The biographical encyclopœdia of Ohio of the nineteenth century:

3BIOGRAPIHICAL ENCYCLOP_ADIA.
studied the dead Anglo-Saxon, the German and the
French. I-Ie not only lectured in the class-room, but in
the forum and the pulpit; and not only studied but practised music, gymnastics, field science and elocution. In
the last exercise he mentions with especial gratitude his old
trainer, Professor ]Jidd, a name famous in histrionic art.
With all. these studies he combined law, and immediately
after graduating from the Law College auras employed to try
cases, while still a professor. As might be expected, he
was soon devoted to this most exclusive of all professions.
I-Ie declined the.proffered Presidency of the Indiana University, at Bloomington, vacated by lion. William Daly.
In the winter of I858-59 he opened an office in Cincinnati,
where he has been ever since a zealous and successful practitioner at the bar, except while in army service. When
the rebellion broke out, in April, I86I, that very month he
was chosen captain of a company of over one hundred
Union men, In August he became Lieutenant-Colonel of
the 48th Ohio, and in September went into command at
Camp Hamilton as Lieutenant-Colonel of the 69th Ohio
Volunteer Infantry. Camp life being distasteful to him, he
was detailed to staff duty as Judge-Advocate. Upon his
return home he at once entered upon a good practice, and
has continued in it wvithoutt interruption. He has never
sought and never held public office. He is a hard and
continual student in law, literature and science; his library,
his cabinet, his essays and lectures, as well as cases, illustrating his 7peal, industry and wide range of labors. In
science, conchology and geology receive special attention.
Patent cases have been among his specialties; and in many
important cases hio has used scientific facts and principles,
evolved in the field and laboratory, to incalculable advantage to his clients. In no sense a politician, he has always
been active and foremost in the political movements of his
day, He stumped the State of Indiana in I856 in favor
of John C. Fremont for President, and Ohio in i86o for
Abraham Lincoln, He was a delegate to the National
Liberal Convention of i872, and vigorously supported
Charles Francis Adanis before that convention as candidate
for the Presidency. In the Greeley campaign he was
silent. For some years his life has been more retired, his
labors less conspicuous than in earlier life, though equally
useful, especially to his faiiiilv, friends and- the reading
public; for he is a constant, though impersonal, contributor
not only to monthlies and weeklies, but to that mightiest
of all factors, the daily press. When rest -from the, exhaustive labors of the class-room or office was required,
instead of seeking it in idleness at some fashionable watering-place, it has been his constant habit to repair to the
Alleghenies, the Rocky mountains the great lakes, or the
South, and there explore caves and canlons, minles, cataracts
and other ob~jects uworthy of study and of description, and
these peripatetic journeys collections of specimens valuable
in science hasve been madle, forming a large and very corn
HALLEN, JAMES R., Lawyer, was born, July
3d, I334, ill Lexinoton, Kentuclky. His father,
o Rev, James Cloallen, traces h is ancestry back
throuh a s rac e of preach e r s to thae Fcorench
Huguenot s, His matern al re lative s a re mostly
lawyers, his grandfather being Da vid Bradford,
a captain in the Br i tish army at Braddock's de feat and a
c olonel t hrough the entire R!evolutionary war. Hi s gallantry and p~atriotismz were rewtarded by a Congressional
grant of fif teen thous and a cres of land, In theo "Ainals of
Pennsylvania" his name appears as a lawyer, a politician
and a soldier. A county was named in hi s honor. He ras
not o nly the leading counsel of the farmers and di stillers in
the celebrated whiskey excise cases, but became their
major-galeneal hen th ey organ ized th e f a mous insurrection
in I792. He remov ed to Louisiana, and, although a large
slaveholder, was an earnest emancipationist, w hich principle was early i n stilled into his grandsond; for it is recorded
that in I848, when James R. Challen was but fourteen
years old, be delivered one of W~endell Phillips' orations at
the anti-slavery-convel-tion at Spring Garden, near Cilivinniati. His parents had removed to this city in his childhood, h is f ather b eing the first pastor of the First Christian
Chu rch. tHere he was educatedtin the common schools
anreewe d Woonly -Co llege, wthe n Dr. Ray taulrt the mathematics. He graduated at Bethany College, Virginia, in
I853. Alexander Campbell was then in full prime as a
teacher, lecturer, debater and divine. At this college
young Challen, still in his teens, established and edited
-The Sylus, a pioneer college journal which gave evidence
of talent, scholarship and good-fellow~ship. After making
the tour of the continent he was called to a professorship in
the Somerset Collegiate Institute, Pennsylvania, in his
nineteenth year, and, when just twenty-one, to the chair of
the English Language and Literature ini the Northwiestern
Christian University, at Indianapolis, Indiana. Here he
reviewed not only the dead languages of the colleges, but
197
Thomas L. Han-ie'r, -,t Geor,eto,,vii, be, in conjunction with
his associate, rapidly secured an extei-isive le,al practice.
In I.833 he was elected Prosecuting Attorney of Drowli
CoL.inty, and in this position served faithfully for two years.
Of late years, in connection with his professional duties, he
has also interested himself in agricultural pursuits and general speculations. Politically, be is a supporter of the
.Democratic party, and cast his first vote in favor of General
Jackson.. Reli,-iously, be is a member of the Christian
Union,orgaiiization. He has always been a firli-i friend of
,the temperance cause, and has never connected himself
,",ith any secret societies. He was married in I837 to Reb,-cca Murray, a native of Morgan county, Ohio, and the
dau,hter of an early pioneer of that county. Ei,ht cbildren have been the products of this union.
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