Kentucky: A History of the State, Battle, Perrin, & Kniffin, 7th ed.,
Kenton Co.

JOHN GRIFFIN CARLISLE.  The family from which the present speaker of our
national House of Representatives is descended has, for more than a
century past, been prominently identified with the history of Kentucky.
     Robert McClure, who was one of the first pioneers, and a companion of
the noted Gen. Benjamin Logan, finally fell in border warfare with the
Indians, about the year 1794, and was buried by his leader, Logan, near a
brook which still bears his name. Two of the brothers of Benjamin Logan
married sister of McClure, and it is a family tradition that he, Robert
McClure, married Anne, a sister of the Logans.  Thomas M. Green, of
Maysville, a distinguished writer, has recently prepared an article
concerning the Logan family, in which the name of this Anne Logan does not
appear, and, if the omission accords with the facts, the family tradition
is unfounded.  For our part we think it true, and believe that family
traits, characteristics and circumstances "which lead directly to the
door of truth," attest its verity.
     Margaret a young daughter of Robert McClure, aged sixteen, ran away
with and was married to John Carlisle.  He, too, was a Kentucky pioneer,
of Irish birth, but evidently of English ancestry (for the name if no
Hibernian), and was probably, at the date of the elopement, something of
a rover.  So undiscoverable appears to have been the Gretna Green to which
the lovers absconded, and so unknown for years was their future home, that
they were long supposed to have been killed or kidnaped by the red men.
From this union sprang a family of seven children--three sons and four
daughters.  The story of it is a leaf from the romance of love, bound in
the volume of Western military adventure.
     Robert McClure Carlisle, one of the sons, represented Kenton County a
number of sessions in the Kentucky Legislature, and was in fact as well as
in name, a representative.  Another and younger son, Lilburn Logan
Carlisle, born in the year 1800, and the father of the statesman who was to
become eminent, though admitted to have been a more talented man than his
brother, never held office, and never sought it.  When young in life, he
married a woman younger than himself, sixteen years old--his mother's age
at the time of her runaway.  She was a Miss Mary Reynolds, and was of
New England descent.  They became the parents of eleven children, of whom
John Griffin Carlisle was the eldest.  He was born September 5, 1835, at
the old Carlisle family homestead, situated in what is now Kenton (then
Campbell) County, about twenty miles south of Covington.
     He was fortunate in his birthplace, in a neighborhood at that time
containing more woodland than open country, and presenting--with its
limestone understrata and blue grass soil, its unfelled primeval forests
surrounding cultivated fields, its smiling vales and picturesque hills,
its plenteous brooks rippling to the near Licking and to the not distant
Ohio, and with a sky overhead Italian-like in its azure lure--a scene
thoroughly Kentuckian and thoroughly beautiful.
     Lilburn Carlisle died prematurely, in May, 1852, leaving the care of
his young and large family to his wife and eldest son, then in his
seventeenth year.  Both were equal to the task.  The mother was provident,
affectionate, energetic, self-reliant; the son, possessing those traits
and others of the highest, stood up, less like a boy than one in his
developed manhood, to the discharge of the duties which had unexpectedly
devolved upon him, and was unconsciously fitting himself for the splendid
performance of higher trusts, upon an ampler theater.
     He obtained his education in and near his home.  It embraced the
ordinary branches of knowledge, as they were then taught in the common
schools, with a little superadded French. Not much mental armor for the
ordinary scholar, but armor enough for a retentive and powerful mind,
which easily masters the outposts of learning, and, having once taken,
ever holds them.
     Before attaining his majority, Mr. Carlisle removed to Covington, Ky.,
and began the study of law in the office of the late ex-governor, John W.
Stevenson.  His student life was from the first extraordinary.  After a
brief novitiate he obtained license, and commenced active practice.
     His appearance at the next ensuing term of the Kenton Circuit Court
was to the bar of Covington a surprise and a revelation.  He came not as a
raw recruit, but as a veteran fully armed.  It seemed that he had a fund
of knowledge on which to draw, large as those accumulated by the study and
experiences of a lifetime. A youth and a beginner, he entered the lists
against age and highest forensic standing; his self-poise and remarkable
aptitude at once suggested what the occasion required, and when success
was attainable he was never unsuccessful.  Thus began his remarkable
professional career.
     Early in 1857 Mr. Carlisle intermarried with Mary Jane, eldest
daughter of the distinguished Maj. John A. Goodson, a soldier under Andrew
Jackson, and representative of Kenton County during many years in the
Legislature.  This lady is known throughout the country for her talent, and
esteemed for her virtues.  She and her husband are the parents of two sons,
William K. Carlisle and Logan Carlisle, both rising lawyers of Wichita, Kas.
     Mr. Carlisle's practice as a lawyer rapidly increased, and secured for
him wealth, influence and position.  He was soon made the recipient of
trusts, and called to the discharge of duties, other than those of the forum.
     In August, 1859, by common consent of the Democratic party, with which
he has always been connected, he was returned a member from Kenton County
to the lower branch of the Kentucky Legislature.  After serving as such,
he withdrew for some time to his practice.  In 1865 he embarked into a
doubtful and not uneventful contest for the State Senate. He was elected.
In 1869 he was re-elected State senator; held the office two years, and
resigned to accept the nomination for lieutenant-governor of Kentucky,
which had been tendered him.  To this office he was elected by a very large
majority, and was sworn in, if we remember rightly, on September 5, 1871,
the day he completed his thirty-sixth year.  He was presiding officer of
the Kentucky Senate during two legislative sessions.  In 1876, easily
defeating a field of candidates, he was elected from the Sixth Kentucky
District to the House of Representatives of the United States, and has been
re-elected to that body in 1878, 1880, 1882, 1884 and 1886.  At the
beginning of the XLVIII Congress, December 3, 1883, he was elected Speaker,
and at the beginning of XLIX Congress, in December, 1885, again elected to
that office.  Such is in brief the unbroken and brilliant record of his
political promotions.  But accompanying that record, distinguishing,
adorning, and imparting to it a charm, an illustration and a power were
characteristics of which space will prevent the mention. A few only may be
enumerated here.
     To Mr. Carlisle, more perhaps than to any other man, is the public
indebted for the construction of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad.  He was
lieutenant-governor of Kentucky at the time a charter was granted it,
which the State had long refused to grant, interdicting a right of way to
the great thoroughfare over her sacred soil and consecrated mud holes. The
passage of the bill authorizing the construction of the work was due to the
casting vote of the Speaker, John G. Carlisle.
     It then became necessary, in order to enable the trustees to negotiate
their bonds, to repeal an unconstitutional proviso.  There was a tie vote,
and this measure, too, passed by the vote of the speaker, John G. Carlisle.
Before Mr. Carlisle became speaker of the House at Washington, he had
frequently presided in committees of the whole, sometimes as long as a month
at a time, and had served often as speaker pro tem.
     His services as chairman of several of the most important of the House
committees, the part he has taken in the discussions of the silver
question, of that of the bounties to steamships, concerning the supervisors
and marshals of elections and of troops at the polls, in that great and
comprehensive work, the refunding, at a lower rate of interest, of the
National debt, and on that equally momentous issue, the tariff--are too
known to the American public to need recapitulation here.
     It would be a work of supererogation, while we are contemplating the
acts and scene-shiftings of busy and varied life, to speak much or
minutely of living actors.  Let time and the end determine.  Let the
record of final judgments follow the evidence, the arguments and the
verdicts.  These things have been, must be, and it is fit and proper that
they should be.  Only the rounded and finished life is the appropriate
theme for biography; and there is too much tendency in writings of the
present day to forestall the future; to over-kindly laud or maliciously
animadvert; to grant what in time will be often withheld, and to withhold
what in time will be often granted.  But this much we may affirm, that
the character of the person here portrayed presents, in itself and of
itself, a noble illustration of the glories of American institutions, of
American government, and of the possibilities of advancement, open even
to the humblest, on that broad road which liberty has paved to success.

Carlisle, McClure, Logan, Green, Reynolds, Stevenson, Goodson
=
Ireland, Campbell, KS

http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/kenton/carlisle.jg.txt