Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/750

708 " Penguin," 23 March, 1815, he was dangerously wounded, and for his gallantry was presented with a medal by congress, and the legislature of Penn- sylvania unanimously voted him a sword. He was promoted to the rank of commander on 3 March, 1825, and to that of captain on 3 March, 1835. He commanded the squadron on the West India sta- tion just before the beginning of hostilities with Mexico, and in May, 1846, he sailed from Vera Cruz to San Brazos de Santiago, established a blockade of the Mexican ports on the gulf, and commanded the American squadron on the Mexican coast for two years. In August and October, 1846, two fruitless attempts were made to enter the port of Alvarado, on 14 Nov., 1846, the port of Tam- pico was captured by him, and on 9 March, 1847, he directed the landing of the army of Gen. Scott at Vera Cruz, and assisted in the reduction of the fortress of San Juan de Ulloa, but was soon after- ward compelled, by the failure of his health, to re- turn home. At the time of his death he was com- mandant of the Philadelphia navy-yard.

CONNER, Henry W., politician, b. in Prince George county, Va., in August, 1793 ; d. in Catawba county, N. C, 15 Jan., 1866. He was graduated at the University of South Carolina in 1813, served in Gen. Joseph Graham's expedition against the C!reek Indians in 1814, settled in Catawba county, N. C, was a candidate for congress in 1818, and elected as a democrat in the next congressional election, and re-elected nine successive times, serving from 3 Dec, 1821, till 3 March, 1841. He declined re- election, but in 1848 entered the state senate, after which he refused to be a candidate for office.

CONNER, James, tvpe-founder, b. near Hyde Park, Dutchess co., N. Y., 22 April, 1798. In 1814 he was apprenticed to Samuel Brower, and, after learning the trade, worked in different prniting- offices in New York city, was a skilful pressman, and, after becoming expert in finishing stereotype plates, took charge of a stereotype foundry in Bos- ton. Returning after three years to New York city, he began business as a printer and stereotype- founder. He made from old stereotype plates, and sold in large quantities, large type that was wanted for posters, manufactured the first folio Bible ever printed in the United States, began to cast type for his own establishment, devising a style of light-faced type that found a large demand, and stereotyped Shakespeare's works and other books, and then a polyglot Bible, for which he designed a new size of type, which he called agate. He next published Walter Scott's works, after which he confined himself to type-founding. He invented a method of casting letters from an electrotyped matrix by chemical precipitation.

CONNER, James, soldier, b. in Charleston, S. C, ISept., 1829; d. 26 June, 1883. He was graduated at South Carolina college in 1849, ad- mitted to the bar in 1852, and in 1856 appointed U. S. district attorney for South Carolina, which office he resigned in December, 1860. He entered the Confederate army as captain in 1861, served in many campaigns, rose to the rank of brigadier- general, and in the latter part of the war com- manded a division. He was chairman of the South Carolina Democratic state committee in 1876, and elected in that year attorney-general on the same ticket with Gov. Wade Hampton, but resigned the office in 1877.

CONNER, Samuel Shepard, soldier, b. in New Hampshire, about 1783; d. in Covington, Ky., 17 Dec, 1820. He was graduated at Yale in 1806. During the war with Great Britain he entered the army as major of the 21st infantry, served as aide- de-camp to Gen. Henry Dearborn in the beginning of 1813, and was lieutenant-colonel of the 13th in- fantry from March, 1813, till 14 July, 1814, when he resigned. In the latter year he was elected to congress from Massachusetts, serving from 4 Dec, 1815, till 3 March, 1817. In 1819 he was appointed surveyor-general of the Ohio land district.

CONNESS, John, senator, b. in Ireland, 20 Sept., 1821. He emigrated to the United States at the age of thirteen, learned the trade of a piano- forte maker, and worked in New York city until the discovery of gold in California. He went to that state in 1849, engaged in mining, and after- ward became a merchant. He was a member of the California legislature in 1853-'4 and in 1860-'l, a candidate for lieutenant-governor in 1859, and the union democratic candidate for governor in 1861, receiving 30,944 votes, to 32,751 cast for the Breckinridge democratic candidate, and 56,036 for Leland Stanford, the successful republican candidate. He was elected as a union republican to succeed Milton S. Latham, a democrat, to the U. S. senate, and sat from 4 March, 1863, till 4 March, 1869, serving on the committees on finance and the Pacific railroad, and as chairman of the committee on mines and mining. He resided m Massachusetts after the conclusion of his term.

CONNOLLY, John, physician, b. in Lancaster county. Pa., about 1750. He resided at Pittsburg, where he became acquainted with Washington. At the beginning of the Revolution he suggested to Gov. Dunmore the plan of rousing the Indian tribes against the colonists, and was his chief agent in that business. He was seized and imprisoned, wliile at the head of an armed i^arty, in 1774, by the authorities of Pennsylvania, with whom he hail a bitter controversy respecting land at the falls of the Ohio, granted him by Lord Dunmore. He was appointed by Lord Dunmore magistrate of West Augusta, and in 1775 was authorized by him to raise in Canada and the west and command a regi- ment of loyalists and Indians, to be called the Loyal Foresters. He visited Gen. Gage in the au- tumn of 1775, and while on the way from Williams- burg, Va., to Detroit, the rendezvous of the force he expected to raise for the invasion of Virginia, he was captured at Plagei'stown, Md., with his in- structions in his possession, and held prisoner till near the end of the war. He and other disaf- fected persons held conferences at Detroit, about 1798, with prominent citizens of the west, with re- gard to the seizure of New Orleans and the forci- ble control of the navigation of the Mississippi, The attention of Washington was attracted to the subject, and measures were taken to prevent the execution of the plot.

CONNOR, Edmund Sheppard, actor, b. in Philadelphia, Pa., 9 Sept., 1809; d. in 1891. In 1829 lie made his first public appearance as young Nerval in the Walnut street theatre, and there- after became noted as a performer of backwoods- man and Indian characters, in several plays writ- ten by native dramatists. He was manager of the Arch street theatre, Philadelphia, in 1850, and for many years lived in retirement in New .Jersey. — His second wife, Charlotte Mary Sanford Barnes, d. in New York city, 14 April, 1863, whom he married in 1847, made her debut at the Tremont theatre, Boston, in 1833, played Juliet to the Romeo of her mother, Mrs. Mary Barnes, and afterward appeared in England. Her father, John Barnes, was also a successful actor.

CONNOR, Patrick Edward, soldier, b. in the south of Ireland, 17 March, 1820; d. in Salt Lake city, Utah, 17 Dec, 1891. He was educated in New