History of Cornish Center, (Sullivan County) New Hampshire United States of America

Our database does not include an historic photo for Cornish Center, (Sullivan County) New Hampshire, do you have one you would like to contribute? Contact Us!

Biographies:

Dudley Chase, jurist, was born in Cornish, N. H., Dec. 30, 1771; son of Dudley and Alice (Corbett) Chase, and brother of Bishop Philander Chase. He was graduated with honors at Dartmouth college in 1791, and was admitted to the bar two years later, practising first at Randolph, Vt. From 1803 to 1811 he was state attorney for Orange county, and in 1805 was elected a representative from Randolph to the Vermont legislature. He served by re-election until 1812, being speaker of the house of representatives during the last five years. He was a delegate to the constitutional conventions of 1814 and 1822. In 1813 he succeeded Stephen R. Bradley as U. S. senator, and served until 1817, when he resigned his seat to become chief justice of the supreme court of Vermont. This office he held until 1821. In 1824 he was again elected to the U. S. senate, and served from 1825 to 1831, when he retired from public life and devoted himself to agricultural pursuits. He died in Randolph, Vt., Feb. 23. 1846.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Philander Chase, 1st bishop of Ohio, 1819-31, 1st bishop of Illinois, 1835-52, and 18th in succession in the American episcopate, was born at Cornish, N. H., Dec. 14, 1775; son of Dudley and Alice (Corbett) Chase, and lineally descended through Samuel and Mary (Dudley) Chase; Daniel and Sarah (March) Chase; Moses and Ann (Follansbee) Chase, from Aquila and Ann Chase, who came from England and settled in New Hampshire in 1640. He was graduated at Dartmouth college in 1796, was admitted to the diaconate of the P. E. church by bishop Provoost in St. Paul's chapel, New York city, June 10, 1798, and advanced to the priesthood by the same prelate, Nov. 10, 1799. He first labored as a missionary in northern and western New York, where he organized parishes at Utica, Canandaigua, and Auburn. In 1800 he assumed charge of the Poughkeepsie, and Fishkill churches. In 1805 he removed to New Orleans, La., where he organized Christ church and became its rector. In 1811 he became rector of Christ church, Hartford, Conn. He then resolved to transfer his labors to the missionary district west of the Alleghanies, held his first service at Salem, Ohio, March 16, 1817, and in June of the same year, assumed charge of the church at Worthington, Ohio, and of the outlying parishes of Delaware and Columbus, serving also as a principal of the academy at Worthington. His marked success in missionary work caused him to be chosen as bishop of the newly formed diocese of Ohio, and on Feb. 11, 1819, he was consecrated at St. James' church, Philadelphia. He was president of Cincinnati college, 1821-23, and during that time took measures which resulted in the founding and partial endowment of Kenyon college, of which he was president, 1828-31. He was also president of the theological seminary at Gambier, Ohio, 1825-31. Bishop Chase later visited England for the purpose of obtaining funds to carry out the enterprise, which resulted in a generous response to his appeal. In 1831, his disposition of the funds obtained in England being questioned by his clergy, he resigned the presidency of Kenyon college and Gambier theological seminary, as well as his episcopate. In 1832 he removed to Michigan, where he was occupied in missionary work. In 1835 he was chosen bishop of Illinois. With the help of money which he obtained on a second visit to England, he founded Jubilee college, at a place to which he gave the name, Robin's Nest, Peoria, Ill. A charter, placing the college entirely under the jurisdiction of the church, was obtained in 1847. On the death of Bishop Griswold in 1843, Bishop Chase became presiding bishop. He received the degree of D.D. from Columbia college in 1819, and that of LL. D from Cincinnati college in 1823. He published: A Plea for the West (1826); The Star in the West (1828); Defence of Kenyon College (1831); A Plea for Jubilee (1835); Reminiscences, and Autobiography (1847); the Pastoral Letters of the House of Bishops from 1844 to 1850, inclusive. His life has been written, as well as a vindication of his course in regard to Kenyon college. He died at Jubilee college, Robin's Nest, Ill., Sept. 20, 1852.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

Salmon Portland Chase, chief justice, was born in Cornish. N. H., Jan. 13, 1808, son of Ithamar and Janette (Ralston) Chase, and sixth in descent from Aquila and Ann Chase, emigrants, who left England in 1640, and settled in Newbury, Mass. His father was a farmer and in 1815 removed from Cornish to Keene, N. H., where, with his wife and eleven children, he established a new home, having in 1812 engaged in the manufacture of glass and become bankrupt. Salmon attended the district school until 1817, when his father died, and he was sent to Windsor, Vt., where he continued his studies. In 1820 his mother sent him to Worthington, Ohio, at the suggestion of her brother-in-law, Bishop Philander Chase, who conducted a collegiate school at that place, and who agreed to give him a home and educational advantages. He made the journey with an elder brother and H. R. Schoolcraft, who were going west to join the Cass exploring expedition. On the removal of the bishop to Cincinnati in 1822, to accept the presidency of Cincinnati college, Salmon entered that institution, and in 1823, when his uncle went to Europe to procure funds to establish Kenyon college, he returned to his mother's home in Keene, N. H., taught school at Royalton, Vt., and matriculated at Dartmouth college in 1824, graduating with the class of 1826. He then went south, expecting to find employment as tutor in some private family, but in this was disappointed, and returning as far as Washington he there was refused a situation in one of the departments, his uncle, Dudley Chase, of Vermont, declining to aid him on the ground that such an appointment had already ruined one nephew. He secured a private school, where he had among other pupils a son of Attorney-General Wirt. This incident led to an offer from Mr. Wirt to receive the young tutor as a law student, and he was admitted to the bar of the District of Columbia in 1829. He continued his school until 1830, when he returned to the home of his uncle in Cincinnati, and was admitted as an attorney and counsellor at the Ohio bar. His anxious waiting for clients was relieved by industrious application to the preparation of an edition of the statutes of Ohio, which his conscientious codification, copious annotation, and comprehensive historical sketch of the growth and development of the territory and state, expanded to three volumes. Upon its publication the fame of the author spread with its rapid sale, all previous "Statutes of Ohio" being superseded by the new work. Practice now came to the young barrister, and among his clients were the bank of the United States in Cincinnati, and the Lafayette, a prominent city bank, which engaged his services as director, secretary of the board, and solicitor. This experience directed the mind of the rising lawyer to subjects of finance, and was the preparatory school of the future U. S. treasurer. The question of slavery and the rights of fugitives from bondage was at this time (1837) uppermost in the public mind, especially in the vicinity of Cincinnati. Mr. Chase was retained us counsel for a colored woman claimed as a fugitive slave, and also in the case of James G. Birney, prosecuted under a state law for harboring a fugitive slave. Both causes were defended by him before the state supreme court, and his arguments against the right of the federal government to demand of a state magistrate any service in the case of a slave voluntarily brought by his master into a free state and there escaping from his control, and in maintaining that the law of 1793 was unwarranted by the constitution of the United States, and therefore void, were published and extensively circulated by the anti-slavery party. In the case of Van Zandt, before the supreme court of the United States in 1846, he was associated with William H. Seward, and there argued that under the ordinance of 1787 no fugitive from service could be reclaimed from Ohio, unless escaped from one of the original slave states, and that the question of slavery was an interstate, and not a federal question for adjudication by Congress. In politics Mr. Chase had taken no positive position, and had supported either Whig or Democrat as they promised to further his one political idea, the blotting out of slavery but in 1841 he called the convention that organized the Liberty party in Ohio, wrote the address to the people, and supported the candidate for governor named by the party. In 1843, when the Liberty party met in convention at Baltimore to nominate candidates for president and vice-president, Mr. Chase was a member of the committee on resolutions, and opposed the radical proposition offered, refusing to support the third clause of the Constitution if it was applied to the case of a fugitive slave, his opposition preventing its becoming a part of the committee's report. It was, however, introduced before the convention and adopted. The movement for a convention of "all who believe that all that is worth preserving in republicanism can be maintained only by uncompromising war against the usurpation of the slave power, and are therefore resolved to use all constitutional and honorable means to effect the extinction of slavery within the respective states, and its reduction to its constitutional limits in the United States" was led by Mr. Chase, and was intended to invite representation only from the southern and western states. It met in Cincinnati in June, 1845, and the address, urging the necessity of a political organization determined upon the overthrow of the slave power, was prepared by Mr. Chase, as chairman of the committee on platform. The second Liberty national convention was held in 1847, and in it Mr. Chase opposed making a ticket, and advised waiting to see how the Wilmot proviso would affect the political parties and the action of Congress. In 1848 he prepared a call for a free territory state convention at Columbus, Ohio, which was signed by over three thousand voters. This resulted in the national convention at Buffalo, N. Y., in August, 1848, over which Mr. Chase presided, and which nominated the Free-Soil ticket, Van Buren and Adams. Mr. Chase was the next year elected by the Democrats and Federal Whigs, as United States senator. In 1852, when the Democratic national convention at Baltimore nominated Franklin Pierce and denounced the agitation of the slavery question, and the ticket and platform were upheld by the Democrats of Ohio, Mr. Chase withdrew from the party, and prepared the platform for an independent party, which was adopted by the Pittsburgh convention of 1852. He opposed the Clay compromise in a speech in the senate; and his amendment providing against the introduction of slavery in the territories, to which the bill applied, received twenty-five votes, while thirty voted against the amendment. He also offered an amendment to the fugitive slave bill, by which so-called fugitive slaves should be accorded trial by jury, and another granting immunity to slaves escaping from states to territories, or the reverse, thus conforming the act to the provisions of the constitution, both of which were defeated. When the Nebraska bill was introduced in 1854, he drew up and caused to be circulated an appeal to the people to oppose the measure, and in the senate on February 3 made a speech in which he elaborated the objectionable features of the bill. On the very night of its passage he made an earnest protest against the measure. His efforts in the senate were directed to the confining of the question of slavery within its constitutional limits, to securing non-intervention on the part of the Federal government in the affairs of the states and territories, to upholding the individual rights of persons and states, and to securing economy in the administration of financial affairs. He favored free homesteads to actual settlers, cheap postage, government aid towards the construction of the Pacific railroad, and liberal appropriations for harbor and river improvements. The opponents of the Nebraska bill and of the administration nominated Mr. Chase for governor of Ohio in July, 1855, and he was elected. His policy, as outlined in his inaugural address, was economy in the administration of state affairs, annual sessions of the legislature, and liberal support to schools. At the Republican national convention of 1856 a majority of the Ohio delegates, backed by a large following from other states, proposed his name as a presidential candidate, but at his personal request it was withdrawn. In 1857 he was again a candidate for governor, and received the largest vote ever given to a candidate for that office in Ohio. When the Republican national convention met at Chicago in 1860, Ohio presented Mr. Chase as a candidate, and in the first ballot he received forty-nine votes; but when the votes of Ohio were needed to secure Mr. Lincoln's nomination they were promptly furnished. In the same year he was elected to a seat in the United States senate, and resigned it to accept the portfolio of the treasury in the cabinet of President Lincoln. The treasury was in need of money, and the secretary asked for $8,000,000, April 2, 1861, of which amount $3,099,000 was tendered at or under six percent. He refused all bids at higher rates than six percent and placed the balance in two-year treasury notes at par or over. When Fort Sumter was first fired upon, the secretary went to New York and obtained $50,000,000 from the banks in exchange for treasury notes payable in coin, and soon after obtained $100,000,000 more from the same source. The bankers could not sell the bonds for coin, and on Dec. 27, 1861, the agreement to suspend specie payment was entered into. When the resources of the banks were found inadequate to supply the secretary's demand for money, he, largely through the suggestion of Mr. O. B. Potter of New York, issued "the greenback," which was made legal tender by act of Congress, for all purposes except custom duties; these treasury notes, running for various lengths of time, and bearing interest at from six to seven and three-tenths percent payable in coin, were readily taken by the people and the loan became very popular. This popular loan was followed by the national banking system, a part of the original plan of Mr. Potter. These financial measures enabled the government to prosecute the war, and furnished a stable currency. When Mr. Chase left the treasury department, June 30, 1864, the national debt amounted to $1,740,690,489. On Dec. 6, 1864, President Lincoln named Mr. Chase as chief justice of the U. S. supreme court, to succeed Justice Taney deceased, and his nomination was immediately confirmed by the senate. In the impeachment trial of President Johnson in March, 1868, Chief Justice Chase presided, and his impartial and dignified demeanor won the respect of all save the intense partisans conducting the prosecution. He became dissatisfied with the policy of the Republican party as voiced by the majority in Congress, and when the Democratic national convention met in New York in July, 1868, he was announced as a candidate for the presidency. At one time his chances of the nomination seemed to be flattering, but the tide changed before the balloting began, and he received but four votes. In the presidential canvass of 1872 he favored the election of Mr. Greeley, the Democratic candidate. Dartmouth conferred on him the degree of LL. D in 1855. Mr. Chase was thrice married, and his daughter Katherine, born to his second wife, Eliza Ann (Smith), to whom he was married Sept. 26, 1839, was the head of his household in Washington, his third wife, Sara Bella Dunlap (Ludlow), having died some years before. Miss Chase, popularly known as Kate Chase, was a society leader during the war; she was married to Senator William Sprague of Rhode Island, and after the expiration of her husband's senatorial term established a palatial home in Rhode Island. Chief Justice Chase's health became greatly impaired through a paralytic stroke, and he died in New York city, May 7, 1872.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor