Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/503

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

AUGUSTUS STORRS WORTHINGTON

WORTHINGTON, AUGUSTUS STORRS, lawyer and patriot soldier, was born August 14, 1843 at Fallston, Pennsylvania. His father, Benjamin D. Worthington, was a manufacturer of wadding. He is described as a man of " intelligence, well informed, upright and patriotic, and an advocate of temperance all his life." To his mother, Eliza (Jackson) Worthington, he was indebted for the awakening and the stimulus of his intellectual life, and for a strong influence upon his moral and spiritual nature. His health was good in childhood and youth; and while he was always fond of reading, he never failed to join in the out-of-door games of the boys of his neighborhood. His early life was passed in Steubenville, Ohio, to which place his parents removed when he was but one year old.

He left school when he was fourteen, having had a two years' course in the high school, after some years of study in the common schools of his town; and from that age until he went into the army in 1862, he worked in the wadding mill in which his father was interested. For several years after leaving school, he pursued his studies at home, after working-hours; but "not with any definite plan" and "not with much benefit."

He became a private soldier in the Union army, August 6, 1862; and he served through the Civil war in Company D, 98th Ohio volunteer infantry. He was honorably discharged at the close of the war, in March, 1865, having been wounded at Perryville, Kentucky, October 8, 1862; and having lost a leg at the battle of Kenesaw Mountain, Georgia, June 27, 1864.

After the close of the war, he served as a clerk in the war department at Washington, from 1866 to 1870, in the meantime graduating from the Columbia law school, in 1868; and was admitted to the bar of the District of Columbia, in June of the same year. In August 1870, he began the practice of law in the city, where he still continues his practice.