Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 5.djvu/583

 VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

953

and two of their children are recorded in Dorchester, namely: Eliza, born January 4, 1800, and Enos, mentioned below. Their other children were: Isaac Ambrose, born November 20, 1804, died July 29, 1830; Har- vey, born May 22, 1807, died April 21. 1875; Sarah Frances, born December 3, 1813, died December 6, 1813; Benjamin, a twin, died same as sister, Sarah F.

Enos Howe, son of Isaac E. and Frances (Randall) Howe, was born'January 4, 1803, in Dorchester, and died October 28, 1892. He married (first) December 24, 1829, Mary Tolman. who was born December 13, 1808, died September 30, 1849. He married (sec- ond) November I, 1854, Bersheba H. (Grif- fith) Brown, of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, born 1809, died June 26, 1870. Children, all of the first marriage : Mary Emeline, Ellen Maria. Albert. Catherine Frances Stone, Isaac and Clara.

Albert Howe, eldest son of Enos and Mary (Tolman) Howe, was born December 14, 1836, in Dorchester, where he grew up, and was educated in the public schools, subse- ciuently serving an apprenticeship to the trade of carpenter. Early in life he located in Pittsfield. Alassachusetts, where he was employed at his trade, and when the call came for three months' men for the Union army, in 1861, he enlisted and was made a corporal of Company K, Eighth Massachu- setts Infantry. At the expiration of his term of enlistment he reenlisted in Com- pany A, Forty-ninth Massachusetts Volun- teers, and was made first sergeant. At the battle of Donaldson he was captured and kept sometime as a prisoner. As there was no provision for the care of prisoners, he was set free and returned to Pittsfield, where he again resumed work at his trade. On account of impaired health, as the result of exposure in the army, he was compelled to abandon this for a time, and in 1863 came to Old Point Comfort, where he was employed in the assistant quartermaster's department. Upon the establishment of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, he was employed in the erection of the first build- ing, under General Armstrong. The insti- tution was at that time under the manage- ment of the American Missionarv Associa- tion of New York. Mr. Howe was among the first assistants, and has been associated with the school down to the present time. In 1870, when a farm was purchased, and

the school chartered with a board of trustees, Mr. Howe was made superintendent and manager of the farm. .Subsequently he was superintendent of industries, and is now, at the age of seventy-eight years, superintend- ent of roads and grounds. He is an attend- ant of the Church of Christ, whose building is located on the school grounds.

He married, November 8, 1865, Lydia French Dresser, born December 28, 1843, died February i, 1896. They had children:

1. Harriette Wilder, born December 3, 1867.

2. Harry Dresser, born January 12, 1872, on the Hampton school grounds : he is a gradu- ate of Cornell University and of the medical department of the University of Pennsyl- vania ; after graduation, for one and one- half years, he was an interne at Blockley Hospital in Philadelphia, after which he located at Hampton, Virginia, where he is engaged in general practice ; he is a most daring and successful surgeon, and dean of the staff of Dixie Hospital, Hampton ; he is identified with numerous medical associa- tions, and is a communicant of Christ Church ; he married, November 8, 1898, Eliz- abeth W'ingate, and the\' have a daughter, Elizabeth \\'ingate Howe, born May 19, 1904.

John Robinson Swinerton. Lives that truly count in a community as obvious in- fluences for good are rare enough, and it is not by any means the case that the most conspicuous are the most potent in their eflfects. The mere interest in good things possessed by some men shining, not bril- liantly perhaps, but with a clear flame through all their acts, is likely to give more light and prove of more service in the final analysis than the illumination of more strik- ing achievement which, meteor like, startles us only to be forgotten the instant its bright course is run. Such it pleases and is whole- some for us to think, and such, if it ever be true, is true in the case of the distinguished and cultivated gentleman whose name heads this brief article.

John Robinson Swinerton, although a Virginian by right of long residence, is not so either by birth or parentage, coming, as he does from an old New England family which took the adventurous voyage to the American colonies and settled in the region of Salem and Danvers, Massachusetts, somewhere about the year 1628. From that