Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/391

Rh became colonel in May, 1863, having been promoted for meritorious conduct at Pittsburg, Tenn. He acted for some time as chief of staff and assistant adjutant-general to Gen. McClernand, and was engaged at the battles of Belmont, Fort Donelson, and Shiloh. On 24 Sept., 1862, he was promoted brigadier-general of volunteers for bravery in action, and at the close of the war received the brevet of major-general. He commanded the U. S. forces at Bolivar, Tenn., from November, 1862, to June, 1863, and repelled Van Dorn's attack on that place. He afterward reorganized about sixty Ohio regiments at Camp Dennison, Ohio, was president of a court of inquiry to investigate Gen. Sturgis's conduct, commanded at Natchez, Mississippi, from July, 1864, to the spring of 1865, and then presided over a commission in New Orleans to examine and report upon southern claims against the government. After the war he was engaged for several years in reviving railroad enterprises in the south, edited the "Illinois State Journal" in 1872-'8, removed to Wisconsin in the latter year, was appointed governor of the territory of Idaho in 1876, served a term of four years, and then returned to Wisconsin and later removed to Kansas.

BRAYTON, Samuel Nelson, physician, b. in Queensbury, N. Y., 11 Jan., 1889; d. in Buffalo, N. Y., 17 May, 1893. After graduation at the College of physicians and surgeons he entered the navy as an assistant surgeon, served on board the monitor "Montauk" during her numerous contests with the enemy, and was afterward for two years in the Pacific. He then resigned from the navy and engaged in business in New York city. He partly adopted the homoeopathic system of medicine in 1868, but continued to use the methods of practice of the old school to a considerable extent. He engaged in practice in Honeoye Falls, N. Y., removed to Buffalo in 1877, and became professor of the theory and practice of medicine in the Buffalo college of physicians and surgeons upon its establishment, and dean of the faculty in 1881. He is also editor of the "Eclectic Physicians' and Surgeons' Investigator," a monthly homoeopathic journal, published in Buffalo.

BREARLEY, David, jurist, b. near Trenton, N. J.. 11 June, 1745; d. in Trenton, 16 Aug., 1790. He studied law, and practised in Allentown, N. J., early took part in the controversy of the colonies with Great Britain, and was arrested for high treason, but was set free by a mob of his fellow-citizens. He was a member of the first convention to frame a constitution prior to 1781, and an officer in the revolutionary army, being lieutenant-colonel, at first in the 4th battalion of the 2d establishment, and, subsequent to January, 1777, in the 1st New Jersey regiment. On 10 June, 1779, he was elected chief justice of New Jersey, resigning in 1789, when he was appointed U. S. district judge. In the constitutional convention of 1787 he protested vehemently against an unequal representation of the states, and opposed the joint ballot of the two houses of congress, on the ground that it impaired the power of the small states. He presided over the state convention that ratified the federal constitution, and was one of the presidential electors in 1788. In the federal convention he was a member of the committee of eleven selected to decide on the length of tenure and powers of the president. Judge Brearley was one of the compilers of the Protestant Episcopal prayer-book of 1785.—His brother, Joseph, was a soldier of the revolution, who was promoted major in 1777, and served through the war without compensation as aide to Gen. Washington.

BREATHITT, John, governor of Kentucky, b. near New London, Va., 9 Sept., 1786 ; d. in Frankfort, Ky., 21 Feb., 1834. He removed with his father to Kentucky in 1800, was a surveyor and teacher, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1810. He was an earnest Jacksonian democrat, and for several years was a member of the legislature. He was lieutenant-governor of Kentucky in 1828-32, and governor in 1832-4.

BREBEUF, Jean de, French missionary, b. in Bayeux, 25 March, 1593 ; killed in the Huron country, 16 March, 1649. He accompanied Champlain as a Jesuit missionary to Canada in 1626, and established himself among the Hurons, acquiring their language, and exercising a paternal influence over them. He was carried as a prisoner to England in 1629, but returned in 1632 to the Huron country, and extended his missionary labors to the Neuter Indians on Niagara river. In 1634 he penetrated, with Daniel, another Jesuit, to the vicinity of Lake Huron. The two Christian villages of St. Louis and St. Ignatius were founded, followed by St. Mary's on the Wye river and other stations. In the war between the Hurons and the Iroquois the town of St. Louis, where Father Bré-beuf resided, was captured by the Iroquois in 1649. He and his companion Lallemand might have escaped, but remained with their converts and were tortured to death. They were covered with pine bark full of pitch, and burned on a scaffold. Bré-beufs skull is said to be preserved at the convent of the hospital nuns in Montreal, in the pedestal of a silver bust. His translation into the Huron tongue of Ledesma's catechism was printed at the end of Champlain's "Voyages," and is the earliest specimen of the Indian idioms of Canada. His account of the Hurons in the Jesuit "Relations" of 1635 and 1636, embracing a treatise on their language, was translated by Albert Gallatin and published in the memoirs of the American antiquarian society. Some of the letters of Pere Bré-beuf were issued by Carayon (Paris, 1870).

BRECK, James Lloyd, clergyman, b. in Philadelphia, 27 June, 1818'; d. in Benicia, Cal., 30 March, 1876. His early education was received in the public schools. He studied for three years under the tuition of the Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg at Flushing, was graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1888, and at the general theological seminary. New York, in 1841, joining the same year with two of his classmates, William Adams and John H. Hobart, in the formation of an associate mission for work in the west. A visit from Bishop Kemper decided the young men to go to Wisconsin, and soon after their arrival at Nashotah in September the associate mission was fully organized by the choice of the Rev. Richard F. Cadle, an army chaplain stationed at Fort Crawford, Wis., as prior, a designation somewhat foreign to the tenets and discipline of the Episcopal church. At the end of the year, however. Prior Cadle, who was also called "father," severed his connection with the mission, and Mr. Breck was left with his original associates to prosecute the work. In the summer of 1842 a tract of 460 acres on the borders of Nashotah lakes was purchased and the foundation for Nashotah theological seminary laid by receiving students in divinity. The seminary did not prove altogether a success, various causes contributing to this result, probably not the least important being the strictness of the regulations and their rigorous application to the students. In 1850 Mr. Breck left Nashotah, and in 1851 went to Minnesota, where he founded, at Crow Wing and elsewhere, the mission work among