  When the genial countenance and kindly voice of T. A. Walton were missed from the customary gatherings of the river merchants, it was felt that something had been lost which not even a lucky speculation, or a good run of trade, could not restore. When the news of his sudden death, whilst on a foreign tour for the restoration of his health, was received, there was genuine sorrow among his old business associates, and poignant grief with many who had learned to look on him not merely as a successful merchant, but as a man of tender heart and open hand when suffering and distress appealed to him for sympathy and aid. Mr. Walton was born in London, and to the last he looked with affection to the city of his birth. His education was gained at the City of London School. After leaving school he was brought up to mercantile pursuits, and in 1830, concluding that there was a better opening in that line in America, he came to this country, bringing with him a considerable amount of money. For a few years he remained in New York, loaning his capital, for which he always found ready customers, but unfortunately they were not all as ready to pay as to borrow. He lost large sums, and was driven to the conclusion that for a man of his openness of character and confiding honesty, New York was an unprofitable location. The representations of a friend, combined with dissatisfaction with his experience in the commercial metropolis, determined him to seek his fortune in the West. Evansburg, Ohio, had been represented to him as a desirable place in which to live, a thriving business point, and adjacent to good hunting ground. This combination of attractions determined him, and he set out for Evansburg with what remained of his capital. But the attractions of Evansburg soon wearied him. Neither his social, commercial, nor sportsmanlike hopes were fulfilled by the facts, and Mr. Walton speedily turned his back on the place of so much promise and so little realization. Cleveland was the rising place of the West, and to Cleveland he came, and established himself, as was the custom with new comers of a commercial turn, in the produce and commission trade. Following the old maxim, he stuck to his business and his business stuck to him. The old frame warehouse in front of which he hung out his sign in 1838, was occupied by him for twenty-five years, until January, 1863, when he retired from active business and was succeeded in the same building by his nephew, Thomas Walton, who still retains the business and the old location. Mr. Walton's nice sense of honor commended him to a large circle of customers in the interior and in Michigan, whilst nearly all the Canadian business with Cleveland passed through his hands. His Canadian customers relied implicitly on his word, and the fact that he always retained his old friends, and received constant accessions of new, sufficiently proved that their confidence was not misplaced. In the Spring of 1863, soon after his retirement from business, he went to England with the intention of staying a year or two and then returning to enjoy the remainder of his life in ease in this country. Whilst in England he paid a visit to some friends in Southampton, and whilst taking a bath in a movable bathing-house on the beach, probably was seized with cramp and suffocated by water getting into his lungs. The news of his death caused a painful shock in business, social, and religious circles, where he had been so well known and so highly esteemed. For a long term of years Mr. Walton was the presiding officer of the St. George's Society of Cleveland, and that benevolent institution owed its usefulness in great measure to his indefatigable zeal in the cause, and to his unstinted liberality. To the distressed of any nation he never turned a deaf ear, but to the needy and suffering of his native country he was ever liberal, and accompanied his unostentatious charities with kind words and manifestations of sincere interest that were frequently as beneficial to the recipient as the money itself. He was also a valued member of the Masonic Order. In religious belief he was an Episcopalian, and was long one of the leading members of Trinity Church. His devotion was unaffectedly sincere, and though he made no vaunt of his religious principles or hopes, there could be no question of his deep, earnest convictions. Kind, courteous, ever thinking of the good of others, and wholly unselfish, Mr. Walton was a good specimen of the true Christian gentleman. Although of English birth, and clinging affectionately to all that reminded him of his native land, he was a thorough supporter of American institutions, and an admirer of the American character. Deeply and warmly as he loved the land of his birth, his affection was even stronger for the land of his adoption, and it was his purpose to have returned from his visit to his boyhood's home and settle down in peaceful content in the chosen home of his manhood, until death should lay him in an American grave. When the war broke out he was an earnest and unshrinking supporter of the Government, and his means were freely used for its support, and for the comfort of the soldiers who were fighting its battles. Though alien born, and associated intimately with people of like birth, there was no native American that could surpass him in love for the Union, and few that exceeded him, in proportion to his means, in contributions to the defence of the Union. In the language of his favorite Shakespeare, it might be said of him
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