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MUDGE, Enoch, clergyman, born in Lynn, Massachusetts, 28 June, 1776 : died there, 2 April, 1850. He was descended from an old New England family, the first member of which mentioned in local annals is Goodman Mudge, who in 1649, as appears by an old deed, purchased a house and five acres of land in New London, Connecticut, for "five bushels of wheat and a dog." He entered the Methodist Episcopal church in 1793, and travelled as an itinerant minister in Maine, enduring great hardships, under which his health gave way, and he was compelled in 1799 to ask for a location in order that he might recuperate. He was therefore settled at Orrington, Maine, where he labored until 1816. During this period he was twice chosen to the legislature, the first time to obtain a repeal of the law that imposed a tax on other denominations for the support of the Congregational church, in which effort he was successful. In 1816 he again became an itinerant, and was stationed successively at Boston, Lynn, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Newport, Rhode Island, and other places. In 1832 he was transferred to the Seaman's chapel at New Bedford, where he spent the remainder of his active life, returning to Lynn in 1844. While residing at the latter place in 1819 he was elected a member of the convention that revised the constitution of Massachusetts. He was the author of a "Camp-Meeting Hymn-Book" (1818); "Notes on the Parables" (1828) ; " Lynn," a poem (1830) ; "The Parables of Our Lord" (1831) ; "Lectures to Seamen" (1836) ; "The Juvenile Expositor," published in seventy numbers of "Zion's Herald"; and many other lectures and occasional discourses. He was a frequent contributor to the press of both prose and poetry.--His son, Enoch Redington, merchant, born in Orrington, Maine, 22 March, 1812; died in Swampscot, Massachusetts, 1 October, 1881, left home at fifteen years of age, went to Portland, Maine, and entered a banking-house. On the failure of the firm he engaged in business for himself, and as a result of land speculations failed in 1835 for $20,000, which was then considered a large capital. Going to New York city, he had the general management for four years of the Astor house. In 1840 he went to New Orleans and opened the St. Charles hotel, where he made $150.000 and paid the debts he had previously incurred. Returning to New York city in 1845, he became interested in manufacturing, and in 1846 built the Saratoga Victory cotton-mills, thirty miles from Cohoes, New York He was engaged for the next ten years in various commercial enterprises, and in 1857 became an agent for the sale of the products of several New England woollen and cotton mills.
His sales gradually increased, until in 1865 they amounted to between $8,000,000 and $9,000,000. In 1866-'7 Mr. Mudge was a member of the Massachusetts senate. He built St. Stephen's Episcopal church at Lynn, Massachusetts, as a memorial of his deceased children, Fanny Olive and Charles Redington, a graduate of Harvard, who was killed at the battle of Gettysburg.--Enoch's nephew, Alfred, printer, son of Samuel Mudge, born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 25 April, 1809; died in Hull, Massachusetts, 14 August, 1882, was compelled to earn his own living at fourteen, but soon afterward apprenticed himself to a printer. In 1825 he went to Boston, where he completed his apprenticeship with Samuel H. Parker. Six years afterward he began business for himself on a very slender capital, and in 1834 lost by fire what little he had accumulated. He then removed to School street in the same city, where he became firmly established. Mr. Mudge was the pioneer job printer of New England, there having been before his time no office where orders for commercial work could be well and promptly executed. Among his achievements was the setting up and printing, in nine working-days, of an octavo volume of 524 pages which contained but one typographical error. He printed, among other specimens of fine work," History of the City Hall," published by the city authorities of Boston, a genealogical record of the descendants of Hugh Clark, of Watertown, and the "Mudge Memorials," being an account of the Mudge family.--Another nephew of Enoch, Zachariah Atwell, author, son of James Mudge, born in Orrington, Penobscot County, Maine, 2 July, 1813, was educated at Lynn, Massachusetts, academy and Wesleyan university, but was not graduated. After teaching in Massachusetts and Mississippi he entered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal church in 1840, and has since been stationed at various places in Massachusetts. In 1854 he received the honorary degree of A.M. from Wesleyan university. From 1859 till 1862 he was editor of "The Guide to Holiness." During his pastoral labors, extending over forty-five years, Mr. Mudge has found time to prepare for publication a large number of works of fiction for Sunday-school libraries, he has also issued "Sketches of Mission Life among the Indians of Oregon" (New York, 1854) ; "The Christian Statesman, a Pertraiture of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton" (1865); " Witch Hill, a History of Salem Witchcraft" (1870); "Arctic Heroes" (1874); "North-Pole Voyages" (1875) ; "History of Suffolk County, Massachusetts" (1879) ; " Fur-clad Adventurers" (1880); and others of a similar character.--Zachariah's brother, Thomas Hicks, educator, born in Orrington, Penobscot County, Maine, 27 September, 1815; died in Baldwin City, Douglas County, Kansas, 24 July, 1862, was graduated at Wesleyan university in 1840, studied three years in Union theological seminary, New York city, and entered the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal church. In 1857-'8 he was professor of sacred literature in McKendree college, Lebanon, Illinois, and he afterward preached in Missouri until he was compelled to leave at the beginning of the civil war. In 1862 he was appointed professor of ancient languages and biblical literature in Baker university, Baldwin City, Kansas, where he remained until his death. -Another brother, Benjamin Franklin, educator, born in Orrington, Penobscot County, Maine, 11 August, 1817; died in Manhattan, Riley County, Kansas, 21 November, 1879, was graduated at Wesleyan university in 1840, studied law, was admitted to the bar, and practised in Lynn, Massachusetts, from 1844 till 1859, being elected mayor in 1852. He settled in Kansas in 1862, and in 1864-'5 was state geologist. From 1865 till 1873 he was professor of natural sciences and the higher mathematics in the State agricultural college. While connected with this institution he employed his vacations in exploring the cretaceous formation in western Kansas, and thus discovered forty-five new species of fossils, including Ichthyornis dispar, a bird with biconcave vertebrae. He was president of the Kansas state teachers' association in 1867, and of the Kansas academy of sciences in 1868-'79. From 1873 till 1579 he was lecturer on geology in the state university at Lawrence. Professor Mudge was a frequent contributor, 1873-'80, to the "Transactions" of the Kansas academy of sciences and other societies. He also published "First Annual Report on the Geology of Kansas " (Lawrence, 1866).
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