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OBITUARIES, AMERICAN. 



and then to the Senate, where he served four 

 years with distinction. While in the Senate 

 he was chosen Professor of Agriculture in the 

 Agricultural Mechanical College at Auburn, 

 for which position he was eminently fitted. 



CLARK, SARAH, died at Rolla, Missouri, Jan- 

 uary 10, 1881. She was a colored woman who 

 spent many of her numerous years in servitude 

 in Kentucky and Missouri. About the begin- 

 ning of the late war, she settled near Boon- 

 ville, Missouri, where she resided till her death. 

 Her exact ago was not known, but from her 

 statements of her life it is supposed to have 

 been one hundred and twenty-six years. She 

 said that before the Revolutionary War she was 

 the mother of two children. She distinctly 

 remembered nursing the grandfather of General 

 Clark, Congressman from the eleventh Missou- 

 ri district, and who served in the War of 1812. 



COMBS, LESLIE, born in Clark County, Ken- 

 tucky, November 28, 1793 ; died in Lexington, 

 Kentucky, August 21, 1881, aged eighty-eight 

 years. General Combs was the last of the gener- 

 ation of pioneer Indian warriors who have made 

 Kentucky famous in song and story, and he was 

 one of the most prominent political men of 

 that State. His father was a Virginian and his 

 mother a Marylander. During the War of 1812 

 he distinguished himself by his courage and 

 gallantry. In the campaign that ended in the 

 disaster at the River Raisin, he was sent by 

 General Winchester with important dispatch- 

 es to General Harrison, and, to deliver these, 

 Combs was obliged to traverse alone a wilder- 

 ness occupied by savages and covered with 

 snow. For over a hundred miles, and suffer- 

 ing the greatest privations, he pursued this 

 desolate journey and discharged the duty com- 

 mitted to him. In April, 1813, he was com- 

 missioned captain. He volunteered, with an 

 Indian guide, to carry the intelligence of the 

 approach of General Clay's forces to General 

 Harrison, when besieged in Fort Meigs, but was 

 overpowered in sight of the fort, and escaped to 

 Fort Defiance. He afterward bore a conspic- 

 uous part in the defeat of Colonel Dudley, on 

 May 5th ; was wounded, and compelled to run 

 the gantlet at Fort Miami. In 1836 he raised 

 a regiment at his own expense for the aid of 

 Texas, then struggling for independence. He 

 was a lawyer of commanding ability, was fre- 

 quently Auditor of the State, a member of the 

 Legislature, and a railroad pioneer, by which he 

 lost a large fortune. The last public office he 

 held was that of Clerk of the State Court of 

 Appeals. It was in defeating General Combs for 

 Congress that John 0. Breckenridge won his 

 first success in public life. Mr. Combs was an 

 earnest Whig, and the trusted friend of Henry 

 Clay, and, during the canvass of 1844, made 

 many speeches on the platforms of the North 

 and East in behalf of his candidate. 



CONDON, SAMUEL, was born in Boston in 1795, 

 and died in that city in 1881, aged eighty-six 

 years and six months. He served his appren- 

 ticeship as a printer in the office of the old 



"Columbian Centinel." In the War of 1812he 

 was on board an American vessel which was 

 captured by an English cruiser, and was con- 

 fined in Dartmoor Prison six months, with 

 some ten or eleven thousand French and Amer- 

 icans. After the war he entered the office of the 

 "Evening Gazette," Boston, and subsequently 

 opened a printing-office in that city, which he 

 conducted successfully until he retired with a 

 modest competency. Mr. Condon was noted for 

 his charities, and was always seeking to discover 

 and alleviate the wants of the poor. For a 

 long time he was superintendent of an evening 

 school in Boston, and was also connected with 

 the Boston Provident Association from its foun- 

 dation. He was a co-laborer in behalf of the So- 

 ciety for the Prevention of Pauperism, and was 

 for three years Superintendent of the City 

 Temporary Home. 



COOKE, HENRY D., born at Sandusky City, 

 Ohio, November 23, 1825 ; died at Georgetown, 

 District of Columbia, February 29, 1881. Mr. 

 Cooke was a son of Eleutherus Cooke, at one 

 time a distinguished orator, and a brother of 

 Jay Cooke, the well-known financier. He 

 graduated at Transylvania University, Ken- 

 tucky, in 1844, and began to study law, but 

 soon turned his attention to writing for the 

 press. In 1847 he sailed for Valparaiso, Chili, 

 as an attache to the American consul there, 

 but was shipwrecked. This event probably 

 led to the organization of the Pacific Mail 

 Steamship Company. After the wreck, Mr. 

 Cooke was detained at St. Thomas, and the idea 

 of a successful steamship line from New York 

 to California, by way of Panama, occurring to 

 him, he wrote concerning it to the Philadelphia 

 "United States Gazette" and the New York 

 " Courier and Enquirer." The attention of the 

 State Department was called to the correspond- 

 ence by Consul W. G. Moorhead, and in about 

 two years the steamship company was organ- 

 ized. Mr. Cooke afterward lived in California, 

 where he was actively connected with shipping 

 interests. He was the first to announce to the 

 authorities at Washington, through a dispatch 

 from the Military Governor of California, the 

 discovery of gold in the Sacramento Valley. 

 The latter part of his residence in California 

 was not fortunate, and he returned to the East 

 where, for some time, he was engaged in jour- 

 nalism. In 1856 he was a presidential elector, 

 and in 1861 became a partner in the house 

 of Jay Cooke & Co. Appointed the first 

 Governor of the District of Columbia, he re- 

 signed in 1873, and had resided about twenty 

 years in Georgetown, where he was held in 

 high esteem as the generous friend of the pub- 

 lic institutions of that city. 



Cox, Mrs. HANNAH, born at Preston, Connec- 

 ticut, June 25, 1776; died at Holderness, New 

 Hampshire, August 29, 1881. Mrs. Cox was, at 

 the time of her death, the oldest person in the 

 State, and probably in New England ; her birth 

 is recorded in the parish register of an old Epis- 

 copal church at Preston. When she reached 



