Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 2).djvu/591

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
FULLER
FULLER
561

framed upon the models of the great French preachers, and of their kind have seldom been equalled. He was more than once president of the southern Baptist convention. In addition to pamphlets containing his debates with Bishop England (Baltimore, 1840), and Dr. Wayland (1845), and various sermons published separately, he was the author of volumes of "Sermons" (New York), and "Letters," an "Argument on Baptist and Close Communion" (Richmond, 1849), and a "Psalmist," which has been much used in his denomination. A memoir of Dr. Fuller was written by his nephew. Dr. James H. Cutlibert (New York,"'l879).


FULLER, Richard Henry, artist, b. in Bradford, N. H., 19 Oct., 1822 ; d. in Chelsea, Mass., 24 Dec. 1871. He was left an orphan when seven years of age, and in 1840 went to Boston, and afterward to Chelsea, working at the trade of a cigarmaker, but soon began to teach himself to draw and paint. His health failing from overwork in 1854. he spent two years in Minnesota, and on his return obtained a place on the Chelsea police force, where he was on duty at night, and painted during the day. He had excellent natural gifts, and such a retentive memory that he is said to have made a clever copy of a Lambinet, which he had seen only for a few moments. He painted landscapes exclusively. His works are represented in some of the finest collections in Boston.


FULLER, Timothy, congressman, b. in Chilmark, Martha's Vineyard, Mass., 11 July, 1778; d. in Groton, Mass., 1 Oct., 1835. His father, Timothy, the first settled minister of Princeton, Mass., was third in descent, from Thomas, who emigrated from England in 1638. The younger Timothy was graduated at Harvard in 1801 with the second honors. After teaching in Leicester academy, he studied law with Levi Lincoln, and practised successfully in Boston. He was a state senator in 1813-'6, and was then elected to congress as an antifederalist, serving from 2 Jan., 1818, till 3 March, 1825. He was speaker of the state house of representatives in 1825, a member of the executive council in 1828, and in 1831 was a member of the legislature from Groton, whither he had removed about 1826. While in congress, he was chairman of the committee on naval affairs, and was distinguished as an orator, making effective speeches in behalf of the Seminole Indians, and against the Missouri compromise. He was an ardent supporter of John Quincy Adams, and published a pamphlet entitled “The Election for the Presidency Considered,” which was widely circulated. Mr. Fuller was a hard-working lawyer, and an active and public-spirited man. He died suddenly of cholera, intestate and insolvent. Besides the works mentioned above, he published an oration delivered at Watertown, 4 July, 1809, and an address before the Massachusetts peace society (1826). —

His daughter, Sarah Margaret, Marchioness Ossoli, author, b. in Cambridgeport, Mass., 23 May, 1810; d. off Fire Island beach, 16 July, 1850, was the eldest of eight children. She derived her first teaching from her father, studied Latin at the age of six, and injured her health by over-application. At thirteen she was a pupil at the famous school of Dr. Park, in Boston, where she began the study of Greek. Thence she went to a school in Groton, kept by the Misses Prescott. On the sudden death of her father, Margaret vowed that she would do her whole duty toward her brothers and sisters, and she faithfully kept the vow, teaching school in Boston and Providence, and afterward taking private pupils, for whom she was paid at the rate of two dollars an hour. During the transcendental period she knew intimately the leading minds of the time — Emerson, Hawthorne, Ripley, Channing, Clarke, Hedge — and in the company of such was very brilliant, meeting them as equals. She first met Emerson in 1835, and the next year visited him at Concord. She went occasionally to Brook Farm, though never fully believing in the success of that experiment, and never living there. She held conversations in Boston, conducted the “Dial,” translated from the German, projected works, and wrote the “Summer on the Lakes,” the record of a season spent in travelling from June to September, 1843. In December, 1844, she went to New York as literary critic of the “Tribune,” then under the management of Horace Greeley, in whose household she at first lived. While in New York, she visited the prisons, penitentiaries, asylums, theatres, opera-houses, music-halls, picture-galleries, and lecture-rooms, writing about everything in the “Tribune,” and doing much to move the level of thought on philanthropic, literary, and artistic matters. Her intimacies here were mainly with practical, honest, striving people. Even William H. Channing was a minister at large, C. P. Cranch received boarders, and Lydia Maria Child was connected with the press. This she called her “business life,” and she pursued it unremittingly for about twenty months, after which, having saved a little money, she went to Europe on the invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Francis Spring. This was in 1846. In Europe she saw the foremost people in the literary, social, political, and reformatory world, spent the late summer and autumn in travelling, established herself for a time at Rome in the spring of 1847, passed that summer in Switzerland and the more northern Italian cities, and returned to Rome in October. She was married in December to Giovanni Angelo, Marquis Ossoli, was a mother in 1848, and entered with zeal into the Italian struggle for independence in 1849. Her conduct during the siege of the city by the French was of the most heroic, disinterested, humane, and tender kind. Her service in the hospitals won the heartiest praise. She was a friend of Mazzini. Though racked with anxiety for her husband and child, she appeared entirely oblivious of herself. On the capture of Rome by the French in June, 1849, and the consequent dispersal of the leaders in the defence, she and her husband took refuge in Rieti, a village in the mountains of Abruzzi, where the child had been left in charge of a confidential nurse, and after some months removed to Florence, which, after a delightful sojourn, they left for Leghorn, whence passage for America was taken on the “Elizabeth,” a merchant vessel that sailed 17 May, 1850. Horace Sumner, a younger brother of Charles Sumner, and Celeste Paolini, a young Italian girl, were the only other passengers. The voyage began disastrously. The captain died of small-pox, and was buried at sea in the waters off Gibraltar. Head winds kept them there a week. The boy was dangerously seized with small-pox soon afterward. As the voyage neared its ending, a violent southeast wind became in the evening a gale, by midnight a