COL. PERRIE
KEWEN
Col. Perrie Kewen, Assistant Adjutant General of California, is a native
of St. Louis, Missouri, born October 10, 1857, his parents being Col. E.J.C.
and Francis (White) Kewen. The Whites were one of the oldest families of
Virginia. The mother of the maternal grandfather of the subject of this sketch
was an aunt to President Jefferson. Dr. Thomas Jefferson White, father of our
subject’s mother, was one of the most eminent and distinguished surgeons of his
time, and a prominent public man. He had two brothers, Joseph M. White,
Congressman from Georgia and honorary member of the Georgia Historical Society,
who was appointed by President Jefferson to compile the laws for the government
of the Mexican territories subservient to the laws of the United States; the
other brother, Philip White, represented Florida in Congress for seventeen
years, consecutively, and died in his seat in the House of Representatives. Dr.
Thomas Jefferson White was one of the founders of the medical department of Jefferson
(now Lee) College, and was the first surgeon to successfully transplant flesh.
He came to California with the troops in 1849, and was in Sacramento in
December of that year. He was a member of the first constitutional convention,
and was Speaker of the House in the first Legislature. His wife was Frances
Jane Perry, of Richmond, Virginia, a daughter of John Perry. Dr. White died at
Los Angeles December 17, 1859. Colonel E.J.C. Kewen, father of our subject, was
a son of Captain Edward Kewen, of the Royal English Navy, who served in the
Irish department of the channel squadron. He came to this country and was
appointed on the staff of General Andrew Jackson. He served with distinction
under that commander in the war with England, and was decorated for gallantry
at the battle of New Orleans. He afterward became an Indian merchant, and later
was killed in a duel in Tennessee. He left three sons, the oldest of whom was
the father of our subject. Colonel Edward J.C. Kewen, father of our subject,
was born at Columbus, Mississippi, November 2, 1825. At thirteen years of age
he became a student in the Wesleyan University, located at Middletown,
Connecticut. He had been there some three years when the untoward speculations
of his guardian hurried him to his Mississippi home; and on his arrival there
to learn that his once princely inheritance had dwindled down to a mere
pittance. Thus reduced from affluence to comparative poverty, with his two
younger brothers dependent upon his exertions for subsistence, he resolved upon
the profession of the law. He betook himself to solitary study, with a
persistence and assiduity almost unprecedented in those of his extreme youth.
He had reached the age of nineteen, with but few acquaintances and associations
in his native town. This was in 1844, in the middle of a most exciting
political contest. By some means he was selected to deliver the opening address
before what was then styled a “Clay Club.” His primal efforts on that occasion
acquired for him at once an extraordinary reputation for oratory. His extreme
youth, peculiarity of style, copiousness of diction, earnestness and polish of
manner gave him sudden and unwonted fame. He was seized upon by the leading
spirits of the party to which he belonged, in a section of country
distinguished for its eloquent men, as one of their most efficient speakers,
and dispatched to remote sections. The writer of the present notice has heard
an incident illustrative of young Kewen’s daring and fervid elocution. At a
prominent point in his native State the people of both parties had massed
together to enjoy the barbecued provision and the attraction of oratory. Two
whole days had passed away in social and political revel, but very much to the
discomfiture of Whig doctrines. Such giants as George R. Clayton and H.L.
Harris and John B. Cobb, from unaccountable reasons, had failed to present
themselves to effulge upon the beauties and strength of a protective tariff and
other germane Whig topics. In despair, and at the very finale of the meeting
the young stranger Kewen, a beardless boy, was reluctantly thrown before them.
He had now some experience, it is true, in public declamation; and youth has
its magnetism and sympathies; yet, they say, astonishment soon melted into
earnest admiration, and the comparative boy ran away with the hearts and the
judgments of the serried crowd. Regardless of party discrimination, they did a
strange thing for that region. They seized hold of the juvenile orator as he
finished his glowing peroration, and bore him around upon their shoulders, and
would not be content until he had given them another specimen of his eloquence
the same night, in a neighboring court-house. Such triumphs are very rare.
After the election in 1844, Mr. Kewen became the editor of the Columbus Whig,
and remained in that occupation for two years. Removing to St. Louis, Missouri,
for the purpose of practicing law, and meeting with peculiar success, we find
him again upon the hustings after the nomination of Zachary Taylor for the
Presidency. The papers of that day teem with the most extravagant encomiums
upon his oratorical abilities. In commendation of his forensic efforts,
partisanship lost its rancor, for praise flew equally from his opponents and
his friends. In his fervid pilgrimage he traversed several of the Middle and
Southern States. The reader of this sketch has already detected in its subject
a peculiar restlessness so characteristic of men of his ardent temperament, and
will not be surprised to learn that he became one of the innumerable throng
that hurried to this western El Dorado forty years ago. Perhaps the blind boy,
Dan Cupid, was one of the impelling causes of his sudden migration. It is very
certain that he filled in with the caravan of Dr. Thomas Jefferson White and
family, and meandered across the “plains” in their companionship and became the
fortunate husband of the Doctor’s accomplished daughter upon their arrival at
Sacramento, December 10, 1849 – this being the first American wedding in
California. It seems that his fame as an orator had anteceded him. Some
occasion prompting it, he was summoned to the rostrum the very day his weary
footsteps first traversed the then primitive city of Sacramento; and his
instantaneous popularity was evinced by his election to the responsible office
of Attorney General by the State Legislature soon after his advent upon our
coast. This office he resigned, as it compelled his residence at a distance
from his adopted city, in which he had sprung into lucrative practice in his
profession. If other evidence of moral and physical courage were wanting, his
character in this respect was especially manifest in his enlistment against the
squatters, who, at that early period of our history had banded in murderous
clans. Under threats of assassination he boldly repaired to one of their
convocations on the levee and succeeded by the audacity of his tongue in
dispersing the threatening and insurrectionary crowd. In May 1851, he was
nominated as a candidate on the Whig ticket for Congress, and it was in that
canvass that he displayed the full maturity and strength of his peculiar
powers. Often speaking several times during the same day, he seemed exhaustless
in mind and body; though successful, the small majority obtained by his
opponent was a high compliment to the zeal and eloquence of Colonel Kewen in a
State Democratic at the time by many thousand. Leaving Sacramento in the summer
of 1852 for San Francisco, he practiced his profession in the latter city with
eminent success, until his restless and daring mind drove him into a new
career. His brother, A.L. Kewen, second in command to General William Walker,
was shot and killed in the first battle of Riva, Nicaragua in June 1855.
Thomas, the youngest of the three, had died the preceding year on the island of
Tobago, in the Province of Panama. Alone in the world, and we may naturally
suppose brooding in deepest melancholy over the early death of his only and
loved kindred, it is not surprising that one of his ardent and generous
impulses would seek relief in the first daring enterprise that offered. He was
an intimate friend of General Walker, and had hitherto resisted his earnest
importunities to embark in his wild adventure. Walker, now the military lead of
the new government, welcomed him with open arms, and at once commissioned him
as the financial agent of the republic as well as judge advocate general on his
staff; and it was not long before he became a member of a judicial tribunal
organized to adjust the rival claims of Vanderbilt and Garrison & Morgan. The
result of the deliberations of that body was that Vanderbilt was indebted to
the Rivas-Walker government to the amount of one-half million of dollars.
Pending the decision, were fought the memorable battles of Rivas, Massaya and
Granada, in each of which Colonel Kewen took an active part as aid to General
Walker. Though disapproving the measure, Colonel Kewen was instructed to take
possession of the steamers belonging to Commodore Vanderbilt, plying in Lake
Nicaragua. That arbitrary and impolitic act, in which he was made the unwilling
agent, resulted in the disastrous consequences that he predicted to his
superior. It drove the powerful capitalist to collide with the authorities of
Costa Rica, and eventually caused the ruin of the Walker dynasty. The Colonel
was now dispatched upon an embassy to the Southern States of our Union for
additional means and forces. Establishing his headquarters at Augusta, Georgia,
he soon succeeded in rallying about him a force of eighty men, completely
equipped, with ample supplies of provisions. The enthusiasm with which he was
greeted and the ready response made to his persuasive appeals, are part of the
history of our country. He had just negotiated with his former friends,
Garrison and Morgan, the conveyance to their destination of his forces and
implements, when the news reached him of the capture of Walker by Commodore
Paulding, under instructions from Washington, and so terminated the
Rivas-Walker government, and with it were dashed the hopes of its most
efficient and brilliant supporter. In December 1857, the Colonel returned to
San Francisco, and in January of the succeeding year became a citizen of Los
Angeles, where he resided up to the time of his death. In his new abode the
people have once elected him to the office of District Attorney, and have twice
dispatched him to the lower branch of our State Legislature. In the
Presidential campaign of 1868 he was complimented with the highest number of
votes as an elector on the Democratic ticket. We have thus sketched in brief
the leading incidents in the life of one of our most prominent citizens.
Perhaps no man is so thoroughly known within our State limits as Colonel E.J.C.
Kewen. Of manners peculiarly genial, and a temperament ardent, enthusiastic and
restless, and impulses generous and noble, and a tested courage more often
mettlesome than discreet, charitable to profusion, his is essentially the
finest type of his combined Celtic and Mississippi origin. Such men often
provoke enmities, but only melt into enduring friends. His oratorical
abilities, so eminently peculiar, have often been condemned by those most
fascinated by their display. Criticism has always been launched at
eccentricity. The scholar, while he wonders, condemns the strange affluence of
diction that floats before him in such luxuriant profusion. Seldom before did
man have such command of language. It is as exuberant as the monthly growth of
the tropics, as gushing as the warble of the wild bird. Under proper control,
and with the woof of logic, it is the richest gift of intelligence. Those that
heard the Colonel some years since, wondered at and deplored this wild
luxuriance, did in later years admire how he had subjected this verbal wealth
to logical control. Had Colonel Kewen confined himself, without political and
other deviation, to his profession, there is no doubt he would have attained in
it the rarest eminence. He had not reached the full fruition of his powers,
though he had the reputation unequaled upon our coast as an advocate and a
public declaimer. The storms of his life are over. Colonel Kewen died of
paralysis on the 26th of November, 1879, at his beautiful home “El
Molino,” Los Angeles County, surrounded by his family. His accomplished wife
survived him but a few months. Mrs. Kewen was a woman of the rarest qualities
of mind and intellect, who endeared herself to all with whom she came in
contact. She merited and received the highest tributes that loving friends
could bestow upon one of the noblest works of God, “a perfect woman.” Two
children, a son and daughter, are all the family that survived them.