Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 4.djvu/473

Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. During the war 1812-14, he served as chairman of the ways and means committee. Upon the appointment of Mr. Clay as commissioner to Ghent, Mr. Cheves was elected speaker of the house to succeed him, in which capacity he served until the end of the Thirteenth Congress. His most important work in Congress was the defeat of Dallas' scheme to recharter the United States Bank. He retired from Congressional service in 1814, refused the position of secretary and treasurer to succeed Albert Gallatin, returned to Charleston and resumed the practice of law. In 1816 he was appointed one of the judges of the state of South Carolina, serving three years. In January, 1819, he was elected a director of the United States Bank and two months later was chosen president of that bank to succeed Mr. Jones. The affairs of the bank, established in 1817, with a capital of $28,000,000, were found to be in a lamentable condition. John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary. "The bank is so drained of its specie that it is hardly conceivable that it can hardly go on till June without stopping payments." Three weeks after the above statements were written, the bank was solvent, and instead of requiring it was in a position to extend aid to other institutions. This was due to the remarkable energy of President Cheves, who for the best interests of the bank, but under protest from the directors, obtained a loan from Europe of $2,000,000, payable in June, 1821. One million was renewed at five per cent. and the remainder was paid off at a profit that defrayed all charge of remittance, even at an advance rate of exchange. In 1822 he resigned the presidency, leaving the bank safe and prosperous, being succeeded by Nicholas Biddle. He lived for a time in Philadelphia and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but in 1829 returned to Charleston, where he lived in retirement during the remainder of his life, occasionally writing reviews and essays on the topics of the day. He was strongly in favor of secession, and in 1850, as a delegate to the Nashville convention, declared himself favorable to the scheme of establishing a separate Southern Confederacy, but considered it madness for South Carolina to act alone.

Mr. Cheves married, in 1806, Mary Dallas, of Charleston, and died in Columbia, South Carolina, June 25, 1857, leaving issue.

George Washington Cheves was born in Fort Valley, Georgia, 1846, died in 1886. He was a man of talent and education, possessing marked literary ability that found expression through the newspapers he edited and published in the states in which he resided, Georgia and Kentucky. He served as a private in the Fourth Regiment Georgia Infantry of the Confederate army, was wounded in the battle of Malvern Hill, captured and confined in Fort Delaware, built on an island in the Delaware river. After the war he taught school and edited the "Terrell Democrat," later moving to the state of Kentucky, where he continued newspaper publication until his death. He married Lily Tevis, who died in 1880. George R. Cheves was born in Standford, Kentucky, November 15. 1874. He was educated in public and private schools in Georgia and New York states, attending in the latter schools in Albany and on Staten Island, obtaining a good preparatory education. In 1892 he entered Milligan College in Eastern Tennessee, from whence he was graduated, class of 1895. He returned to Milligan for a post-graduate course, remained one year and received the degree of Bachelor of Science. He engaged for about ten years in the lumber business in Eastern Tennessee and Pulaski county, Virginia, locating in 1906 in Pulaski, the capital of the latter county. There he established the "Southwest Times" and in October, 1908, bought the "News Review," consolidated the two papers, which he published under their combined names until June, 1914. He is an elder of the Disciples of Christ Church, a Democrat in politics, and interested in all that tends to make men better citizens. In addition to being the son of a Confederate veteran, Mr. Cheves had two uncles who served in Georgia regiments of the Con- federate army, R. S. Cheves and C. T. Cheves.

George R. Cheves married, November 3. 1897, Margret Stone, born in Paperville, near Bristol, Tennessee, in February, 1874, daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth Stone. Children, all born in Pulaski, Virginia; Roswell Stone, December 1, 1899; Samuel G.. May 18, 1902; William Howard. March 23, 1907.

William Leven Powell, M. D. William Leven Powell, M. D., a prominent physi-