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he served in the defence of Paris when Napoleon retired to Elba, and on the restoration of the empire he applied for a commission, which would have been granted but for the defeat at Waterloo. In 1816 he came to Louisiana and settled at Natchez, Miss., and soon afterward he studied law with Joseph E. Davis. After his admission to the bar he settled in Natchitoches, where the population was largely French, and soon attained a profitable practice. In 1826 he was elected to the state senate, and four years later he was nominated for congressman, but was defeated. He then removed to New Orleans, and continued there in the practice of his profession until 1838, when he went to Europe. On his return he was appointed judge of the supreme court, but soon resigned to engage in agricultural pursuits. In 1840, when the reorganization of the court was effected, he again accepted a seat on the bench. On account of his ample knowledge of both civil and commercial law, he took rank among the foremost judges that Louisiana has ever possessed. It is said of him that “for clearness of diction and logical perspicacity in the application of legal principles to the facts of the case in hand, his decisions will stand comparison with those rendered by the foremost jurists in the land.” On the formation of the provisional Confederate government he was appointed its commissioner to Spain, and remained abroad until after the civil war. He then resumed his practice, and devoted his energies to the restoration of his property. ROSTAING, Just Antoine Henri Marie Germain, Marquis de, French soldier, b. in the chateau of Vauchette, near Montbrison, France, 24 Nov., 1740; d. there in September, 1826. He was first attached to the household of the “grand dauphin,” and afterward was first page to Louis XV. After serving in Germany as a cavalry officer, he joined the musketeers in 1769, and became colonel of the Auxerrois regiment. He was transferred to the command of the Gâtinois, and ordered to this country under the command of Rochambeau. where he remained from 1780 till 1783. For his bravery in the attack on St. Lucia, and at the siege of Yorktown, he received the cross of St. Louis, was made a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, and promoted brigadier. After his return to France he was a delegate to the constituent assembly, and on 20 March, 1792, he was commissioned lieutenant-general. Shortly afterward he retired to his estates, where he spent his remaining days. ROTCH, Arthur (roach), architect, b. in Boston, 13 May, 1850; d. in Beverly, 15 Aug., 1894. He was graduated at Harvard in 1871, studied architecture in the Massachusetts institute of technology, and for five years in the École des beaux arts in Paris. While he was in France he had charge of the restoration of the Chateau de Chenonceau. In 1880 he became senior member of the firm of Rotch and Tilden, in Boston, and since that time he had built various churches and the Memorial library building in Bridgewater, Mass., gymnasiums of Bowdoin college and Phillips Exeter academy, Associates' hall, high-school, and academy in Milton, Mass., the art schools and art museum of Wellesley college, and many private houses and business blocks throughout the United States. Mr. Rotch had exhibited water-colors in the Paris salon, the London academy, the New York academy of design, and elsewhere. He was chairman of the visiting committee of fine arts of Harvard university, and one of the corporation of the Massachusetts institute of technology. In conjunction with his brother and sisters he founded, as a memorial to |
his father, who married a daughter of Abbott Lawrence, the Rotch travelling scholarship, which annually sends a student of architecture to Europe for two years' study and travel. ROTCH, Charity Rodman, philanthropist, b. in Newport, R. I.. 31 Oct., 1766; d. in Kendol, Ohio, 8 Aug., 1824. She was the daughter of a sea-captain, and married Thomas Rotch, of Nantucket, in 1790. For some time she lived in that town, but in 1801 she settled in Hartford, and in 1811 failing health led her to take up her residence in Kendol, Ohio. Her husband died in 1823 and bequeathed to her his personal property to be disposed as she should decide. She determined to found a school for orphan and destitute children, and a few years after her death the fund that she left reached the sum of $20,000. The interest of this money was subsequently applied to the purchase of a farm of 185 acres near Massillon, Ohio, on which was erected, at a cost of $5,000, a building for educational and dwelling purposes. In this institution boys are thoroughly instructed in the art of husbandry and girls in culinary duties and the making of their own wearing-apparel. The course is four years in length. ROTH, John, clergyman, b. in Sarmund, Prussia, 3 Feb., 1726; d. in York, Pa., 22 July, 1791. He was educated in the Roman Catholic church, but in 1748 united with the Moravians. In 1756 he was despatched to Pennsylvania, and three years later he entered the Moravian Indian mission, serving for fifteen years in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Returning to Pennsylvania in 1773, he was employed in rural congregations till his death. Roth made a special study of the Unami dialect of the Lenape language, and composed in it an extensive religious work, “Ein Versuch der Geschichte unsers Herrn u. Heylandes Jesu Christi in das Delawarische übersetzt der Unami, von der Marter-Woche an bis zur Himmelfahrt unsers Herrn, im Yahr 1770 u. 1772 zu Tschechschequanüng an der Susquehanna,” which is still in manuscript. His son, John Lewis (1773-1841), was the first white male child that was born in Ohio. ROTHERMEL, Peter Frederick, artist, b. in Nescopack, Pa.. 18 July, 1817; d. in Grassmere, Pa., 15 Aug., 1895. He received little education, and, after studying land-surveying, took up the study of art at the age of twenty-two. He was instructed in drawing by John R. Smith, and subsequently became a pupil of Bass Otis in Philadelphia. During 1856-'9 he was in Europe, residing for about two years in Rome, and visiting also the principal cities in England, France, Germany, Belgium, and Italy. Since his return he had lived in Philadelphia, where he was elected a member of the Pennsylvania academy, of which institution he had been director from 1847 to 1855. He possessed much facility of composition, and had produced a large number of works, including “De Soto discovering the Mississippi” (1844); “Embarkation of Columbus,” in the Pennsylvania academy; “Christian Martyrs in the Colisseum”; a series of paintings illustrative of William H. Prescott's “History of the Conquest of Mexico” (about 1850); “The Virtuoso” (1855); “Vandyke and Rubens”; “King Lear” (1856); “Patrick Henry before the Virginia House of Burgesses”; “St. Agnes” (1858); “Paul at Ephesus”; “Paul before Agrippa”; “St. Paul preaching on Mars Hill to the Athenians”; “Trial of Sir Henry Vane”; “Battle of Gettysburg” (finished in 1871), in Memorial Hall, Fairmount park, Philadelphia; “The Landsknecht” (1876); and “Bacchantes” (1884). Very many of his paintings have been engraved. |
