Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 7).djvu/234

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192
MATTOCKS
MAYNARD


serably be expeditiously disposed of. He was met for answer by a blank refusal. The assembly de- clared that full ])ower of election of all ofTicers rested with it alone : thereupon it deposed the then governor, Samuel Matthews, and put up as his successor, chosen by itself and responsible to it alone, Samuel Matthews. The governor held out until the ne.Ktday, and tlien capitulated and took the oath. He was a vigorous prosecutor of the few I'uritans that appeared in the colony, John Hammond, in his " Leah and Rachel," declaring that the Independents or Puritans were " ban- ished, clapt up in prison, and disarmed by one Colonel Samuel Matthews, then a counsellor in Vir- ginia." It is probable that Matthew's son, Thomas, was the T. M.. the author of the best and most complete contemporary account of Bacon's rebellion, printed in Force's " Tracts."

MATTOCKS, Charles Porter, lawyer, b. in Danville, Vt., 11 Oct., 1840. He was graduated at Bowiloin in 1803. At the outbreak of the civil war he enlisted in Maine, and was appointed 1st lieutenant in the 17th Maine infantry on 2 Aug., 186'3; he was made captain, 4 Dec, 1863, major, 33 Dec. 1863, and colonel, 15 May, 1865, having previously commanded the 1st U. S. sharpshooters (Berdan's) during the winter and spring of 1864. He received the brevet of colonel of volunteers on 9 April, 1865. for gallant and meritcrioas ser- vice during the campaign terminating with the surrender of the insurgent army under Gen. Rob- ert E. Lee, and on 13 March, 1865, of brigadier- general of volunteers for faitliful and meritorious service during tlie war. lie was mustered out 4 June, 1865, and was graduated at the Harvard law-school in 1867. He was state's attorney for Cumberland county in 1809-'73, and member of the state legislature, 1880-'4. During the war with Spain he was appointed brigadier-general by Presi- dent .McKinley on 8 June, 1898.

MAXIM, Hiram Stevens, inventor, b. in Tan- giersville, Me., 5 Feb., 1840. He attended the common schools of the state. After receiving the foundation of an education, he educated himself in the different branches of science with which his work had brought him into contact. Before the age of twenty-one years he had served his appren- ticeship and had been foreman. At the age of twenty-four he entered the large machine-works of his uncle, Levi Stevens, at Fitchburg, Mass. In 1877 he took up the question of electricity, and was among the first to make dynamos, electric machines, and electric lamps in the United States. He was the first to make incandescent lamp carbons by the process known as "flashing." In 1881 he exhibited at Paris the first electric current regula- tor ever made for electric lamps. For this inven- tion he was made chevalier of the Legion of honor by President Grevy. In 1883 he took up the ques- tion of automatic guns. He believed that the recoil energy of the gun, which was only a disturb- ing element in firing, could be turned to useful effect in performing the necessary functions of loading aTid firing. The first automatic gun was made in Hatton Garden, London, in 1884. This gun discharges 600 shots a minute. Mr. Maxim has also invented a smokeless powder which is not affected by heat and moisture, and which gives very high muzzle velocities and low pressures without any smoke at all. He also invented in 1889 an aeroplane, which is propelled by twin screws. This apparatus is the only instance in which any considerable weight has ever been lifted by an aorial apparatus not provided with a ^as bag. Mr. .Maxim is a member of many scientific associations, has received from the sultan of Tur- key the order of the Medjidie, and in 1899 he be- came a British subject.

MAY, Lewis, financier, b. ii Worms, Germanv, 23 Sept., 1823 ; d. at Dobbs Ferry, on the Hudson, N. Y., 33 July, 1897. He received his education in his native city, and came to this country in 1840, becoming a clerk in a country store in Penn- sylvania. From 1845 to 18.50 he conducted a mercantile business at Shreveport, La. ; removed to California, and settled in New York city in 1851. He retired from his business interests in California in 1857, and until his death was engaged in financial pursuits in New York. He was an organizer of the Young men's Hebrew association, and its first president; director of several railroad companies; president of Temple Euuinu-El, New York city, from 1863 to 1897 ; and treasurer of Mount Sinai hospital for eighteen years, also of other institutions and companies.

MAYALL, Thomas Jefferson, inventor, b. in North Berwick, Me., 10 Aug., 1826 : d. in Reading, Mass., 18 Feb., 1888. He obtained employment in a paper-mill in Roxbury, and soon began invent- ing, especially making improvements in machinery in the factory, and attracting the attention of his employers by devising the first rubber belt that was ever used in this country. This was followed by a model of the first cylinder printing-machine that was ever made, from whicn has grown the present industry of wall-paper printing, and calico printing, which |)i'evious to that invention was done on blocks. The machine made 1,000 rolls of paper a day. printed in two colors. His other in- ventions include a method of producing satin-faced paper, a method of vulcanizing rubber (1841), an automatic battery, a revolving cannon, bomb-shells with sharpened edges to bore through the armor of ships, a Coffee-hulling machine, which he intro- duced into Brazil, and self-acting drawbridges for railroads. At the time of his death he was at work on an electric elevated railroad, an electric-cable railroad, and a pneumatic elevated railroad. His revolving cannon was introduced in several coun- tries of Europe. By means of machinery oper- ated by steam, this gun is loaded and fired forty times a minute, with only one man in attendance, the loading, firing, and swabbing going on at the same time. Jlr. Mayall took out 200 patents in this country and 70 in England.

MAYER, Lewis, clergyman, b. in Lancaster, Pa.. 26 ."^larch. 1783; d. in York, Pa., 25 Aug., 1849. He learned a trade, at the same time ac- quired a cla.ssical education, and subsequently studied theology in Frederick, Md. He was or- dained to the ministry of the German Reformed church in 1807, was pastor of the church in Shep- ardston. Va., of that at York, Pa., and i)rofessor of theology in the German Reformed seminary which was located in Carlisle, Y(nk. and Mercersburg, Pa. His later years were devoted to the preparation of the principal work of his life, a "History of the German Reformed Chuich," of which he completed one volume (Philadelphia, 1851). He also pub- lished "Sin against the Holy Ghost" and a series of "Lectures on .Scriptural Subjects" (1849).

MAYNARD, George William, mining engineer, b. in Brooklyn. N. Y., 12 June. 1839. He was graduated at Columbia, and studied his profession in Germany at the University of Gottingcn and at the mining school of Clausthal. In 1863 he had charge of metallurgical works in Ireland, but in 1864. after his return to the United States, he engaged in mining engineering, chiefly in Colorado. After three years of this practice he took