Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 2).djvu/471

Rh to Gen. Hooker, and was engaged in the campaign of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, and in the Atlanta campaign in 1864. He was promoted brigadier-general of volunteers, 8 Aug., 1864, ordered to Gen. Sheridan in October, and was with him at Cedar Creek. On 13 March, 1865, he was brevetted major-general of volunteers, and was on duty in South Carolina. He was appointed register in bankruptcy for the first district of Maine in 1868, and represented Portland in the legislature in 1872-'4. &mdash; Another son of William Pitt, Francis, soldier, b. in Portland, Me., 18 March, 1839, was graduated at Bowdoin in 1858, and studied law at Harvard and in New York. He was appointed captain in the 19th U. S. infantry on 14 May, 1861, and was severely wounded at Shiloh. From October, 1862, till July, 1863, he was colonel of the 25th Maine volunteers, and commanded a brigade in front of Washington and near Centreville, Va. He was appointed brigadier-general of volunteers, 10 May, 1864, and major-general, 9 Nov., 1865. In 1864 he was with Gen. Banks in the Red river expedition, and was present at Sabine Cross-Roads, Pleasant Hill, and Monett's Bluff, where, leading his brigade in an assault, he lost a leg. In November, 1864, he was on duty in Washington, and in 1865 was in command of the 1st infantry division, Department of West Virginia, and was afterward assigned to Hancock's 1st veteran corps. He was a member of the Wirtz military commission in Washington in 1865, and assistant commander of the bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands in 1866. He was retired with the rank of brigadier-general in the regular army, 1 Nov., 1866. He served as mayor of Portland in 1876, but declined a renomination. — Another son of William Pitt, Samuel, soldier, b. in Portland, Me., 6 Jan., 1841; d. in Centreville, Va., 1 Sept., 1862, was graduated at Bowdoin in 1861. He began to study law, but soon entered the military service as 2d lieutenant in the 2d Maine battery, 30 Nov., 1861. He was promoted to 1st lieutenant, 3 June, 1862, was aide to Gen. Zebulon B. Tower in July, 1862, and was mortally wounded in the second battle of Bull Run, 31 Aug. &mdash; Samuel Clement's son, Joshua Abbe, b. in Rockland, Me., was appointed 2d lieutenant in the 1st U. S. cavalry, 24 March, 1862; 2d lieutenant 5th artillery, 6 Sept., 1862; 1st lieutenant, 30 Nov., 1865; captain, 26 June, 1882; and was wounded at Chickamauga. &mdash; Another son, Samuel, b. in Rockland, Me., was appointed 2d lieutenant in the 5th Maine battery, 18 Jan., 1865. He is a lawyer and politician in Stamford, Conn.

FESSENDEN, Thomas, clergyman, b. in Cambridge, Mass., in 1739; d. in 1813. He was the son of Rev. William Fessenden, of Cambridge, and uncle to the first Samuel. After graduation at Harvard in 1758, he became pastor in Walpole, N. H., which charge he held from 1767 till 1813. He was author of &ldquo;The Science of Sanctity&rdquo; (1804), and &ldquo;The Boston Self-styled Gentlemen-Reviewers reviewed&rdquo; (1806). &mdash; His son, Thomas Green, author, b. at Walpole, N. H., 22 April, 1771; d. in Boston, Mass., 11 Nov., 1837. He was graduated at Dartmouth in 1796, and during his college term wrote a ballad, entitled &ldquo;Jonathan's Courtship,&rdquo; which was reprinted in England. He studied law in Vermont with Nathaniel Chipman, occupying his leisure in writing humorous poems and other papers for the &ldquo;Farmer's Weekly Museum&rdquo; of Walpole, of which Joseph Dennie was then editor. He went to England in 1801, as agent for a new hydraulic machine, which proved a failure and involved him in pecuniary difficulties. While in London he became interested in the construction of a patent

mill on the Thames, in which enterprise he was completely ruined. At this time he formed the acquaintance of Benjamin Douglas Perkins, patentee of the metallic tractors, which he advertised in a poem in Hudibrastic verse, entitled &ldquo;Terrible Tractoration,&rdquo; in which he satirized the medical faculty, who opposed the use of these instruments (published anonymously, London, 1803). Hawthorne says: &ldquo;It is a work of strange, grotesque ideas, aptly expressed.&rdquo; The poem was enlarged and republished in New York in 1806 as &ldquo;The Minute Philosopher.&rdquo; He returned to the United States in 1804 and settled in Boston, but afterward edited the &ldquo;Weekly Inspector&rdquo; in New York for two years, and in 1812 began to practise law in Bellows Falls, Vt. He removed to Brattleborough, Vt., in 1815, and was editor of the &ldquo;Reporter&rdquo; there, but from 1816 till 1822 conducted the &ldquo;Intelligencer&rdquo; at Bellows Falls. In the latter year he established, in Boston, &ldquo;The New England Farmer,&rdquo; with which he remained connected till his death. He edited, also, &ldquo;The Horticultural Register&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Silk Manual,&rdquo; and published &ldquo;Original Poems&rdquo;; &ldquo;Democracy Unveiled&rdquo; (1806); &ldquo;Pills, Poetical, Political, and Philosophical; prescribed for the Purpose of purging the Public of Piddling Philosophers, Penny Poetasters, of Paltry Politicians and Petty Partisans. By Peter Pepperbox, Poet and Physician&rdquo; (Philadelphia, 1809); &ldquo;American Clerk's Companion&rdquo; (1815); &ldquo;The Ladies' Monitor&rdquo; (1818); and &ldquo;Laws of Patents for New Inventions &rdquo; (1822). His last satire was a little poem, entitled &ldquo;Wooden Booksellers.&rdquo; See an article on Mr. Fessenden, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, included in the volume entitled &ldquo;Fanshawe, and other Pieces&rdquo; (Boston, 1876).

FEUCHTWANGER, Lewis, chemist, b. in Fürth, Bavaria, 11 Jan., 1805; d. in New York city, 25 June, 1876. He was the son of a mineralogist, and inherited a taste for natural science, to which he devoted special attention at the University of Jena. After receiving his doctor's degree there in 1827, he came to the United States in 1829, and settled in New York, where he opened the first German pharmacy, and also practised medicine, being particularly active during the cholera epidemic of 1832. Subsequently he devoted his entire attention to chemistry and mineralogy, and became engaged in the manufacture and sale of rare chemicals. He introduced in 1829 the alloy called German silver, and was the first to call the attention of the U. S. government to the availability and desirability of nickel for small coins. In 1837 he issued, by permission of the U. S. government, a large quantity of one-cent pieces in nickel, and in 1864 he had struck off a number of three-cent pieces in the same metal, but they were not put into circulation. After the great fire of 1846 he called the attention of the authorities of New York to the fact that saltpetre would explode under certain conditions. This statement created much discussion; the expression &ldquo;Will saltpetre explode?&rdquo; became a byword, and a play was acted at one of the theatres in which a character representing Dr. Feuchtwanger was presented. He made two large collections of minerals, one of which he exhibited in London at the World's fair in 1851, and the other, which he bequeathed to his daughters, was for a time on exhibition at the Museum of natural history in Central park, New York. Dr. Feuchtwanger was a member of scientific societies in this country and abroad, and contributed papers to Silliman's &ldquo;American Journal of Science&rdquo; and to the &ldquo;Proceedings&rdquo; of the American association for the advancement of science. He published a