AUSTIN CANFIELD

MRS. AUSTIN CANFIELD

JUDE CONVERSE ("UNCLE JUDE" IN CHARDON).
     Mr. Converse, born at Randolph, Orange county, Vermont, July 21, 1806, was the youngest of the twelve children of Joseph and Mary Converse.  Of these but two survive, Governor Julius Converse, of Vermont, an eminent lawyer, and who reached the chief magistracy of his State through several of the most important subordinate stations in the gift of her people; and Mrs.. Eleanor Hoyt, of Cleveland.  Another sister, Mrs. Mary French, was for many years a highly-esteemed resident of Chardon; was the mother of Mrs. Mary Foote widow of the late Charles H. Foote; John French; Hon. Warren C. French, an able lawyer and leading citizen of Vermont; J. Wales French of Kirkland, Oneida county, New York; Mrs. Calvin Knowles and Henry French, of Cleveland.
     Jude was reared in New England, where his ancestors were early planted, grew up amid its green hills, cold blue steams, and snowy winters.  The youngest of a large family, one can easily understand he was the half-spoiled pet of older sisters, imbibed the ideas, inherited the traits of character, had the usual education and habits of thought of a genuine New England boy.  His brother-in-law, Hoyt, was for many years one of the most prominent men of Geauga when its northern boundary was Lake Erie.  In 1828 young Converse followed his sister to Chardon, where, with the exception of two years at Cleveland, he resided the rest of his life.  Soon after his arrival he engaged in mercantile enterprises, which he pursued with varying success for many years.  The final failure in business, that severest test of integrity and reputation, involved no loss of character and no diminution of esteem and confidence.  During most of the administrations of Presidents Lincoln and Johnson he had the management of the Chardon post office, which he was compelled to relinquish, on the invasion of disease, to the general regret of the people.  On the 8th of November, 1832, he was joined in marriage to Mrs. Sidney Denton, widow of the late Dr. E. Denton, of Chardon.  Of this union and its fruits I am to speak elsewhere.  His death occurred at Chardon, on the 4th day of February, 1874, and there his remains repose.
     The Converses were a well-looking race, a good share of which fell to Jude.  Slenderly made, standing five feet eight, blonde, blue-eyed, with fair hair, pleasing manners, and one of the frankest of manly faces, in which the guilelessness of the heart and soul were written in the clearest characters.  His was a joyous, loyal nature, rich in all the social qualities, tender, simple, pure, generous, just, susceptible of enduring attachments, and endowed with the qualities which win much love.  He received a fair intellect, which saw clearly, formed earnest convictions, upon which he unhesitatingly acted.  Not self-assertive, unambitious, modest, his name was rarely heard out of his village.  No one perhaps ever lived in it more loved and esteemed, or died more regretted.

SIDNEY CONVERSE.
     When one stands in the shadow of this woman, estimates her possibilities, and turns to the calm tame serenity of her way in life, which any woman could have trod, he feels as if there had been a misapplication, a misappropriation of faculties.  Of the usual height, commanding presence, full-corsaged, a massive head, broad be imperious, and an air and look that might become regal, one is prepared for the unusual, the striking in her career, and half-regrets her sex or curses its narrow limits.  Her life presents a fine subject for a study.  A memoir would bring out her traits with breadth and fullness; a sketch in some sort will be as failure.
     Sidney Metcalf was born in Enfield, Connecticut, Mar. 16, 1804.  She also was one of twelve children.  Her father's name was Thomas, and her mother's Sybil.  Thomas and Eben Metcalf, of Chardon, and Orrin Metcalf, of Natchez, Mississippi, are brothers.  Mrs. Elizabeth Chandler, of Seneca county, Ohio, is a sister, as was Mrs. Samuel Smith, of Chardon, also Mrs. Doctor Ludlow, of
Auburn.  One would like to know more of the Metcalfs.  They were a strong fibered race, coming from New Hampshire granite.  Governor Metcalf of New Hampshire (and probably Governor Metcalf, of Kentucky, also, as the Metcalfs are supposed to have had a common origin), was of that blood, and so is Honorable Charles E. Glidden, of Warren.  Thomas Metcalf was a strong, positive-minded man, of exceptional force of character and intelligence, as is Thomas, Jr. of Chardon.  Orrin, a younger son, is a leading man in his region, and for many years sheriff of Adams, his county of residence, in Mississippi.  Another son, Doctor Asa B., early became a resident also of that State, and after many years of successful practice there, removed to California, where he died, and where his widow and two accomplished daughters, Mrs. Ellen J. McHenry and Mrs. Emma M. Hay still reside.  The mother, Sybil was said to be one of the most amiable of women, which I can believe.
     I knew nothing of the girlhood of Sidney.  I thought the name a funny one for a girl; somehow it always seemed appropriate for Mrs. Converse.  She accompanied the Smiths to Chardon in 1817, when she was thirteen, and grew and ripened in the richness and freedom of those years.  Such a nature and mind as hers will educate themselves, and secure all there is of the best within their reach.  At the age of twenty she formed her first marriage, becoming the second wife of Dr. Evert Denton, of Chardon, and assumed the care of his four children. Dr. Denton was one of the most famous physicians of his day, in a very wide circuit; a man not of striking personal appearance, but of great learning and brilliant parts; a sayer of things to be repeated, many of which remain.  After a happy union of six years, Sidney became a widow.  This was in 1830.  She now went through one of the sorest tests of a woman's life, - twenty-six, very attractive, a widow. In 1832 she formed what one might fancy her more real marriage, with Jude Converse.  Quite certain I am that the conditions favorable to a happy union quite abundantly attended this last.  The first husband was a man to be admired, honored, revered, and doubtless loved.  The second was a man more to be loved.  The gifted never seek the same gifts.  The beautiful wed the plain, and genius mates with the moderately endowed, and is proud of the acquisition.  The heart does not always find its own, but seldom fails to recognize it when it does.  The dark, cynical, witty, original man of genius, inferior presence, and forty years, might not successfully rival the handsome, gay-hearted, high-spirited youth of twenty-six.  Sidney had intellect and courage enough for half a dozen.  However it may have been, the marriage was one of rare unity and happiness. The home realized the ideal conception of that word.  The bright days of prosperity without found answering light within.  When the outside world darkened it was illuminated by the radiance from the hearthstone.  There heart, soul, love, tenderness, warmth, courage, and hope never diminished; surrounding darkness only made them appear more conspicuous, steady, and enduring.  With children and grandchildren idolizing and clinging to her, the woman, when she reached her second and real widowhood, pined.  On the first anniversary of her husband's death she was smitten with illness, and five days after, Feb. 9, 1875, she followed him.
     It has been said that no woman attains all her best until motherhood.  Mrs. Converse was the mother of six children.  Of the four by her first husband, Richard E. and Sybil reached maturity.  Richard is a man of singular and fine acquirements, which for some inscrutable reason have never been utilized, and, though possessing many excellences, many men with none of his genius make a larger figure in the world.  Sybil also had rare intellectual qualities, marked with a dreaminess that rendered her peculiar, - a beautiful, gentle girl, of brilliant intellect.  She died when twenty-five, at her uncle's, in Natchez, of yellow fever.  Of the two of the last marriage, Julius O. will be the subject of the following sketch.  The others died in childhood; the last, Mary Ellen, at the age of two and one-half years.  A rare, precocious child, her gifts provoked the fatal favor of the gods, as in classic ages.
     The mental qualities of Mrs. Converse were practical, of the cast we call masculine, because of their rarity among women.  Her mind was enriched by wide and varied reading, her perceptions quick, and her judgment of men and things of singular accuracy.  Few detected the tendency of the times with greater sagacity, or were more fertile in suggesting expedients.  Force and strength were the leading features of her character.  The religious element was large and well developed in her nature; her views of the order called advanced.  Self-poised, clear-seeing, strong, and masterful, though always womanly, she was necessarily a centre.  Tender woman, wife, and mother, the law of her household was love.  Generous and sympathetic, her heart was a refuge to the stricken, and her hand a ready helper to the needy.  In her neighborhood she was a resource of strength, wise counsel and charity; in her circle she led without seeming to, and ruled by appearing to serve.  When one contemplates her completed life, he may perhaps cease to regret that no broader and higher career was opened to her.

JULIUS ORRIN CONVERSE.
     This gentleman bears the names of his two uncles, the governor of Vermont, and Metcalf, of Natchez.  The only son and surviving child of the subjects of the two preceding sketches, he was born at Chardon, May 1, 1834, and is now forty-four years of age.  He is what the English call “personable,” stands six feet high, with more the complexion and look of the Converses than of the Metcalfs.  With the kindly amiability of his father he unites the fine sense, good judgment, and many of the mental characteristics of the mother.  The born pet of his parents through infancy and early childhood, he came as near being spoiled by over-tenderness as falls to the lot of the children of the most devoted.  From the day that he was able to walk he was the perpetual companion of his father, who never relinquished his hand unless engaged in some act requiring both of his own.  In his walks to and from the “Red Brick Store" to the post-office, to make calls or for recreation, Jude was invariably attended by Julius.  What the result of continued prosperity in business would have been to the junior may not be known.  The child, so tenderly cherished by he father, had early to learn the bitter-sweet lesson of persistent, fruitful labor.  He was not placed early at school, nor did he ever at any time enjoy any but the commonest advantages.  It is believed that after his thirteenth year his attendance at school was of the scantiest.  A child of Sidney Converse would hardly be entirely dependent upon outside facilities for education.  Julius could at no time, in the constant presence of his father, have been a harum-scarum, rollicking boy.
     At sixteen he entered upon his novitiate in a life-long service of the press.  It was in the office of a village newspaper that he grew, developed, and ripened, as strong-minded men do.  It was there that he received his real outside education.  He is a favorable specimen of what it may do for a boy of pure New England descent.  I cannot imagine the faintest touch of the Bohemian type, which is found distributed in all printing establishments, on the character or habits of Julius.  A boy might run away from such a father as Jude Converse; a tramping jour. printer never had a mother who greatly resembled Sidney.  Her providence must have been too wise, wide, and warm to permit the birth of a wish to wander out of its circle.  His first work, beginning in 1850, was under the young Bruces, William W. and Eli, on the Geauga Republic.  He then served under the late Hon. J. F. Asper, afterward member of Congress from Missouri, who conducted the Free Democrat.  He was succeeded by the late J. S. Wright in 1852, who subsequently changed the name of the paper to Jeffersonian Democrat.  Young Converse followed the press in this change of owners, and continued in a subordinate position until he became the proprietor and editor, in January, 1859.  These useful, fruitful years were mostly spent in the same office, when, at the early age of twenty-five, he assumed the responsibilities of the head and owner of the establishment.  The Converses were without exception pronounced Whigs.  Julius had breathed no other air; indeed, there was scarcely enough of any other for a single breath. This came to them early impregnated with decided anti slavery sentiment, and ere young Converse graduated to full citizenship the Whig party had disappeared.  During this period he studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1858. He has a good mind for the law, where, in the long run, the solid wins against the brilliant.  He took the paper, then free from local rivalries, with all the patronage of the county, and at once met the requisitions of his position.  His predecessor was a cautious, prudent manager of the journal.  From the young editor it at once took a sharper and more advanced position upon the one topic of slavery.
     The next year saw the election of Mr. Lincoln and the secession of the States, followed by the awful war, which fought itself, dictated its own policy, fashioned all policy, and formed all individual opinion.  The whole nation was at war, and all men, women, and children were more or less warriors, soldiers, auxiliaries, victims, sufferers, and mourners.  During all those years, the young editor, ever stanch, contributed his full quota to the one cause.  The Jeffersonian Democrat was finally changed to the more significant Republican.  The paper has steadily grown, broadened. and deepened, keeping fully abreast of the intelligent community who sustain and are in some sort sustained by it.  Reared and living nearly all his days in the village of Chardon, the centre of a purely agricultural community, whose character and habits of thought are his, trained to the constant calling of understanding and supplying their intellectual needs, when the narrow limits of the means at his command are remembered, contrasted with the expensive pages of the city dailies and weeklies with which it competes, the Geauga Republican must be esteemed quite the model country newspaper.  With its staff of good writers in each township, it. certainly meets one of the demands of the city editor: it furnishes to his scissors all the happenings within the limits of its circulation.  Mr. Converse is a good writer.  He occasionally grapples with a point or problem, and, in a half-dozen clear, well-considered, compact, vigorous paragraphs, disposes of it.  The fault I find with him is, he writes too little.  Then, when I estimate the space at his command, and mark the disposition he makes of it, and see that quite the whole of it is filled with original matter, in short, pithy articles and paragraphs, I excuse his forbearance.  Really, the amount of skill and ability expended by one man on a successful country paper would quite well furnish forth a lawyer, a doctor, two or three preachers, and half a dozen lecturers.
     Early in Mr. Lincoln's administration he appointed Mr. Converse postmaster at Chardon, and renewed it.  This is the only office Mr. Converse has ever held.  I have never heard that he sought any office.  He has most of the time, for years, been chairman of the Republican central committee of his county, and serves constantly on the district committees, judicial, senatorial, and congressional, giving the best of a ripened experience and rare judgment to the Republican cause, with out other reward than the unstinted confidence and esteem which have always attended him.  Singularly unambitious and modest, always underestimating himself, and never claiming anything, frank-natured, generous, of integrity undoubted, the blue-eyed, slender, silent boy who, a few years since, was the docile companion of his father's footsteps, has silently and unconsciously matured into one of the first men of a community of unusual intelligence, critical, and exacting in the qualities of its trusted men.  Certainly, this is much.
     On the 24th of December,1862, he was united in marriage with Julia P. Wright, daughter of Daniel H. and Susan P. Wright, of Freedom, Portage county.  The Wrights were of vigorous Massachusetts stock, coming from the neighborhood of Northampton, inheriting and transmitting to their children the virtues and characteristics of the New England race.  They were the parents of five children, one dying in infancy.  Of the two sons, Daniel fell in the murderous battle of Cedar Mountain.  He carried the colors of his regiment, the gallant Seventh Ohio, and met the usual fate of the standard-bearer.  Our army suffered a severe repulse there, and the hands which slew buried him.
     Arthur, less fortunate, contracted disease of the camp, march, and exposure, and died in hospital.  Less favored in death, parents and sisters had the solace of seeing his grave made by kindred hands near his home.  The parents survive in honored age.
     Mrs. Converse, a niece of the former proprietor of the Republican, was born in Huntsburg, Mar. 5, 1836, was carried to Freedom at seven, and grew to womanhood with the intelligence and culture which came almost naturally to the children of the favored Reserve.  A brunette, with a good face and fine eyes, accomplished, with womanly ways and manners, winning the love and confidence of Sidney Converse, - a sure test of many excellences, - she succeeds her in the love, confidence, and respect of family, friends, and neighbors. She, too, graduated early in the school of adverse fortune, was herself a teacher of children, and derived the strength of character, independence, and completeness of development which the women of her race receive from such training.  Of this marriage a daughter, Mary, fourteen years of age, is the offspring, - Converse, as one sees, in face and form, in disposition and ways also, I may imagine her going around much with her father, watching his eyes, and hearing his words.  Later, the mother traits will appear.  Daughters inherit from fathers and sons from mothers.  The German common folk have a pleasant superstition that to be born in the month of May, a “ May child,” is to secure happy fortunes.  Mary Converse shares with her father this pleasant omen.  The children of such parents as they were born of are surrounded by more fortunate influences and providences. The family circle is complete with the presence of Sarah N. Wright, the attractive younger sister of Mrs. Converse.
     When last in dear old Geauga (summer of 1878), I was several times in the present Converse mansion, - the new and beautiful residence.  It seemed pervaded with the warmth and spirit of the old life, whose memories were to be perpetual, and whose legends and traditions would live in perennial freshness.
Source: History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio - Publ. Philadelphia, Williams Brothers - 1878 - Pg. 124