Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/144

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TILTON
TIMM

in the University of Pennsylvania, but declined, being unwilling to leave the service. In 1782, af- ter the surrender of Cornwallis, he began to prac- tise again in Dover. In 1783-'5 he was a delegate to the Continental congress, and he sat for several sessions in the legislature. He removed to Wil- mington for his health, from 1785 till 1801 was government commissioner of loans, and on the declaration of war with Great Britain was appoint- ed surgeon-general of the army. He found the hospitals on the northern frontier, and especially the one at Sackett's Harbor, filthy and neglected. He moved the latter to Watertown, X. Y., intro- duced better regulations into all of them, and was rewarded by an immediate improvement in the health of the army. Purchasing a farm near Wil- mington, he devoted his time thereafter chiefly to its cultivation. In 1857 his remains were disin- terred, and now lie in the Wilmington and Brandy- wine cemetery beneath a monument erected by the Delaware state medical society. Dr. Tilton pub- lished his graduation essay, " De Hydrope " (Phila- delphia, 1771), and an elaborate plan for hospital organization, entitled " Economical Observations on Military Hospitals, and the Prevention and Cure of Diseases incident to the Army" (Wilmington, 1813). His papers include " Observations on the Yellow Fever," " Letter to Dr. Duncan on Several Cases of Rabies Canina," "Observations on the Curculio," " On the Peach-Tree and its Diseases," " A Letter to Dr. Rush approving of Bleeding in Yellow Fever," and an oration in 1790 as presi- dent of the Delaware Society of the Cincinnati. TILTON, John Rollin, artist, b. in Loudon, X. H., in 1833; d. in Rome, Italy, 22 March. 1888. His professional life was spent in Italy, and he was a close student of the Venetian school of paint- ing. Many of his landscapes are in private col- lections in England and the United States. Among his paintings are " The Palace of Thebes," which was shown at the Royal academy, London, in 1873 ; " Como " ; " Venice " ; and " Venetian Fishing- Boats " and " Rome from Mount Aven- tine," both of which are in the Corcoran gallery, Washington. His "Lagoons of Venice," and " Komombo " were at the Philadelphia exhibition of 1876 Henry T. Tuckerman says of him that " while some critics compare him with Claude and Turner, others, like Jarves, unjustly declare him a ' weak sentimentalist in color, having no solid foundation of knowledge or inventive force. ' "


TILTON, Theodore, journalist, b. in New York city, 2 Oct., 1835. He was graduated at the Col- lege of the city of Xew York in 1855, was em- ployed for a year on the Xew York " Observer," and then became an editor of the " Independent," continuing on the staff from 1856 till 1871, the latter part of the time as editor-in-chief. He edited also, about six months of the last year, the Brook- lyn " Union." He then established the " Golden Age," an independent political and literary weeklv, but retired from it at the end of two years, fn 1874 he charged Henry Ward Beecher with crimi- nal intimacy with his wife (see Beecher), and the case, tried by Plymouth church and the public courts, attracted wide attention. Mr. Tilton has written many political and reformatory articles, which have been reprinted in pamphlets. He has gained much reputation as an orator, being a con- stant and eloquent speaker in behalf of woman's rights, and, before the civil war, in opposition to slavery. For twenty years he was a lyceum lec- turer, "speaking in nearly every northern state and territory. He went abroad in 1883, and has since remained there. Among his works are " The Sex- ton's Tale, and other Poems" (Xew York, 1867); " Sancta Sanctorum, or Proof -Sheets from an Edi- tor's Table" (1869); " Tempest Tossed," a romance (1873 ; republished in 1883) ; " Thou and I," poem& (1880) : and " Suabian Stories," ballads (1882).


TIMBY, Theodore Ruggles, inventor, b. in Dover, X. Y., 5 April, 1822. He received a common- school education, and spent his youth on a farm. At an early age he developed inventive faculty, and in 1836 made a practicable working model of a float- ing dry-dock, which was condemned by nautical experts as impracticable in tidal waters. " The first sight of the circular form of Castle Williams on Governor's island, in the harbor of Xew York, sug- gested to him the idea of the revolving plan for de- fensive works, and in April, 1841, he went to Wash- ington and exhibited a model and plans of a revolv- ing battery, to be constructed of iron, to the chief of engineers and chief of ordnance of the U. S. army. This model and plans were also submitted to John C. Calhoun and other officials in Washington. In January, 1843, he made a model of a marine tur- ret, and at that time filed a caveat in the U. S. patent-office for a metallic revolving fort, to be used on land or water, and to be revolved by pro- pelling engines located within the same, acting upon suitable mechanism. From January, 1841, till 1861 Mr. Timby urged the importance of his plans upon the proper authorities at Washington and elsewhere, but without satisfactory results, although in 1848 a favorable report was made to- the secretary of war and indorsed by the chief of the ordnance bureau. Meanwhile, in 1856, he ex- hibited his plans to Xapoleon III., and received some encouragement, but without practical result. In September, 1862, after developing many modifi- cations of his original idea, he took out letters-pat- ent covering the broad claim for " a revolving tower for defensive and offensive warfare, whether placed on land or water," and in the same year he entered into a written agreement with the con- tractors and builders of the original " Monitor " for the use of his patents, covering the revolving turret, by which they agreed to pay him a royal- ty of $5,000 on each turret that they constructed. These facts show beyond a doubt that Mr. Timby is the original patentee of the revolving turrets, and that he was recognized as such by John Erics- son, the designer of the "Monitor" and similar iron-clad vessels. Among the elaborations and de- velopments of the original idea of the revolving tower which he has perfected from time to time are the cordon of revolving towers across a chan- nel (1861); a mole and tower system of defence (1880); the planetary system of revolving towers- (1880) ; the subterranean system of defence (1881) ; and the revolving tower and shield system (1884), all of which he has patented in this and other countries. Mr. Timby invented and patented in 1844 the American turbine water-wheel, which was a success, and in 1861 he devised the method, now in universal use, of firing heavy guns by electricity, as well as other inventions of practical utility. The degree of A. M. was conferred on him by Madison university in 1866. and that of S. D. by the L'niversity of Wooster, Ohio, in 1882. Mr. Timby founded in February, 1888. " Congress." a monthly journal, in Washington, D. C, and has prepared for the press a collection of didactic and philo- sophical prose and verse entitled "Beyond."


TIMM, Henry C., musician, b. in Hamburg, Germany, 11 July, 1811. He was baptized as Christian Heinrich. but, on coming to the United States, he adopted his present name. He had some instruction on the piano from Albert Gottlieb