60 MARYLAND MANUAL.

Charles F. Markell.

Charles Frederick Markell, Republican, was born in Frederick
city, Maryland, October 16, 1855, and is descended from one of
the oldest families in the State. Receiving an academic and col-
legiate education, he graduated with the first honor from the law
department of the Columbian University at Washington, D. C.,
in 1876, and was admitted to the Supreme Court of the District
of Columbia before attaining his majority. After a considerable
sojourn in Europe he returned to his native place, where he has
since been engaged in the active practice of his profession. Mr.
Markell represented his county in the Maryland Legislature in
1884, serving upon some of the most important committees.
For three years he owned and edited a daily Republican news-
paper, and has always been active upon the hustings in the advo-
cacy of his party faith. Under the administration of President
Harrison Mr. Markell was sent to Brazil as secretary of legation,
succeeding J. Fenner Lee, of Baltimore, and served during the
absence of Minister Conger as charge d'affaires. It was while
acting in this capacity that he was successful in inducing the
Brazilian government to remove the onerous expediente tax upon
wheat flour, which bore with especial weight upon the export
merchants of Baltimore city, and which Mr. Markell insisted
was in direct violation of the reciprocity arrangement.

Mr. Markell has published a small volume of poems entitled
"Chamodine, " is the author of the interesting "Chaskell" papers,
which for the past year have appeared in the columns of one of
the Frederick journals, and has in press a novel interweaving
with descriptions of ideal life in Brazil, a love story. He is also
engaged on a history of Frederick city.

He is chairman of the committee on elections, member of com-
mittee on judiciary, on insolvency, on civil service.

Melvin P. Wood.

Melvin P. Wood, Republican, was born in 1848 in the town of
Newmarket, Frederick county, where he now resides. He is a
son of Joseph Wood, one of the original Lincoln men, and was
an ardent Union man during the war, and in 1870 he was elected
president of the board of County Commissioners of Frederick
county. Mr. Wood was raised on the old home farm near the
village, and attended the public schools during the winter months
until he was fourteen years of age, when he entered a grocery
store at Monrovia Station as clerk. Later he purchased the entire
business. In 1885 he was nominated by the Republicans for the
House of Delegates, and was the only man on his ticket elected,
the Democrats electing their full ticket with this exception, by
from two to three hundred majority. In 1893 Mr. Wood was