Morgan Twp. -
BRADLEY CUMMINGS RANDALL.   The desire for approbation is as legitimate as the desire for food, and when a man, actuated by pure motives, accomplishes something from which good is derived, he merits the approval of the hearts that love him, and he receives their expressions of praise with grateful pleasure.  It is our purpose to write a brief notice in commendation of him whose name and portrait head this sketch, feeling assured that by a meritorious and blameless life he is deserving of mention in the pages of this work.  Jason and Martha Randall, the parents of Bradley Cummings, removed from Genesee county, New York, to Ohio, and located in Kirtland township, then Geauga, but now attached to Lake county, at which point they arrived in February, 1819.  It was here, on the 25th day of February, 1820, that the subject of the present sketch was born.  His parents eventually removed to Chardon, Geauga county, and died there, —the father in 1853, and the mother in 1858.  Bradley C. was the youngest son and the sixth child of a family of ten.  His education was begun of course as that of every American boy has begun,—at the district school, and finished at the academy situated in Kirtland village.  Taught perhaps two terms of school, and then engaged in the business of merchandising, as a partner in the firm of Randall, Cook & Co., at Chardon, Geauga county.  In connection with the store the firm operated an extensive morocco factory, and also dealt largely in general produce, wool, etc.  This was the commencement of a series of years of toil in the occupation by which he acquired the handsome competence he was not permitted to live to enjoy.  Continued in business at Chardon until 1855, when he removed to Rock Creek, purchased a tannery and opened a dry goods store; this was under the firm-name of Cook & Randall. Their mercantile department increased until they had as extensive extensive a stock as was shown in the county.  The tannery grew to be a stupendous enterprise. In 1861 he became sole owner, and continued as such until the 20th day of January, 1867, when his useful and honorable life was brought to a close.  His death was deeply regretted, for the loss of a truly worthy and good citizen always leaves a void not easily filled.
     Mr. Randall was united in marriage, on the 18th day of April, 1848, to Flora C., daughter of Thomas and Ruby Murphy, of Chardon, Geauga county, who were among the pioneers of that township.  This estimable lady is still living in widowhood.  The children of this marriage were Carlton Bradley, who was born in Chardon, on Jan. 19, 1849.  He was married, on June 20, 1870, to Frances A. Shafer, of Morgan township.  He was only permitted to enjoy the marriage relation a brief period, dying of pulmonary consumption May 29, 1872.  The next child was Ida Flora, who was born on the 21st day of May, 1851, also in Chardon.  Her marriage occurred on the 24th day of September, 1870, and her death on the 29th day of the same month and year.  She was a noble girl, too frail perhaps to endure the many bitter experiences of life.
     Mr. Randall was strongly Republican in politics, was a member of the independent order of Odd Fellows, and in early life a communicant of the Baptist church, and in later years an attendant at the Congregational church.  He was universally respected and esteemed as a man of sterling integrity, excellent business qualifications, sound judgment, and uncommon ability; an ever kind and indulgent husband and father, and, although ever engrossed with the cares of his business, vet had always time for those attentions which every one happily wedded loves to bestow.
----- Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page Betw. 198 & 199

HON. RUFUS PERCIVAL RANNEY.
     This gentleman was born at Blanford, Massachusetts, Oct. 30, 1813.  In 1822 he removed with his parents to Ohio.  They located first at Fairport, and afterwards at Freedom, Portage county.
     Judge Ranney's early education was limited.  He worked on his father's farm in summer and attended village school in winter.  At a later day, by his own industry, he managed to attend college at Hudson for a short period.  In 1836 he entered the law-office of Wade & Giddings, at Jefferson, this county, and after two years’ study was admitted to practice.  In 1839 he became the partner
of Hon. Benjamin F. Wade, and by diligent and faithful attention to his duties rose rapidly in his profession.  In 1846 and 1848 he was a candidate for congress against General John Crowell, but failed of an election, though he ran largely ahead of the Democratic State and county tickets.  In 1850 he was chosen to represent the counties of Trumbull and Geauga in the constitutional convention.  In the debates of that body he took a prominent part.  On the 17th of March, 1851, he was chosen by the legislature a judge of the supreme court in place of Edward Avery, resigned.
     This was the last election of supreme judge under the old constitution.  In October, 1857, Judge Ranney was re-elected by the people.  He resigned in 1856, and in 1857 was appointed by President Buchanan United States district attorney for northern Ohio.  This position he held two months and resigned.  The same year he removed from Warren to Cleveland.  In 1859, Governor Chase appointed him one of the commissioners to examine into the condition of the State treasury; but the appointment was declined.  In the fall of 1859 he was the Democratic candidate for governor against William Dennison, but failed of an election.  In 1862 he was again elected judge of the supreme court, which position he resigned in 1864.  From 1864 to 1868 he served upon the Democratic national committee.  Since 1864 he has held no official position, but has been engaged in the practice of his profession at Cleveland.  As a lawyer and jurist Judge Ranney has no superior in the State.  It is conceded, not alone by his political friends, but as well by his political foes, that he stands at the very head of the bar in northern Ohio.  We cannot claim him wholly for this county, but this is the place where he began the study and the practice of his profession, and he was a resident of the county for a number of years.
----- Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 85

CAROLINE L. RANSOM *   The defect in the American character is on the art side.  The art elements in the nature of individuals remain comparatively undeveloped.  The aggregate effect on the national character in the eye of an educated foreigner is somewhat striking, and is not unfrequently charged to the account of defective moral sentiments; a something in the climate, they say, tending to savagery, of which there has been a deal of twaddle.  This deficiency is not due to any lack of native endowment, that we inherit from our polyglot ancestry, but to the want of means, the helps for its development.  Our present greatest need, in the way of education, is far deeper, higher, more universal art culture.   When a shoal of poets come they create their audience.  This would be true of a school of painters, but there always must be some prophecy and preparation for a Messiah.  You cannot make an artist; the schools and colleges never produced one, and never will.  If any man should ask me what is their use, I should attempt no reply to him; the question could never be answered to his apprehension.  He is not far enough removed from the Digger Indians.  The labor should have been with his ancestors.  We have much well-considered writing and criticism of art and artists.  What we most need are collections of works of art, a better and wider diffusion of genuine specimens.  The man who carries a really good picture, even when translated into an engraving, to a remote village, is a benefactor in a small way.  The city that decorates one of its squares with a fine piece of statuary, has done as much for its people as if it had endowed a free school.  None will pass it with indifference.  To some it would be a perpetual pleasure; to the few a celestial revelation, giving point to their own aspirations, suggesting the needs of their own natures, and leading the way to the possibilities of their own powers.
     The story of one artist soul, born in exile from artistic surroundings, I am briefly to sketch.  Genius is sexless, when lodged, as in this instance, in the feminine form, and finds expression by a woman's hand; it nevertheless asserts itself as undeniably genius, a part of the great art soul of which the favored few are endowed.
     John Ransom is a lineal descendant of Edward Hyde, the great Earl of Clarendon, and chancellor of Charles II.  In this branch of the family, the name of Ann Hyde, Edward’s daughter, and the mother of two queens, was repeated in every generation till the present.  Elizabeth Orms is the daughter of General Orms, of Castleton, Vermont, a strain of people, if less exalted, worthy to mate with the descendants of Hyde.  From the union of these two was born Caroline L., at Newark, Ohio.  In her infancy the family emigrated northward, and found a home near the Mormon temple, in the beautiful region of Kirtland.  In 1840 the Ransoms formed a permanent seat in Harpersfield, on the picturesque banks of Grand river, Ashtabula County.  There was much, both at Kirtland and about this final resting-place, that appealed to the imagination and poetic nature of the young girl.  We are told she exhibited an aptitude amounting to rare precocity in the study of some branches of education, which, united to an ambition quite masculine, enabled her to maintain a position in advance of her classmates.  With less than a girl's aptitude for mathematics, she easily surpassed her male competitors in the Greek and Latin classics, receiving her education at an academical school open to both sexes.  She was a graduate of the Grand River Institution, where she afterwards remained as principal of the ladies’ department, and had charge of the Greek and Latin classes of the whole school.  She was early aware of a strong predisposition to art, and looked about eagerly for the means of indulging her bent.  These were of the scantiest.  During her vacations she took lessons in linear drawing, and doing flowers in water-colors, from a strolling teacher of slender capacity.  Small as the aid was, it kindled the latent aspiration, and induced her to grasp at the elusive forms of beautiful nature.  Nothing escaped her eye. which caught at every point.  At that time she had never seen but one real painting.  Think of a young poet who had never read but one poem! With this scant furnishing forth she herself established a class in water-colors, and gave herself, as far as she could conscientiously, to nature.  While looking out eagerly for help a special Providence, in the form of a wandering portrait-painter, was vouchsafed her.  Him she employed to paint herself, and at once went about procuring him orders.  Had he sat to her she could not have studied him closer.  What can be more fascinating to a young art soul than a painter at his easel?  His colors, brushes, palette, the way he uses, and the marvels he works with them—nothing escaped her; every moment she could snatch from duties was spent at the temporary studio.  Everything he did observed, every word treasured, little scraps of old masters, stories of their wonders, talks of their lives, of living painters he had known, had read about, or heard of.  She induced her father to have portraits of all the family.  These, five in number, were painted in the family home. She felt in her soul that she could paint.  The artist had a portrait which he claimed to have painted under Chester Harding.  She copied it.  Her success astonished her master, friends, and, most of all, herself. She now essayed a living subject.  A kind old aunt of her mother was specially raised up to be her first sitter.  We may fancy the opening scenes of this experiment.  The eager young girl, her fair face flushed, her blue eyes large and flashing, with the masses of wavy hair dashed back as by the hand of the wind.  The good, patient, dear old aunt perked up, posed and pushed about by the dainty fingers of the girl artist, who would tell her to look this way and that, step back and view her, with her head first on one side and then on the other, till everything is adjusted; and then, with a long, quivering breath, the crayon is applied to the canvas.  What a picture it would make.  What anxious days those were, big with the fate of artist and sitter, both to be immortal, or neither.  Days of going on, going wrong, and then off, and then all right again.  It was a triumph.  Old aunty, at least, was made famous.  What a moment for the neophyte, as amid the wonder and plaudits of the eager friends, in the rush and gush of emotion, with her face in her hands, she heard her soul saying to itself, “I, too, am a painter!”  It is true, the outlines were a trifle hard, and the half-tints might have been better adjusted, but the hand that fashioned it was the hand of an artist.  It was a likeness and full of life and flesh.  She repeated the experiment with other sitters, and so found her career.  From her love of nature, and the seeming ease with which she sketched the features of a view, she thought that landscape would afford the best subjects for her pencil.
     Horace Greeley’s father had been a tenant of one of her Grandfather Orms’ farms, and Horace and her mother had been playmates in childhood, and grew up fast friends.  With a letter to him from her mother, she made her way to New York, was kindly received, and became an inmate in the family of his sister, Mrs. Cleveland.  Here she was placed under the care of the landscape-painter, Ashur B. Durand, successor of Professor Morse as president of the National Academy of Design.  After many months of studious and quite successful work, he assured her that her talent and genius, which were decided, were better fitted for portraiture.  She was then placed under the care of Thomas Hicks, and devoted herself exclusively to portraits and figures.  After six months she painted the portrait of Mrs. Goss, of New York, which received high commendation from her master and his brother-artists.  For eight succeeding years she spent about one-half of each under the best instruction in New York, and the other in Ohio, painting portraits to defray her expenses, being a member of John F. Cleveland’s family while in the city, enjoying the care and affection of a daughter of the house.  The latter part of this time she was a pupil of the celebrated Huntington, when she painted her portrait of the Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, which was purchased by congress, and now hangs in the old hall of the house, in the capitol, where he served so long and faithfully.  This was hung by the side of Huntington's best, in the exhibition of 1859, and received the highest commendation of him, and of the art critics, and the press of New York.  It is characterized by strength and boldness, and remarkable for its life-like expression.  This purchase by congress was its first patronage to a woman.  Among the distinguished subjects of Miss Ransom's pencil were the late Dr. Jared P. Kirtland, the naturalist, Governor Brough, General Garfield, Governor Huntington, and Governor J. D. Cox—the two last for the governor’s room in the capitol, at Columbus.  Chief Justice Chase sat to her twice while secretary of the treasury,—for a bust once, and again for a full-length portrait.  The last, representing him standing in the south portico of the treasury building, was the one he wished to be known by in after-years.  In July, 1867, she went to Europe, where she remained two years, seeing much of its countries, many of its great cities, and visiting some of its most famous collections of art, painting and copying several of them, making the acquaintance of many distinguished artists; correcting, widening, and deepening her art impressions and instincts, perfecting her education and judgment in matters of her profession, and improving her style.  A woman of wide and general culture, it was not in art alone that she was profited by these two most valuable and treasured years.  I think their influence can be clearly traced in her work since her return, when it may be said that she is quite at the maturity of her powers.
     Her master-piece, what she may not be expected to ever excel, what few artists in this country can equal, is her now famous full-length portrait of General George H. Thomas, so often described that effort in that direction is tautology.  The subject was one which peculiarly appealed to the sensibility and appreciative sympathy of Miss Ransom, artist and woman as she is.  The grand, massive head, weight, strength, and firmness of the figure, which she has so planted that nothing but an upheaval of the earth’s crust can ever shake it; the moveless will, the changeless resolve, the calm courage, the serene daring, the combination of the great solid qualities of the man, the general, and the hero, found in her the soul and intellect that could appreciate and reverence, and the hand that could express them in the face and form which she has given to the eyes of men.  All men and women have eyes with which to scan the faces and forms of their fellows.  Scarcely any two see all of the same things in the face of any worth looking at.  It is the gift of the artist in human portraiture to see all that the external face and form contain,—the nice lines and subtle expressions that elude common though acute observers. They see vastly more.  The countenance reveals to them the best there is in the man, the best which they attribute to a given man; and something of this a true artist will bring forth, and make to appear in the faces of those worthy of their pencils.  Two faculties the artist must have: The power of idealizing in his own soul his best conceptions of the man, and then such trained skill and deftness of hand that he can realize to the eye, to all eyes that have the power to see, that ideal in colors on the canvas before him.  Miss Ransom is a poet, as many artists are; she also has the gift of a poetic utterance, which few possess.  There is also a martial tone and touch in her being, something to which the stir and pomp of arms, belted knights, and embattled hosts appeal, and find response.  She conceived Thomas standing solitary on kindred rock, facing the near battle, swelling and lifted up with its spirit and inspiration, yet holding himself calm, proud, great, and as if in his single person he was to encounter, resist, and overcome the foe, and he looks not only as if he had made up his mind to the encounter, but would certainly vanquish the assailing host.  The likeness is said to be admirable.  It is much more than a likeness of the outer man; soul, intellect, weight, manhood, winning and ready to be crowned with a great victory, are all there.  The old comrades of Thomas come into its presence, look and uncover, remain silent, and burst into tears.  It has been present at many of the reunions of the armies he commanded, and was the most observed and honored personage present.
     It is true, newspaper men, who don’t know a palette from a plate, still continue to take their little flings at it.  Nothing better marks the position it occupies at the capital.  They have never heard of the works of older and better-known artists, but they have heard of this, and cannot rest until they have advertised the fact, and their own ignorance; and it is pitiful to think that the painter of General Thomas can be wounded by these “midgets.”  I am not to write a history of this work, nor of the sort of criticisms it has received.  I must add a word of its creation.
     In the autumn of 1871, Miss Ransom produced the first portrait of General Thomas, now owned by Colonel Squire, which was a study and preparation for the full-length.  This was commenced in the spring of 1872.  She secured a studio in New York, where she spent six months of the autumn and winter upon it.  The Army of the Tennessee held its reunion at Toledo, in the fall of 1873, when the work as then completed was exhibited.  It was a bold test which the artist challenged.  Its reception by his old comrades in arms was most enthusiastic.  It received as much attention as the great living commanders of the armies who were present and did it homage.  Thus approved, the artist determined to fully execute her original purpose—paint in the battle of Chickamauga as a back-ground.  For this purpose she visited the scene of that conflict, which she carefully studied and sketched, completing the work as it now meets the eye.  In the autumn of 1874, at the solicitation of the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, it was placed in the hall of their reunion at Columbus, Ohio, who marked their appreciation of it by the following resolution:
     “Resolved, That the Society of the Army of the Cumberland, at Columbus in session assembled, hereby tender to Miss Ransom their thanks for the presence of her magnificent portrait of our old and much-beloved commander, Major-General George H. Thomas.  We hereby indorse the great excellence of the portrait, and the accuracy of the landscape of the field of Chickamauga, and we respectfully request the congress of the United States to place it permanently in the Capitol at Washington.”
     Afterwards it was placed on exhibition in the rotunda of the capitol, during the opening weeks of congress, where it daily attracted crowds. It is now the most conspicuous object in the studio of the artist, at Washington, where it is accompanied by the fine bust portraits of General McPherson and B. F. Wade, and surrounded by many works of her brush, among which are the notable copies made in Italy.   The Wade should be purchased and returned to Ohio, where it belongs.
     I hardly dare venture a word further upon the qualities of Miss Ransom as an artist.  She seems to me to be remarkable for the certainty and firmness with which she grasps her subject, and the strength and fidelity with which she works out her conception of it.  She never fails of producing a striking likeness.  No one can greatly excel as a painter who is not to some extent a colorist.  Miss Ransom has a large gift of that power.  Her spirit is steeped in its rich sensuousness, which sometimes finds happy expression in poetic forms, some of which have been given to the public.  The best remain in MSS.  She has admirable judgment of works of art; is broad, just, and generous in her appreciation of the works of others; is a kindly, sympathetic, noble, lovable woman.  Her studio has been for many years in Cleveland.  For three winters past she has occupied one on Pennsylvania avenue, in Washington, where her Friday afternoons are among the pleasant occasions in the art and literary circles of the capital, into which she was at once received, and where she is justly appreciated.  Among the products of these riper years may be mentioned the portraits of Mr. French, sergeant-at-arms of the senate, Mrs. Garfield, and Mrs. Riddle, painted in Washington, all of which, and especially the last, are among the finest specimens of American portrait-painting.  Now quite at maturity, Miss Ransom may look forward to coming years of increasing fame, and a realization of all the hopes which should crown the deservedly successful devotee of widening, growing, American art.
----- Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 111
* By Hon. A. G. Riddle.