DAWES, HENRY LAURENS (1816-1903), American lawyer, was born at Cummington, Massachusetts, on the 30th of October 1816. After graduating at Yale in 1839, he taught for a time at Greenfield, Mass., and also edited The Greenfield Gazette. In 1842 he was admitted to the bar and began the practice of law at North Adams, where for a time he conducted The Transcript. He served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1848-1849 and in 1852, in the state Senate in 1850, and in the Massachusetts constitutional convention in 1853. From 1853 to 1857 he was United States district attorney for the western district of Massachusetts; and from 1857-1875 he was a Republican member of the national House of Representatives. In 1875 he succeeded Charles Sumner as senator from Massachusetts, serving until 1893. During this long period of legislative activity he served in the House on the committees on elections, ways and means, and appropriations, took a prominent part in the anti-slavery and reconstruction measures during and after the Civil War, in tariff legislation, and in the establishment of a fish commission and the inauguration of daily weather reports. In the Senate he was chairman of the committee on Indian affairs, and gave much attention to the enactment of laws for the benefit of the Indians. On leaving the Senate, in 1893, he became chairman of the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes (sometimes called the Dawes Indian Commission), and served in this capacity for ten years, negotiating with the tribes for the extinction of the communal title to their land and for the dissolution of the tribal governments, with the object of making the tribes a constituent part of the United States.[1] Dawes died at Pittsfield, Mass., on the 5th of February 1903.
[1] The commission completed its labours on the 1st of July 1905, after having allotted 20,000,000 acres of land among 90,000 Indians and absorbed the five Indian governments into the national system. The “five tribes” were the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole Indians.
DAWES, RICHARD (1708-1766), English classical scholar, was born in or near Market Bosworth. He was educated at the town grammar school under Anthony Blackwall, and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which society he was elected fellow in 1731. His peculiar habits and outspoken language made him unpopular. His health broke down in consequence of his sedentary life, and it is said that he took to bell-ringing at Great St Mary’s as a restorative. He was a bitter enemy of Bentley, who he declared knew nothing of Greek except from indexes. In 1738 Dawes was appointed to the mastership of the grammar school, Newcastle-on-Tyne, combined with that of St Mary’s hospital. From all accounts his mind appears to have become unhinged; his eccentricities of conduct and continual disputes with his governing body ruined the school, and finally, in 1749, he resigned his post and retired to Heworth, where he chiefly amused himself with boating. He died on the 21st of March 1766. Dawes was not a prolific writer. The book on which his fame rests is his Miscellanea critica (1745), which gained the commendation of such distinguished continental scholars as L. C. Valckenaer and J. J. Reiske. The Miscellanea, which was re-edited by T. Burgess (1781), G. C. Harles (1800) and T. Kidd (1817), for many years enjoyed a high reputation, and although some of the “canons” have been proved untenable and few can be accepted universally, it will always remain an honourable and enduring monument of English scholarship.
See J. Hodgson, An Account of the Life and Writings of Richard Dawes (1828); H. R. Luard in Dict. of Nat. Biog.; J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Classical Scholarship, ii. 415.
DAWISON, BOGUMIL (1818-1872), German actor, was born at Warsaw, of Jewish parents, and at the age of nineteen went on the stage. In 1839 he received an appointment to the theatre at Lemberg in Galicia. In 1847 he played at Hamburg with marked success, was from 1849 to 1854 a member of the Burg theatre in Vienna, and then became connected with the Dresden court theatre. In 1864 he was given a life engagement, but resigned his appointment, and after starring through Germany visited the United States in 1866. He died in Dresden on the 1st of February 1872. Dawison was considered in Germany an actor of a new type; a leading critic wrote that he and Marie Seebach “swept like fresh gales over dusty tradition, and brushing aside the monotony of declamation gave to their rôles more character and vivacity than had hitherto been known on the German stage.” His chief parts were Mephistopheles, Franz Moor, Mark Antony, Hamlet, Charles V., Richard III. and King Lear.