Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/320

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ROCKINGHAM
ROCKWELL

ville. where he remained five years, building a paper-mill and making various improvements. In is 15 lie removed to Bloomfield, Ontario co., and in April, 1818, took up his residence in Rochester, which had been named for him. In 1816 he was a second time chosen a presidential elector, in January, 1817, he was secretary of a convention held at Canandaigua to urge the construction of the Erie canal, and in the course of the year he went to Albany as agent of the petitioners for the erection of Monroe county, but did not sucferd in his mission until 1821. lie was the first clerk of the new county, and its first representative in the state legislature of 1821-'2. In 1824 he was promi- nent in organizing the Bank of Rochester, and was made its first president. Shortly afterward he re- signed the post and retired from active life. He was in religion an Episcopalian, and was one of the founders of St. Luke's church in Rochester. His grandson, Thomas Fortescue, physician, b. in Rochester. X. V.. 8 Oct., 1823; d. in Buffalo, X. Y., 24 May. 1887, was graduated M. A. at II..- bart (then Geneva) college in 1845, and studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He w.-is graduated M. I), in 1848, and after serving for a year as interne in Bellevue hospital. New York, continued his studies in Europe for a year and a half longer, and then began practice in New York city. He married, on 6 .May. 1852. Margaret Munro, daughter of Bishop William II. De Lancey. In 1853 he established himself in Buffalo, where he took the chair of the principles and practice of medicine, together with that of clinical medicine, in the Medical department of the university of Buffalo. From 1853 till 1883 he was attending physician to the Sisters of Charity hospital, and in 1861 he became consulting physi- cian to the Buffalo general hospital. In March, 1863, he was appointed a special inspector of field hospitals. He was president of the New York state medical society in !S75-'6, and its delegate to the International medical congress at Philadelphia in 1*70. Besides many technical papers on profes- sional topics, he published "The Army Surgeon" (Buffalo, 1863); and "Medical Men and Medical Mailers in 1776" (Albany, Is76). Another grand- son, William Beatty, soldier, b. in Angelica, N. Y., 15 l'Yb.. lx2ii, entered the U. S. service as major and additional paymaster of volunteers on 1 June, 1861. He was transferred to the permanent estab- lishment as paymaster on 17 Jan., 1867, and on 17 Feb., 1882, was appointed paymaster-general of the army, with the rank of brigadier-general. See " Early History of the Rochester Family in Ameri- ca," by Nathaniel Rochester (Buffalo, 1882).


ROCKINGHAM, Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquis of, English statesman, b. in Eng- land, 19 March, 1730; d. in Wimbledon, Surrey, Mil-land, 1 July, 1782. He attached himself with a rdi ir to the Whig party in his youth, escaping from home in December, 1745, to bear arms in the army of the Duke of Cumberland again-t the la~l of the Stuarts. The Hanoverian princes rewarded his devotion with distinctions and honors. In 1750 lie succeeded his father in the marquisate. The reactionary course of George III. impelled him to resign his office of lord chamberlain, and on the deal h of t he Duke of Devonshire in 1764 he became the recognized chief of the Whig parly, and was called on 30 .rune. 1T65, to preside over a cabinet. The principal task that he set before himself was to restore a harmonious feeling between the mother country and the colonies in North America, exas- perated as they had been by the measures of the preceding ministry. In this object he was opposed by the king and was not supported by his col- leagues. The ministry made a show of carrying the stamp-act into execution, but recoiled from the work of enforcing it with the bayonet, and when the manifestations in America had made clear the state of feeling there, Rockingham was able, in March, 1766, to secure the repeal of the stamp duties. Before he succeeded in redeem- ing his promise to re- move the restrictions on commerce or to carry further meas- ures of conciliation he was compelled, by the defection of the Duke of Graft i m and the ill will of the king, to give up the seals of ollice m May. During the minis- tries of the Duke of ( Ira ft on and Lord North he combated the errors of his suc- cessors, and led in op-

position the younger

statesmen that finally repaired them. At the height of the crisis, when England, distracted by faction, had to face a coalition of France, Spain, and the United States, Rockingham was again called to the direction of affairs, but had scarcely taken up the work when he died. He accepted office on the ex- pressconditionthat peace should be concluded with the United States, ami began negotiations with the belligerents. In the earlier stages of the conflict Rockingham and his secretary. Edmund Burke, were not inclined to accept the claims of the colo- nists to immunity from taxation and from parlia- mentary control that were supported by William Pitt. Roekingham was the representative of the aristocratic traditions of the Whig party, while Pitt was the precursor of Democratic ideas, lie was not an orator, and as a man of affairs was hampered by a timid disposition. Yet his good sense and his uprightness in a period of corruption and intrigue aided in regenerating the Whig party. Burke, in eulogizing his patron, said that " in op- position he respected the principles of government, and in the ministry protected the liberties of the people." See the Earl of Albemarle's " Memoirs of the Marquis of Rockingham and his Contempora- ries " (London, 1852).


ROCKWELL, Alphonso David, physician, b. in New Canaan, Conn., 18 May, 1840. He was educated at Kenyon college and graduated in medicine at Bellevue medical college, New York city, in 1864. Entering the army as assistant surgeon of the 6th Ohio cavalry, he was soon promoted surgeon of brigade with the rank of major, and served through the campaigns of 1864 and 1865 in Virginia. In 1866 he associated himself with Dr. George M. Beard for the study of the uses of electricity in the cure of nervous diseases. He was electro-therapeutist to the New York state women's hospital from 1874 till 1884, and has since Wen professor of electro-therapeutics in the New York post-graduate medical school and hospital. With I>r. Beard, he was the originator of important methods of using eleclrieii . especially general laradi/.ation as a tonic agent, ami i In pioneer in csiaM idling electro-therapeutics on a scientific basis in the I cited States, where eleelriciu had been neglected by the profession and had Fallen inlu the hands of