History of Homer, (Cortland County) New York United States of America

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Biographies:

Henry Clark Johnson, educator, was born at Homer, N.Y., June 11, 1851; son of Eardley Norton and Elizabeth Matilda (Hay) Johnson; grandson of Clark Munson Johnson and of Henry Hay, and a descendant of English and Dutch ancestors, respectively. He was graduated at Cortland academy in 1867; studied Roman law under Professor James Hadley of Yale, and was graduated at Cortland academy in 1867, and from Cornell university, A.B., 1873. He was married in 1874 to Kate Loder, daughter of the Hon. Morgan Lewis Webb, of Cortland, N.Y. He studied law under Judge William H. Shankland, and at Hamilton college, 1873-75, graduating LL.B. in 1875, and was immediately admitted to practise in all the courts of the state. He was head master of the Ury school, Philadelphia, Pa., 1875-77; head master of St. Paul's school, Garden City, L.I., N.Y., 1877-79; principal of the city high and normal school, Paterson, N.J., 1879-81; professor of the Latin language and literature in Lehigh university, 1881-88; president of the Central high school, Philadelphia, Pa., and professor of constitutional and international law there, 1888-93; and principal of the School of Pedagogy for Men from its foundation, in 1891, to 1893. On Jan. 1, 1894, he engaged in the active practice of the law in New York city, where he became special council for the Manhattan Elevated railroad, and council for the Knights of Labor in the Ford franchise tax bill before the New York legislature in 1900, and council for the Typographical Union No. 6 against the New York Sun. He received the honorary degree of A.M. from Hobart college in 1877. He became a member of the American Historical association; of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; of the American Academy of Political and Social Science; of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences; of the Pennsylvania Historical society; of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, and corresponding member of several European learned societies. He is the author of: The First Three Books of Homer's Iliad (1879, 2d ed., 1885); The Satires of Persius (1884); The Agricola and Germania of Tacitus (1885); The Bucolics and Georgios of Virgil (1885); The ?neid of Virgil (1893); Cicero de Amicitia (1894); The Satires of Juvenal.

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

Francis Bicknell Carpenter, painter, was born at Homer, Cortland county, N. Y., Aug. 6, 1830; son of Asaph H. Carpenter and grandson of Noah Carpenter, a nephew of Ethan Allen. He early evinced a talent for drawing, which he persistently cultivated in the face of his father's opposition. For five months he was a pupil of Sanford Thayer of Syracuse, N. Y., and, returning to Homer, he opened his first studio in 1846, where he painted many portraits. In 1847 he sent an ideal female head, entitled "The Jewess," to the exhibition of the American art union of New York city, which was purchased by the union. In May, 1851, he removed to New York, and his first important work in that city was a full-length portrait of David Leavitt, president of the American exchange bank, which was exhibited at the National academy of design in 1852, and the young artist was elected an associate academician. His portraits of Presidents Fillmore and Pierce, and of Ex-President Tyler brought him into prominence. The year 1855 he spent in Washington, where he painted Cass, Marcy, Seward, Chase, Houston and Cushing. On his return to New York, eminent people from all parts of the country flocked to his studio; some of the more prominent of those whose portraits he painted were Charles Sumner, Henry Ward and Lyman Beecher, Schuyler Colfax, James Russell Lowell and Ezra Cornell. In 1864 Mr. Carpenter was invited by President Lincoln to the White House to paint the historic group, The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, which was afterwards placed at the head of the stairway in the national capitol, a gift to the government from Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson. In 1871 he commenced, and in 1891 he completed, his second historical composition, the First International Court of Arbitration, which hangs in Windsor castle, a gift to Queen Victoria from the women of America, through the beneficence of Mrs. Wm. W. Carson. In 1874 he completed a full-length portrait of Lincoln for the capitol at Albany, and in 1885 painted a portrait of President Garfield, which was presented to Dartmouth college by H. C. Bullard of New York. His portrait of President Lincoln, the original study from which the face in the emancipation group was painted, is the accepted portrait of the great emancipator. Mr. Carpenter published "Six Months in the White House with Abraham Lincoln" (1886). He died in New York city, May 23, 1901.

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

Andrew Dickson White, educator and diplomat, was born in Homer, N.Y., Nov. 7, 1832; son of Horace and Clara (Dickson) White; grandson of Asa and Clara (Keep) White, and of Andrew and Ruth (Hall) Dickson. He attended the Cortland Academy at Homer, N.Y., of which his maternal grandfather was one of the founders; removed with his parents in 1839 to Syracuse, N.Y., where he continued his education in the public schools, and in Syracuse academy; was a student in Hobart college, 1852, and was graduated from Yale, A.B., 1853, A.M., 1856, where he received the DeForest and Yale Literary gold medals and the first Clarke prize. He was a post-graduate student in history at the universities of Paris and Berlin, 1853-55 (serving meanwhile as attacth? to the U.S. Legation at St. Petersburg, Russia), and at Yale, 1856; was professor of history and English literature. University of Michigan, 1857-63, and lecturer on history. 1863-67. He returned to Syracuse, N.Y., in 1863, and served as state senator, 1863-67, introducing bills codifying the school laws of the state, creating a new system of normal schools and incorporating Cornell university at Ithaca. N.Y., and made a report establishing a health department in the city of New York. He served as first president of Cornell, 1867-85, visiting Europe, 1867-68, to purchase books and apparatus for the university, and to investigate the organization of foreign schools of agriculture and technology. He personally contributed $300,000 toward the equipment fund, and in 1887 founded the new school of history and political science, bearing his name, giving to it his historical library, numbering over 40,000 volumes, exclusive of pamphlets and manuscripts. He was U.S. commissioner to Santo Domingo, 1871; president of the state Republican convention, 1871; a delegate to the national Republican conventions of 1872 and 1884; a presidential elector on the Grant and Wilson ticket of 1872; chairman of the jury of public instruction at the Centennial exposition, Philadelphia, Pa., 1876, and honorary U.S. commissioner to the World's exposition at Paris, serving on the jury of appeals, 1878. He was absent from Cornell university as U.S. minister to Germany, 1879-81; was U.S. minister to Russia, 1892-94; a member of the Venezuelan commission, 1896-97, and a second time appointed ambassador to Germany in 1897. He was a member of the peace commission at the Hague, and president of the delegation to the same, 1899. In November, 1902, he resigned his ambassadorship in order to devote his entire attention to literary work, making his residence in Ithaca, N.Y. He was twice married: first, in 1859, to Mary A., daughter of Peter and Lucia (Phillips) Outwater of Syracuse, N.Y., who died in 1887; and secondly, in 1900, to Helen, daughter of Dr. Edward Hicks and Endora (Behan) Magill; she was graduated from Swarthmore college, A.B.; Boston university, M.A., and afterward pursued her studies at Newnham college, Cambridge, England, and became a Greek scholor of note, and was principal of West Bridgewater academy, Mass., and preceptress of Evelyn college, Princeton, N.J. Ambassador White received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the University of Michigan, 1867; from Cornell, 1886; from Yale, 1887; from St. Andrews, Scotland, 1902, and from Johns Hopkins university, 1902; that of L.H.D. from Columbia, 1887, that of Ph.D. from the University of Jena, 1889, and that of D.C.L. from Oxford, England, 1902. He was a trustee of Hobart college, 1866-77, and of Cornell from 1866, a regent of the Smithsonian Institution; a trustee of the Carnegie Institution, Washington; first president of the American Historical society; honorary member of the New England Historic Genealogical society; an officer of the Legion of Honor of the French Republic; and honorary member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, and of various foreign organizations. He also received the "Royal Gold Medal of Prussia for Science and Art" for the year 1902. He is the author of: Outlines of Lectures on History (several eds., 1860-83); A Plan of Organization for Cornell University (1865); A Report upon the Admission of Women to the University (1870); A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology (1876; enlarged ed., 1895); Paper Money Inflation in France (1876, and various eds.); A Syllabus of Lectures on General History (several eds.); The New Germany (various eds.); A Report upon European Schools of History (various eds.), and several public addresses on educational and political questions and contributions on historical subjects to leading publications.

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

Erastus Milo Cravath, educator, was born at Homer, Cortland county, N.Y., July 1, 1833, son of Orin and Betsey (Northway) Cravath, grandson of Samuel and Mature (Bishop) Cravath, of Norwalk, Conn.; and a descendant of Ezekiel Cravath, born in the town of Boston in 1671, and his wife Elizabeth Hooke of Salisbury, Mass., a granddaughter of Governor William Hooke. He was educated in the district school, at Homer academy, at New York central college, McGrawville, and at Oberlin college, where he was graduated in arts in 1857, and from its theological department in 1860. Throughout his college course he partially supported himself by teaching school during vacations. He was married, Sept. 18, 1860, to Ruth Anna Jackson, of Kennett Square, Pa., of Quaker ancestry, and a graduate of Oberlin, class of 1858. He was pastor of the Congregational church at Berlin Heights, Lorain county, Ohio, 1860-63; and chaplain of the 101st Ohio volunteer infantry, 1863-65, serving in the Alabama campaign and in the battles of Franklin and Nashville. Having become impressed during the war with the needs of the emancipated slaves, he decided to devote his life to educational work in the south, and became field agent of the American missionary association for the opening of schools for freedmen in the central south. In conjunction with the Rev. E. P. Smith, district secretary of the American missionary association at Cincinnati, and Prof. John Ogden, superintendent of education of the Freedmen's bureau for Tennessee and Kentucky, and a field agent of the Western freedmen's aid commission of Cincinnati, he undertook the rounding of a school for negroes at Nashville, Tenn., in October, 1865. On their own responsibility they purchased, at a cost of $16,000, a block of land on which stood a large hospital erected by the government for war purposes. Gen. Clinton Bowen Fisk, commissioner of the Freedmen's bureau, entered into the plans for founding this school, which finally became Fisk university. Soon afterward the American missionary association and the Western freedmen's aid commission assumed the purchase, and sent out twenty teachers. Professor Ogden became principal and Mr. Cravath assumed the general business responsibilities. He made the Fisk school his home while establishing schools at Atlanta, Macon, Milledgeville, Andersonville, Talladega and other cities further south. In July, 1866, he was appointed district secretary of the American missionary association at Cincinnati, laving charge of collecting funds and of school and church work in Kentucky, Tennessee and northern Georgia and Alabama. In September, 1870, he became field secretary of the association at New York, and in that capacity assumed charge of its entire work in the south. In July, 1875, he was elected the first president of the Fisk university. The first three years were spent in supervising the wonderfully successful efforts of the Jubilee singers to raise funds to enlarge the university, by giving concerts throughout Protestant Europe. Returning in the summer of 1878 he assumed active cbarge of the university. In 1895 he made a four months' tour, visiting Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, Greece and Italy. He died at St. Charles, Minn., Sept. 4, 1900.

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