BAKER, Benjamin, Superintendent of Schools, Newport, was born in the village of Wickford, town of North Kingstown, R. I, October 24, 1853, son of David Sherman and Mary Cahoone (Waite) Baker. His family has resided in the "South County"  (Washington) since the early settlement of that region. General Silas Casey, Stephen A.  Douglas and General Sherman are said to have been distant relations of the family. He acquired his early education in the public schools of Wickford, following which he attended the Providence Conference Seminary at East Greenwich, and Brown University, from which institution he graduated in 1875. He was a teacher in the high school at Westerly in 1875-6, studied law in the office of Vincent & Carpenter (the late Judge Carpenter of the United States District Court) in 1876-7, was Principal of the high school in Woonsocket 1877-9, was a teacher in the Providence high school from 1879 to 1890, and in the latter year became Superintendent of Schools in Newport, which position he now holds. Mr. Baker is a member of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Newport Historical Society, the Natural History Society of Newport, and the Newport Business Men's Association. He was married, February 10, 1880, to Miss Lucy Anna Sisson; they have two children : Harvey Almy, born April 24, 1881, and Charles Fullerton Baker, born February 28, 1884. Biographie Index

BEDLOW, Henry, Mayor of Newport for three terms, 1875-6-7, was born in New York city, December 21, 1821, son of Henry and Julia (Halsey) Bedlow. The name of Bedlow belongs to one of the oldest Knickerbocker families of New York, and the American ancestor of the subject of this sketch was Isaac Bedlow, son of Godfrey Bedlow, physician to William, Prince of Orange.   Isaac Bedlow came from Leyden, Holland, and settled in New Amsterdam, now New York, in 1639. He soon became prominently identified with the interests of the city, was for some years Alderman, and in 1668 he acquired by purchase the historic Bedlow's  Island, afterward deeded to the state of New York.   One son in each generation has since represented the family, who have always made New York their residence.  William Bedlow, grandfather of Mayor Bedlow, was appointed by the Government one of the commissioners  to make   the  survey and establish the military school at West Point; he married Catherine, sister of Colonel Henry Rutgers, and had one son, Henry.   The   present Henry Bedlow was educated under private tutors at Yale University, studied law and graduated at Harvard Law School, and was admitted to the New York State bar in 1842.   Subsequently he studied medicine in this country and France.   In early life he became an attache of the United States Legation at Naples, where he rendered Minister Polk, brother of the President, James K. Polk, efficient service in intercourse with what at that time was considered the most formal court in Europe.   Mr. Bedlow was also officially attached to the United States Dead Sea Expedition, sent out under command of F. W.  Lynch, whose published report bears complimentary testimony to his efficient aid rendered in the exploration and survey of the Jordan river and valley and the lake of Sodom and Gomorrah.   For many years Mr. Bedlow has spent with his family the summer and autumn season in Newport, of which city his varied capabilities and social accomplishments have made him a most valued resident.   He became actively concerned in and closely identified with all the city's interests, and in 1875 the citizens elected him Mayor, to which office he was twice re-elected.  His three successive terms marked a period of at that time unprecedented advancement for the city and of general improvement in its municipal affairs.  Mr. Bedlow was married, March 2, 1850, to Miss Josephine DeWolf Homer, daughter of Fitzhenry Homer of Boston; there are two children: Harriet Hall, widow of Lieutenant-Commander Francis Morris, and Alice Prescott, wife of William Henry Mayer of Middletown, Rhode Island.Biographie Index

COTTON, Joseph Potter, civil engineer, Newport, was born in Bowdoin, Me, May 8, 1837, son of Isaac H. and Rhoda Lamont (Potter) Cotton.  His paternal ancestors were engaged in farming and ship building. His great-grandfather Lamont was a soldier in the Revolution and died in the service.  He acquired his early education in the public schools and academies of his native district, working as a boy on the farm, and later teaching in district schools in Maine, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  In 1857 he taught winter school in Topsham, Me., and taught in the same town the following year.  In 1859-60 he taught school in Phillipsburg, N. J., and in 1861-2-3 in Easton, Pa. In 1862 he served as Orderly Sergeant in Captain Finley's Company, Colonel Clemens' regiment militia, of Easton, Pa.  In 1863 he raised and commanded Company C, Thirty-eighth Regiment Pennsylvania Militia, mustered into the United States service. In 1864-5 he was Assistant Superintendent of the House of Refuge in Philadelphia. In 1866 Mr. Cotton commenced work in engineering, being employed from March to September as rod man and leveler on the Lake Superior & Lake St. Croix Railroad, in Wisconsin. Following this engagement he was employed under General G. K. Warren of the United States Engineers on surveys of western rivers, in Mississippi, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio, until 1871. In that year he came to Newport and took charge of the construction of the breakwater at Block Island. He continued in the service of the Government until 1883, being employed on various river and harbor and fortification works. In 1882-3-4 he served as Commissioner and Engineer of the Seekonk River bridge at Providence.   In association with E. S. Cheesbrough he prepared a plan for sewerage of  Newport, which plan, slightly modified, was adopted and the sewers built. Since 1883 he has been engaged in the private practice of engineering, and since 1890 has served as City Engineer of Newport. Mr. Cotton was a member of the School Committee from 1876 to 1883, and was Overseer of the Poor three years. He has been a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers since 1876, and of the Newport Business Men's Association since its organization, is President of the Fish and Game Association, and has been President of the Association for Saving and Building since it was organized in 1888. He is also a member of G.  K. Warren Grand Army Post and of the Newport Charity Organization Society. In politics he is a Republican. Mr. Cotton was married, March 26, 1867, to Miss Isabella Cole ; they have two children : Frederic J. and Joseph P. Cotton, Jr. Biographie Index

GREENE, Benjamin, M. D., Portsmouth, was born in Exeter, R. I., October 30, 1833, son of Hon. Isaac and Eliza (Kenyon) Greene. He is descended from the well-known Greene family of which Gen. Nathaniel Greene was a distinguished representative. His father was a farmer and a prominent man of his district, for many years a Representative in the General Assembly. His grandfather, Hon. Benjamin Greene of Coventry, was a Judge of one of the courts and held various and prominent public positions. Dr. Greene passed his early life at the family homestead, where he worked on the farm. He received however a good school and academic education, and in 1856 commenced the study of medicine with his uncle.  Dr. Job Kenyon of Anthony, R. I. In 1857 he entered the University Medical College of the City of New York, and graduating in 1859, established himself in practice in Portsmouth, R. I., where for some years he was the only physician and surgeon in the place. In his extensive practice now covering many years, Dr. Greene has become widely known and greatly respected as a skilful physician, and as a gentleman of superior intellectual attainments, enterprising and public spirited, and of high moral character. Notwithstanding the demands of his profession, he has found time to devote to real estate transactions and various manufacturing interests, in which he has exhibited rare business judgment and capabilities, and has been mainly successful. He has been a member of the Rhode Island Medical Society since 1860, and is a prominent Mason, having filled many offices in that order and being still a member of the Board of Censors.  He was married, November 26,1860, to Miss Eunice A., daughter of Philip B and Sarah E. (Cooke) Chase, of Portsmouth ; they have had two children : Ivah Eunice and Isaac Philip Greene. Biographie Index

GREENE, Nathaniel, M. D., Middletown, was born in Dungeness House, Cumberland Island, Georgia, June 22, 1809, eldest son of Nathaniel Kay and Anna Maria (Clark) Greene. His father was the youngest son of Major-General Nathaniel Greene of Revolutionary fame, and his mother was the daughter of Ethan and Anna (Ward) Clark of East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Dr. Greene was brought to Rhode Island in his infancy, and has resided here ever since. His early education was mainly acquired in the public schools of Kingston and at East Greenwich Academy; for awhile he attended school at Jamaica Plain, Mass., a then noted school where wealthy and cultured people sent their children.  At the age of fourteen he entered Amherst College as a Freshman, remaining one year, and then entered the Sophomore class at Brown University, where he likewise remained only one year. For three years he lived on and managed a farm. From thence he went to Whitestown, Oneida county, N. Y., and studied medicine two years under Drs. Peck and Clark, who were of the Allopathic school, afterwards studying one year with Dr. Charles F. Eldridge of Fast Greenwich, R. I.   At the urgent solicitation of Dr. Abraham Okie of Providence, he began the practice of medicine as a homoeopathist, about 1852, and continued the practice, which was a large and lucrative one, for twenty years.   He received his diploma from the  New York Homoeopathic College of Medicine and Surgery.   In 1842, when an attempt was made to overthrow the then existing state government of Rhode Island, Dr. Greene organized a company of volunteers, and taking the command, reported for service at Chepachet. The rebellion was suppressed without the intervention of arms, however, and the company was not required to do any fighting. Subsequently, at the request of Governor Samuel Ward King, he enlisted a company of cavalry, of which he retained command for about two years. In April 1848 he was elected Senator from Middletown to the General Assembly of the state, and was three times re-elected to that office, in 1849-50-51. Upon the organization of the Aquidneck Agricultural Society, in 1850 or thereabouts, Dr. Greene was elected its first President.  In 1878, with the assistance and by the advice of Dr. Henry E. Turner, Major Asa Bird Gardiner and Colonel James Varnum, he called a meeting of persons entitled by heredity to membership in the Society of the Cincinnati,  and   reorganized the Rhode Island society of that name. This organization was duly recognized by the National Society of the Cincinnati, and Dr. Greene was elected President of the Rhode Island branch, which office he has held continuously ever since. Dr. Greene was married, at the age of eighteen, to Mary Jane Moore, eldest daughter of Colonel William Moore of Newport, R, I. Biographie Index

POWEL, John Hare, Ex-Mayor of Newport, was born in Paris, France, July 3, 1837. His father, the late Colonel John Hare Powel, originally bore the surname of Hare, and assumed the additional one of Powel by legislative act in 1806. Through him the subject of this sketch is descended from Edward Shippen, Charles Willing and Robert Hare, three Englishmen who settled in Philadelphia prior to 1773. On the maternal side his ancestry includes the Verplanck, Beekman, Van Cortlandt, Schuyler, Provost and other early Dutch families of New Netherlands, now New York, and also by the marriage of his grandfather, Colonel Andrew de Veaux of South Carolina, with the French Huguenot family of that name.   He received his education principally under the instruction of an English tutor, after which he studied law with Henry J. Williams of Philadelphia. A large part of his early life was devoted to travel in America and Europe, and the remainder was passed at his father's inherited estate, Powelton, now a part of West Philadelphia, and at Newport, the summer home of the family since the early part of the century. The death of his father, which took place at Newport in 1856, left him in possession of a house on Bowery street in that city, adjoining the residence of his eldest brother, and this, together with his interest in the place and his fondness for field sports and outdoor exercise of all kinds, induced him to give up his residence in Philadelphia. Upon his marriage in 1860 he removed to Newport, and became at once identified with the permanent interests of the city, which has since numbered him among its most valued citizens.  Although actively interested in various local societies and public affairs, and serving two years as a member of the Board of Health, Mr. Powel invariably declined to accept any political office, until in 1886 he was induced to become an independent candidate for Mayor. In response to the call for troops in 1862, Mr. Powel, who had been captain of the Newport Company of the National Guard from its organization, volunteered with his company, which became Company L in the Ninth Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers. He received from Governor Sprague his commission as Captain in May 1862, was promoted to Major in June and to Lieutenant-Colonel in July following, and in the fall of the same year was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel of the Fifth Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers.  Later he was frequently tendered and urgently solicited to accept the Colonelcy of either of the nine-months regiments then being raised in Rhode Island, and many other positions, all of which he was compelled to decline. In February 1863, he was elected a member of the Newport Artillery Company, was chosen Lieutenant-Colonel in April following, and became Colonel in December 1864, to which position he was annually re-elected until his resignation in August 1877. Colonel Powel was married in June 1860 to Miss Annie Emlen Hutchinson, daughter of  I. P. Hutchinson, a prominent merchant of Philadelphia; she died April 23, 1872. They have had two children: John Hare Powel, Jr., whose decease preceded that of the mother, and Pemberton Hare Powel, born January 7, 1869, now living. Biographie Index

WETMORE, George Peabody, United States Senator, son of William Shepard and Austiss Derby (Rogers) Wetmore, was born in London, England, August 2, 1846, during a visit of his parents abroad.  The Wetmore family in America is descended from Thomas Whitmore, who emigrated from England in 1635. and was one of the original patentees of Middletown, Conn. William Shepard Wetmore, Governor Wetmore's father, was born in St. Albans, Vt., in 1801, and was a distinguished merchant, residing for many years in South   America and China, and finally in New York city, where he closed his business career.    Shortly thereafter he became a citizen of Newport, R. I., where he lived until his death.    Seth Wetmore of Middletown, Conn., grandfather of Governor Wetmore, married a daughter of General William Shepard of Westfield, Mass., and went at the end of the last century to St. Albans, Vt.     He was a lawyer by profession, a Judge, member of the Legislature and of the Governor's Council of Vermont for many years, and a Fellow of the University of Vermont.   On the maternal side. Governor Wetmore is descended from the Rev. John Rogers, fifth President of Harvard College and the first in the list of graduates of that institution to become its head.   The subject of this sketch has lived at Newport, R. I., since he was four years old, and received his early education at private schools in that city, kept by Messrs.  Reade  & Thurston and by the Rev. William C.  Leverett.   He was graduated from Yale College in the class of 1867 and from the Columbia College Law School, of New York City, in 1869, and was admitted to the Bar of   New York and Rhode Island the same year.   Mr. Wetmore is President of the Newport Hospital and a Director in various other associations and institutions; is a Trustee of the Peabody Education Fund; Trustee of the Peabody Museum of Natural History in Yale University, and was nominated a Fellow of the University in 1888, but declined ; and is a member of the State Commission to build the new Rhode Island State House.   In politics he is a Republican; he was first Presidential Elector of Rhode Island in 1880 and again in 1884; was President of the Newport Blaine and Logan Campaign Club in 1884: was a Member of the State Committee to receive the Representatives of France, on the occasion of their visit to Rhode Island in 1881; was governor of Rhode   Island in   1885-6   and  in  1886-7, and although defeated for a third term  received a greater number of votes than at either of the two preceding elections when successful.   In 1889 he was defeated on the eighth ballot for United States Senator, during his absence in Europe; but was elected to that office on June 13, 1894, receiving a unanimous vote from the General Assembly in the Senate, House and Joint Assembly.     His term expires March 3, 1901. He was married December 22, 1869, to Edith Malvina Keteltas, daughter of the late Eugene Keteltas of New York; they have four children : Edith M. K., Maude A. K., William S. K. and Rogers P. D. K. Wetmore. Biographie Index

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