-class certificate, and received his commission as first lieutenant of the York Rangers. As a professional man, he is endowed with a kindly disposition, and is never slow to help any poor person-visiting his office for medical advice or medicine. Dr. McConnell has been for four years attendant physician to the Protestant Orphans’ Home, of Toronto, where two hundred orphan children are supported by the charitable people of the city and neighborhood, and his watchful care has not only been gratuitous, but productive of the most gratifying results. Besides practising his profession, he has interested himself in real estate, and is now one of the largest property owners in the ward of St. Mark. His career points a moral which our young men would do well to study, showing as it does that perseverance and attention to duty is a greater requisite to success in life than to be born to affluence. He was married previous to his beginning his practice, to Miss Powell, of York township, and during their residence at Thornhill, eight children were born to them, five daughters and three sons, and of these, three daughters and one son survive.

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=Roberts, Charles George Douglas=, M.A., Professor of Modern Literature, King’s College, Windsor, Nova Scotia, was born at Douglas, near Fredericton, New Brunswick, on the 10th of January, 1860. His father, the Rev. G. Goodridge Roberts, M.A., rector of Fredericton, was the eldest son of the late George Roberts, Ph.D., a gentleman of English descent, formerly headmaster of Fredericton Collegiate School, and professor of classics in the University of New Brunswick. Our poet comes of a line of ancestors more or less conspicuous as scholars, upon both maternal and paternal sides. His mother, Emma Wetmore Bliss Roberts, daughter of the late Judge Bliss, also of Fredericton, comes of an old loyalist family, of which Emerson’s mother was a member. Mr. Roberts, the subject of this sketch, was educated at Fredericton Collegiate School, where he took the Douglas medal for classics. In 1877, while at the University of New Brunswick, he took a classical scholarship, with honors in Greek and Latin; in 1878, the alumni gold medal for an essay in Latin; and in 1879 graduating with honors in metaphysics and ethics. In this year he was appointed head-master of Chatham, New Brunswick, Grammar School. In 1880 his first volume of verse, entitled “Orion and other Poems,” was published by J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia; and in 1881 he took his degree of M.A., and according to the ordinary acceptation of the term, “finished his education,” though a man’s education may never truly be said to be finished while he is an inhabitant of this mortal sphere, and retains his faculties. Yet the foregoing statements prove that Mr. Roberts had acquired much knowledge at a very early age, and at a very early age was inspired by the soul of song. No one can doubt this who has read the following extract, which we take from his lines entitled “To the Spirit of Song”:

Surely I have seen the majesty and wonder, Beauty, might, and splendor, of the soul of song; Surely I have felt the spell that lifts asunder Soul from body, when lips faint and thought is strong.

These lines are to be found on the first page of his volume, entitled “Orion, and other Poems,” and unquestionably show genius in the boy under twenty years of age, for it would have been impossible for any one not possessed of the soul of song to have conceived them. Had the first, third, fourth, eleventh, and thirteenth lines been equal to those we have quoted, the concluding line—

Lowly I wait the song upon my lips conferred

—would have made the picture of the dark-eyed, dark-haired aspirant for immortality, kneeling before the white-robed angel, a simply perfect creation. The poem “Orion” is an outcome of his early love for classical literature, and when we consider that it was written by a boy standing on the threshold of life, it is wonderful; and shows distinctly what he may attain in coming years, when at the zenith of his power. This poem contains many lines of unsurpassed beauty. We quote the following couplet, which is taken from that part of the poem which describes Orion lying upon the seashore in his utter wretchedness, when the drug administered by the king is beginning to affect him. The scene is described as, at the setting of the sun—

The deep-eyed Night drew down to comfort him, And lifted her great lids, and mourned for him.

And again, later in the night, a slave comes with the king bearing a cup containing the juice with which he puts out Orion’s eyes, and a servitor bearing a torch, before whose light—

All the darkness shuddered and fled back.

And how beautiful are the lines sung by the weeping sea-nymphs—

We all are made heavy of heart, we weep with thee, sore with thy sorrow; The sea to its utmost part, the night from the dusk to the morrow.

And again, when he regains his sight—

All the morning’s majesty And mystery of loveliness lay bare Before him; all the limitless blue sea Brightening with laughter many a league around. Wind wrinkled, etc.

But it may be that the genius of Mr. Roberts is nowhere so apparent as in a short poem of his that we have seen somewhere, entitled, “Off Pelorus,” the first stanza of which is an exquisite piece of word-painting, combined with the very soul of song. We quote from memory—

Crimson swims the sun-set over far Pelorus, Burning crimson tops its frowning crest of pine; Purple sleeps the shore, and floats the wave before us, Eachwhere from the oar-stroke eddying warm like wine.

It is impossible to separate true poetry from its sister, painting, and here the two walk hand in hand. The rich coloring of the painter, the subtle thought and music of the poet, and all developed strongly, so as to come within the immediate grasp of ordinary intelligence. We have not seen Mr. Roberts’ prose writing, but we are informed that he has written much that is masterly in thought and style; can do good battle in a political discussion, and has peculiar and abundant gifts in the field of criticism. In 1882 he was appointed head-master of York Street School, Fredericton. In 1883 he accepted the position of editor of _The Week_, a Toronto weekly, from which he, finding his tastes did not harmonize with the director’s, retired in four months, when he returned to New Brunswick, and was there engaged with several literary undertakings, till his call, in 1885, to the University of King’s College, Windsor, Nova Scotia, as professor of English and French literature and political economy. In 1887 he published his most important work, “In Divers Tones” (Montreal: Dawson Bros.; Boston: D. Lothrop & Co.), which has been very favorably received. Professor Roberts is a contributor to most of the notable publications printed in the English language; among these may be mentioned “Longman’s,” “The Century,” “Wide Awake,” and “Outing.” Mr. Roberts is a member of the Church of England, and was married December 29th, 1880, to Mary Isabel Fenety, daughter of George E. Fenety, Queen’s printer, of Fredericton, New Brunswick. By this marriage he has three children.

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=Chicoyne, Jerome Adolphe=, Advocate, Sherbrooke, was born on the 22nd August, 1844, at St. Pie, county of Bagot, province of Quebec. His paternal ancestors came over from France at the time Mr. de Maisonneuve was recruiting settlers for the colony of Ville-Marie. His name was Pierre Chicoyne, and his place in France was and is still called Channay, in the old Province of Anjou. He became proprietor of the fief Bellevue, in the parish of Verchères, which fief still belongs to his descendants. Members of the family continue to reside in the same place and vicinity in France, and intercourse is regularly kept up between them from both sides of the ocean. A new settlement, started in the township of Woburn, at the head of Lake Megantic, in the county of Beauce (where the subject of our sketch felled the first tree on the 8th December, 1880), is named Channay, as a reminiscence of the place wherefrom his ancestor came. Mr. Chicoyne was educated at the Seminary of St. Hyacinthe, and followed the usual course—eight years. He was admitted to the bar of Lower Canada on the 17th September, 1868, at Montreal; and after practising at St. Hyacinthe until 1872, was compelled to quit it in consequence of ill-health. He then became attached to the department of agriculture of the province of Quebec, as colonization agent, and has ever since been connected with the colonization movement in the Eastern Townships. In 1875 he left St. Hyacinthe with his family, and settled at La Patrie, one of the new settlements organized by him in his capacity of government agent. In 1880, he started a colonization scheme (under the patronage of both the Provincial and Federal governments) in France, which resulted in the influx of considerable French capital and immigrants to these townships. Some of the results may now be seen in the great progress achieved by the village of Megantic, in the county of Compton, and in the above mentioned settlement of Channay. In January, 1886, he took the direction of _Le Pionnier_, the oldest French paper in the Eastern Townships, which paper has largely contributed to, and still helps, the settlement of that comparatively new section of the country. He took part for the first time in politics during the elections of 1867, in the Conservative interest, and is still, and has ever been a most devoted and faithful worker in the Conservative ranks. Mr. Chicoyne has made four trips to Europe, and has visited England, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy, and while in these countries studied the political economy and social questions of the age. In religion he is a member of the Roman Catholic church. On the 7th January, 1868, he was married at St. Hyacinthe, to Dame Caroline Perreault.

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