show that he was "more sinned against than sinning."
Judge Daniel G. Fowle resides in Raleigh. He was born and raised in Washington, Beaufort County, the son of the late Samuel R. Fowle, a prominent merchant at that place, a native of Boston, and a useful citizen. He studied law and has attained eminence in his profession. He served in the army as Lieutenant-Colonel of the Thirty-first Regiment and as Adjutant-General of the State. In 1865 he was appointed by Governor Holden one of the judges of the Superior Court. He is now in the successful practice of his profession and a prominent candidate for Governor, and known as the silver-tongued orator. He has been twice married: first to a daughter of Judge Pearson, and then to Mary, daughter of Dr. Fabius J. Haywood, of Raleigh.
John Watrous Beckwith is now the Episcopal Bishop of Georgia. He is a native of Raleigh, son of Dr. John Beckwith, and graduated at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. He read law and practiced for a time, but exchanged, as Hawks and others, the bar for the pulpit. He was ordained as a deacon at Wilmington in 1854, and a priest at Warrenton in 1856. He was residing in Maryland at the opening of the war, and, as his brother Polk, felt it a duty to God and his country to join the suffering South. He entered as Chaplain, served through Mississippi, South Carolina and Georgia until the war ended. He then took charge of St. John's Church at Savannah, and in 1868 was consecrated Bishop of Georgia. He is a fluent speaker and blessed with winning eloquence.
The Right Reverend John Stark Ravenscroft, D. D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the North Carolina diocese from the date of his consecration, April 22, 1823, to the date of his death, March 5, 1830, was during a part of his episcopate a resident of the city of Raleigh. We collate from a memoir by Mr. Walker Anderson, attached to the edition of his "Works," the following: Bishop Ravenscroft, born in the year 1772 upon an estate near Blanford, County of Prince George, Virginia, long a possession of his family. He was the only child of Dr. John Ravenscroft, a gentleman of fortune, educated for the practice of medicine; the mother was a daughter of Mr. Hugh Miller, a Scotch gentleman resident of the same County, both parents being descended on the mother's side from the extensive and respectable family of Bollings He says: "Though a native of Virginia, of which State my progenitors, as far back as I have been able to trace them, with the exception of my maternal grandfather, were also natives, yet my first recollections are of Scotland, my parents having removed there from Virginia the same year in which I was born; and after an interval of about two years spent in the north of England purchased and settled finally in the south of Scotland, where my mother and two sisters still reside." Here his father died, 1780, and his mother availed herself of the excellent opportunity which Scotland afforded of giving her son a classical education; after he had finished his course at one of the most respectable grammar schools in that country, she placed him at a seminary of somewhat higher grade in the north of England, where, besides continuing his classical studies, he was instructed in mathematics, natural philosophy and other sciences. He left Scotland and reached Virginia in January, 1789, then just seventeen years old. He came to look after the remains of his father's property. In this he was so far successful as to be subsequently in easy if not affluent circumstances. He entered William and Mary College, intending to devote himself to the study of the law, of which Mr. Wythe was then the professor, but owing to the extreme laxity of discipline in the college, joined to the large pecuniary allowance made by his guardian, habits of extravagance and dissipation were induced, and he did not derive any great benefit from the lectures of this eminent lawyer. This fact is frankly confessed in the autobiographical sketch referred to. It does not appear that he was ever licensed in the profession, but in Williamsburg he formed the acquaintance of a lady, whose lovely character appears from that time to have exerted an influence over his wayward disposition sufficiently powerful to counteract the adverse influence of his former bad habits and want of religious principles, and to make him the estimable and respectable man he afterward became, until the more powerful operation of Divine grace brought him into God's ministry. About the year 1792 he visited Scotland for the last time, converted his inheritance into money, which justified him in marrying the estimable lady just referred to, on his return to Virginia. This event occurred a short time previous to his coming of age, when he married the daughter of Lewis Burwell, of Mecklenburg County, Virginia, and settled in Lunenburgh County, not far from Mr. Burwell; here he devoted himself to the usual pursuits of a country life. As a husband, a master and a member of society, Mr. Ravenscroft was
| Index - Contents |
 |
|
| ||
|
||