Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 06.djvu/344

 LANE

LANE

and drawing in the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical college, which position he still held in 1901.

LANE, John, pioneer, was born in Virginia, April 8, 1789. He was taken by his parents to Georgia in boyhood, and was educated at Frank- lin college, Athens. He was admitted to the South Carolina conference of the Methodist Episcopal church in 1814, and in 1815, was ap- pointed to the Natchez circuit, and in this way he became the pioneer Methodist preacher in Mississippi Territory and the first of that denom- ination to labor among the Cherokee and Creek Indians. He was made presiding elder of the Mississippi circuit in 1820, and remained in the ministrj' to the end of his life. He alsb engaged in business in which he was successful, and he served as judge of the private court of Warren county. He was president of the Conference Missionary society and president of the board of trustees of Centenary college, Johnson. La., for several years. He was married to a daughter of the Rev. Newit Vick, and in 1820 settled in Mis- sissippi on Mr. Vick's estate. Here he founded Vicksburg, which he named in honor of his wife's father. He died in Vicksburg. Miss., Oct. 10, 1855.

LANE, Jonathan Abbot, merchant, was born in Bedford, Mass.. May 15, 1822 ; son of Jonathan and Ruhamah (Page) Lane, and a descendant in the seventh generation of Job Lane, who left England about 1635, and settled in New England, and of Nathaniel Page who settled in the colony in 1880. His parents removed to Boston in 1824, and he was graduated at the Boylston grammar school in 1834, and at the English high school in 1837. He entered the employ of Calvin Wash- burn & Co., dealers in dry goods, in 1837, and in 1849 became the controlling owner of the busi- ness, which he conducted 1849-98. In 1861 he was made president of the ward eleven branch of the Union league and served as a private in the home guard. He was elected president of the Mer- cantile Librarj' association in 1875. He was a representative in the state legislature, 1863-64 ; state senator, 1874-75 ; a member of the execu- tive council, 1878 ; and a Republican presidential elector in 1892. He was a president of the Con- gregational club, a director of the American Con- gregational association, a life member of the Y.M.C.U., and of the Boston Y.M.C.A.; member of the advisory board of the Children's Friend society, a director of the Home for Aged Men, a trustee, on the part of the state, of Baldwinville Cottage hospital, a member of the Boston Art club, president of the Boston Merchants' associa- tion, 1887-95 ; one of the vice-presidents of the National board of trade, and chairman of the first mayor's merchants' municipal committee of tlie city of Boston, 1896-97. He was married io

1851 to Sarah Delia, daughter of the Rev. Ben- jamin Franklin Clarke, of Buckland, and five sons, John C, Frederic H., Alfred C, Benjamin C, and Lucius Page, survived him. A number of his reports and addresses, chiefly upon the sub- jects of taxation and of the consular service, ap- peared in pamphlet form. Mr. Lane died in. Boston, Mass., June 5, 1898.

LANE, Jonathan Homer, scientist, was boi-n in Geneseo, N. Y., August, 1819. He early became interested in the study of electricity to which he gave special attention during his college course. He was graduated from Yale, A.B., 1846, A.M.,^ 1850. He entered the U.S. coast survey in 1847, and the U.S. patent-office in 1848, as assistant examiner, becoming chief examiner in 1851. As astronomer of the U.S. coast survey, he was a member of the expedition that observed the total solar eclipse at Des Moines, Iowa, in 1869, and was sent to Catania, Italy, for the same purpose in 1870. He was connected with the bureau of weights and measures at Washington, D.C., 1869-80. He was the inventor of a macliine for finding the real roots of the higher equations, a machine for exact uniform motion, a visual tele- graph, a visual method for the comparison of clocks at great distances apart, an improved basin for mercurial horizon, and an instrument for holding the Drummond light and reflector on shipboard. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of other scien- tific societies. He is the author of memoirs : On the Lav) of Electric Induction in Metals (1846); On the Law of Induction of an Electric Current on Itself (1851); Report on the Solar Eclipse of Aug. 7, 1SG9 (1869); Theoretical Temperature of the Sun (1870); Report on the Solar Eclipse of Dec. 12, 1870 (1871); Description of a New Form of Mercurial Horizon (1871); Coefficients of Ex- pansion of the British Standard Yard Bar (1877). He died in Washington, D.C., May 3, 1880.

LANE, Joseph, soldier, was born in Buncombe county, N.C., Dec. 14, 1801 ; son of John and Eliz- abeth (Street) Lane ; grandson of Jesse Lane, and a descendant of Sir Ralph Lane, who came to Amer- ica with Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-uncle, Joel Lane (1740-1795), was one of the first settlers of Wake county, a member of the Provincial con- gress that met at Hillsborough in 1775, and a member of the general assembly which was held at his own house in 1781. On Apiil 4, 1782, he sold to the general assembly one thousand acres of land, upon which the city of Raleigh was built. Joseph removed with his parents to Kentucky in 1810, and settled in Henderson county, where he was educated. He removed to Vanderburg county, Ind., and there was em- ployed in the office of the clerk of the covinty court, and divided his time between selling goods