Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/606

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572
WINSTON
WINTHROP

for presidential elector on the Douglas ticket. Though he had opposed secession, he entered the Confederate army in 1861 as colonel of the 8th Alabama regiment, and commanded a brigade in the peninsular campaign. Soon afterward he resigned his commission on account of physical disability, and devoted himself to aiding the poor and destitute. He was a delegate to the State constitutional convention of 1866, and was afterward chosen to the U. S. senate, but was refused a seat. After this he repeatedly declined to be a candidate for governor, and lived in retirement. Gov. Winston was tall and thin, and in early years erect and active, but his later life was a long struggle with disease. He had few equals as a debater, being gifted with great powers of satire and possessing much readiness and boldness in controversy. In his power over his friends and his hostility to his enemies he has been compared to Andrew Jackson.


WINSTON, Joseph, soldier, b. in Louisa county, Va., 17 June, 1746; d. near Germantown, N. C., 21 April, 1815. His ancestor was one of five brothers from Winston Hall, Yorkshire, England, who came to Hanover county, Va., in the 17th century. Joseph received a fair education, and at the age of seventeen joined a company of rangers. While pursuing a party of hostile Indians they fell into an ambuscade, and young Winston was twice wounded, one of the balls remaining in his body till his death. The savages put the rangers to flight, but Winston escaped and was carried on a comrade's back for three days, till they reached a frontier cabin. He was afterward pensioned by the legislature, and in 1766 removed to Surry county, N. C. In 1775 he was a member of the Hillsborough convention, and in February, 1776, he was in the expedition against the Scotch Tories. In the same year he was made ranger of Surry county and major of militia, serving against the Cherokees, and in 1777 he was a member of the legislature and of the commission that made a treaty with that tribe on Holston river. In 1780 he took part again in partisan warfare with the Tories, and at King's Mountain he led the right wing, and was conspicuous for his bravery, contributing greatly toward the victory. For his services on this day the legislature afterward gave him a sword. After defeating a band of loyalists in a running fight in February, 1781, he took part in the battle of Guilford in March. He represented Surry county in the state senate for three terms, and when Stokes county was formed became the first senator from that county, serving five times between 1790 and 1812. In 1793-5, and again in 1803-'7, he was a member of congress. The county-seat of Forsyth county, N. C, is named for him. — His son, Joseph (1788-1840), served in the war of 1812, was many years in the legislature, and was a major-general of militia. William Winston Seaton, the journalist, was the elder Joseph's nephew.


WINTER, William, author, b. in Gloucester, Mass., 15 July, 1836. He was graduated at the Harvard law-school, but began his career as a journalist and literary and dramatic reviewer. As such he wrote for the New York journals, and contributed literary articles to various magazines. Since August, 1865, Mr. Winter has been attached to the New York “Tribune” as dramatic reviewer, and as such has secured for himself a high reputation. Within that time he has also written and delivered poems on numerous public occasions. Partly in the interest of his profession, Mr. Winter has made several visits to Europe. In 1886, in commemoration of the death of his son, he founded a library at the academy in Stapleton, Staten island, N. Y. Mr. Winter's publications include “The Convent, and other Poems” (Boston, 1854); “The Queen's Domain, and other Poems” (1858); “My Witness: a Book of Verse” (1871); “Sketch of the Life of Edwin Booth” (1871); “Thistledown: a Book of Lyrics” (1878); “The Trip to England” (1879); “Poems: Complete Edition” (1881); “The Jeffersons” (1881); “Henry Irving” (New York, 1885); “The Stage-Life of Mary Anderson” (1886); “English Rambles and other Fugitive Pieces” (Boston, 1884); and “Shakespeare's England” (Edinburgh, 1886). He has edited, with memoirs and notes, “The Poems of George Arnold” (Boston, 1866); “Life, Stories, and Poems of John Brougham” (1881); and “The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O'Brien” (1881).


WINTHROP, John, governor of Massachusetts, b. in Edwardston, near Groton, Suffolk, England, 22 Jan., 1588; d. in Boston, Mass., 26 March, 1649. The manor of Groton had been purchased in 1544 by his grandfather, Adam Winthrop, a rich clothier of Suffolk, who had also a city home in St. Michael's, Cornhill, and who was for several years master of the famous Cloth-workers' company of London. A portrait of him, ascribed to Hans Holbein, indicates a man of culture, decision, and great strength of character. One of his daughters became the wife of Sir Thomas Mildmay, nephew of the founder of Emmanuel college; and another was the mother of Dr. William Alabaster, who is styled, in “Fuller's Worthies,” “a most rare poet as any our age or nation has produced: witnesse his Tragedy of Roxana.” Of this Adam Winthrop the third son, also named Adam, was a lawyer by profession, a graduate of Magdalen college, Cambridge, and for many years the auditor of Trinity and St. John's colleges. His first wife was a sister of Dr. John Still, bishop of Bath and Wells, but she died early without offspring. His second wife was Anne Browne, of Edwardston, and of this marriage John Winthrop, the subject of this notice, was the only son. His parents lived until within a few years of his coming to this country, his mother dying only one year before he embarked. Of the school or schools which he attended as a boy there is no record, but we find him admitted to Trinity college, Cambridge, on 18 Dec., 1602, when he was not quite fourteen years of age, and he remained there for more than two years. But his college life was brought prematurely to a close, before he was entitled to a degree, by his early engagement and marriage. On 26 April, 1605, he married Mary Forth, daughter and sole heir of John Forth, of Great Stambridge, in Essex. She was of a wealthy family, one of whom was knighted in 1604, and is said to have brought to her husband “a large portion of outward estate.” It is matter of tradition that he was made a justice of the peace on arriving at eighteen years of age, and that “he was exemplary for his grave and Christian deportment.” As early as 1609, when he had just attained his majority, he is recorded in his father's diary as holding “his first court in Groton Hall.” The wife of his youth was taken away within eleven years after their marriage, having borne him six children, of whom two had died in their earliest infancy; and a second wife, of the old Clopton family, had been buried, with her infant, only a year and a day after wedlock. He was sorely oppressed by such successive bereavements, and found consolation only in a more earnest cultivation of the Christian hope and faith which he had cherished from his childhood. There is reason for thinking that he had contemplated becoming a clergyman at this period, and his “Experiences,” as written at the