Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 09.djvu/190

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commanded a division in the Appomattox cam- paign; refused to surrender, and charged through the Union lines with two divisions of cavalry, lie escaped and attempted to reorganize the Array of Virginia, but was captured at Hanover L".H..Va., May 2, 18C5. He was married, May •JS, 1863, to Elizabeth Barbara, daugliter of Will- iam Overton and Sarah Ann (Gregory) Winston of Hanover county, Va. After the war he studied law. and in 1870 became interested in railroading, being chief engineer of the Eastern division of the Northern Tacific railroad, 1871-81. and chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific railroad, 1881- 83. In 1885 he retired to an estate in Virginia, where he was living. June 10. 1898, when he was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers by President JIcKinley. He served at Chickamauga Park and Knoxville, commanding the 14th Min- nesota, 2d Oiiio. and 1st Pennsylvania regiments of volunteer infantry, and was engaged in drill- ing troops and equipping them for battle when the war ended. He was honorably mustered out, Nov. 31, 1898, and returned to his home in Charlottesville, Va.

R0S5ITER, Thomas Prichard, painter, was born in New Haven, Conn., Sept. 29, 1817. He attended the New Haven schools; studied art under Nathaniel Jocelyn, and in 1838 opened a studio in New Haven. He studied in London and Paris, 1840-41; painted in Rome, 1841-46, and settled in New York city in 1846. He was elected an Associate National Academician in 1840, and an Academician in 1849. He resided in Paris, 1853-56, and again in New York city, 1856- 60. Among his more famous paintings are: Miriam Dancing before the Hosts; Jeremiah; Jeics in Captivity; Joan of Arc in Prison; Wise and Foolish Virgins; The Representative Mer- chants; The Home of Washington, with Mignot (1858); TJte Discoverers (1859), and The Life of Christ, a series. He was awarded a gold medal at the Paris International exposition of 1855 for his Venice in the loth Century (1854), and a medal of the third class at the Salon of 1855. He diod in Cold Spring. N.Y., May 17, 1871.

ROTCH, Abbott Lawrence, meteorologist, was born in Boston, Mass., Jan. 6, 1861; son of Benjamin S. and Annie B. (Lawrence) Rotch; grandson of Joseph and Anne (Smith) Rotch, and of Abbott and Katharine (Bigelow) Lawrence, and a descendant of families of English ancestry, prominent as merchants in Massachusetts, a paternal ancestor having founded the town of New Bedford, and his maternal grandfather that of Lawrence. He was graduated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. S.B., 1884, and in 1885 established at his own expense the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, in Milton, Mass. At this observatory, the entire expense of which he assumed, he, with two or three assistants, made important investigations in dynamic meteorology'. Here were executed the first measurements in the United States of the height and velocity of clouds, and here, also, kites were first used to lift self-recording instruments into the upper air, a method of investigation now extensively adopted in Europe. As early as 1899 Mr. Rotch experimented with kites for wireless telegraphy, using the Marconi system, and in 1901, when he crossed the ocean to lecture to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, he flew kites daily from the deck of the steamer, thus obtaining the first observations of the upper atmosphere over the Atlantic. He was married, Nov. 22, 1893, to Margaret Randolph, daughter of Edward C. and Margaret (Randolph) Anderson of Savannah, Ga. In 1891 he received the honorary degree of A.M. from Harvard: was a member of the International Jury of Awards at the Paris exposition in 1889, and was then made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; subsequently he was American member of the International committees on cloud nomenclature and scientific aeronautics, and in 1902 received from the German Emperor the Royal Order of the Crown, Third Class, for his co-operation in the international work of exploring the atmosphere. He took part in scientific expeditions to various parts of the World, and was for ten years associate-editor of the American Meteorological Journal. He is the author of: Observations and Investigations at Blue Hill, published in the Annals of Harvard College Observatory after 1887; Sounding the Ocean of Air (London, 1900), besides many articles in scientific periodicals.

ROTH, Theophilus Buechle, educator, was born in Prospect, Pa., Ft-b. 9, 1853; son of Lewis and Lydia (Bueclde) Roth; grandson of David and Mary (Althaus) Roth, and great-grandson of John Roth (born in Brandenburg, Prussia, wha came to America, 1745), missionary among the American Indians in Bradford county. Pa., and at Gnaden Huetten, Ohio, and later pa.stor of the Moravian church at York, Pa., where he died. He was graduated at Thiel college, Greenville, Pa., A.B., 1874, A.M., 1877, and entered the Lu- theran ministry, 1878. He was married, Oct. 7, 1879, to Amalie, daughter of John G. and Bar-