Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 01.djvu/439

 BRITTON.

BROADHEAD.

institute at Rochester, N. Y. He then removed to Lyons, N. Y., where he taught for five years, lu 1851 he invented the continuous copper strip for use as lightning rods, and was afterwards engaged in the business connected with his in- vention at Lockport and Rochester, N. Y., Detroit and Adrian, Mich., and Chicago, 111. He died in Adrian, Jan. 3, 1872.

BRITTON, Alexander Thompson, financier, was born in New York city, Dec. 29, 1835. He was gradixated at Brown university in 1857, and was admitted to the bar of Rhode Island, where he practised law uaitil 1860, when he removed to Madison, Fla. Upon the breaking out of the civil war he went to" Washington, D. C, and volunteered in the national rifles, the first Union company to cross the Potomac river. In 1864 he organized the legal firm of Britton & Gray in Washington, D. C. In 1877 he was appointed by President Hayes a commissioner to codify the public land laws, published by authority of Con- gress. He was president of the board of police commissioners and director in nimierous chari- table and banking institutions and street railroads. As chairman of the committee in charge of the inauguration of President Harrison, he, by economical management, turned over to the district an inaugural poor-fund of twenty-six thousand dollars. In 1890 he organized and was made president of the American security and trust company. He was appointed by President Harrison one of four commissioners to represent the district at the Colimibian exposition, 1893. He edited tlie Financial Revietv, and "U.S. Land Laws."' He died at Washington. July 7, 1899.

BROADHEAD, Garland Carr, geologist, was born in Albemarle county, Va., Oct. 30, 1827. His father was a soldier in the war of 1812, a self- made man, who, educating himself, rose to be a magistrate. In 1836 he settled in St. Charles county, Mo., where the son received his early education, first under his father, afterward under a tutor, while he worked at intervals upon his father's farm. He early showed a fondness for mathematics, and was familiar with Latin grammar before his tenth year. At the age of twenty-three he entered the University of Missouri, and two years later, the Western mili- tary institute at Drennon Springs, Ky. He stvidied geology under Prof. Richard Owen, formerly of Edinburgh. In 1852 he engaged as a civil engineer and superintendent of construction of a division of the Missouri Pacific railroad. In 1857 he was appointed assistant geologist of Mis- souri, which position he retained four years. From 1862 to 1864 he was United States deputy collector in St. Louis, and in 1866 he was United States assessor for the 5th Missouri district. In 1868 he was appointed assistant geologist of

Illinois, and in 1873 state geologist of Missouri, and he held the oSice until the survey was sus pended in 1875. In 1875 Mr. Broadliead made a collection for the Smithsonian insitution,- and for the Missouri department of the Centennial exhibition, and in the following year was one of the jurors at the exhibition, and wrote out the rejwrt on petrolemn and other hydrocarbons, as well as brief memoirs of state and other exhibits. In 1881 he was appointed special agent of the tenth census for investigating and obtaining data and specimens of rock quarries for the states of Missouri and Kansas. In the same year he visited North Park, Colorado. From November, 1883, to April, 1884, he was engaged in arranging specimens in the museum of the State university at Columbia, Mo. In July, 1884, he was ap- pointed a member of the Missouri river commis- sion. In July, 1885, in company with the other members of the commission, he visited Yellow Stone park and the upper streams tributary to the Missouri. From 1887 until 1897 he was pro- fessor of geology and mineralogy in the University of Missouri. He was made a member of various scientific societies, and. besides, the volumes incidental to liis geological surveys, he has writ- ten several hundred articles of scientific in- terest, chiefly geological, published in various pamphlets.

BROADHEAD, James O., lawyer, was born in Albemarle county, Va., May 19, 1819. He was educated at the high school, and when sixteen years of age studied for one year at the Uni- versity of Virginia. In June, 1837, he removed to Missouri, where he studied law in the ofiice of Edward Bates for three years. In 1841 he began the practice of the law in Pike coimty. Mo., and in 1845 was elected as a delegate to the constitutional convention of the state. In 1846 he was elected to the state legislature from Pike county, and in 1850 to the state senate, and served in that capacity four years. In 1859 he located in St. Louis, and in February, 1861, he was ap- pointed U. S. district attorney of Missouri, but resigned when he found it interfered with his duties as a delegate to the state convention, " for vindicating the sovereignty of the state, and the protection of its institutions." Under the provisions of resolutions ofl'ered by Mr. Broadhead, this convention abolished the exist- ing state government, and established a provis- ional government, which for the first three years of the civil war managed its affairs, raising and organizing a military force in support of the United States government. He was commis- sioned heutenant-colonel of the 3d Missouri cavalry, and was assigned to duty on the staff of General Schofield, as provost marshal-general of the department of Missouri. In 1876 he was