and copy-reader in a printing-office, in his fourteenth
year he apprenticed himself in a jewelry establishment. Having learned
his trade, he removed to Boston, where he remained four years working
at his trade, and giving, meanwhile, considerable time to reading and
study. Returning to Philadelphia, he studied law, and was admitted to
the bar in 1841. From 1846 for a period of ten years he held the
office of Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia. In 1856,
on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he left the Democratic
party, and became the Republican candidate for Congress, but was
defeated. In 1860 he was a delegate to the Chicago Republican
Convention, and was, in the fall of the same year, elected a
Representative from Pennsylvania to the Thirty-Seventh Congress, and
was re-elected to the Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, and Fortieth
Congresses.--51, 58, 79, 348, 349, 438, 526.

JOHN R. KELSO was born in Franklin County, Ohio, March 23, 1831. At
the age of nine years he removed with his parents to North-western
Missouri, then a wilderness. After surmounting great obstacles he
succeeded in obtaining an education, and graduated at Pleasant Ridge
College in 1858. He soon after became principal of an academy at
Buffalo, Missouri. On the breaking out of the rebellion he was the
first in his county to volunteer in defense of the Union, and
immediately took the field as captain of a company of daring and
enterprising men. With his company he was detailed to hunt the
bushwhackers, who, from their hiding-places, were committing the most
atrocious outrages upon the loyal people. His name became a terror to
the rebels and guerrillas of the Southwest. He took part in over sixty
fierce conflicts, and in personal encounter killed twenty-six armed
rebels with his own hand. At the close of his service in the war he
was elected a Representative from Missouri to the Thirty-Ninth
Congress. He declined renomination, and resumed his profession of
teaching in Springfield, Missouri. His successor in the Fortieth
Congress is Joseph J. Gravelly.

_MICHAEL C. KERR_ was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania, March 15,
1827. He was left an orphan at the age of twelve years, and through
his own exertions obtained an academical education. He taught school
for a time, and, in 1851, graduated in the Law Department of the
University of Louisville, and soon after located in New Albany,
Indiana. In 1856 he was elected to the Legislature of Ind