Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/393

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MONFORT
MONROE

was henceforward active and successful. He was retained as counsel by the Shakers in many im- portant cases, and by the Hudson river railroad company when the question of the acquisition of the right of way from Poughkeepsie to Albany, N. Y., was raised. He again removed to New York city in 1851, and was elected to the bench of the superior court in 1861, 1807, and 1873. becom- ing chief justice. He was a member of the Con- stitutional convention of 1876. He was the author of " Practice of the Courts of the State of New York " (New York, 1849 ; 2d ed., 2 vols., 1853-'4).


MONFORT, Joseph Glass, clergyman, b. in Warren county, Ohio, 9 Dec. 1810. His father for many years was pastor of Presbyterian churches at Hamilton, Ohio, and Mount Carrael, Ind. The son was graduated at Miami university in 1834, studied theology in 1835-'6 at Indiana seminary, and was a founder and editor of the Louisville, Ky., " Presbyterian Herald " in 1836-'7. He was licensed to preach in September, 1837, and occu- pied pulpits in Hamilton, Ohio, and Greensburg and Sandy Creek, Ind., from 1837 till 1855, with the exception of two years, when he acted as agent of the theological seminary at New Albany, Ind. In the last-named year he was invited to assume the editorship of the '" Presbyterian of the West," the name of which journal he changed to " The Presbyter." In 1869 it was united with tlie New school organ under the title of " The Herald and Presbyter." For ten years preceding that event Dr. Montort was an earnest advocate of the re- union of the two branches of his church. He was the author of the Newark, Ohio, memorial which was signed by seventy clergymen and forty ruling elders, and which proposed negotiations with a view to such action. He was appointed by the general assembly of 1866 a member of the joint committee on reunion. For many years he was a member of the church extension committee, and of the boards of domestic and foreign missions, a trustee of Hanover college, Ind., a director of the Theological seminary of the northwest, and a trustee of Lane theological seminary, for which institution he also acted as treasurer, and by the skilful management of its finances considerably increased its income. He received the degree of D. D. from Hanover college, and that of LL. D. from Centre college, Ky., in 1853. — His son, Fran- cis Cassatte, b. in Greensburg, Decatur co., Ind., 1 Sept., 1844, was graduated at Wabash college in 1864, and studied theology for three years in this country and for three years in the universities of Edinburgh and Berlin. In 1869 he was called to a church in Cincinnati, where he remained four years, when he resigned to become an editor of his father's journal, " The Herald and Presbyter," with which he is still connected. In 1879 he accepted a call from the First church. Cincinnati, and now discharges the duties of both pastor and editor. He received the degree of D. D. from the University of Wooster, Ohio. He is the author of " Sermons for Silent Sabbaths " (Cincinnati, 1884) and "Socialism and City Evangelization" (1887).


MONIS, Judah, educator, b. in Italy, 4 Feb., 1683 ; d. in Northborough, Mass., 25 April. 1764. He came to this country, embraced Christianity, and was baptized at Cambridge, Mass., in 1722. From the latter year till 1761 he taught Hebrew in Harvard university. He published " Truth, Whole Truth, Nothing but the Truth " (1722) and " A Hebrew Grammar " (1735).


MONK, Maria, impostor, b. about 1817 ; d. in New York city about 1850. In 1835 she asserted in Montreal that she had escaped from the Hotel Dieu nunnery in that city, of which she claimed to have been an inmate for years,-and told a shocking story of crimes that had been committed there. Her stories met with no credence in Montreal, and she was shown to be a woman of bad character, whereupon she came to New York and repeated her story, which many believed. She gained an entrance into good society, and received many attentions from those who gave credit to her tale ; but it was conclusively proved to be a falsehood. She had even gone so far as to publish a plan of the interior of the nunnery, which was shown by careful examination to be incorrect in every par- ticular, and in her second publication she described an island in St. Lawrence river that had no exist- ence. In the midst of the excitement that her story caused, Col. William L. Stone, then editor of the " Commercial Advertiser," made a special jour- ney to Montreal to investigate matters, with the result that he refuted Maria's story in " Maria Monk and the Nunnery of the Hotel Dieu " (New York, 1836). This raised against him a storm of abuse from her adherents, and Laughton Osborne made a bitter assault on him in " The Vision of Rubeta" (Boston, 1838), a clever but scurrilous poem.. Maria's adherents believed in her after she had been repeatedly exposed by men of high repu- tation, and the Protestant residents of Montreal finally thought it necessary to deny her allegations in a public meeting held for the purpose. Her imposture, considering the internal improbabili- ties of her story, is one of the most remarkable on record. The " Know Nothing " party used it to make political capital, and the burning of Ro- man Catholic churches in various cities were indi- rectly the result of it. Her " disclosures " were published in " Awful Disclosures by Maria Monk " (New York, 1836), and " Further Disclosures," with an introduction by Rev. J. J. Slocum (1836). Of the various editions of this book it was estimated by Cardinal Manning, in 1851, that from 200,000 to 250,000 copies had appeared in England and this country. Maria left a daughter, who pub- lished an autobiography entitled " Maria Monk's Daughter " (New York, 1870).


MONOD, Theodore, French clergyman, b. in Paris, France, 6 Nov., 1836. He is the son of Rev. Frederic Monod, a French Protestant clergyman. He studied law in 1855-'8, came to the tJnited States, and, deciding to prepare for the ministry, spent the two succeeding years in Western theo- logical seminary, Alleghany, Pa. From 1860 till 1863 he labored among the French Canadians in Illinois. Returning to Paris, he succeeded to his father's pastorate, preaching there until 1875. During the next three years he travelled as agent of the " Mission interieure," but in 1878 he ac- cepted a call from a congregation in Paris. From 1875 till 1879 he edited " Le Liberateur," which is now absorbed in the " Bulletin de la mission inte- rieure." His writings embrace " Regardant a Jesus " (1862 ; English translation, " Looking unto Jesus," New York, 1864) ; " The Gift of God " (London, 1876; French ed., Paris, 1877); and "Life More Abundant " (1881).


MONROE, Andrew, clergyman, b. in Hampshire county, Va., 29 Oct.. 1792; d. in Mexico, Audrain co.. Mo., 18 Nov., 1871. He was the youngest of a family of eleven children, four of whom became ministers of the Methodist Episcopal church. He was licensed to preach in March, 1815, by the Ohio conference, and sent to labor on the Fairfield circuit. He was a pioneer worker in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, a member during his life of eleven general conferences, and