|
Gideon Tabor Stewart "GIDEON TABOR STEWART,
Norwalk. Mr. Stewart was born at Johnstown, New York, on the 7th
day of August, 1824, and was named after Judge Gideon Tabor. He
is descended from sturdy Scotch-Irish ancestors, both paternal and
maternal. His father, Thomas Ferguson Stewart, was a contractor
and builder at Schenectady, New York, where his mother, Elizabeth
Ferguson Stewart, daughter of Dr. Thomas Ferguson, of Stewartstown,
Ireland, opened the first English school and academy, which continued
under her auspices until it was merged in Union College. She was
well educated and a very successful teacher, attracting pupils from
all parts of the State, some of whom became prominent in its early
history . . . . Gideon Tabor . . . was brought by his father to
Oberlin College, but left before graduating to begin the study of
law, which he did at Norwalk, Ohio, in the spring of 1842 in the
office of Jairus Kennan, with whom he remained over a year, when
he went to Columbus and entered the law office of Honorable N. II.
Swayne, afterwards a justice of the United States Supreme Court.
He remained there about a year and a half and then went to Florida,
where he spent two winters with his brother Nicholas. Returning
to Norwalk, he was admitted to the Bar on August 1-t, 1846, and
became a law-partner of Jairus Kennan. He was admitted to practice
in the Supreme Court of the United States on January 26, 1866. In
1850 he was elected auditor of Huron county, and held the office
for six years, when he resumed his law practice. After the outbreak
of the Civil War in 1861, he went to Iowa and purchased the Dubuque
Times, that being the only daily Union paper in the north half
of the State at that time. This he published until about the close
of the war, when he sold it and returned to Ohio. He bought the
controlling interest of the Toledo Commercial, which he sold
at a profit in about six months; and returning to Norwalk, resumed
his law practice in the last of 1866, which he now continues, more
than half a century having elapsed since he began it there. His
practice has always been general, but confined to civil cases. He
has been engaged in many important cases in Ohio. The printed law
records and briefs of his Supreme Court cases alone make four large
bound volumes. Mr. Stewart occupies first rank in his profession,
and his ability is recognized throughout Ohio and in fact beyond
the confines of the State. He is a man of charming and delightful
manner, is greatly beloved by his fellow citizens and commands the
respect of all who know him. As a speaker he is pleasant and ready.
He has delivered many political speeches and numerous finished addresses
on other subjects during his long and useful life. Originally he
belonged to the old Whig party and was opposed to slavery. At the
commencement of the war he became a Republican, but at the close
he passed into the Prohibition party, where he has since remained
and has always been one of its most earnest and conscientious workers.
He was fifteen years a member and four years chairman of its national
committee. lie was unanimously nominated by three State conventions
of the party in Ohio for President of the United States, but each
time declined to be a candidate for that office. He was at one time
the candidate of that party for vice-president of the United States;
was three times its candidate for governor of Ohio and nine times
its candidate for judge of the Supreme Court of the State. For the
latter office he was the first and last candidate of the party,
in 1869 and 1896. He was grand worthy patriarch of the Sons of Temperance
and three times elected grand worthy Chief Templar of the Good Templars
of Ohio . . . . He is president of the Law Library Association of
Huron county at Norwalk, and was one of its organizers. He has been
engaged in many business and commercial enterprises. In the early
years of his practice he edited the Norwalk Reflector, the
Whig organ of Huron county, and was for several years half owner
of the Toledo Blade. He is a life member of the American
Bible Society. He has been for many years president of the Firelands
Historical Society, of which he was one of the founders over forty
years ago, and which has published over 3,000 pages of historic
collections there. He was one of the founders and first officers
of the Whittlesey Academy of Arts and Sciences at Norwalk, which
has maintained a large library and reading room, with valuable courses
of lectures. He was also one of the pioneers of the Scotch-Irish
Society of America and director of the Western Reserve Society of
the Sons of the American Revolution. He was one of the organizers
and directors of the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad Company. In
1857 he married Abby N. Simmons, of Greenfield, Huron county, and
by this union there are four children, all living: one daughter,
Miss Mary Stewart, and three sons, Charles Hill Stewart, of the
law firm of Bentley & Stewart, at Cleveland; George Swayne Stewart,
a member of the Norwalk Bar, now at the head of the George S. Stewart
Company, engaged in manufacturing ; Harlon Lincoln Stewart, formerly
State senator and for a number of years publisher of the Norwall-Experiment,
the leading Democratic newspaper there." [Gregory
Irving Reed (ed.), Bench and Bar of Ohio: A Compendium of History
and Biography 205-207 (Chicago: Century Publishing and Engraving
Co., 1897)(vol. 1)] [online
text] Gideon
Tabor Stewart Gideon Tabor
Stewart [See also C.L. Martzoloff (ed.), Poems on Ohio 19-20, at 19 (Columbus, Ohio: F.J. Heer Printing Co., 1911)(including the poem, "Ohio's Welcome to John Quincy Adams")] Poetry Gideon Tabor Stewart, Early and Late Poems of Gideon Tabor Stewart ([S.l.: s.n.], 1906) Writings Gideon Tabor Stewart, The Miranda Fraud ([S.l.: s.n.], 1870) _________________, Constitutionality and Expediency of the Home Protection Bill (Columbus: Ohio Anti-Liquor Alliance, 1881) _________________, The Ballot Test of Temperance (New York: National Temperance Society, 1882)(1884) _________________, Liberty and Union, and The Conflict of Liberty (New York: National Temperance Society and Publication House, 1885) _________________, Moral Suasion ... (New York: National Temperance Society and Publication House, 1881)(1886) _________________, The Equal Rights of Citizens ([Cleveland], 1887) _________________, The Constitutional Right of School Suffrage for Women in Ohio. Address read at the annual meeting of the Ohio woman suffrage association at Warren, May 14th, 1891 ([Norwalk, Ohio], 1891) _________________, The Prohibition Party against the rum power with its crime ruled political parties and crime consenting churches, from public addresses and writings of Gideon T. Stewart ([n.p.], 1904) _________________, Famed in American History the Lives of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, father and son, each a former president of the United States ... ([Norwalk, Ohio: s.n.], 1906) |
|