then removed to Sacramento, where he practiced over

ten years.

While in Sacramento, he was one of the first and most prominent organizers and supporters of the Republican party, when Republicanism was sufficient cause for personal injury and unlimited abuse of its advocates; of which he received a full share, including personal threats, and persistent efforts to injure his business. Much of the subsequent success of Republicanism is doubtless due to his persistent, fearless, and honest support, in those hours of trial. He was defeated as a candidate for Clerk of Supreme Court of California, in 1856, during which year he edited and published the Sacramento Daily Times, the leading Republican paper in the State, in the Presidential contest then pending. He was District Attorney for the City and County of Sacramento in 1859, 1860 and 1861. He afterward resided a year in Santa Cruz, California, still engaged in his profession.

He was married January 6th, 1853, to Miss Olive Colegrove, of Trumansburg, Tompkins County, New York, an estimable lady, with whom he has since lived in great domestic happiness, the union being blessed with numerous offspring.

He

In 1863, Mr. Cole was elected to Congress by ballot through the whole State, receiving 64,985 votes. served in the thirty-eighth Congress, on the Committees on Post Offices, and Post Roads, and on the Pacific Rail Road. He introduced and carried through Congress the important bill establishing a Steam Mail Line to China and Japan, and several other prominent measures.

In December, 1866, Mr. Cole was elected to the United States Senate, to succeed Hon. James A. McDougall, receiving on first ballot in Republican caucus sixty votes to thirty-one cast for Aaron A. Sargent, and on first ballot in joint legislature ninety-two votes against twenty-six for W. T. Coleman, the Democratic candidate. He entered the Senate March 4th, 1867, and served on Committees for Appropriations, Claims, Manufactures, Post Offices and Post Roads, and Revision of Laws.

As will be inferred from the above, Mr. Cole's pecu

liar characteristics are unswerving integrity of action and intention, tenacity of purpose, a contempt for wealth and its influences, a strong sense of justice, and fidelity in friendships. Domestic and temperate in habit, and modest in ambition, his honors have been thrust upon him, rather than plucked down by a bold hand.

JOHN R. MCCONNELL.

BY WILLIAM H. RHODES.

JOH

OHN. R. MCCONNELL, the leading lawyer of Northern California, was born in Kentucky in the year 1826. He is descended from Scotch-Irish stock, and his ancestors originally settled in the State of Pennsylvania. At an early day, one branch of the family removed to the wilds of Kentucky. On the mother's side, Mr. McConnell is lineally descended from the family of the Clarksons, who are of English origin, and originally settled in the county of Albemarle, in old Virginia. He was the twelfth child in a family of thirteen.

The

As early as 1833, his father removed to the State of Illinois, and soon settled on a farm, near the town of Jacksonville, the county seat of Morgan county. next year his father died, and two years afterwards, his mother In 1841, he returned to Kentucky, and resided in the family of a brother-in-law, in Bourbon county, until 1846.

He attended several respectable institutions of learning, both in Illinois and Kentucky; but his education was chiefly derived from the private tutorship of Professor Vaughn, now of the city of Cincinnati. This gentleman now stands at the head of the mathematicians of the West. Under his tutor, McConnell made rapid strides in classical studies, but became eminent in mathematical and metaphysical lore. In the higher mathematics especi

ally, he excelled, and to this day nothing seems to afford him more pleasure than a dash into the mysteries of curvilinear and conic sections.

In the year 1844, abandoning, on account of ill health, the original design of a military education at West Point, he commenced the study of law, under the tuition of John Martin, Esq., at that time a leading member of the bar of Bourbon county. But from him he derived only slight assistance, and has been always self-reliant in the acquisition of that profound knowledge of law to which he has attained. Some assistance, however, he did derive from a short matriculation at Transylvania University, where his studies were, for a time, directed by such masters of the profession as Judges Wooley, Robertson, and Thomas A. Marshall. Ill health, however, soon compelled him to quit the law school, and he was again thrown upon his own resources.

In 1846, removing again to Illinois, he commenced the practice of law at the early age of twenty-one years. Two years after this, we again find him moving-for early in 1848 he was located at Natchez, in the State of Mississippi.

It was during his residence in Mississippi, that young McConnell commenced laying in that fund of useful information on some branches of the law which afterwards contributed so largely to his benefit, and to that of his adopted State. In Natchez, we find him applying himself to the study of Justinian's Institutes, and that splendid body of civil law which has come down to us from the age of Tribonian. Before he had time to avail himself of any of the knowledge thus acquired, the news of the discovery of gold in California reached his place of residence, and early in 1849, in company with his friend Col. E. J. Saunders, (afterwards so well known in Nicaragua and during the Confederate war) he started across the plains to California. He arrived here early in October, 1849, and settled as a miner in the vicinity of Placerville. It was bruited abroad that he was, by profession, a lawyer, and he soon engaged warmly in the disputes before the various Alcaldes' courts in the vicinity. Here he met