NOBLE COUNTY OHIO - BIO:  DALZELL, James M. 
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>From the 
The Ohio Biographies Project
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~usbios/Ohio/mnpg.html
a part of
The U.S. Biographies Project
http://members.tripod.com/~debmurray/usbios/usbiog.html


HON. JAMES M. DALZELL, now an attorney-at-law in Caldwell, was born in
Allegheny County (opposite Pittsburgh), Penn., September 3, 1838.

He attended school in Allegheny, and was quite proficient in the rudiments
of a common English education before he was nine years old. Then his
father, Robert Dalzell, removed to Brookfield Township, and there commenced
farming. His youth was spent like that of other boys of that day in the
country, working on the farm in summber, and attending school in winter
three months in the year. At sixteen he had completed the limited
curriculum of that period, and having obtained a certificate set out on
foot for Vinton County in the winter of 1854, and there taught his first
school at $22 per month. With the proceeds he maintained himself at the
Ohio University at Athens for a term, and when his money was exhausted,
again resorted to "the birch"; and so alternately teaching and attending
college as he could; sometimes at Sharon college, again at Oberlin, at
Athens, and Washington, Pa. The years flew by, and with such difficulties
to encounter and overcome, in making his own way at college. When the war
broke out it found him a junior at Washington College, Pennsylvania. He had
also graduated from Duff’s College, Pittsburgh, but the dream of his life
was to finish a full classical course in old Washington; but the cherished
ambition of his youth was frustrated by his enlistment as a common soldier
in Company H, One Hundred and Sixteenth Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Here he
served three years without discredit, and was promoted "Sergeant Major, for
gallant and distinguished service," as his commission reads. At the close
of the war returning home to Noble County, he was chosen deputy clerk of
the court of common pleas, and acted in that capacity until July, 1866,
when he was appointed to a clerkship in the United States Treasury at
Washington City, which he held for two years, until he had graduated in
Columbia College and was admitted to the bar as attorney at law in June,
1868. This he achieved by night study alone, for his days were devoted to
the business of his office. Nov. 29, 1867, he married Miss Hettie M.
Kelley, an estimable young lady residing then at her home in Muskingum
County. Together they spent a pleasant and profitable year at the Capital.
But in the fall of 1868 they removed to Caldwell, Ohio, and there have
resided ever since. Their union has been one of the happiest and blessed
with six children, all of whom survive except James Monroe, the eldest son,
a very promising youth, whose sudden death at the age of fifteen has cast a
deep gloom over the household that mourns his departure.

Mr. Dalzell has always contributed to the daily newspaper press, and it is
probably not going too far for us to say that no name is better known than
his among newspaper writers. His business for eighteen years had been that
of a lawyer, in which he has been fairly successful. In 1869 he was elected
prosecuting attorney and served two years; and so vigorous was his
prosecution of liquor sellers that at the end of his term there was not an
open saloon in his county. In 1875 he was elected to the General Assembly
of Ohio, and represented Noble County so well that in 1877 he was re-
elected for two years more. During his entire four years in the legislature
he was a member of the judiciary committee, the most influential and
important of all the committees, and the one to which lawyers only are
eligible. The entire body of Ohio statutory law passed through the hands of
this committee for the laws were then being codified and re-enacted. In
1882 he was strongly supported in the Congressional convention at St.
Clairsville for the nomination to Congress, and was balloted for
unsucessfully nearly three hundred times in the most exciting contest for
Congress ever witnessed in Ohio. The convention broke up in confusion,
without nominating any one, and then and there Mr. Dalzell retired from
politics and resumed the practice of law more assiduously than ever. For
many years he was on the "stump" in various States, and in 1879 was called
to Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and in 1880 to Indiana. He was in demand
everywhere and was regarded one of the best stumpers in the United States.
He was always a Republican. He advocated the election of every Republican
candidate, both with voice and pen, from Fremont to Garfield. The
confidential friend of Sumner, Frederick Douglass, James A. Garfield,
Rutherford B. Hayes, Gen. W.T. Sherman, Henry Wilson, John Sherman, O.P.
Morton, Thaddeus Stevens, Schuyler Colfax and a host of their great
contempories. Mr. Dalzell confesses to not a little pride in their letters
testifying their high regard for him. As is elsewhere fully detailed in
this work, Mr. Dalzell was the originator and author of the popular
soldiers’ reunions now held annually in all parts of the country. It is
doubtful if there is a soldier in the United States who does not know
"Private Dalzell" (as he is familiarly called) at least by reputation, for
at the first and other reunions since established he has addressed most of
them in his patriotic speeches. Besides, he has always taken a pride in all
matters relating to soldiers ever since the war, and devoted a large
portion of his time and means to the furtherance of their interests not
only in this but in almost every other State.

But since he quit politics and resumed the practice of the law, he has
passed his time very quietly. When not engaged in the courts or at
professional business elsewhere, he devotes himself to his books. He is
regarded as one of the first forensic orators in Ohio, and on all public
occasions he is in demand. To these calls, however, he seldom responds, for
he finds more pleasure and profit in the plain, plodding practice of the
law and the presence of his family to whom he is doubly devoted.

History of Noble County, Ohio Published by L.H. Watkins & Co. of Chicago
1887 The Legal Profession

Transcribed by Deb Murray <debmurray@worldnet.att.net>