Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 07.djvu/351

 MEANS

MEDARY

volunteers early in 1864, and commanded the district of Etowah, Ga. In January, 1865, he was ordered to Savannah, where he was mustered out of service. He was appointed territorial secretary of Montana, and served as governor pro tempore during the absence of Gov. Sidney Egerton, and while attempting to frustrate an attack by the Indians on the white settlers he fell into tiie Missouri river from the deck of a steamboat, and his body was not recovered. A petrified body supposed to be Ids was rej)orted to have been discovered in the river near Fort Ben- ton in 1899. He is the autlior of: Sjxeches un the Legislative Independence of Ireland (1852). He died near Fort Benton, Mont., July 1, 1867.

MEANS, Alexander, educator, was born in Statesville, N.C., Feb. 6, 1801. He attended the academy in Statesville, 1815-19 ; taught school, 1820-25 ; attended medical lectures at Transyl- vania university, Lexington, Ky., and practised medicine in Putnam county, and at Covington, Ga., until 1833. He was licensed as a Methodist preacher in 1828 ; was principal of the Georgia Conference Maimal Labor school at Covington, 1834- 38 ; attended Jefferson Medi- cal college, Philadelphia, 18- ' 38-39 ; was professor of phys- ics in Emory college, Ga., 1838-55 and 1865-83 ; profes- sor of chemistry and phar- macy in Georgia Medical college, Augusta, 1840- 59 ; president of the Masonic Female college, Cov- ington, Ga., 1853-54, and of Emory college, 1854- 55. He was also professor of chemistry in Atlanta Medical college, 1855-67. As a member of the Georgia secession convention of 1861, he voted against secession, but he remained loyal to the south during the civil war. He was agricultural chemist for Georgia, with headquarters at Sav- annah, 1868-77. He received the honorary de- grees : M.D. from the Augusta Medical college, 1841 ; D.D. from Emory, 1854, and LL.D. from Emory, 1858. He contributed papers to i)eriodi- cals, and is the author of the Centennial of Cliem- istry and A Cluster of Poems for the Home and Heart. He died in Oxford, Ga., June 5, 1883.

MEANS, John Hugh, governor of South Caro- lina, was born at Hampton, Fairfield district, S.C., Aug. 18, 1812, son of Thomas and Sarah Means. His father, a planter, was a native of Boston, Mass. John Hugh Means was graduated at South Carolina college in 1832, and during the nullification excitement in 1832-33 he became well known as an advocate of state rights. He was married, Jan. 23, 1833; to Sallie. daughter of Robert Stark of Columbia, S.C. He was a repre- sentative in the South Carolina legislature for several terms, was governor of South Carolina,

1850-52, and during his administration strength- ened the state militia and advocated secession. As president of the state convention of 1852, he declared the state had a right to secede and gov- ern itself independently. He was a delegate to the South Carolina convention of 1860, and in 1861 entered the Confederate army as colonel of the 17th South Carolina regiment. He took a prominent part in the early movements of the civil war, and was attached to Evans's independ- ent brigade, Kemper's division, in the battle of Manassas, where he was mortally wounded. He died at Manassas, Va., Aug. 28, 1862.

MEARS, John William, metaphysician, was born in Reading, Pa., Aug. 10, 1825 ; son of Henry , Haller and Ann Barbara (Birkinbine) Mears ; grandson of William and Elizal>eth (Haller) Mears and a descendant of William Mears born in England, 1710, who settled in Georgia with Oglethorpe's expedition about 1735. He was graduated at Delaware college, Newark, Del., B.A., in 1844, and at the New Haven Divinity school in 1851. He was pastor of Presbyterian churches in New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware, 1851-60 ; was assistant editor and subsequently editor and proprietor of the American Presbyte- rian, Philadelphia, 1860-70, which was absorl^ed by the New York Evangelist, and professor of ethics and metaphysics at Hamilton college, Clinton, N.Y., 1871-81. He was president of the New York State Teachers' association in 1878. and chairman of the convocation of the University of the State of New York, at Albany, that year. • He invited metaphysicians to meet at Saratoga in the summer of 1881, to celebrate the centennial of the publication of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," and made a notable address. He was a candidate for representative in the 46th congress in 1878, and for governor of New York in 1879 on the Prohibition ticket. He was a prominent re- former, and after several years' agitation suc- ceeded in breaking up the Oneida community of free-lovers, established in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes. He received the degree D.D. in 1870. He is the author of : Tlte Bible in the 'Workshop (1857) ; The Martyrs of France (1860) ; The Beggars of Holland (1867); TJie Story of Madagascar (1873); TJie Heroes of Bohemia (1879); From Exile to Overthrow (1881). He died in Clinton, N.Y., Nov. 10, 1881.

MEDARY, Samuel, territorial governor, was born in Montgomery Square, Pa., Feb. 25, 1891 ; son of Jacob Medary, a farmer. He was brought up as a Quaker and taught a Friends' school when eigh- teen years old, and wrote both prose and verse for the Norristown Herald. He removed to Montgom- ery county, Md.,with his parents in 1820, and about 1823 to Georgetown, D.C. He settled in Batavia, OhiD, in 1825, where he was county surveyor.