Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 2).djvu/142

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DE CELLES
DE COUDRES

tur said he would shoot him. Decatur was shot in the abdomen, and fell soon after Barron. He was taken to his home, where he died that night. No man was ever more regretted by the country than this heroic officer, to whom the highest honors were accorded, and he was followed to his grave by the largest concourse of people — public and private— that had ever assembled in Washington city. — His younger brother, James, entered the navy as mid- shipman. 21 Nov., 1798, and was promoted to be lieutenant, 20 April, 1802. In the attack of 3 Aug., 1804, on the Tripolitans, he commanded one of the American gun-boats, and was instantly killed by a musket-ball while attempting to board one of the enemy's vessels.


DE CELLES, Alfred Duclos, Canadian journalist, b. in Si. Laurent, near Montreal, 15 Aug., 18-1:4. He was educated at Quebec seminary and Laval university. He was editor of " Le journal de Quebec" from 1867 till 1872, and of "La Mi- nerve " from 1872 till 1880, when he was appointed assistant librarian of parliament. He was also con- nected editorially with " L'opinion publique."


DE CHARMS, Richard, clergyman, b. in Philadelphia, 17 Oct., 1796; d. 20 March, 1864. His ancestors were Huguenots, who took refuge in England in 1685 upon the revocation of the edict of Nantes. In early life he was a printer. In 1825 he engaged in the study of Swedenborgian theology under the Rev. Thomas Worcester, of Boston, at the same time superintending the publication of the " New Jerusalem Magazine " in that city, the first three numbers of which he set in type and printed with his own hands. Subsequently, by the assist- ance of a friend, he was enabled to enter Yale, where he was graduated in 1826, and, at the sug- gestion of the same friend, he began the study of theology in London, to qualify himself for the Swedenborgian ministry. During the two years passed in England he supported himself by his labor as a journeyman printer, llis theological studies were continued in Baltimore, and his first sermon, on the " Paramount Importance of Spiritu- al Things," was published in that city in 1828, and was afterward reprinted in London. After a year of pastoral labor in Bedford, Pa., he went to London, and studied under the Rev. Samuel Noble. On returning to this country in 1882, he became pastor in Cincinnati, 1832-9, and conducted a pe- riodical called " The Precursor." He subsequently preached in Philadelphia. 1839-45, Baltimore, 1845-'50, and New York. In his later days he de- voted much attention to mechanical contrivances and inventions of his own. He rendered valuable service to the periodical literature of his church, and issued several volumes of sermons on the fundamental doctrines of Swedenborg. He pub- lished also " Freedom and Slavery in the Light of the New Jerusalem " ; " Sermon illustrating the Doctrine of the Lord " (Philadelphia, 1840) ; " Series of Lectures delivered at Charleston, S. C." (1841) ; and " The New Churchman Extra " (1 vol.), a treatise devoted to polemics and church history in the United States and Europe.


DE COSMOS, Amor, Canadian journalist, b. in Windsor, Nova Scotia, about 1830. He was educated in his native place and in Halifax. He went to California in 1852, and to British Columbia in 1858, in which year he founded the " British Colonist " newspaper, which he owned and edited from that date until 1863. In 1870 he founded the " Daily Standard," and was its editor and proprietor until 1872, when he retired. The same year he formed an administration in British Columbia, and held the portfolio of president of the executive council (without salary) from the date of the formation of the government until he retired from local politics in 1874, in consequence of the operation of the act against dual representation. Mr. De Cosmos was the first in British Columbia to advocate the introduction of responsible gov- ernment into the colony, the first to recommend the union of the Pacific provinces, which he ac- complished in 1867, and also the first to advocate the union of British Columbia with the Dominion, and was subsequently instrumental in securing the unanimous acceptance of the terms of union made with Canada. He represented Victoria in the Vancouver island assembly after the union of that island with British Columbia, and sat in the legis- lative council almost uninterruptedly from 1867 till 1871. In 1871 British Columbia was united to Canada, and Mr. De Cosmos was elected to both the local assembly and the Canadian parliament. He was re-elected to the Dominion parliament in 1872. and again in 1874 and 1878.


DE COSTA, Benjamin Franklin, clergyman, b. in Charlestown, Mass.. 10 July, 1831. He was graduated at the Biblical institute, Concord, N. H., in 1856, and entered the Protestant Episcopal church. He was rector at North Adams, Mass., from 1857 till 1858, when he went to Newton Lower Falls, where he remained until 1860. During the civil war he was chaplain of the 5th and 18th Massachusetts infantry, and was in the battles of Bull Run and Yorktown. In 1863 he settled in New York and engaged in journalism. He was the editor of the '• Christian Times " in 1863, of the •' Episcopalian " in 1864, and of the " Magazine of American History" in 1882, and one of the founders of the Huguenot society of America. In 1884 he organized the first branch of the " White Cross Society," and is its president. He was also one of the original promoters and organizers of the Church Temperance Society, of which he was the first secretary. He is now (1887) rector of the Church of St. John the Evangelist in New York city, and, in addition to his religious work, is ac- tive in social movements, and has often addressed the working-men upon the relations between capi- tal and labor. The degree of D. D. was conferred upon him in 1881 by the College of William and Mary. He is a member of various literary associ- ations. He has published " The Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen " (Albany, 1869) ; " Sailing Directions of Henry Hudson, pre- pared for his Use in 1608 " (1869) ; " The North- men in Maine" (1870); "The Moabite Stone" (New York, 1870) ; " The Rector of Roxburgh," a novel, under the nom de plume of William Hick- ling (1873); several monographs in regard to Mount Desert and Lake George ; and " Cabo de Baxos " and " Cabo de Arenas," studies in cartol- ogy. He coTitributed to volumes iii and iv of the " Narrative and Critical History of America." He has edited White's " Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church " (1881).


DE COUDRES, Louis, brass-founder, b. in 1789; d. in Brooklyn, N. Y., 16 Dec, 1872. He was apprenticed at the age of thirteen to James P. Allaire, who was carrying on a small brass and bell foundry. At this establishment the brass castings were made for McQueen, who had a machine-shop, and did the work for Robert Fulton, in applying his steam-engine to the first paddle-wheel boat, the "Clermont," on the North river. Several years later Mr. Allaire established his steam-engine works in Cherry street, New York, which became famous for the number and character of the engines it supplied to the early steam-