The biographical encyclopœdia of Ohio of the nineteenth century:

BIOGRAPHICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA.
United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio,
but resigned soon after President Lincoln came into office.
Soon after the war of the rebellion commenced he tendered
his services to Governor Dennison, who appointed him
Lieutenant-Colonel of the 23d Regiment Ohio Volunteer
Iinfantry, then quartered at Camp Chase. The reginment was engaged in the military operations in West
Virginia in the summer and fall of that year. Iin October,
I86I, he was promoted to the Colonelcy of the 5ISt
Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and with his regiment
served under Buell and his successors in command of the
Army of the Tennessee. In April, i863, while with his
comman d in Tennessee, he was elected a Judge of the Superior Court of Cincinnati, and resigned his commission to
again take his seat upon the bench. Judges Storer and
Hoadley were his colleagues. In July, I865, he resigned
for the same reason that impelled him to quit the bench in
I853. He is now in the very zenith of his intellectual and
physical powers, and occupies a prominent place in the foremost rank of the legal fraternity of the WVest.
ATm THEWS, IION. STANLEY, Lawyer, was
born in Cincinnati, July 2ISt, I824. H is par ent s
XX we re Th oma s J. and Isabella (Brown) Matth ews, the former a nat iv e of Leesburg, Virginia,
a n d the latter a daughter of Colonel William
Brown, one o f the pion eers of the Miami country.
H is mother was the sec on d wi fe of the father, and he was
the first offspring of th e u nion. Wh ile an infant his Farents
removede fiom Cincinnati to Lexingtoeg, Kentucky, where his
father was en gag ed as a professor of mathem at ics in Tran sylvania Coll ege for a time, and also as a civil engineer in
the construction of railroads. In I832 he w as elected Professor of the Woodward High Scho ol, in Cincinnati, a nd
returned thither. In the same year his son Stanley entered
the institution as a pupil, where he remained until I839, at
iwhic h date he enter ed th e jun ior class of Kenyon College,
at Gambier, Ohio. Hi e was g raduated in August of the following year. i e began the study of law in the fall of I840,
i the city of Cincinnati. In I842 he w ent to Maury county,
Tennessee, where he resi ded f or a time in the family of
Rev. John Hudson, a Presbyteri an m inister, and assisted
him in the government a nd instruction of a school known a s
Un ion Seminary. Shortly after this h e married the daughter of Ja rmes Black, of Maury county. Having been admitted t o the bar, he com menced the practice of law at
C olumbia, Te nne s see. His s tay here was brief; but during
its c ontinuance he employed his leisure in editorial work
up on a po litical weekly called the Tenvzeessee D.emocraL
Returni,ng to Cincinnati he was admitted to practise in the
court s of h is native State. Through the influence of Judge
NV. B. Caldwell he was appointed Assistant Prosecuting
A ttorney for a term of court, and the prominence t hus obta ined was the stepping-stone to his future success. Throubgh
the wr itings of Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, the n editor of the
Daily HefisW, of Cincinnati, he be came strongly imbued
with the growing anti-slavery sentiment of that period.
When its edito r r e moved to Washington city, to establish
t he rVational Erac, lihe succeeded him as editor of the
fIeroal ot, in which position he continued until the journal
declined as a business enterprise. His connection with
j ou r nalismt brought him into prominence in the politics of
the State, and in the session of I848-49 he was elected
Clerk of the Ohio House of Representatives. This was the
memorable session which elected Salmon P. Chase to the
Senate of the United States. In I850 he returned to the
practice of his profession in Cincinnati, and in the following
year was elected one of the Judges of the Court of Common
Pleas of Hamilton county. He remained on the bench for
two years, when, in consequence of the insufficiency of the
salary, he resumed private practice, becoming one of the
his law preceptor. This partnership lasted about eight
years. In the fall of I855 he was elected to the State
Senate, from Hamilton county, and served one term of two
years. In I858 he was appointed by President Buchanan,
ENT, ZENAS, was b orn in Middletown, Coalnecti cut, July I2th, I786. Ile came of good old
( Puritan stock, a nobility of descent which rests its
claim upon a robust manhood and hardy virtue.
His father was a carpenter and joiner by trade,
and carried a musket in the war for American
independence. When Zenas Kent was a boy, even New
England had made but a beginning in the development of
the common school system, and though he made the best
of his opportunities, exhausting the facilities of the country
school of that time and place, his early advantages were
very limited as compared to the common school privileges
enjoyed by the youth of to-day. Mr. Kent has left at least
one monument of the mietho dical perseverance with which
he addressed himself to every task. A copy of Adam's
Arithmetic, published in I802, which Mr. Kent used at
school, is now, in the possession of his son, Marvin. It is a
well-thumbed book, now yellow with age, and a plodding
student has left his impress on every page. Indeed he has
left considerable additions to the original text. The publisher had had the forethought to bind numerous blank pages
with his letter-press, to stand the pupils instead of a slate,
and remain a record of his industry. On these leaves young
Kent carefully worked out and proved every example in the
book. Here was a combination of excellent traits-application, method, thoroughness-ill which the boy well foi'eshadowed the man. He entered his work on the leaves of
the book of his life, and be left no t a blank page in it all.
In selecting a pursuit in life, Zenas Kent chose the trade of
his father, and endeavored to make himself master of it.
By the time he reached his twenty-fifth year, young Zenas
Kent was united in marriage to Pamelia Lewis, a native of
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