Sharpless Moore Walton, Coast-to-Coast

We tend to think of geographic mobility as a phenomenon of post-World War II America, but many of us can think of someone in our family trees who hit the road much earlier than that.

Sharpless Moore Walton (1863-1951), shown here in a childhood carte de visite photograph by Benjamin E. Lodore (b. abt. 1830, New Jersey) of Elkton, Maryland, was born on a farm in Avondale, New Garden Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, and died in Spokane, Washington.

Along the way, Walton studied veterinary medicine at New York University (1881), married his first wife, Jennie Louise Campe, in Blackfoot, Bingham County, Idaho (1886), and then, under the name Frank M. Walton, turned to real estate and insurance sales in Spokane County, Washington state.

Sharpless Moore Walton was named for his maternal grandfather Sharpless Moore (b. abt. 1810, Pennsylvania). Young Walton’s father, Nathan P. Walton (1835-1869), was a physician and a farmer. They were Quakers, and might have been members of New Garden Meeting of Friends in Chester County.

Walton was still using the name Sharpless when he married Swedish immigrant Jennie Louise (Eugenia Lovisa) Campe in 1886, but what brought him to Idaho, I don’t know (Source: Western States Marriage Records  Index at Brigham Young University-Idaho).

He surfaces in the 1900 census in Spokane as an insurance agent, under the name Frank M. Walton.

Thanks to Washington State Archives’ excellent vital records digital archiving and indexing, we know that in 1918, Sharpless was married for a second time, to Irish immigrant Mollie Ryan. The fate of his first wife is unknown–there is neither a death record nor a divorce record for Jennie.

The Washington State Archives also provided Frank M. Walton’s death certificate, which confirmed his parentage and indicated where he is buried.

Sharpless is buried under the name Frank M. Walton, along with his second wife, Mollie, at St. Joseph Cemetery (aka Trentwood Cemetery) Spokane Valley, Washington. Since a rosary was said for him after his death, he must have converted to Catholicism.

Walton’s father, Nathan P. Walton, is buried in Fallowfield Cemetery, Coatesville, Chester County, Pa. His mother, Elma Moore Walton (1837-1921), married for a second time merchant Levi Preston, and although a Moore family history says she is buried in New Garden Friends Burial Ground, I haven’t been able to confirm this.

When this photograph was taken in Elkton, Sharpless may have been on a visit to some of his mother’s Moore relations. Her uncle William Moore (1796-1859) a teacher and farmer, had settled in Cecil County, near Rising Sun, with his wife Mary Miller Way Moore, where they raised five children.

Why did Sharpless Walton abandon his distinctive first name? What drove him across the country from the land of his ancestors to Washington State? Why did he give up veterinary practice? If you know the answers to any of these questions, get in touch.

Records on photographer Benjamin E. Lodore (b. abt. 1830, New Jersey) are sketchy. He shows up as a photographer in the mid-1860s via IRS tax lists, and with his wife, Amanda, and their children Mary J., William, John, Alice, and Sallie, lived in Elkton in 1870.

In 1880, He and his family were living in Volusia County, Florida, planting orange trees.  An 1885 land record for an additional land purchase by Amanda Lodore says that she was a widow. 

Their son William E. Lodore (b. Nov 1863, Elkton, Md.)  joined the US Army and spent the rest of his life as a career soldier. He was stationed for a time in Cuba. The last record I’ve found for him says he was discharged from the Army in June 1901 at Washington, DC, for disability. There is a Washington, DC death record that gives his death as 12 Jan 1906. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

I am grateful to St. Joseph Cemetery, Trentwood, Spokane Valley, Washington, for kindly confirming the whereabouts of Frank and Mollie (Ryan) Walton’s graves, and to the Spokane Public Library for providing Frank Walton’s death notice from the Spokane Spokesman Review.

“The gospel of work”: Dr. Alexander Douglas McConachie

I’ve so far documented nine cabinet card photographs of dentists and physicians who studied and/or practiced in Baltimore.

Alexander Douglas McConachie (1864-1951)  number ten, is the only one not from the United States.

Born in Woodstock, Oxford, Ontario, Canada to Scots immigrants William and Elspeth (Shand) McConachie, Alexander came to Baltimore to study dental surgery and medicine in 1886.

He was part of the University of Maryland Department of Dental Surgery graduating class of 1888, along with Leonidas Wilson Davis and Frank Ryland Steel.

Dr. McConachie went on to study medicine at the University of Maryland and earned an MD there in 1890. He did post-graduate work at Johns Hopkins, and then pursued his medical studies in Europe.

During World War I, Dr. McConachie served in the Army Medical Corps in Orleans, France.

He was president of the Medical Alumni Association of the University of Maryland for 1923-1924, and a professor on the faculty of the Maryland Medical College.

McConachie settled in Baltimore and in 1898 married into an old Cecil County clan. His wife, Mollie Manly Thomas Drennen, through the Hylands traced her Elkton roots back the 18th century.

According to a Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage Book, Mrs. McConachie was descended through her mother, Ann Elizabeth Worrall Manly, from a Lt. John Hyland, born in Kent County, Maryland, in 1746.

After his marriage, Dr, McConachie and his wife settled on Charles Street, in Baltimore, where they lived for the rest of their lives. McConachie, who specialized in disorders of the ear, nose and throat, had his practice at the same address for 50 years.

Dr. McConachie  took his Presbyterian Protestantism seriously. When asked for his definition of success, he told the authors of Men of Mark of Maryland:

“Being content and happy in doing my daily duty as it arises, I never feel the sting of failure, but if I have failed (according to the judgment of others), I should say that I have not succeeded in applying assiduously my gospel, which is a gospel of work, and more work, by which we work out our salvation here and hereafter.”

Fortunately, his gospel did not stop him from enjoying life. An avid sportsman, he loved the new pastime of “motoring” and “hoped to fly.” He liked movies and the theater, and read widely.

The portrait of the young doctor here was taken at the studio of William Ashman, probably as a graduation remembrance in the late 1880s. The National Library of Medicine’s later  portrait of Dr. McConachie shows a handsome man in his confident prime.

He and his wife are buried with his wife’s people in Elkton Cemetery, Cecil County.

Rev. Richard Henry Barnes Mitchell

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The full-length carte de visite portrait of  Protestant Episcopal minister Rev. Richard Henry Barnes Mitchell (1803-1869) was taken at the studio of Palmer Lenfield Perkins (1824-1900), 207 Baltimore Street.

Mitchell was born in Kent County, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, son of Capt. John Mitchell, a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and Catharine Barnes Mitchell.

References to Rev. Mitchell in records of the Protestant Episcopal Church indicate that in his early years as a minister, he served a parish in Virginia, and William and Mary (Ridge) Parish in St. Marys County, Maryland. He spent many years as the rector of Christ Church in Bordentown, New Jersey. At the time of his death, he was rector at Trinity Church, Elkton, Maryland.

Sources are contradictory regarding the number of Mitchell’s marriages. I’ve found three wives, and this agrees with some genealogical sources, but there is a fourth listed  on the back of one of the cartes de visite pictured above.

His will, posted on ancestry.com by a family researcher, mentions a fourth wife, Margaret S., and this must be the “Miss Wirt of Elkton Md.” mentioned on the back of the carte de visite.

He had eight children with his first wife, Lucinda Compton, and three more sons with his second wife, Susan Binney.  Among his sons, Walter Alexander Mitchell and Whittingham Doane Mitchell both became Episcopal ministers; Andrew R. Mitchell became a physician and settled in Wilmington, Delaware.

So far, I have only located the graves of Rev. Walter A. Mitchell and his wife, Susan Thomas Mitchell, are buried in the cemetery of All Faith Episcopal Church, Mechanicsville, St. Mary’s County, Md.

And now, to the photographer, Palmer Lenfield Perkins. Like Rev. Mitchell, Perkins was of the Methodist Episcopal persuasion. Perkins was born in Beverly, Burlington Co., New Jersey. Originally he studied for the ministry at Prnceton University, but left without taking a degree. In 1850, he opened a daguerreotype gallery at North and Baltimore and pursued the photography business at various locations on Baltimore Street until his retirement sometime between 1880 and 1890.

After his death, his son, Harry Lenfield Perkins, carried on the business into the early 1900s.

Perkins had, as the Sun put it, “at an early age, manifested a fondness for military organization.” “Colonel” Perkins, as he styled himself, helped organize the Fourth Regiment of the Maryland National Guard, one of the two regiments that participated in the infamous acts of violence against striking B & O railroad workers in 1877.

Perkins ran unsuccessfully  for Congress as a Prohibition Party candidate in 1890.

He was an active member of Ascension M. E. Church in Baltimore. You can see the church as it appeared in the early 1870s in a Chase stereoview .