Biography
Born near Richwood, Ohio, Wilkins attended the common schools of Marysville, Ohio. During the American Civil War, he enlisted as a private in Company H, One Hundred and Thirty-sixth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, May 2, 1864, and served until honorably discharged August 31, 1864. He then engaged in banking in Uhrichsville, Ohio. He was a member of the Ohio Senate 1880 and 1881, and served as member of the Democratic State central committee in 1882.
Wilkins was elected as a Democrat to the Forty-eighth, Forty-ninth, and Fiftieth Congresses (March 4, 1883-March 3, 1889). He served as chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency (Fiftieth Congress).
After his congressional service, Wilkins settled in Washington, D.C.. He became majority owner and publisher of the Washington Post in 1889, and later, in 1894, acquired the entire stock ownership of the paper, serving as editor until his death in Washington, D.C., June 7, 1905. He was interred in Rock Creek Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Beriah Wilkins
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)