Founding Fathers: Complete Biographies, Their Articles, Historical & Political Documents. Emory Speer
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as the Jay collection. In 1832 he became a member of the Lyceum of natural history (now New York academy of sciences), and was its treasurer in 1836-'43. He took an active part in the efforts that were made during that time to obtain subscriptions for the new building, and bore the principal burden in planning and superintending its construction. He was one of the founders of the New York yacht-club, and for some time its secretary. From 1859 till 1880 he was a trustee of Columbia college. The shells collected by the expedition of Com. Matthew C. Perry to Japan were submitted to him for examination, and he wrote the article on that subject in the government reports. Dr. Jay was the author of “Catalogue of Recent Shells” (New York, 1835); “Description of New and Rare Shells” (1836); and later editions of his catalogue, in which he enumerates about 11,000 well-marked varieties, and at least 7,000 well-established species. — William's son, John, diplomatist, b. in New York city, 23 June, 1817, was graduated at Dr. William A. Muhlenberg's institute in 1832, and at Columbia in 1836. After his admission to the bar in 1839 he became well known by his active opposition to slavery and his advocacy of St. Philip's colored church, which was admitted to the Protestant Episcopal convention after a nine years' contest. He was secretary of the Irish relief committee of 1847, and was counsel for many fugitive slaves, including George Kirk, two Brazilian slaves that were landed in New York, Henry Long, and the Lemmons. (See Arthur, Chester Alan.) In 1854 he organized the meetings at the Broadway tabernacle, that resulted in the state convention at Saratoga on 10 Aug., and in the dissolution of the Whig and the formation of the Republican party at Syracuse, 27 Sept., 1855. During the civil war he acted with the Union league club, of which he was president in 1866, and again in 1877. In 1868, as state commissioner for the Antietam cemetery, he reported to Gov. Reuben E. Fenton on the chartered right of the Confederate dead of that campaign to burial, a right questioned by Gov. John W. Geary, of Pennsylvania, and Hon. John Covode. In 1869 he was sent as minister to Austria, where his diplomatic work included a naturalization treaty, the establishment of a convention on trademarks, and the supervision of the U. S. commission to the world's fair of 1873. He resigned and returned to the United States in 1875, and has since resided in New York city. In 1877 he was appointed by Sec. Sherman chairman of the Jay commission to investigate the system of the New York custom-house, and in 1883 was appointed by Gov. Cleveland as the Republican member of the State civil service commission, of which he is still (1887) president. Mr. Jay was active in the early history of the American geographical and statistical society, and was long manager and corresponding secretary of the New York historical society. He was also the first president of the Huguenot society, organized in 1855 in New York. In connection with his political career, Mr. Jay has delivered numerous addresses on questions connected with slavery, and also bearing on its relation to the Episcopal church, of which he is a leader among the laity. His speeches and pamphlets, which have been widely circulated, include “America Free, or America Slave” (1856); “The Church and the Rebellion” (1863); “On the Passage of the Constitutional Amendment abolishing Slavery” (1864); “Rome in America” (1868); “The American Foreign Service” (1877); “The Sunday-School a Safeguard to the Republic”; “The Fisheries Question”; “The Public School a Portal to the Civil Service.”
James Madison
More than two hundred years ago, in those early days of our country's history, which read now like some old time romance or fairy tale; the days of the Mayflower and brave Miles Standish, of Captain John Smith and the Indian Princess Pocahontas, a list was written in the year 1623 of the names of all the men, women and children in the colony of Virginia. In that list is found the name of Captain Isaac Madison, who, with his little company of pioneer soldiers, fought many a battle with their savage Indian neighbors.
Thirty years afterward John Madison, a descendant of the brave captain, took out a patent for lands lying between the York and James Rivers, bounded on the east by the waters of Chesapeake Bay.
Years passed away and generation after generation of Madisons took out patents of land from the English government and clearing away the forests of Virginia, made fertile plantations and became owners of large estates. Among these pioneers was one named James Madison, who owned a fine estate in Orange County called Montpellier and who, about the year 1749, was married to Miss Nellie Conway, the daughter of a wealthy planter, whose large estate in King George County was called Port Conway.
In the winter of 1751, Mrs. Nellie Madison made a long visit to her old home at Port Conway and there, on the 16th of March, 1751, her first child was horn and named for his father, James Madison. As time passed, other children came to the home of James and Nellie Madison until Montpellier echoed with the merry voices of seven children, four sons and three daughters.
The life of these little children of the South was very different from the life of New England boys and girls. The boys of Massachusetts and other Eastern States were sent to school when very young and most of their time, when at home, was employed in doing chores in the winter months and in working in the fields during the summer, while the girls were early taught to sew and knit, to spin and weave and to help in all the household labors.
But children in the Southern States knew nothing of the toil, and very little of the privations and hardships of pioneer life. The climate was much warmer and the winters not so long and cold as in New England; the fertile soil needed little care to furnish plenty of food, and all the work on the plantation and in the house was performed by negro slaves. The children grew up, therefore with the idea that they were not only a privileged class, but were expected to become rulers of the common people and must prepare themselves for such a position.
This was especially true of the oldest son in a family. The law of primogeniture, by which the eldest son inherited the estates and became the head of the family after the death of the father, prevailed in Virginia, and such boys grew up with the feeling that much was expected of them.
A historian, Writing of that time, says: "This had a strong effect upon the aspirations and lives of the bright boys of that generation, as the roll of the noted men of the early days of the Republic plainly shows. It is remarkable how many of them were sons of Virginia farmers."
James Madison was only four years old when the news of Braddock's defeat by the French and Indians brought terror to the homes of the settlers on the western borders of Virginia, and during the two years following that defeat the people lived in dread of their savage neighbors. Montpellier was so near the border that war threatened to reach its very doors. Around the fireside and at all neighborhood gatherings the people talked of nothing else; and the children listened eagerly, half pleased and half afraid. to the stories told by negro mammies of Colonel George Washington, the brave young hero commanding the Virginia riflemen, who Were holding back the savage red-skins and protecting the settlements from torch and tomahawk.
To the end of his life James Madison remembered those days; and the child's admiration for the hero deepened as he grew to manhood into respect, affection and veneration for the noble man who was "first in the hearts of his countrymen."
There were no schools in Virginia when the father of James Madison was a boy, and feeling deeply his own lack of education, he was determined that his children should have every possible advantage which they could obtain from the schools then established. Mrs. Madison's education was much better than her husband's and she taught her son during the early years of childhood. Like most great and good men, James Madison learned his earliest lessons at his mother's side and those lessons influenced his whole life. When, in after years, he held the highest office in the nation his respect and veneration for his aged mother was a beautiful example to all American boys.
While still very young, little James was sent away from home to attend a school in King and Queen County kept by Mr. Donald Robertson. Here he remained some time and, in addition to the English branches, he began the study of Greek. Latin. French and Spanish. But his parents did not like to have their boy away from them so long and so the Rev. Thomas Martin, an Episcopal clergyman, came to live in the Madison home and become the private teacher of the young