1500 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE   although the greater part of it is rented. Mr. Prentiss married, in 1853, Catherine L. Clarke, who was born in Gloucester, England. Her father, John Clarke, was born in the same place, and there spent his early life. In 1835 he came with his family to America, landing at Philadelphia, from there coming by way of the Hudson river, Erie canal and Lake Erie to Cleveland, a small place with but one street and then known as Ohio City. Remaining there but four weeks, he then started westward in search of a favorable location, and having considerable means journeyed on until he found something that pleased him, finally purchasing sixty acres of land in Groton township, Erie county, on a road leading southwest from Sandusky. There was a large house, built for a hotel, on the place, a good orchard, and much of the land was under cultivation. He was a man of marked ability and enterprise, progressive and energetic, and in addition to establishing a blacksmith's shop, which he hired a man to run, he built a tannery and a shoe factory, also manufacturing furniture, and, having bought an ashery in Bloomingville, engaged in the manufacture of black salts and potash. To all this multiplicity of enterprises Mr. Clarke gave his personal attention. After living there a number of years he spent two years in Sandusky, and then built a residence in Bellevue, where he spent his remaining days, having the superintendence of his farms until his death, at the „age of about eighty-three years, in 1877. The maiden flame of the wife of Mr. Clarke was Elizabeth Lloyd. She was born in Himbleton, ,England, near Worcester, and died, at the age of sixty years, in Ohio. To Mr. and Mrs. Clarke these children were born, namely : Mary, Catherine L., Lucy, John. Christopher, Philip, Stephen, Theodore, Emily and two that died in childhood, Frederick, a little fellow of two or three years, dying in Liverpool, while the family were en route to this country, and Edwin, who was accidentally killed when nine years old. The Clarke family were all Episcopalians. Mr. and Mrs. Prentiss are the parents of three children, namely : Theodore, Katherine and Frederick. Frederick married Alice Phinney; and they have two children, Benjamin and Edwin John. In his political affiliations Mr. Prentiss is a Republican, and has held various offices of trust. LUCIUS W. PECK, who died in Austinburg, January 2, 1899, was one of the ablest and most cultured men who ever resided in Austinburg township, Ashtabula county, and his widow, Mrs. Charlotte (Tuttle) Peck, was well fitted by education and character to be his companion and assistant in every activity of life. Mr. Peck was a grandson of Captain Crawley, who participated in the tea episode in Boston harbor, and his parents were Lucius and Abbie (Crawley) Peck. He received his higher education at Farmington Institute and Oberlin College ; taught school for twenty years, and traveled quite extensively in Mexico and the south. The main business of his life was farming, and his homestead of 100 acres presented every evidence of the care of the practical husbandman, and also carried with it the atmosphere of refinement which surrounded the personalities of both Mr. and Mrs. Peck. Throughout nearly all his mature life the husband also was in public service as a school director, notary public, trustee, justice of the peace or in some other capacity which brought him both deep respect and wide popularity. On the 5th of November, 1850, Mr. Peck wedded Miss Charlotte I. Tuttle, daughter of Ira and Charry (Mills) Tuttle, of a fine old Connecticut family which was established in the Western Reserve as early as 1809. Her grandfathers are the only Revolutionary soldiers who now lie buried in Austinburg township ; and the record of the Tuttle family is altogether so interesting that further details are given hereafter. Mrs. Peck attended Grand River Institute, in Austinburg township, for six and a half years, and in early life was a student of law. She was a teacher. in the district schools for several years before her marriage and for twenty years taught music. For more than half a century she has also been a contributor to the local papers, especially to the Jefferson Sentinel. As has been noted, her family history should fix a place for her in the ranks of the Daughters of the Revolution. She attended the Centennial in Cleveland, being a delegate to the Convention of Pioneer Women of the Western Reserve. Despite the many duties. of a social, literary and charitable nature which devolve upon her she actively superintends the 0ld family farm which was cleared by her father 100 years ago in May, 1909. Ira Tuttle, the father mentioned, was. born in Torringford, Connecticut, April 2, 1788, and in 1809, when twenty-one years of age, came to the Western Reserve on foot, leading HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE- 1501 a cow and driving a pair of oxen. The former proved of especial value when the young man reached his destination, as for several weeks before he returned to Connecticut he liVed almost entirely on berries and milk. HaVing determined on the site of a homestead in the new country, he returned to Connecticut on foot, and in 1810 brought his parents to the Reserve, the journey being made in a huge covered wagon drawn by six yoke of oxen. The homestead was first established near Mill Creek, on the land which he got from the Connecticut Land Company, and he lived there always. It was 600 acres in Austinburg township, Ashtabula county at that time the locality was known as Richfield and six Indian camps were found to be located on the future homestead of the Tuttle family. The parents of the young pioneer who thus established the family in the middle west were Major Clement and Abigail (Dutton) Tuttle, the military title being well earned by brave serVice in the Revolutionary war. While the Tuttles were clearing and improVing their homestead in the wilds of northern Ohio, they were equally faithful to their religious obligations, the parents being such regular attendants of the church in Austinburg township that they missed but one Sunday's service in more than thirty years. On the 23d of April, 1808, Ira Tuttle married Miss Charry Mills, born January 19, 1788, whose father, as stated, was also a soldier in the ReVolutionary war. The children born to Mr. and Mrs. Ira Tuttle were as follows : Harriet N., horn NoVember 30, 1814, who became the wife of Henry Paine, of Painesville ; Bradford, who was born July 7, 1810 ; Eben M., born September 22, 1812 George, born March 24, 1817 ; Harman, who was born March 25, 1821, and died March 1, 1889 ; and Charlotte I., Mrs. Lucius W. Peck, who was born March 3, 1830. ARTHUR CARRAHER, a prominent farmer of Hartsgrove township, Ashtabula county, was born May 5, 1827, in Ireland, a son of Peter and Mary (Branagan) Carraher, both natives of Ireland, where they were married. He died in Thompson, Geauga county, Ohio, and his wife, who was born in 1831, also died in Ohio, November 8, 1874. They came to the United States in 1840, and spent seven weeks and four days on the ocean. Their children were : Thomas, born in 1831, married Catherine Silk, and lives in Nebraska ; Anna, born in 1829; married James Sidney, and lives in Ashtabula .county, Ohio ; and Arthur. Arthur Carraher attended school in his native country and was nineteen years of age when he came to Ohio. He lived in Geauga county five years and then settled on his present farm, then in the forest. He had to chop roads through the woods at first. He owns 175 acres, which he has cleared and put into fine condition, making many improvements. He does general farming, and finds it profitable. In politics he is a Democrat, and he has served as a road supervisor and school director. He is a member of the Roman Catholic church. Mr. Carraher married Imogene Curtis, deceased, and they had children as follows : Frank, born September 15. 1851, married Kate Orcott, and is a farmer of Hartsgrove township ; Emmett, born September 20, 1853, married Rose Finnigan, and lives in Madison county,.. Nebraska John, born January 25, 1858, is unmarried and lives at home ; Thomas, born June 7, 1860, is married and lives in Hartsgrove township ; Christopher, born September 13, 1871, is married and lives in Hartsgrove township ; and Arthur, horn January 10, 1870, is deceased. JACOB F. HENNINGER.—Public spirited and enterprising, Jacob F. Henninger, now serving as mayor of Monroeville, Huron county, is widely known as a man of integrity and sterling worth. He has filled Various positions of trust and responsibility in a manner reflecting the highest credit upon himself, proving that the confidence of the people, which was freely given to him, and the trust reposed in his abilities were not unworthily bestowed. He is a native born citizen, his birth having occurred in Monroeville February 22, 1869. Jacob Henninger, his father, was born in Bavaria, Germany, where he lived until after his marriage. Coming with his wife to the United States in early manhood, he resided for a while in New York city, from there coming to Huron county, Ohio. Locating in Monroeville, he has since been busily engaged in various occupations, having been street commissioner a number of years and having served as constable. He married Katherine Spatz, of Bavaria, Germany, and into their household ten children were born, namely : Louisa. Phillipine, Katherine, Lena, Anna. Elizabeth, Carrie, Henry, George and Jacob F. The oldest son of his parents, Jacob F. Hen- 1502 -HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE ninger attended school until fifteen years 0ld, when he began his, active career as clerk in a dry goods store, continuing thus occupied twenty years. The Hess Hardware Company being then organized, he became secretary of the corporation, and held the position two years, resigning at that time to accept the assistant casbiership of the Farmers and Citizens' Banking Company in Monroeville, an office that he has since filled most satisfactorily. Mr. Henninger married, June 28, 1904, Emma H. Powley, who was born in Monroeville, a daughter of Henry Powley, a native of England. Politically Mr. Henninger is an earnest adherent of the Democratic party, and in 1905 received the highest honor within the gift of his fellow townsmen, being elected mayor of the city, a position which he filled with such acceptance that he was re-elected to the same office in 1907. For six years he was secretary of the board of public affairs and also served as, justice of the peace. Fraternally he belongs to Norwalk Lodge, No. 730, B. P. O. E. HENRY F. BILLMEYER, D. D. S.—Distinguished as a native-born citizen of Bellevue, Huron county, Ohio, Henry Francis Billmeyer, D. D. S., is also noted as one of the foremost dentists of the city, his professional services being largely sought by those in need of dental attention. A closer student, progressive in spirit, he keeps abreast of the times in regard to the valuable discoveries and improvements made in dentistry in recent years, and by reason of his acknowledged skill has built up a fine patronage. He was born April 25. 1861,. a son of Andrew Billmeyer. Andrew Billmeyer was born and brought up in Milton, Northumberland county, Pennsylvania, and as a young man served an apprenticeship of four years at the cabinet maker's trade in Lewisburg. He subsequently settled in Bellevue, Ohio. Acquiring his elementary knowledge in the public schools of Bellevue, Henry Francis Billmeyer subsequently took a course of study at Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan. Entering then the dental department of the University of Michigan he was graduated from that institution with the class of 1881, and with the exception of five years spent in Newark has practiced his profession in Bellevue, where his success is widely known. Politically the Doctor is an influential member 0f the Republican party, and has served as delegate to different county and state conventions. In 1901 he had the honor of being . elected mayor of the city, and filled the office so ably and acceptably that he was re-elected to the same position. in 1903. JOHN A. ABRAMS, the present gas engineer superintendent for the Mohican Oil ad Gas Company, Wadsworth, was born at Raymilton, Venango county, Pennsylvania, June 18, 1862, and is a son of Amos R. and Mary (Pinkerton) Abrams. The mother was a daughter of James Pinkerton, a half-brother of the far-famed detective, Allen Pinkerton, and she was of -Scotch and German descent. Amos R. Abrams was a blacksmith, and his family were among the first to become associated with the history of the city of Pittsburg. John Adam Abrams received his education in the country schools of his home vicinity, and his first entry into commercial life was as an assistant to his father at the forge, while later he was with his uncle, Aaron Pinkerton, the proprietor of a grist mill at Sandy Lake. and assisted his grandfather and others in the mill business in various parts of the state of Pennsylvania. About this time, however, the oil-producing industry attracted the attention of the youth, and going to the oil country in the vicinity of Oil City in the employ of Butler & Company, his skill as a smith gained him a good position as a tool dresser for the drills. He had previously received a full tutelage from his father, who was famed for his proficiency as a metal worker, and this knowledge proved of inestimable value to the son in his new line of work. Remaining thus employed during five or six years, Mr. Abrams then became associated with the National Transit Pump Works at Oil City, Pennsylvania, was then with the Standard Oil Company as a maker of pumps and gas engines and as a general mechanic, and then went upon the road as a traveling salesman for the latter corporation. He traveled in the interest of a gas burner. which he had developed, known as the Kline burner, named in honor of the superintendent of the shops, and he also developed many other valuable devices for that company. He has recently patented a valuable grate bar for burning gas, and has other valuable patents pending, one for the regulation of gas pressure for individual burners. Mr. Abrams traveled through Missouri in. the region tributary to Joplin and Webb City, HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1503 the lead and zinc country, at a time when gas was piped there from the Kansas field, and he there introduced his gas burner inventions. From there he went to Blackwell, Oklahoma, and installed a boiler plant, and rereturning northrrived in Cleveland on the 3rd of July, 1906, and on the 11th of the same month he came to Wadsworth and became the manager of the Mohican Oil and Gas Company. He married Miss Emma Grant, a daughter of William P. Grant, of Pittsburg, a farmer, and their ten children are : Sylvia, Lloyd, Clarence, Elmer, John, Lester, Harry, Glenna, Thelma and Geraldine. WILLIAM HELDMYER.—One of the most influential and successful of the business men and citizens of Elyria is William Heldmyer, born in Medina county, Ohio, April 13, 1850, a son of Jacob and Julia Heldmyer, who were from Wittenberg, Germany. They came to the United States-in 1848, and established their home in Liverpool township, Medina county, Ohio, where they resided until 1851, when they removed to Ottawa county, Ohio. Jacob Heldmyer early in life was a harness maker, but later took up the voVocationf a farmer, which he followed the rest of his acactiVeife. He died at Oak Harbor, Ohio, in 1856. The boyhood clays of William Heldmyer were spent in hard work upon the farm and he received only a district school education. In 1867 he came to Elyria and entered the employ of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad Company, where he was employed at carpenter work. His first mercantile experience was in 181880hen he formed a partnership with Messrs. Wright and Semple, and engaged in the hardware business in Elyria as a member of the firm of Heldmyer, Wright and Semple, and in 1883 he purchased the interest of his partners, and in 1890 took as a partner John Krantz, the style of the company then becoming William Heldmyer and Company. In 1897 the business was incorporated as The Heldmyer Hardware Company, and Mr. Heldmyer has since been the secretary and treasurer of the corporation. He is also a third owner and the vice president of the Elyria Hardware Company and a part owner and director in both the Lorain Hardware Company ,and the Krantz Hardware Company, the two latter of Lorain. He is the president of the Elyria Savings and Banking Company, of which he was also one of the organizers ; also assisted in organizing and is the president of the Lorain County Building and Loan Association ; the president of the Andwur Hotel Company and one of the owners of the hotel property, has been a director of the Elyria Chamber of Commerce since soon after its organization, and a number of years ago served as a member of the city council. At one time Mr. Heldmyer was largely interested in lake 'vessels. s He erected the Heldmyer Block, where his store is located, and organized the Elyria Building Company in 1897 and built the Elyria Block, known by that name, finally purchasing all of its stock. This splendid block was destroyed by fire in 1909, but was soon after rebuilt, being completed in 19190. In 1874 Mr. Heldmyer married Mary Beese, born in Elyria, and she died July 19, 1908, at the age of fifty-two years. The following are their children : Florence J., Leona M., Alice C. and Harry M. A. Leona married James Garnett 'Tyler, of Cleveland, and Alice wedded Willard M. Taylor, of Elyria, and they have one child, Mary Helen. Mr. Heldmyer has been a leading factor in the progress of Elyria, and fills a prominent place in its history of men of business, honest endeavor and enterprise. CHARLES HOMER ROGERS.—It is seldom that one attains prominence in more than one line, for it is the tendency to concentrate one's energies upon a gigiVenursuit, but. in Charles Homer Rogers is found one who has attained an eminent position in both business and musical circles,. a recognized leader in each. His father was a jeweler for many years in Medina county, and with him he learned the trade of a watchmaker and also . pursued special courses of study at the American Optical College in Detroit, Michigan, where he graduated with its class of 1907 and with the degree of Oph. D. He now practices this profession in connection with his jewelry business, which he established in Wadsworth two years ago. And although his name has become inseparably associated with the business life. of this city, it is equally as well known in musical circles. Mr. Rogers studied for three years .under the tutelage of Professor James D. Johnston, and has become proficient in the execution of the violin and all brass instruments, while further than, this he has been prominently associated with all the brass bands of this section of the country. He organized the Euterpean Quartette of Seville, and gives special attention. to orchestral work. He has 1504 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE become widely known in the musical circles of this community, and is one of the rising young men of Medina county. Mr, Rogers was born in this county on the 21st of February, 1887, a son of Clinton Henry and Eva (Dennis) Rogers, the father from Medina county and the mother from Wayne county, both being descendants of New England ancestry. They gave to their son a good education in the schools of Seville, where . he was a student in the high school, and allying his interests with those of the city of Wadsworth he is becoming conspicuously identified with its material prosperity. He married Miss Roxie Pollock, of Wadsworth. TRUMAN HUNTLEY, an enterprising and successful farmer of Hartsgrove township, was born in the township of Donwich, Canada, April 2, 1848, a son of Truman Frederick and Mary (Roach) Huntley. The father is deceased, and the mother, born in New York December 8, 1812, died November 2, 1904. Mr. Huntley came to Ashtabula county in 1879 and settled on a farm, after having spent several years in Michigan. He is an experienced and industrious farmer, and is very successful ; he owns ninety-eight acres of land and breeds a few fine horses. In political views he is a Republican, and has served several times on the election board. He and his Wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal church, and he has served tens years as trustee of the church. He takes an active interest in public affairs, and lends his support to any worthy cause. In 1879 Mr. Huntley married Elizabeth Hunt. Her grandfather, William Hunt, a native of Connecticut, came from Pennsylvania to Mahoning county, Ohio, and later settled in Hartsgrove township, Ashtabula county, in1836, settling in the forest and wilderness. Her parents were William B. and Hannah (Duncan) Hunt, the former, born in Pennsylvania in .1804, died December 20, 1890, and the latter, born in 1807, died December 30, 1885. Mr. Huntley and his wife have no offspring. WILLIAM BOLICH has enrolled his name on the pages of the industrial history of Medina county as a barber and his home is in the city of Wadsworth. He was born at Doylestown in Wayne county, this state, September 6, 1874, and is a son by adoption of. Daniel Bolich. Receiving a good educational training in the graded and high schools of Wadsworth, he learned the trade of a barber and began his business life along that line. He is identified with both the Masonic order and the Knights of Pythias fraternity, and is a Spanish-American war veteran, having served with Company G, Eighth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and saw active service in the Cuban campaign under Colonel Hard. He was a sergeant of said company. Mr. Bolich was united in marriage with Miss Mae Trew, born in Wadsworth, and their four children are Daniel Anderson, George Anson, Mary Evelyn and Betrice Isabell. Mr. and Mrs. Bolich are members of the Church of Christ. WILLIAM AQUILLA KREIDER occupies a place in the business life of Wadsworth as a merchant. After the completion. of his education in the country schools of his home vicinity he learned the trade of a firmer and plumber and was employed by the firm of Kreider Brothers. The proprietors of that association were his elder brothers, and after ten years with them he started in business for himself in 'Wadsworth, this being twenty-two years ago, and his name is thus enrolled among the city's oldest business men, while his course has ever been such as to retain to him unqualified confidence and esteem as an able man and a public-spirited citizen. Born in Guilford township of Medina county, January 17, 1852,. he is a son of Daniel and Martha (Bennett) Kreider, and is descended on the paternal side from Pennsylva- nia German stock, which was founded in Ohio many years ago by the Rev. Daniel Kreider, a minister of the gospel. The mother was of Canadian stock and a descendant of a German and French family named Covert. Mr. Kreider married Miss Crutilda Rodenberger, also born in Medina county, where her father, Solomon Rodenberger, is a farmer. The three children of this union are: Herman Elbert, Zella Irene and Paul Vernon. Mr. Kreider is a member of the Wadsworth council, and he is also a member of the fraternal orders of Odd Fellows and the Royal Arcanum and of the Lutheran church. CHARLES S. SIMONDS.—One of the most distinguished jurists that practiced at the bar of Ashtabula county in its earlier history was Charles Stetson Simonds, a native son of Vermont, born at Westminster on the 1st of May, HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1505 1815, to the marriage union of Moses and Priscilla (Cook) Simonds. In 1821 the parents with their family came to Ashtabula county, Ohio, locating in the town of Saybrook, and there the father died a few years afterward, in 1828, leaving his widow with six children. When Charles had attained the age of seventeeen he began teaching in the village schools of Geneva, but after a time resigned his professional work and went to St. Louis, Missouri, expecting to go on to Mexico, but instead he returned to Illinois and taught school, split rails, etc., and also read Blackstone and Kent, with the intention of adopting the law as his profession. Returning to Ashtabula county in 1829, he continued his reading in the office of Wade and Ranney at Jefferson, and was admitted to the bar of Ashtabula county in 1842 and .began practice at Jefferson. Mr. Simonds was elected a justice of the peace and prosecuting attorney. He was first associated in practice with R. R. Ranney and Darius Cadwell, and from 1872 until 1879 with Edmund C. Wade. Mr. Simonds lived a life of integrity and honor, commanding the respect of all who knew him, and as a practitioner at the bar he enjoyed the highest honors. He died on the 22d of June, 1891. In 1844 Mr. Simonds married Louisa, a daughter of Jonathan, Warner, of Jefferson, and their children were : Charles H., who is mentioned below ; Albert G., of Pasadena, California ; Maria L., wife of the Hon. E. C. Wade ; Adaline W.; and Amelia P., the wife of B. F. Beardsley, of St. Paul, Minnesota. Charles H. Simonds was born March 19, 1844, at Jefferson, in Ashtabula county, and in his early life learning the tinner's trade, he in 187o engaged in the business for himself, and thus continued far four years. From that time until 1878 he served as a clerk in the office of the common pleas court and of the probate judge, and was then elected clerk of the common pleas court and re-elected in 1881, and again in 1884, making nine years of continuous service in that office. His politics are Republican, as were also those of his father.. Mr. Simonds is now engaged in the furniture business in Conneaut, and is also the vice president of the Citizens Banking and Trust Company. He is a Master, Royal Arch and a Knight Templar Mason, and is also a member of the Lake Erie Consistory, thirty-second degree. JAMES FRANK MILLER, M. D.—Among the physicians of prominence in Huron county is James F. Miller, M. D., who has been located in Bellevue for more than a quarter of a century, during which time he has gained a large and lucrative. practice, his natural talents and skill winning him an honored position in medical circles. Coming from Scotch ancestry, he was born, June 4, 1842, in Webster, Worcester county, Massachusetts, a son of James Miller. The Doctor's paternal grandfather, John Miller, was born in Ireland, of thrifty Scotch descent. Emigrating to this country when a young man, and being as far as known the only member of his family to cross the ocean, he settled in Connecticut. He had previously followed the sea for a time, but after his settlement in New England he bought a farm in Thompson,. Connecticut, and thereafter followed agricultural pursuits until his death, at the age of four score. and three years. His wife, whose maiden name was "Nancy Stone, spent her entire life of ninety-six years in Thompson, Connecticut, and there reared her family, which consisted of three daughters and five sons, as follows : Phebe, Abigail, Sybil, David, Samuel, Welcome, Truman and James. Beginning as a boy to work in a mill, James Miller, born in 1803, mastered the trade of a weaver, becoming so thoroughly familiar with its every detail that he was made foreman of that department, and continued in that position until his death, at the early age of thirty-nine years. He married Eurelda Upham, who was born in Berlin, Connecticut, August 6, 1805, their union being solemnized November 6, 1831. She remained a widow for nine years after his death, and then married for her second husband Thomas Wheelock, whom she also survived. She resided in Thompson, Connecticut, until past eighty years of age, when she came to Bellevue, Ohio, where, at the home of the Doctor, her youngest child, she spent the remainder of her life, passing away at the age of eighty-eight years. She reared three children, namely : Linus Childs, Phineas Topham and James Frank. Left fatherless in infancy, James Frank Miller was early thrown upon his own .resource, at the age of twelve years beginning to earn his own. living. Entering the home of a shoemaker in his native town, he began learning the trade of making shoes by hand, and during the eighteen months that he remained with 1506 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE this neighbor received for his work $25 in money, and was allowed two winter terms of schooling of three months each. The following year he was employed by another shoemaker, and in addition to attending school three months of the time was given $35 in cash. Going then to live with a farmer near Webster, he was given $40 for nine months' labor, and the remaining three months did chores about the place for his board and attended school. Then, in company with his brother Phineas, he opened a shop, and made shoes for Benjamin Corbin, of Webster, for a year. Mr. MIiller then entered the employ of Robert Prince. a farmer, with whom he remained until 1862, each year receiving $60 and his board for nine months' work, working for his board and attending school during the winter seasons. On August 10, 1862, he enlisted in Company D, Eighteenth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, went south with his regiment and took part in all of its campaigns and battles. On August 8, 1864, he was commissioned second lieutenant of Company E, Fourteenth United States Infantry, was later promoted to first lieutenant, and from almost the first had charge of the company, while for six months' he was a commandant at Chattanooga. He remained with his company until honorably discharged from the service on March 27, 1866. Locating then in Indianapolis, Indiana, Mr. Miller was graduated from Bryant & Stratton's Business College in the fall of 1866, and immediately accepted a position as bookkeeper with the Singer Sewing Machine Company, with which he remained a year. The ensuing two years he was city manager for the Howe Sewing Machine Company, after which he was for two year with Noah Merrill & Company. He was afterwards with George F. Meyer two years, and then served for a year as clerk of the Third Ohio collection district.. Entering then the employ of C. M. Rischig, he remained with him until 1876, when he began the study of medicine with Dr. O. S. Runnels & Brothers, under their instruction laying a substantial foundation for his future medical, knowledge. In 1880 he was graduated from the Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College, and the following year located in Bellevue, Huron county.. Here Dr. Miller has met with undisputed success, winning the confidence of the people and building up a very satisfactory practice in this vicinity. On January 30, 1887, Dr. Miller married Hattie J. Woodward, who was born in Thompson, Connecticut, a daughter of A. O. and Mary J. (Davis) Woodward, natives of that state, born of English ancestry. The Doctor and his wife are the parents of two children, namely ; Ralph Frederick, attending Adelbert College, and Frank Owen, clerk in a commercial house at Claremont, Surry county, Virginia. Fraternally the Doctor is a member of Alta Lodge, No. 206, K. of P., ad was a charter member of Olive Branch Lodge, No. 2, of Indianapolis, Ind., making him in point of membership one of the oldest Pythians in the state. With the exception of four, years he was captain of the Bellevue Company from its organization until 1909, serving as brigade surgeon, with the rank of colonel, four years. He is a member of C. C. Gamber Post, No. 34, G. A. R., and takes great interest in its work. Religiously Dr. and Mrs. Miller are consistent members of the Episcopal church. CAPTAIN J. H. WILLIAMS is a native of Norwalk, and was born September 1, 1869. He is a son of Theodore and Mary Isabel (Goodnow) Williams. Theodore Williams was also a native of Norwalk, born January 3, 1820 ; he was reared in his native town, and lived on one lot for a period of eighty-eight years. He died in December, 1907. He was the first child baptized in Norwalk, and lived there continuously longer than any other man in the town. He was married in Henryville, province of Quebec, Canada, to Mary Isabel Goodnow, who was born in 1837, in Plattsburg, New York, and died at the age of forty-one years. Theodore Williams was engaged in many kinds of business. At the age of fourteen he began working for the firm of Good-now & Edwards, who conducted a store ; later he bought out Mr. Edwards and the firm became Goodnow & Williams. The firm was later succeeded by Mr. Williams, and he continued in business forty-five years. In 1885 he sold his' interests and became president of the First National Bank. spending some eight years in that position. In 1879 he purchased the Globe Roller Mills, which he continued to operate until his death. He was in business for a period of seventy-five years, and was an active and ambitious man, never taking a vacation in that time. Theodore Williams was never an office-seeker, but in 1871 was appointed a member of the state board of equalization and for seventeen years was president of the Norwalk HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1507 board of education. In politics he was an ardent Republican, taking a keen interest in the affairs of the party. He sat with President Hayes at the Norwalk Academy, and always continued his intimate friend. For seventy continuous years Mr. Williams was a vestryman of St. Paul's Episcopal church ; he saw the erection of the old church building which is to give place to the one now being built. He and his wife had five sons and one daughter, namely : Louise (died at the age of eight years), Edward T., James H., Charles G., Theodore and Walter R. All reside in Norwalk with the exception of Charles, who died at Phoenix, Arizona, while in the government reclamation service. He was a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Theodore Williams was a son of James Williams and his wife, Sarah Hunt, who came to Norwalk in 1815, among the first families. He was a lawyer and was born in Orange, New Jersey ; his wife was born in Newburgh-on-the-Hudson and came to Norwalk in the summer of 1815. He became the first mayor of the town of Norwalk, and a prominent citizen ; he was one of the delegates who named Henry Clay as candidate for the presidency, making the journey to and from Baltimore on horseback. He was a staunch Whig, but became a Republican on the organization of that party, in 1856. Captain J. H. Williams was the secod son of his parents. He received his education at Riverview Academy and Harvard College, and afterwards purchased the Norwalk Chronicle, of which he was for twelve years editor and proprietor. He is an ardent Republican, and actiVe in the interests of the party. He is a member of the National Guard of the state and is a commissioned officer of the Fifth Regiment, with rank of captain. He was selected as one of the aides of Governor Herrick's staff, also of the staff of Governor Pattison and later of Governor Harris, and was very closely associated with Governor Nash. He is prominent in political circles, and is well known all over the state. Captain Williams is a member of the Masonic and other orders. He also belongs to Harvard Varsity Club, of Boston, and succeeded his father as Vestryman of St. Paul's Episcopal church. He married, in 1896, Carrie, daughter of Judge D. H. Fox, founder and president of the Huron County Bank, now deceased. Captain and Mrs. Williams have three children, as follows : Frederick Fox, Theodore and Mary G. ADDISON J. BLANCHARD, of Norwalk, now retired from business life, was born in Catskill, Greene county, New York, May 8, 1836 ; he is a son of Justus H. and Jane P. (Myer) Blanchard. Justus Blanchard was born May 18, 1808, also in Catskill, and was a physician and surgeon ; he came to the Western Reserve in 1851 and located at Penfield, Lorain county, where he purchased a large farm. .He died in his eighty-eighth year. His father was born in France. Justus Blanchard's wife was of an old New York Dutch family ; she died in the Western Reserve. Of their six children, two sons and four daughters, all grew to maturity and all surVive. save one. Addison J. Blanchard was the oldest of the family, and was about fourteen years old at the time of their removal to Ohio. He received his education in the public schools, and lived at home until 1861, at which time he enlisted in Company B, First Ohio Light Artillery, as a priVate. He served until June, 1862, when on account of disability he received an honorable discharge. He returned home, where he remained until 1864 and then began working for the CleVeland & Toledo Railroad Company, now the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern ; he began as fireman and later became engineer, working for the company about fourteen years, and then left the service. He served about a year as deputy sheriff of Lorain county, and spent. about two years in the railway mail service. He was then appointed superintendent of the Lorain County Infirmary, and held the position six years ; he then became connected with the State Hospital at Toledo, where he spent six years, after which he spent five years at the Cleveland Asylum for the Insane. Since 1896 Mr. Blanchard has been retired, and he resides at Norwalk. He was one of the charter members of the Grand Army of the Republic, Richard Allen Post, at Elyria, and is now a member of the Wooster Post at Norwalk. In political, views he is a staunch Republican, and takes an active interest in the progress of his chosen party. He has many friends and acquaintances, and is well known throughout the Western Reserve. Mr. Blanchard married (first) in 1867, Carrie Louise Hill, and they became the parents of one son, Edward, a resident of Clevelad. He married (second) in November, 1896, Ellen A. Fuller, a native of the Western Reserve, born in Trumbull county ; they have no children. 1508 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE CHARLES A. BINGHAM, of Orwell, was born on a farm adjoining his present home, October 6, 1856, and is a son of Major Amandar and Jeannette (Kibbie) Bingham. His mother was born in New York and her father, a wagon maker by trade, brought her to Orwell when a child; he was a native of Vermont. Amandar Bingham worked on the Erie canal when it was being constructed, and came on to Ohio, where he became a farmer; landowner and lightning rod salesman, after the war. As a salesman he covered a large territory and worked at this for many years, though the last part of his life was spent on a farm. He helped raise a company and went out as captain in the Sixth Ohio Cavalry ; he was afterwards promoted and reached the rank of major. He spent about one year in charge of the recruiting station at Cleveland. He died June 13, 1888, aged seventy-three years, and his widow died October 15, 1901. They had lived on the farm .since the war, and he built the house now standing. At one time he owned about 400 acres of land. Major Bingham did no care for political life, but served as justice of the peace before he began traveling. By his first wife he had ten children. ,By his second marriage he had two sons, Charles A. and Porter L. The latter was killed by falling from a building while at work at his trade of painter, in Windsor township. He died at the age of forty-one years, haVing spent most of his life at Orwell. Charles A. Bingham was educated in the local schools and for several winters. taught school. He spent many yearn working with his father as salesman, and later worked the farm. He has handled fertilizer for four years, and at present is in the employ of Armour & Company. His regular territory is northeastern Ohio, and he sells to dealers. He also superintends the work on his farm, on which dairying is the leading feature. He is not an enthusiastic politician, but has served as trustee and in other offices, being at one time caucus enumerator. He is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and its Encampment, and has for years been very active in its interests. He served two terms as district deputy, and has taken a prominent part in team work. He has the credit and honor of working up the first degree work now adopted by the grand lodge. Martin Merrifield; Jr., became identified with this work, and formulated a new degree and organized his team to work the first degree accordingly ; this work was continued long after his death, and Mr. Bingham had been captain of the team. His wife is very active in the Rebekah Lodge, ad she is also a member of the Methodist church. On June 24, 1890, Mr. Bingham married Cora, daughter of Robert and Sarah (Gould) Rex, of Orwell, where she was born. Robert Rex was a tailor, came to Orwell when a young man, and was a native of England ; he died April 8, 1866, before the birth of Cora, and her mother died April 11, 1888. Mr. and Mrs. Bingham have two children, Bernard Amander, aged fourteen, and Charles Thomas, aged twelve. JACOB J. DAUCH.—A man of more than average business ability and judgment, Jacob J. Dauch is actively identified with the manufacturing and mercantile interests of Erie county, and holds a position of prominence among the active and valued citizens of Sandusky. A son of Philip Dauch, he was born in this city July 2, 1857, coming on both sides of the house of thrifty' German ancestry. Born February 25, 1820, in Germany, Philip Dauch remained in the fatherland until 1847, when he emigrated to the United States. Locating first in Cincinnati, he remained there three years, being in the city during that awful scourge of cholera. which claimed thousands of victims. He afterwards spent a year in Springfield, Ohio, from there coming, in 1851, to Sandusky, where. he built and operated a brewery on the present site of the Stang plant. of the Kuebler-Stang Brewery. After leaving, the brewery, he bought a farm in Huron township,. and there spent the remainder of his life, dying in May, 1906. n November 19, 1852, he married Maria E. Klotz, who was born in Germany, February 20, 1833, and was brought by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Klotz, to Springfield. Ohio, in 1834. She is still living, and has eight children, namely : Jacob J., the special subject of this sketch ; Emma A., wife of Emmett Kelley ; Regina P. married William Holtzheiser ; Louisa M., wife of William Goodsite ; Gustavus A. P.; Theodore E.; Carl F. W. ; and Martha M., wife of Henry LaFavre. After leaving the district school, Jacob J. Dauch took a full course of study at the Buckeye Business College in Sandusky. After his graduation he bought the college, and managed it from 1881 until 1884. Going then into HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1509 the country, Mr. Dauch operated a threshing machine for three years, being equally success ful in his mechanical labors. Coming to Sandusky in 1887, he began work in a paper mill, and the next year, in company with J. J. Hinde and others, purchased an interest in the plant. In 1892 these gentlemen sold the mill to the Columbia Straw Paper Company, retaining, however, considerable stock in the same. This corporation failing in 1895. Mr. Dauch and Mr. Hinde leased the plant from the receivers, and operated it under the lease .for a number of years. In the same year, under the name of Hinde & Dauch, the firm commenced the manufacture of corrugated paper for use in packing bottles, lamp chimneys, and other glassware, and in 1900 became incorporated under the name of "The Hinde and Dauch Paper Company," with a capital of $300,000. This company is carrying on a substantial and highly remunerative business, its goods being in demand throughout the Union. Mr. Dauch is also officially connected with various other companies besides this one, of which he is president, being also president of the Acme Suction Roll Company ; a director in the Threading Machine Company ; and vice president and treasurer of the Sandusky Foundry and Machine Company. Mr. Dauch married, in February, 1880, Mary M. Wendt, who was born in Germany, June 3, 1860, a daughter of Henry and, Martha Wendt. Mr. Wendt brought his family to Ohio in 1865, locating in Vermilion, where he followed the trade of a carpenter, residing there until his death. His widow is still living, and has three children, namely : Mary M., now Mrs. Dauch ; Valtine H.; and Gertrude E., wife of C. E. Bird. Of the union of Mr. and Mrs. Dauch five children have been born, namely : Elnbra L., married Sydney Frohman; Leola E. (Mrs. Herman C. Kehnke) ; Henry P. who wlethallled by a railroad tram in 1906; Aletha M., and Wade W. In naVotesl affairs Mr. Dauch uniformly votes the Republican ticket, but in local matters he is Independent, voting according to the dictates of his conscience, regardless of party prejudice. CAPTAIN WILLIAM B. MILLER, a son of General Travis Ayres and Mary (Champion) Miller, was born July 15, 1833. at Rome, Ohio. His grandfather, Richard Miller, was born October 14, 1774, in Lyme, Connecticut. He sailed before the mast, making voyages to the West Indies and South America, in the boats of that day, some of them of not more than sixty tons. After his marriage he was a farmer in his native place until 1824, when he joined his son in Ohio and settled in Rome. He owned 320 acres in the home farn n which his son Travis tilled 160. On another farm he owned and operated a sawmill, and his son-in-law, James Edwards, a furniture factory. He was a Whig and served as a justice of the peace. Richard Miller married, January 15, 1798, Phoebe Beckwith, born in 1780. Their children were : Travis A.; Marsena, born January 28, 1804, was drowned at the age of eighteen in Long Island Sound; Cordelia, born March 2, 1812Minnesota James Edwards, and. died in Minnegota ; Eliza, Mrs. Benton, born- July 8, 2824, died in North C30,lina in 1904. Richard died March 3o, 1866, and his wife, Phebe, in 1878, both in Austinburg; he . being ninety-two and she ninety-eight years old. General Travis A. Miller, the oldest child of Richard and Phoebe, was born December 31, 1799, in Lyme, Connecticut. He began teaching school at the age of eighteen. He was an expert mathematician and an authority on the science of navigation, upon which subject he wrote several treatises. In 1822 he came to Ohio to visit an uncle and was so much pleased with the business outlook that he determined to make. his home in the Western Reserve. Two years later, after a six weeks' trip, by teams and canal boat, he, with his father, mother and two sisters, settled in Rome, where he opened the first general store. He bought "black salts" (sulphate of soda, made by leeching ashes), which he sold in Pittsburg to be used in glass making. His home was one of the old stage route taverns. He was brigadier-general of state militia, Whig and later a Republican, served as justice of the peace, postmaster, and was always actively interested in public affairs. In 1849 he sold his interests in Rome, donating land for a church and graveyard, and Moved to Austinburg, where he went into business in the store now owned, by Frank Barnes. He died in Austinburg in November, 1890. General Travis Miller married (first) January 9, 1831, Mary Champion, of Rome, who died of typhoid fever five years later. Their children are : William Bainbridge, mentioned below : and Mary, born July 2, 1835, married T. G. Stanclart. who is at the head of a large hardware establishment in Detroit, Michigan. 1510 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE General Miller married (second) in January, 1838, Joanna Chester, of Rome, who died June 5, 1889. Their children were: Edgar Chester, born November 19, 1839, died in 1890. He married Ruth A. Sawyer, of Canada ; their children are : Ella, who married W. A. Elliott, professor in Allegheny College, MeadVille, Pennsylvania ; and Ruth M. Lewis M., born August 12, 1841, lives in New York city. He married Marie A. Ashley and has two children, Frank A. and, Maud Elizabeth. General Miller's youngest child was Frances J born January 22, 1851, and died in 1903. He married W. F. Smith, of Painesville, Ohio. They also have two children, Percy K., who married Florence Stockwell, of Painesville, and Gertrude Mae, who married Albert M. Means. Captain William Bainbridge Miller attended school in Jefferson and Grand River Institute in Austinburg. At the age of seventeen years he went to Cincinnati to go into business. When eighteen he became freight clerk on a Mississippi river steamboat, was later made purser, and subsequently became captain. Later still he passed the necessary examination and received pilot's papers. He commanded the "Jennie' Hubbs," "Silver Moon," "Lorina," "Robert' Burns," "Harry Dean," "Minneola," "Ben.Franklin," "Henry S. Turner," "Thompson. Dean," and "Guiding Star." These boats ran on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. In many of them he had large interests, while some where built by him. He was on the river thirty years, having become captain at the early age of nineteen. He was sailing at the time of the Civil war, carrying troops and supplies for the government, and more than once narrowly escaped capture at the hands of guerrillas. Captain Miller is a Republican and is serving as a justice of the peace in Austinburg. He is a great lover of hunting and frequently makes trips in search of his favorite sport. He is well known and highly respected in the community, and though retired from active life is in rugged health. The house where he now lives was formerly a station on the "Underground Railroad." Captain Miller married, September 27, 1855, at Covington, Kentucky, Emily Howell, of that city, who died in Austinburg August 19, 1902. They have. two children; Mary and Edgar D. Mary Miller graduated in medicine at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is now a practicing physician in Ashtabula, Ohio. She married William P. Battels, who died in 1901. Edgar lives in Cleveland, where he is manager of the. Harris Oil Company. He is unmarried. JOHN HARTMAN, a native born son of Medina county, born in Sharon township, February 10, 1834. John Hartman has long been numbered among the best known and most successful agriculturists of Wadsworth town- ship. He is also a descendant of one of the community's earliest pioneer families, for his father, Peter Hartman, came to the commonwealth over eighty years ago from Pennsylvania, a sturdy representative of a German family, his father having been born in that country. His wife was of the same nationality and never spoke the English language. She bore the maiden name of Mary Homel. The school days of John 'Hartman, their son, covered the period of the' pioneer log structures as well as the more modernly constructed buildings, and he became proficient as an agriculturist on his father's homestead. He is both a grain and stock farmer, and the production of coal has also during the past years been a source of great profit to him, three shafts having been sunk on his farm. His homestead contains 115 acres. Mr. Hartman has served his township as a school director and as a road supervisor, and his name is prominently recorded on the pages of much of the local history of his community. He married Margret D. Warner, and the issue of their union is a son, Frank John Lynn, who is now twenty-eight years of age, but since the early age of four he has been afflicted with body ailments, which has made him an invalid. Mrs. Hartman is the daughter of Rev. John J. Warner, a minister of the gospel in the Disciple church. He was born in the state of New York, at neida in Clay county, and coming to the Western Reserve in Ohio he attended Oberlin College. He married Ann Maria Clark, of an Ohio family, and their daughter, Mrs. Hartman, received her educational training in the district schools and those of Wadsworth. She is a member of the Disciple church. COLONEL J. H. SPRAGUE.—Colonel J. H. Sprague, a prominent manufacturer of Norwalk, was born in New York city February 15, 1846, and is a son of Judge James and Catherine G. (Groesbeck) Sprague, the former a native of Rhode Island and the latter HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1511 of Schenectady, New York, the former of English and the latter of Dutch descent. His great-great-grandfather, Major Josiah Sprague, led the mob that threw overboard the British tea in the harbor at the celebrated "Boston Tea Party," and served in the Continental army. Major Sprague's son, John Sprague, was a captain in the war of 1812, and his son, Judge James Sprague, was a captain in the Mexican war. Colonel Stephanus Groesbeck, an ancestor of Colonel J. H. Sprague's mother, took a prominent part in the French and Indian war, and his son, Captain John, was a captain in the war of the Revolution. Colonel J. H. Sprague received his education at Auburn, Red Creek and Pulaski Academies and Watertown UniVersity, and was a schoolmate of Marietta Holley, who wrote the works of "Josiah Allen's Wife." At the age of fourteen, Colonel Sprague entered Watertown University, and in the same year, in the spring of 1861, though still only fourteen years old, he enlisted in Company A, Nineteenth New York Infantry, as sergeant. After taking part in the first Battle of Bull Run he was detailed to the secret service department under Colonel Baker, and did duty in the grounds at the White House at Washington, where he became acquainted with Lincoln, also Stanton, Seward and many other men in prominent government positions. In 1864 he rejoined his regiment and took command of Battery F, Third Light Artillery, and took part in the battles around Charlestown, Fort Wagner and Oulstee, Florida. He was mustered out in July, 1865, after haVing served throughout the entire war. For about four years after the war Colonel Sprague had charge of McLeer's Circus. Colonel Sprague has great musical talent, and has written considerable music ; he arranged the first band music of "Dixie," in 1860, for the author of the words, Dan Emmett. He has also published several books, has corresponded for several papers, and has a fine literary style. In 1866 Colonel Sprague was appointed to the regular army, as captain of the Fourth Regulars, receiVing his appointment through Honorable Edwin Cowles, M. C., and after serVing about a year he resigned. In 1875 he received the appointment of attorney for D. M. Osborne & Company, being located at Norwalk and having charge of all collections and law suits. In 1880 he was appointed general manager for Plano Har- Vol. III-16 vesting Company, of Illinois, and in 1887 started his present enterprise, manufacturing umbrellas and novelties. The firm was first Sprague & French, and in 1890 was incorporated as the Sprague Umbrella Company, of which Colonel Sprague is principal owner and president. He is very ambitious and enterprising, and has met with pleasing success in his enterprise ; the company employs about 200 persons, and their business amounts to about a quarter of a million dollars annually. Colonel Sprague is a prominent Mason, is past eminent commander of the Norwalk Commandery, Knights Templars, is past exalted ruler of Norwalk Lodge, No. 730, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. and was one of the founders of the lodge. He is also vice commander of the Department of Ohio Grand Army of the Republic and is a member of the Loyal Legion, Society of Cincinnatus and the military order of foreign wars. He also belongs to the Independent. Order of Odd Fellows, Royal Arcanum, . National Union, Red Men and other societies. He is a lifelong Republican, and takes an active interest in public affairs. Colonel Sprague married, May 30, 1867, Eliza A. Cunningham, daughter of Warren and Ann (Wagner) Cunningham, of Norwalk, Ohio. PAUL EVERT DENTON.—An able, clearheaded, progressive young man, full of vim and push, Paul Evert Denton, of Chardon, holds a noteworthy position in the journalistic and literary circles of Geauga county, and as managing editor of the Geauga County Record exerts a wide influence in business and political affairs. A son of. Franklin E. Denton, he was born, December 24, 1884, in Burton, Geauga county, coming from distinguished English ancestry. The Denton family was first represented on American soil by the Rev. Richard Denton, who emigrated from England to the United States in 1630, coming over with the Puritans. After serving for a number of years in the New England Ministry he returned, in 1659, to his old home in England, and there died in 1662. ne of his descendants, Dr. Evert Denton, great-grandfather of Paul Evert Denton, was born, in 1789, in Greenwich, Connecticut, and was educated at Columbia College, receiving the degree of M. D. at that institution. At the age of twenty-one he began the practice of medicine in Connecticut, from there going to New York state. In 1820 Dr. Denton came 1512 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE with his family to the Western Reserve, locating in Chardon, Geauga county, where he built up an extensive practice, becoming not only the leading physician of this section of the country, but one of its most prominent and influential citizens. He died in 1830, while yet in the prime of life. He was twice married, by these unions becoming the father of eight children. Richard E. Denton, Paul E. Denton's grandfather, a son of the second marriage of his father,. was born in Chardon, September 10, 1826, and here spent his entire life.. A diligent student from his youth up, he became quite noted as a linguist, and was a very popular lecturer before educational gatherings and teachers' institutes. On November 25, 1858, he married Lydia E. Pomeroy, a successful teacher in the public schools of Huntsburg, Geauga county, and, they became the parents of four children, Franklin E., Richard L., Harold P. and George M. Franklin E. Denton was born, in Chardon, November 22,, 1859, and at the early age of seven years began learning the printer's trade in the office of his uncle, J. O. Converse, publisher of the Geauga Republican.. With intervals of attending school he continued typesetting on the Republican until 1884, when he became connected with the Geauga Leader, published at Burton. He was soon made editor and business manager of that paper, with which he was associated until, 1887, when he removed to Cleveland. For a number of years thereafter he worked on various papers of that city, and in addition did special literary work, publishing several volumes of prose and poetry, acquiring a wide reputation in the world of literature. Moving from Cleveland to Ravenna, he was for a number of years editor of the Ravenna Republican, but in 1897, being obliged on account of ill health to give up active work, he removed to Chardon, where he is now living, honored and respected by all. on October 18, 1882, he married Martha A. Goldthorpe, of Chardon, and their only child, Paul Evert, is the special subject of this sketch. Receiving his rudimentary education in the city schools of Cleveland, Paul E. Denton subsequently continued his studies in Ravenna and Chardon, being graduated from the Chardon High School with the class of 1903. Following in the footsteps of his father, he worked at the printer's trade in the office of the Geauga Republican, at the same time keeping the office books and doing the correspondence for outside newspapers, in this manner obtaining practical experience in journalistic work and laying a substantial foundation for his future success. After his graduation from the high school Mr. Denton was tell& for three years in the Chardon Savings Bank, and during that period did special work for the Cleveland and other city newspapers.. In 1906 he left the bank to accept the position of news editor of the Geauga County Record, the Democratic organ of the county, and in 1907 went to Cleveland, where for six months he was connected with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Then, at the earnest solicitation of the management; he returned to Chardon to accept his former position of news editor of the Geauga County Record. In the spring of 1909 Mr. Denton was advanced to the managing editorship of this paper, and is filling the position with characteristic ability and efficiency. He is a wide-awake, enterprising journalist, acquainted with his business from the ground up, and is meeting with marked success in his present position. He also does special work for papers in Cleveland and other cities, having already won a wide reputation as a ready and interesting writer. Swerving from the political faith in which he was reared, Mr. Denton is a staunch Democrat, and an active worker in the affairs of the minority party of Geauga county.. As a relaxation from business cares, he finds diversion in music, and is a valued member of the Chardon Musical Culture Club. He is still unmarried. ALGERNON KINGSLEY, prominent among the business men of Ashtabula county, traces his descent in the United States to Peleg Kingsley, his paternal great-grandfather, who with his two sons located in New York from Rhode Island before the Revolutionary war. William Kingsley, one of the two sons, in about the year of 1854, with his wife drove through from New York with horse and buggy to Ohio, to the home of his son Samuel, and he continued to reside here until his death at the age of eighty years. Samuel Kingsley, a son of William, with his family, consisting of his wife, three sons and two daughters, came from Whitehall, New York, in 1852, and located on a farm in Andover township, Ashtabula county, Ohio, and he lived on that farm during the remainder of his life. But in the meantime he added an-, other farm thereto, owning at the time of his HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1513 death 132 acres. This land had been originally settled by George Dolph, and it had undergone one other change of ownership, before it became the property of Mr. Kingsley. Samuel Kingsley was a farmer all his life. His brother Aaron had settled at Niles, Ohio, about the year of 1835, also coming from Whitehall, in Washington county, New York, and he was afterward the proprietor of the Kingsley Hotel at Niles until his death in 1847. Samuel Kingsley died in his ninety-third year, in April of 1906, surviving his wife for twelve years. He had served on the school board ad as a township trustee and was in sympathy with the underground railroad movement, his farm being on the line of this road, and a station was in the immediate neighborhood. He was also a member of the Black String Society, organized to protect John Brown from the United States marshal, and was a member in good standing of the Baptist church and served as its deacon. In the family of Samuel Kingsley were four sons and two daughters, namely : George F., a florist in Wooster, Ohio ; Algernon, mentioned below ; Charles, who died at the age of fourteen years ; Amanda, who married Lewis Bartholomew ; Julisa, who married H. A. Lewis, of Andover ; and William, who died at about the age of thirty-one ; his widow, nee Belle Burt, with a daughter, the wife of Bert Twitchell, lives in Andover.   Algernon Kingsley was born in Whitehall, New York, May 30, 1839, and was thirteen years old when the family came to Ohio. In 1861 he enlisted for the Civil war in Company C, Twenty-ninth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, the company haVing been raised at West Andover, and it was under the command of Captain Hayes, of Trumbull county. n the 13th of NoVember, 1862, Mr. Kingsley was discharged on account of a gunshot wound which he had received at Cedar Mountain on the 9th of August of that year, his left arm having been shattered, and he was two years in recuperating his health. He had been promoted to corporal of his company. n recovering his health, he bought the West Andover Cheese Factory, which had just been recently built, and this became the largest factory of its kind in Ohio, using milk from 1,400 cows, and a day's output often reached as high as ninety cheese, weighing fifty pounds each. Mr. Kingsley took a cheese to the Northern Ohio state fair at. Cleveland which weighed 1,880 pounds, and this was sold to a Cincinnati firm. This business proved very successful, and in 1869 he was able to buy a small farm adjoining that of his father, and he began to deal in stock and sell milk. His farm now includes 260 acres, including the old Kingsley place, and in later years he has bred Holstein cattle, and he and his sons have produced some of the best cattle which has been exhibited at the county and state fairs, many of them taking the first prizes at different times among the Holstein herds. During the past fourteen years he has bought on commission. He is still engaged in the live stock business, but in February of 1907 he left the farm, and his home is now in Andover. Mr. Kingsley married- in .1869 Sarah O. Green, and they have had three children : Lena, who died at the age of eight years ; Darwin M., a member of the hardware firm of Ward and Kingsley in Andover ; and Celey A., a clerk in Andover, who married Eva Mack, of Andover, and they have one child, Kathryne. Mr. Kingsley has served as an enumerator, as a member of the school board for fourteen years, as an assessor, as a constable for fourteen years, and for thirty-two years worked with Squire S. C. Merrell, a justice of the peace. Mr. Kingsley is a charter member of Hiram Kyle Post, No. 80, G. A. R., and served many years as a post commander and as quartermaster. He is one of the honored pioneer residents of Ashtabula county, and is prominently known as a business man and citizen. JOHN NEWTON LEATHERMAN.—Among the business men of Wadsworth is numbered John N. Leatherman, a lumber merchant and manufacturer, and the present incumbent of the office of city treasurer, in which he is serving his second term. He was born on a farm three miles west of Wadsworth in Medina county November 19, 1869, a son of Jacob W. and Mary (Baker) Leatherman, the father a merchant and a grain dealer. He came to Ohio as a boy, and he is a member of an old established family of Pennsylvania Dutch stock, and his wife is descended from the same sturdy race. After the completion of a public school course in Wadsworth and a business course in the Wadsworth Normal, John N. Leatherman entered the world of business as a lumber merchant, as a member of the Wadsworth Lumber Company, and this firm, was later incorporated and became known as the Wadsworth Lumber ad Manufacturing Company, Mr. Leatherman becoming one of its directors and its secretary and treasurer. 1514 -HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE As above stated he is also the present treasurer of the city of Wadsworth, a valued factor in the public life of his community and a leading business man, progressive, enterprising and persevering. Mr. Leatherman married Miss Sadie Moncreif, from Orrville, Ohio, a daughter of Dr. D. L. Moncreif, and they have had three children. He is a member of both the Masonic order and of the Mennonite church. THOMAS SHAW.—Among those who have been able and successful exponents of the great basic industry of agriculture in Medina county is Mr. Shaw, who has here maintained his home from the time of his infancy, being a member of one of the sterling pioneer families of this favored section of the Western Reserve. He is still the owner of his finely improved farm, in Montville township, but is now living a retired life, having an attractive home in the village of Medina, where he is enjoying the generous rewards of former years of earnest toil and endeavor. Thomas Shaw was born in Waddington, St. Lawrence county, New York, June 23, 1832, and is a son of William and Hannah (Peacock) Shaw, both of whom were natives of England. The father was reared to maturity in. his native land, where he remained until 1828, when lie came to America and located in St. Lawrence county,, New York, where he was engaged in farming for a few years. In 1833 he removed with his family to Ohio and became one of the pioneers of Medina county.. Here he purchased a tract of heavily, timbered land in Yorktownship and through arduous labor and indomitable perseverance he reclaimed a good farm. He moved to Montville township in 1851, where he remained until his death, which occurred in 1869. He was a man of strong character, utmost integrity and of indefatigable industry, and he was duly prospered in his efforts as a farmer and stock grower. His political support was given to the Democratic party, though he never sought or held office, and he and his wife both held membership in the Methodist church. They commanded the high regard of all who knew them, and their names merit an enduring place on the roll of the honored pioneers of Medina county. They became the parents of nine children, of Whom four are now living. The devoted wife and mother survived her htisband by more than a decade, and her death occurred in the year 1881. Thomas Shaw, the immediate subject of this review, was about one year old at the time of the family removal from the old Ern, pire state to Medina county, and he was reared to maturity on the old homestead farm, in wnose work he began to lend his aid while still a boy. Under this sturdy discipline he waxed strong in physical powers, and in the meanwhile he duly availed himself of such educational privileges as were afforded in the primitive schools of the pioneer epoch in this section. He continued to be associated in the work and management of the home farm until he had attained to the age of nineteen, at which time he came from York township to Montville township, and initiated his independent career as a farmer and stock raiser. He purchased a farm in Montville township, about one and one-half miles from Medina, the county seat, and there he developed one of the fine farm properties of the county. A portion of this well improved farm was originally that owned by his father, William Shaw, who came to the county about the same. time as did Thomas Shaw, and the place has been known as the Shaw homestead for more than fifty-nine years. The subject of this sketch gained recognition as one of the able, progressive and enterprising farmers of the county, and his success in his chosen vocation was on a parity with the ability and industry which marked his course during his active career. He still owns the farm, upon which he continued to reside until 1904, when he removed to Medina and purchased his .present comfortable residence, which is eligibly located on South Broadway. Mr. Shaw has so ordered his course as to retain at all times the confidence and esteem of the people of the county in which virtually his entire life thus far has been passed, and he is known as a sterling citizen of unassuming character. His political allegiance is given to the Democratic party, and while he has ever given his aid and influence in support .of measures advanced for the general welfare of the community he has never had aught of aspiration for public office. On October 25, 1866, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Shaw to Miss Martha Abbott, who was born and reared in Medina county and who is a daughter of the late Leorette Abbott, long a resident of Montville HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1515 township, this county. Mr. and Mrs. Shaw have two children,. Willis L., who has charge of the home farm, and Adda, who remains with her parents. CHARLES D. WIGHTMAN.—The career of Hon. Charles D. Wightman, postmaster of the city of Medina and former member of the state senate, effectually sets at naught the application of the scriptural aphorism that "a prophet is not without honor save in his own country," for he is a native son of Medina county, where he has not only been honored with offices of high public trust, but where he has also attained to no insignificant distinction as one of the able members of the bar of the Western Reserve. Mr. Wightman was born in Lafayette township, Medina county, Ohio, November 25, 1866, and is a son of James L. and Clarinda (Bissell) Wightman. His father was born in Jefferson county, New York, September 21, 1828, and there was reared to the age of five years. He then, in 1833, was brought by his parents, Nathan and Betsy (Osgood) Wight-man, to Ohio, and the entire journey was made with wagons and ox teams. Nathan Wightman made Medina county his destination, and near Chippewa lake, in Lafayette township, he purchased a tract of heavily timbered land, which he ultimately developed into a fine farm. His landed estate comprised 200 acres, and today no finer farming lands are to be found within the borders of the historic old Western Reserve. Nathan Wightman was a soldier in the war of 1812, in which he served at Sackett's Harbor, New York. He was one of the honored pioneers and influential citizens of Medina county, and both he and his wife continued to reside on the old homestead until their death. James L. Wightman was reared to maturity on the pioneer farm, to whose work he early began to contribute his quota of assist. ance, the while his educational advantages were such as were offered by the somewhat primitive schools of the locality and period. He attained to his legal majority about the time of the discovery of gold in California, in 1849, and he was one of the venturesome spirits who made their hazardous and weary way across the plains and oVer the mountains to the new Eldorado. After his arrival in California he became a member of the mining camp known as Hangtown, which gruesome title was later changed to Placerville, the present name of the now attractive little town. There he engaged in placer mining, according to the crude methods then necessarily in vogue, and he met with fair success in his quest for the precious metal. He returned to Ohio in 1852, and the considerable number of twenty-dollar gold pieces, which represented the tangible results of his labors, were carried in a belt, in which they were carefully sewed, a belt which he did not once remove on the entire return trip, as the dangers of loss were too great. After his return from the west James L. Wightman was united in marriage to Miss Clarinda Bissell, who was born in the state of Ohio, a daughter of Eben Bissell, who came to Medina county, Ohio, in the early days and was one of the sterling pioneer settlers of Westfield township. After his marriage Mr. Wightman settled in Lafayette township,. near Chippewa lake, where he 'became a successful farmer and stock grower, owning a well improved farm of 125 acres and being known as one of the enterprising and progressiVe farmers of this county, where he also wielded much influence in local affairs, in which connection he served in various township offices. He continued to reside on the old homestead, honored by all who knew him, until he was summoned to the life eternal in 1899. His wife preceded him by a number of years, as her death occurred in 1891. Of the three children the subject of this sketch is the youngest ; William B., the eldest, resides in Lafayette township ; and Lucy M. is the wife of Charles M. Fenn, of Medina. Charles D. Wightman, whose name initiates this article, passed his boyhood days on the home farm, which he now owns, and his early educational training was secured in the district school of the locality. Later he attended the public schools of Medina and in 1886 he went to Adrian, Lenawee county, Michigan, where he was duly matriculated in Adrian College, in which well ordered institution he was graduated as a member of the class of 1889, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Science. After leaving college Mr. Wightman located in Medina, where he entered the law office of judge George Hayden, under whose able preceptorship he prosecuted his technical study of the science of jurisprudence until he became eligible for admission to the bar, a consummation to which he attained on March 9, 1893. He forthwith opened an office in Medina, where he soon won his professional spurs 1516 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE and where he eventually gained distinctive precedence as, one of the able attorneys and counselors of the Medina county bar. His clientage has been of essentially representative character and he has had to do with much important litigation in both the state and federal courts, where he has shown himself a specially strong and versatile trial lawyer. Mr. Wightman has long been one of the wheel horses of the Republican party contingent in Medina county, and has rendered yeoman service in behalf of the party cause, in which his services have been much in requisition as a campaign speaker. In 1893 he was elected prosecuting attorney and re-elected to the same office in 1896. In 1897 he was elected to represent the joint Twenty-seventh and Twenty-ninth districts of Ohio in the state senate, securing a gratifying majority at the polls and making an excellent record as an earnest worker, both in the committee room and on the floor of the senate, in which he served from 1898 until 1902, having been chosen as his own successor at the expiration of his first term. He served on several of the most important committees, and was chairman of the judiciary committee. The district which he thus represented comprises Lorain, Richland, Ashland and Medina counties. After his retirement from the office of senator Mr. Wightman resumed the active practice of his profession in Medina, and to the same he gave his entire attention until 1905, when he was appointed and commissioned postmaster of Medina. His administration has been most effective and satisfactory and he has done much to systematize and improve the service of the office, which is of the second class. In a fraternal way he is identified with the Knights of Pythias. His religious views are in harmony with the tenets of the Congregational church, in whose faith he was reared. The genial and popular postmaster of Medina, is not married. CHARLES D. FREEMAN, M. D.—Established in the successful practice of his profession- in the. city of Medina, Dr. Freeman is numbered among the representative physicians and surgeons of his native county and is a scion of one of the old and honored pioneer families of Medina county, with whose history the name has been indissolubly linked for more than fourscore years. Dr. Freeman was born in Westfield township, Medina county, January. 8, 1853, .rid is a son of Joseph H. and Caroline (Wilcox) Freeman, the former of whom was born in Westfield township, this county, January 8, 1826, and the latter was born in the state of New York, whence her parents came to Ohio when she was a child. The paternal grandfather of the doctor was Rufus Freeman, who was horn in Vermont in the year 1796 and who became one of the pioneer farmers and influential citizens of Westfield township, Medina county, where he reclaimed his farm from the forest and where he passed the residue of his life, honored by all who knew him. Rufus Freeman was one of the promoters and organizers of the Ohio Farmers' Insurance Company, with which he was actively identified in official capacity for a number of years. He was one 0f the popular and influential citizens of his township, where he was a farmer and stock dealer. Joseph H. and Caroline (Wilcox) Freeman became the parents of five children, of whom the Dr. Freeman of this sketch is the third; James A. is a resident of St. Louis, Missouri ; and Horace J. is retired. Dr. Charles D. Freeman secured his preliminary educational discipline in the district schools in Scott county, Iowa, where his parents then resided, and later he was a student in Cornell College, at Mount Vernon, Iowa. His initial study in the line of his profession was prosecuted under the effective preceptor-ship of Dr. Lucius French, a leading physician and surgeon of Davenport, Iowa, and in 1882 he was matriculated in the celebrated Bellevue Medical College in New York city, in which institution he was graduated as a member of the class of 1884 and from which he received his degree of Doctor of Medicine. Soon after his graduation Dr. Freeman located in Medina, where he has since followed the work of his humane profession with all of zeal and devotion .and where he controls a large and representative practice. He keeps in constant touch with the advances made in both the sciences of medicine and surgery, and his success in his chosen field of endeavor has been of the most unequivocal order. He is a member of the American Medical Association, the Medina County Medical Society and the Ohio State Medical Society, in the of fairs of each of which he takes a deep interest. In politics, though never manifesting /aught of ambition for public office, Dr. Freeman is HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1517 arrayed as a stalwart supporter of the and policies for which the Republican party stands sponsor. He is prominently identified with the Masonic fraternity, in which time honored organization he has attained to the thirty-second degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, in which his affiliation is with the consistory at Cleveland. In the York Rite he holds membership in Medina Lodge, No. 58, Free, and Accepted Masons; Medina Chapter, No. 30, Royal Arch Masons ; and Akron Commandery, No. 25, Knights 'Templar. He is an ardent devotee of the -rod and gun, and his vacations are usually spent in the indulgence of the gallant sports afloat and afield. He enjoys unqualified popularity in his native county and is still on the 'list of eligible bachelors. SHELDON HARMON.-The Harmon family is one of the oldest as well as one of the most prominent of Ashtabula county, and the name has ever stood exponent for the most sterling personal characteristics, the deepest appreciation for the rights and privileges of citizenship, .and it is linked with the annals of the county from an early epoch in its history. Aaron Harmon came from Connecticut to Ohio in 1811, and located on land bordering Lake Erie and east of Ashtabula Harbor. His farm there embraced several hundred acres, and the home which he built and in which he lived for so many years is yet .standing; a mute reminder of days gone by. His first wife bore the maiden name of Temperance Fargo, and was born on the 16th of May, 1784, and they had the following sons : Hardin D., who was born September 11, 1806, and died November 16, 1895; Edmon, born October to, 1808, .and died July 19, 1835 ; Judson, born March 22, 1811; and Ezekiel Fargo, born March 27, 1823. Ezekiel is still living in New Jersey, a very old man, and Judson also lived in r the east. Hardin spent his life in Ashtabula county, and the old home which he built about 1831 is now the home of Frank S. Harmon. Aaron Harmon married for his second wife Abigail Tyler, born Marep 31, 1791, and they were married on the 19th of June, 1825. Their children were : John, born March 1, 1826; Sheldon, born November 15, 1829 ; Gilbert, born August 6, 1832, and these sons spent nearly all their lives on homes near their father. Gilbert lived at Conneaut at the time of his death. Sheldon Harmon was born on the old Harmon homestead, and his entire life spent thereon, or on the farm of his own which adjoined. The house which he erected in 1862, made from brick manufactured on his own land, is yet standing, and that dwelling was his home until death, at the age of sixty-three years. He became a large property owner, and dealt largely in a fine grade of stock, and during. eighteen or nineteen years served his township as a trustee. On the 19th of January, 1854, Sheldon Harmon married Eunice -Wood Jefford, born at Chautauqua county, New York, one of the thirteen children of Eber R. and Almira Jefford. Eber R. Jefford died on October 29, 1862, while in the'service of his country. Three of the children born to Sheldon and Eunice Harmon reached matureyears : Frank S., who was born April 29, 1855 ; Julia, who has never married, and owns the homestead, was born February 23, 1859; and Burton G., born February 23, 1867, was killed on a tug by the explosion of a boiler in July of 1897, when thirty years of age. His daughter Mildred was but six months old at the time of his death. His wife was before marriage Enima Weiblin; and Mildred was the only child.   Frank S. Harmon, born on his father's farm April 29, 1855, has been a lifelong agriculturist, and he farmed with his father until the latter's death. The farm he now occupies was bought by the father twenty-eight years ago, and since Frank S. has added thereto forty acres, and he also owned forty-one acres of his father's estate, as well as another tract of thirty-two acres near was harbor. During many years dairying was the leading, feature of his farm work, and for many years he operated .a milk wagon, keeping from twenty-five to :sixty cows, but he has since dropped this -branch of business. He married on March 5, 1879, Eliza Wilkinson, a daughter of George and Emeline (Stevens) Wilkinson, both of New Hampshire parentage. Mrs. Wilkinson was a daughter of Enoch and Hannah Stevens, who drove in an ox wagon from New . Hampshire to Ohio in 1810, and located on North Ridge, two and a half miles northeast' of Ashtabula, where they lived for many years, and there their daughter Emeline was born in 1812. In later years they moved to Ashtabula, where Mr. Stevens, a shoemaker, died at the age of seventy-eight years, his wife living to the age of ninety-three. Emeline Stevens was .thirty-six years of age at the time of her marriage to George Wilkinson, a sailor, and sire, died when sixty-three years of age, leaving 1518 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE   one child, Eliza, who was twenty-three at the time of her marriage to Mr. Harmon. Six of the children born to Mr. and Mrs. Harmon are living : Gertrude Eunice, the wife of James McClure, of Ashtabula ; Ethel Emeline, wife of Richard William England,. of Cleveland ; Harry Sheldon, whose home is in Ashtabula; Frank Burton, a sailor on the lakes ; Sheldon, named for his grandfather, is farming the home estate ; and Esther Virginia is in school. Frank S. Harmon gives his political support to the Democratic party. CORRIN N. ROYCE.—This sketch has to do with the career of another of the native sons of the historic old Western Reserve who has here attained to distinctive success in connection with the productive activities and industrial enterprises of this favored section of the old Buckeye state and who is numbered among the representative citizens of Ashtabula county. For many years he has been prominently identified with the lumbering industry, in which his operations have been of wide scope and importance, and he has now been president of the Jefferson Banking Company, in the thriving little city of Ashtabula for a quarter of a century and where he is held in the most unequivocal confidence and esteem as a successful business, man and loyal and public-spirited citizen: C. N. Royce was born in Lenox township, Ashtabula county, Ohio, May 2, 1848, and is a son of Jasper and Malinda (Chapin) Royce, the former of whom was born in the state of Connecticut, a scion of a family founded in New England in the colonial epoch of our national history, and the litter of whom was a native of Massachusetts. Jasper Royce was reared and educated in his native commonwealth, whence he came to the Western Reserve when a young man and numbered himself among the pioneer settlers of Lenox township, Ashtabula county, where he developed a valuable farm and became an honored and influential citizen. He there continued to reside until his death, at the age of seventy years, and his name is inscribed on the roster of the sterling pioneers of this section of the Western Reserve. The maiden name of his first wife was Snyder and they became the parents of three daughters, all of whom are now deceased. After the death of his first wife he wedded Miss Malinda Chapin, likewise a representative of one of the well known pioneer families of Ashtabula county, and she survived him by several years. They became the parents of two children, of whom the subject of this sketch is the younger and the other. was Florence, who died at the age of twenty-five years. The parents were zealous members of the Congregational church and in politics the father was arrayed as a staunch supporter of the cause of the Republican party. He took a deep interest in public affairs of a local nature and served in various township. offices. C. N. Royce passed his boyhood days on the old homestead farm in Lenox township, and early began to contribute his quota to its work and management. His educational advantages, were those afforded in the district schools of the locality and period, and there he laid the-foundation for that broad fund of practical knowledge which he has since gained under the direction of that wisest of all head masters, experience. When he was sixteen years of age Mr. Royce initiated his independent career, and after devoting his attention to farm work for two years he was variously engaged until he had attained to his legal majority, when he purchased a farm in his native township, where he eventually developed one of the model farms of the county and where he continued to reside until. 1885. In the meanwhile he had become largely interested in the lumber industry, and in January of the year mentioned he moved from his farm to Jefferson,. where he maintained his home until June, 1909, when he moved to Ashtabula, where he has gained precedence as a representative business man. He has continued to be identified with the manufacturing and handling of lumber, in which his operations have had specially wide ramifications, extending from Ohio to Alabama and through the states of Kentucky and Texas. His business headquarters in connection with this important line of enterprise are now maintained in the city of Cleveland, where 'his interests are centered and are of important order. He was one of the organizers of the Jefferson Banking Company and' is ably directing its policy and business as president, in which office he has further manifested his fine executive ability. The institution conducts a large and substantial business along conservative lines and is one of the solid and popular banking houses of .the Western Reserve. Mr. Royce is the owner of much, valuable real estate in his native. county, including well improved properties in the city-of Jefferson, and in all his varied operations, HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1519 through which he has gained a large measure of success, he has held to the highest standard of integrity and honor and has thus retained a secure hold upon the confidence and respect of all with whom he has come in contact in the various relations of life. He has been the architect of his own fortunes and his labors have been directed with energy and discrimination, so that he has well merited the prosperity which is now his. In politics Mr. Royce gives an unqualified allegiance to the Republican party, but he has never had aught of desire to enter the arena of "practical politics." The only public office of which he ever consented to become incumbent was that of trustee of Lenox township, a position which he held for several years. He is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and both he and his wife hold membership in the Methodist church. In the year 1870 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Royce to Miss Rildie E. Dodge, who was born and reared in Ashtabula county and who is a daughter of Edward R. and Harriet (Groves) Dodge, honored pioneers of this county. Her father took up his residence in the Western Reserve in the year 1821. Mr. and Mrs. Royce have two daughters : Amy, who is the wife of R. D. Rose, of Youngstown, Ohio, and Nellie, who remains at the parental home and is prominent in the social activities of the community. BURTON E. THAYER.--AS an able and popular official of his native county Mr. Thayer has attained prestige which indicates the high esteem in which he is held in the section which has ever represented his home and in which, as a matter of course, he is best known. He is now incumbent of the office of county treasurer of Ashtabula county and maintains his home in Jefferson, the judicial center of the county. He was born at Conneaut, this county, on January 18, 1855, and is a son .of Lewis and Laura (Haviland) Thayer, who were numbered among the honored pioneers of this section of the Western Reserve, where they continued to reside. They were natives respectively of Ohio, and by vocation the father was a lumberman. Burton E. Thayer was reared to manhood in his native city, in whose public schools he secured his early education and his initial business experience. When twenty-five years of age he assumed the position of cashier in the First National Bank of Conneaut, which was first organized as a private bank under the name of Lake, Thayer & Smith, and he finally became cashier of the institution, an executive office of which he continued to be incumbent for about sixteen years, within which he did much to further the development of the large and substantial business controlled by this bank. For eight years also he served as cashier of the Conneaut Mutual Loan Association, and he is well known in his native county as an able and discriminating financier. He resigned the last mentioned position to become a candidate for county treasurer, to which office he was elected in 1905 and of which he has since been incumbent. His former experience specially well qualified him for the assumption of the work of this exacting and important office, and the fiscal affairs of the county haVe been well handled during his regime as treasurer. Mr. Thayer is vice-president of the Citizens Banking & Trust Company of Conneaut, where he maintained his remoVal to the county seat, and he has other city in which he was born and which is endeared to him by many gracious associations. In politics Mr. Thayer has given an unwavering allegiance to the Republican party from the time of attaining to his legal majority and the consequent right of franchise, and he has rendered effective service in the promotion of the party cause in his home county. When but twenty-one years of age" he was elected treasurer of Conneaut township and he continued in tenure of this office for twenty-nine consecutive years, at the expiration of which he resigned the same to become treasurer of the county. He served also as a member of the board of education of Con-. neaut and has ever manifested a most lively interest in all that ten& to promote the interests of popular education in Ashtabula county. He is affiliated with the time-honored Masonic fraternity, in which he has attained to the chivalric degrees, being identified with Cache Commandery, Knights Templars, and he also holds membership in Conneaut Lodge, Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks. In 1877 was recorded the marriage of Mr. Thayer to Miss Clara R. Risdon, daughter of Elial Risdon, a representative citizen of Conneaut, and the four children of this union are : Lee Carl, Alice J., Hazel J. and Harry E. 1520 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE HORACE A. COWLES.-A native son of Geauga county and 'a member of one of , its honored pioneer families, Horace A. Cowles has here maintained his home from, the time of his nativity and has well upheld the prestige of a name long and worthily identified with the annals of this section of the Western Reserve. He has been called upon to serve in various offices of distinctive public trust and is now incumbent of that of county auditor, in which he is giving a most admirable and satisfactory administration. He was long numbered among the representative farmers and stock growers of the county and is still identified with these important lines of enterprise, being the owner of the fine old homestead farm formerly owned by his grandfather, in Bainbridge township, a place thus doubly valued by him by reason of the gracious associations and memories of the past. On his father's farm near the old homestead Horace A. Cowles was born on March 29, 1857, and he was there reared under sturdy discipline, as he early began to contribute his quota to the work of the farm, in the meanwhile duly availing himself of the advantages of the public schools of the locality and period. As a youth he secured employment in a cheese factory in his native county, and . with this line of enterprise he continued to be actively concerned for about a decade, after which he gave his attention to farming, stock growing and to the buying and shipping of cattle until 1905, when he assumed the office of county sheriff, as will be more fully noted in a later paragraph. He has been the owner of the old homestead farm since 1881, and under his supervision the same has become one of the model places of Bainbridge township, being well improved and under effective cultivation and comprising ioo acres of most productive land. Mr. Cowles is a son of Ausemus and Cynthia (Eggleston) Cowles, the former of whom was born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, on November 6, 1829, a scion of staunch New England stock of English extraction, and the latter of whom was born at Mantua, Ohio, August 8, 1836. When. Ausemus Cowles was a lad of six years, his parents came to Geauga county, Ohio, and numbered themselves among the pioneers of Bainbridge township, where they settled on the farm now owned by the subject of this review and previously mentioned in this context. There the parents passed the residue of their long and useful lives, honored pioneers of the county; and there Ausemus was reared to maturity, eventually becoming owner of a nearby farm, where he continued his effective labors as a farmer and stock grower during his entire active career and where he continued to reside until moving to Dakota about 'goo. He was a man of exalted integrity and honor, a leal and loyal citizen and ever commanded the fullest measure of popular confidence and esteem in the community in which virtually his entire life was passed. He was a staunch advocate of the principles and policies for which the Republican party stands sponsor, and both . he and his wife were most zealous members of the MethodiSt Episcopal church at. Bainbridge, of which he served as treasurer for many years. His devoted wife was summoned to the life eternal on April 19, 1887, and her remains rest in the Bainbridge cemetery. They became the parents of six children, concerning whom the following brief record is consistently perpetuated in this sketch: Horace A., whose name initiates this article, resides in Chardon, the county seat ; Lucius E. is a resident of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Alice L. is the wife of John Bliss, of Lakota, North Dakota ; Eva L. is the wife of William Fairbanks and likewise resides in Lakota ; William G. died at Clova, Canada, in January, 1909; and Frederick E. resides at Lakota, North Dakota. Horace A. Cowles has been a zealous worker in the local ranks of the Republican party and the high esteem in which he is held in his native county is well indicated in the various official positions in which he has been called upon to serve the public. In 1905 he was elected sheriff of the county, giving a most satisfactory administration and being chosen as his own successor, thus serving two terms of two years each. At the expiration of his second term he was elected county auditor, entering upon the discharge of the responsible duties of this office on October 18, 1909. His term of office is two years, and in his present position he will continue to safeguard the interests of the people of his home county, in whose welfare and progress he has ever shown a loyal and vital concern. .For three years he served effectively as chief probation officer of the county, retiring from this position in 1910. Both Mr. and Mrs. Cowles are earnest and valued members of the Christian church in Chardon, in which he is an elder, as well as superintendent of the Sunday school. HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1521 In a fraternal way he is affiliated with Chardon Lodge, No. 93, Free and Accepted Masons. On December 19, 1878, was.solemnized the marriage of Mr. Cowles to Miss Jennie V. Bliss, who was born in North Amherst, Lorain county, this state, on March 8, 1861, and who was educated in the public schools of Bainbridge and Chagrin Falls, Geauga county. She is a daughter of Ambrose and Sarah (Baker) Bliss, the former of whom was born in Bainbridge township, Geauga county, December 22, 1835, and the latter of whom was born in Newbury, Geauga county, July 16, 1835. Ambrose Bliss eventually became a successful merchant at Chagrin Falls, where his death occurred on August 7, 1867. His marriage to Sarah Baker was solemnized September 4, 1855, and his wife long survived him, having been summoned to eternal rest on January 25, 1899, and both being members of the Christian church at Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and interred in the cemetery at Bainbridge. Of their two children Mrs. Cowles is the younger, and her brother, Benjamin O., who was born in North Amherst, Lorain county, April 28, 1859, is now a resident of the city of Cleveland. Mr. and Mrs. Cowles became the parents of four children, concerning whom the following data are given : Roy H., born in Bainbridge, October 4, 1879, was educated in Hiram College, and is now a resident of Burlington. Iowa ; Rita Bliss, born in Bainbridge, November 13, 188r, was afforded the advantages of Hiram College and the normal school at Angola, Indiana, is a talented musician, having been a successful teacher of piano and violin, and is now deputy under her father in -he office of the county auditor ; an infant son, horn October To, 1884, died on the i9th of the following month ; and Charles Carlton, born May 1, 1889, died March 3, 1893. EDWARD PATCHIN.-A man of sterling character and genuine worth, Edward Patchin, now living retired from business pursuits in Chardon, Geauga county, is especially worthy of mention in this volume. A son of Linson T. Patchin, he was born March 6, 1840, in Newberry, Geauga county, coming from excellent New England ancestry. Born in Connecticut, Linson T. Patchin came with his parents to the Western Reserve in 1804, when a boy. He assisted in much of of the pioneer work of felling the forests, and on attaining manhood bought land and was engaged in agricultural pursuits on his homestead in Newberry until his death; in September, 1853. He was active in public and military affairs, serving as captain of a Company of militia, and for a number of years being. justice of the peace. He married Amoret Stone, who was born in Geauga county, a daughter of judge Vene Stone, who was very prominent in public matters, and for a number of years served as associate justice. She survived her husband, passing away in the winter of 1881, and being buried beside her husband in the cemetery at West Burton. They were the parents of nine children, as follows : Eliza Ann, wife of Abraham Van Etten; of Cleveland; Betsey,. deceased, was the wife of the late Alexander Burnett ; Charles L., deceased ; Henry, deceased; Caroline, deceased, was the wife of Smith Beardsley ; Edward, the special subject of this sketch ; Electa, deceased, married E. A. Bedient ; Calista, wife of Henry Shepherd; and David, unmarried, lives in Washington. Growing to man's estate on the old homestead, Edward Patchin acquired the rudiments of his education in the district schools, continuing his studies at an academy in Burton and at Hiram College. He subsequently taught in the district schools three winters, in the meantime working on the farm summers. At the breaking out of the Civil war, in response to the first call for troops, Mr. Patchin enlisted in Company F, Nineteenth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, for three months. At the expiration of that time he enlisted for a term of three years in Company E, One Hundred and Fifth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and was appointed sergeant of his company. He enlisted in this company August 8, 1862, and on October 8, 1862, at the Battle of Perryville, he was seriously wounded, and in the following December was honorably discharged from the service, being permanently disabled. Re-. turning home, Mr. Patchin taught school one winter, afterwards becoming interested in the oil fields of Pennsylvania. In the fall of 1865 Mr. Patchin was elected treasurer of Geauga county, and served . two terms or four years. He was subsequently engaged in the fire insurance business in Chardon for a number of years, doing such satisfactory work that he was then appointed general agent and adjuster for the Concordia Fire . Insurance Company, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and for twenty-three years traveled over four states in following that line of work. 1522 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE Giving up 'the position in 1904, Mr. Patchin was engaged in mercantile pursuits in Chardon, but since that time has lived retired from active business, enjoying to the utmost the comforts of his pleasant home. Politically identified with the Republican party, Mr. Patchin has been a member of the Republican County Committee, and has rendered appreciated service as a delegate to county, district and state conventions, and on several occasions acting as chairman of the Republican County Conventions. In addition to serving as county treasurer four years, he has been mayor of Chardon, and for several terms was assessor of Chardon and of Chardon township. He is a most loyal and progressive citizen, and is among the foremost in forwarding all enterprises conducive to the general welfare and advancement of the community. On May 20, 1869, Mr. Patchin was ,united in marriage with Anna M. Canfield, a daughter of Christopher L. and Mary Ann (Kerr) Canfield, coming on the paternal side from honored New England ancestry. Her grandfather, Hi.len Canfield, born and bred in Massachusetts, came from there to the Western Reserve with his family in 1814, making the long journey through the almost pathless woods, with an ox team, and being forty-eight days on the way. He settled in Geauga county and here his son, Christopher L. Canfield, was born in 1822. The Kerr family came to Ohio from New Jersey at an early day, and for many years William Kerr, grandfather of Mrs. Patchin, was one of the leading men of the Reserve, serving as sheriff, auditor and recorder of Geauga county, that being before Lake county was set off from it. Two children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Patchin, Rufus Harry and Mary Amoret. Rufus Harry Patchin completed the course of study in the Chardon public schools, receiving his diploma from the high school in 1889. He afterwards entered Allegheny College, from which he was graduated in 1893 with the degree of B. A. Then, after teaching school for a year in Chardon and two years at Mentor he took a law course at the Ohio State University at Columbus, after his graduation from that institution entering the law office of Ranney & Fuller, of Cleveland. For two, years he was connected with the legal department of the state fire marshal's office. Retiring from that position in 1902, he was actively and successfully engaged in the practice of his profession in Chardon until 1908, when he was elected to his present position as prosecuting attorney of Geauga county, a position which he is filling most ably aid satisfactorily. He married, January 2, 1905, Catherine Burke, of Cleveland. Mary Amoret Patchin, like her brother, is highly educated and talented. After completing the high school course in Chardon she entered Wellesley allege at Wellesley, Massachusetts, and was there graduated with the class of 1906. She has since been actively engaged in the work of the Young Women’s Christian Association, and is now in Champaign, Illinois, where she is connected with the University of Illinois. Mrs. Patchin is a woman of much culture, occupying a prominent position in the social circles of Chardon. She is a member of Taylor Chapter, D. A. R., and a member of the Progress Club, which was instrumental in founding the Chardon Public Library, and is also a member of Ruby Chapter, O. E. S. Religiously she belongs to the Methodist Episcopal church. Mr. Patchin is a valued member of Reed Post, No. 387, G. A. R., in which he has filled most of the offices, and from which he has frequently been sent as a delegate to state encampments. He is prominent in Masonic circles, belonging to the Blue Lodge, the Chapter, and to the Oriental Commandery, K. T. of Cleveland. In January, 19p, Mr. and Mrs. Patchin were appointed probation officers for Geauga county. Mrs. Patchin is also a member of the Woman's Relief. Corps, and takes great interest in promoting the good of the organization. ELBERT JULIAN BURRELL.—The attainment of a distinguished position in financial circles came to Elbert Julian Burrell. His was truly a successful life, and he left his impress upon the industrial communities with which he was identified, while there was no shadow of wrong or injustice to mar his splendid career. A native of the Western Reserve, he was born at Leroy, Medina county, Ohio, on May 30, 1845, but was a boy when he came with his parents, George and Marionett (Barnes) Burrell, to Ridgeville township in Lorain county, and he was reared on a farm there, receiving his education in the district schools, which he attended only during the winter months, and worked on the farm during the summers. His father also owned a mill in Ridgeville, and the young lad also spent mtich of his time there, thus gaining HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1523 the insight into machinery which shaped much of his after life. In about the year of 187o he went to Michigan and engaged in lumbering, but, owing to a severe injury which he received by the explosion of a boiler in the mill, he turned his attention to the manufacture of chemicals, originating an improved process for the making of alcohol, which was used by sixteen large companies in Michigan, Tennessee, Canada and Wisconsin, in all of which Mr. Burrell was interested. While he did not make Elyria the place of his residence, his business interests constantly calling him to different parts of the country, he owned a home here and had always expected to finally settle here. For several years he suffered from poor health, and during the year and a half preceding his death he was an invalid. He died at Manistique, Michigan, on the 28th of December, 1905, and was buried in Ridge Lawn cemetery in Elyria. He was a member of the Masonic fraternity. In 1868 he married Mrs. Mahala Sharp, born in Morrow county, Ohio, a daughter of William and Effie (Shafer) Graves, born respectively in New York and in Ridgeville, Lorain county, Ohio. Mrs. Burrell first married George S. Sharp, and they had twin sons, Hon. William G., of Elyria, present member of congress from the Fourteenth district, and Hon. George W. Sharp, the latter prominent in the public life of Michigan, a senator from the Thirtieth district, being then a resident of Newburg, Michigan, but now residing in Cleveland. A son, Orpheus, was born to Mr. and Mrs. Burrell, but he died at the age of two and a half years. Mrs. Burrell is a member of the Univeralist church at Mt. Gilead, Ohio, which was formerly her place of residence, and is active in charitable and church work, and is a member of several women's organizations. She is also one of the trustees of the Old Ladies' Home at Elyria. HARTLEY C. PARSONS.-A man of scholarly attainments, cultured and talented, Hartley C. Parsons. of Chardon, is a man of good business ability and judgment and one of the successful and enterprising newspaper men of the Western Reserve. He was born, April 15, 1877, in Chardon, a son of Wilder C. Parsons, and is a splendid representative of the native-born citizens of Geauga county, his natural endowments and mental force of character placing him among the foremost citizens of this section of the Western Reserve. A life-long resident of Geauga county, Wilder C. Parsons has for many years been actively identified with the mercantile interests of Chardon, and is now carrying on a substantial business 'as head of the firm of Parsons & Cook, well-known jewelers and stationers. His wife, whose maiden name was Laura M. Stephenson, was born and bred in Iowa.   A product of the Chardon public schools, Hartley C. Parsons was graduated from its high school with the class of 1896, and the following two years he was here employed in the bicycle business. Going then to Ann Arbor, he attended the University of Michigan three and one-half years, while there being assistant business manager, of The Wolverine, a college publication of the university, in this position developing a taste for journalistic work. Previous to that time, however, Mr. Parsons, while yet a student in the Chardon High School, had a printing press of his own and did a general job printing business, thus early demonstrating his ability in this line of industry. On leaving college Mr. Parsons embarked in the manufacturing of maple products, conducting the business under the name of the Parsons Maple Company for three years. In 1905 the Geauga Printing Company was organized, taking over three newspaper properties, The Geauga Republican, The Geauga County Record and The Middlefield Times, the Record being a Democratic paper, while the other two were Republican. Each of these papers were continued by the new organization, each maintaining its distinctive political features under separate editorial management until April 1, 1909, when the two Republican journals were combined and continued under the name of the Geauga Republican. When the Geauga Printing Company was incorporated Mr. Parsons became secretary of the company and managing editor of the Republican, continuing in those positions until February, 19̊9, when he was made general manager, secretary and treasurer' of the company, and managing editor of the Geauga Republican. These positions he has since filled with ability. gaining a reputation as a first class journalist and as a man of superior executive and business skill. He is also financially interested as a stockholder in several other business concerns, being intimately associated with the varied interests of the city., One of the leading Republicans of Geauga county, Mr. Parsons has been very active in 1524 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE party affairs, and is now the Chardon member of the County Central Committee, of which he is chairman; and is a member and the chairman of the Republican County Executive Committee. He has served as a delegate to county, district and state conventions, and is now one of the vice-presidents of the famous Garfield Republican Club, representing Geauga county. While he is active in political circles, Mr. Parsons has never been an office 'seeker. His father, however, was for six years postmaster at Chardon. Mr. Parsons is a musician, much interested in the advancement of the musical standards of town, city and county, and for many years has been a member of the Chardon Musical Culture Club. Religiously he is a prominent member of the Methodist Episcopal church, which he is serving as steward. A public-spirited and progressive citizen, ever alive to the interests of his community, Mr. Parsons has been especially active in the matter of establishing good roads throughout this section of the Reserve, and in any list of names attached to projects of public welfare his signature is invariably found. PATRICK J. CALLAHAN has spent many years of his life in Ashtabula county, a prominent representative of its agricultural interests, but he is a native son of Ireland, born in County Limerick, December 26, 1843, and he received his educational training in the school's of his native land. His parents, Michael and Margaret (Burns) Callahan, are both now dead,, the father dying in Ireland. Leaving the land of his nativity, Patrick J. Callahan arrived on American shores after a voyage of seven weeks and he made his way to Painesville, Ohio, being at that time eighteen years of age. He later secured employment with the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad Company, and for eighteen years was foreman of a company of men engaged in laying track and helped to build the first railroad across the plains. In 1877 he located on a farm in Trumbull township, where he now owns an estate of eighty-four acres, and some years ago he was quite extensively engaged in the raising of cattle and sheep. He has served two years as a road supervisor, and during the past seventeen years has been one of the trustees of Trumbull township. His political allegiance is given to the Republican party. He married in 1877 Ellen Burns, who was born in Ireland in 1843, and their union has been without issue. Mr. and MrS. Callahan are members of the Roman Catholic church. THOMAS S. STEPHENSON.—During many years Thomas . S. Stephenson was identified with the farming interests of Ashtabula county, but he has recently sold his estate of 100 acres in Denmark township and will retire td a private life. He was born in the state of New Jersey on April 11, 1850, and his mother, Phebe ( Johnson) Stephenson, also had her nativity in the commonwealth; born in 1814, but the father, Samuel, was born in the mother country of England in 18o8; He died in November, of 1879, and his wife survived him for many years and died in October of 1896. Thomas S. Stephenson came to Ashtabula county from Norwalk. Ohio, on March 10, 1879, and his home has since been within its borders, and he has long been numbered among its representative citizens. He married Florella Marsh. born on February 7, 1852, and the following children have been born of their union : Bertha, who was born December 6, 1879, married Jerry Jones and lives in Sharpn, Pennsylvania ; Leon, born December 12, 1884, resides in Mercer, that state ; Frank; born March 29, 1891, resides in the west. Mr. Stephenson married for his second wife. Elizabeth Snyder, and their union has been without issue. Mr. Stephenson in politics has allied his interests with the Republican party, and he has .served his community three years as a constable. He is a member of the United Brethren church. HARRISON G. BLAKE, the subject of this sketch, was born in the state of Vermont in the year of 1818, and came to Medina when eighteen years of age. He at once commenced the active duties of life by entering as a clerk in the pioneer business houses of Medina, and continued this occupation for several years ; then commenced business on his own account. His energy and capacity for business had so impressed his business acquaintances with his capacity and energy and push that the thought to lose Mr. Blake from the business of the town would be a great setback to its business. After his years of struggle in business with others he purchased the corner lot now known as the Old Phoenix Block, the largest business corner in town, and was after a few years burned out. Notwithstanding this sad HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1525 blow to his business prosperity, he determined at once to rebuild on a larger scale than before and erected what is called the Old Phoenix Block, the largest business structure in town, and which is the largest single business structure in the town today. Later in life Mr. Blake established the Old Phoenix National Bank, one of the solid business institutions of the town today. Also, with his varied and man business cares, he found time to study law and was admitted to the bar and became a practicing attorney. Later on he was elected a member of the legislature in Ohio and served two terms. He was the author of the law which repealed and wiped from the statute books the infamous and disgraceful Black Laws of Ohio. He carried into his legislative duties the same energy and push that had hitherto attended all enterprises he had undertaken, and became a popular and the leading citizen of Medina county, and which he retained to the clay of his death. He was a progressive man in everything which related to the progress and betterment of human kind. The first temperance lecture that I ever heard was one he made at River Styx when I was quite a small boy. 1 ie was a young man then, but to my mind his speech was able and direct, and pictured the horrors of intemperance in lively, vivid colors, and it made so strong an impression on my mind and I thought of what he said so often in life that I know that it had a guiding influence over my future life. I have no doubt it impressed others as it did me, and in the main did much good. Mr. Blake, in his earlier years of political life, was a Whig. He was not at home here. The party was pro slavery, and otherwise very conservative. It was not in touch with the growing sentiment of the freedom loving spirit of the masses. The old Whig as well as the Democratic party were the cornerstones of African slavery in the conduct of the government. The great majority of the masses of the people .under the laws of evolution and progress had outgrown these corner-stones of human bondage, and were rapidly forming for a more progressive and humane party. The time came when the old Whig party could no longer wallow in its conservative bondage at the shrine of human slavery, and like other organizations that had outlived its usefulness, went the way that evolution directed, went to its death, to give place to a more active and progressive party ; hence the Whig party died and the Republican party was born, and in 1856 the progressive political element of the country gathered around the banner of John C. Fremont, the pathfinder, and nominated him for president. This is known as the 1856 campaign in our history. The whole nation was ablaze with the spirit of freedom and a larger liberty for the surging masses, who could no longer be held in the leading-strings of the slave power. The whole scene is today vivid in my memory, for I was one of the actors in this great drama of human progress. To say that Mr. Blake was enthused in this great struggle is to put it very mildly. The spirit of the patriots of old had come to life again. His speeches were of the high grade, patriotic orator. He held great masses of the people spellbound by his patriotic oratory. He talked to great crowds during this campaign, and wherever he was heard .converts by the hundreds rallied around his standard. If Mr. Blake had done no greater work in his life than this alone, it should entitle him to a lasting record in the annals of his country. But the great work of his life had not come to him yet. In 1861 he was elected to the congress of the United States. He served his first term and was re-elected to serve the second, and served four years. During the last term he conceived, wrote and introduced a bill establishing the postal order system of the United States, which has grown to-day to immense proportions, in forty years attached to the business of the United States postoffice. The act authorizing the establishment of the postal money order systems was passed and approved May 17, 1864, and the business was put into operation in November. In 1865 the number of money order offices, ending June 30, 1865, was 419, and the number of domestic money orders issued was 74,227. And the amount of domestic money orders paid this year was $1,313,577.08. In 1875 the number of money orders issued by the postal authorities was 3,404, and the number of domestic orders issued was 5,006,323, and the amount of domestic orders paid and repaid was $77,431,251.58, and the amount of domestic money orders paid and repaid was $77,361,690.75. In a single decade, from,1875 to 1885, the business had grown to the following proportions: In 1885, number of domestic money order offices had grown to 7,056, and the number of domestic money orders issued, to 7,725,893, and the amount of domestic money orders, to $117,858,921.27. In the year 1895 the number of money order offices had 1526 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE increased in the nation to 19,961, and the number of domestic orders issued was 22,031,120, amounting to $156,709,089.77. In the year 1908 the number of money order offices had increased to 43,313, and the number of orders issued was 64,864,570, in amount of $498,699,637.49. Since the establishment of the money order system, in 1865, up to 1908, the colossal sum of $6,745,253,031.89 in this one department of the government alone; $6,745253,031.89 is a colossal sum of money, even for the government to set in motion through the postoffice, of the government. The yast sum given by the postoffice department even baffles the comprehension of the mathematician. It is set down in amount in figures correctly, but even his keen mathematical skill in the unit of actuals of computation he does not comprehend the vast amount ; and this great sum set in motion by the postoffice department during a period of forty-four years of practice under the money order law conceived by the brain of the Hon. Harrison G. Blake. In 1865 my recollection is that there was bank in Medina, and no place for the businessmen to buy a draft on New York or other cities, and no place for them to make deposits of their money. My judgment is that this must have been patent to Mr. Blake at the time he conceived and introduced his money order bill. Thousands and thousands of towns in Ohio and other states that were in need of relief in obtaining valid voucher's in the payment of debts in all the states of the Union; The establishment of the postal money order law was a happy deliverance from the necessities of the world of business in securing from the government a medium of exchange in the payment of debts and otherwise that had heretofore been denied them, and millions of people all over the nation were accommodated as never before. The enactment of this system furnished such relief as people needed. From the days of my young manhood I have studied carefully the operations of the government until now ; I have been a vigilant student of the great enactments of the government of the people, and to-day in my memory I can find no single law that has been placed on the statute books of the nation that has done so much good, has been so great a relief to the people in the matter of exchange and otherwise, as the postal money order law of the United States. Mr. Blake himself had no adequate and just conception of its growth, use and con venience to the people when his bill became a law. If in forty years the government has been able to transmit through its mails over six thousand millions in money of its postal orders, what may be the vast sum at the end of a hundred years of practical work. This proposition staggers the imagination in forecasting the increased values which the money order system will produce at the end of a century from its birth, in its practical application to national and business life. And should the present govenment exist for a period of two hundred years, with the postal order system in its present tide of full national prosperity, no imagination is fruitful and far-seeing" enough to predict the number of the thousands of millions of dollars that will pass through its mails in that far-away time. In my judgment the establishment of the money order system, abstractly considered in its units of benefit to the great mass of the people, has no equal and no superior as a single measure among all the laws from the inception of the government until now. The inception of Mr. Blake to found this system and make it a popular branch of the government was a masterstroke of direct policy in the interest of the whole people of the nation. And this followed in line of the formative character of the man. By nature he was intensely democratic in sentiment. He was emphatically a man of the people, for the people and by the people. On this living question he was. sound to the core. In his legislative life he was always with the people and for the rights of the people. In these latter days we are degenerating from this solid bulwark established by the fathers of the republic. The founding of the money order system entitles Mr. Blake to a lasting, enduring, national fame, for good deeds done in the cause of the whole people of a great nation. He was fifty-eight years old when he died. He had lived an active, useful life, and when he left the scenes of earth life his life was crowned with many honors, well de, served. By Judge A. Munson. LEMUEL K. RITSCHER is one of the venerable citizens of the village of Madison, where he has maintained his home for more than half a century, save for a brief interval passed elsewhere in the state, and here he is now living virtually retired, after having been engaged in the carriage and hardware business for a long period of years. He and his devoted wife are HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1527 numbered among the honored pioneer citizens of this community, where their circle of friends is circumscribed only by that of their acquaintances. Mr. Ritscher was born on Washington street, in the city of Newark, New Jersey, on the 27th of June, 1831, and in his native place he was reared and educated. In his youth he there entered upon an apprenticeship to the trade of carriagemaking, in the shop of J. B. Turnbull & Sons, and he served for five years, receiving in compensation for his services his board and the princely sum of twenty dollars a year for the first two years. Thereafter he did piecework, at which he earned for the company one dollar for each piece turned out, while he himself received his board and the sum of three and' one-half dollars per week. At the end of his five years' apprenticeship he had no money to show for his time, but had become a skilled workman at his trade. In April, 1852, he started for the city of Washington, but he soon afterward returned to Newark and entered the employ of the firm in whose establishment he had served his apprenticeship. He was made foreman of the shop, in which eight men were under his supervision, and he was there employed until he came to Ohio. His maternal grandfather, Aaron Kent and his sons had come to Ohio in the spring of 1855, and he secured a tract of land on the shore of Lake Erie, in Perry township, in which locality his brother Levi had taken up his abode several years previously. Jacob Kent, the father of Aaron Kent, was a soldier in the Revolutionary war, in which he served under Washington, in New Jersey, where he owned a farm, and ft is a matter of authentic record that General Washington was entertained at one or more meals at the home of the Kent family. Aaron Kent improved a good farm in Perry township, Lake county, Ohio, where he continued to reside until his death, at the age of seventy-seven years. In 1854 Lemuel K. Ritscher, the subject of this sketch, was united in marriage to Miss Mary P. Whitehead, whose death occurred only one year and seventeen days later, and he then sought change and respite from his sorrow by joining his grandfather in Ohio, to which state he came in August, 1855. He took up his residence in the village of Madison, where he was employed as a journeyman at his trade until 1867, when he went to Painesville, the county seat, where he was for ten years a valued employe in the factory of the Paines- Vol. III-17 ville Carriage Company. In 1877 he removed to Defiance, Ohio, where he entered the ern, ploy of J. B. Turnbull, his former employer in Newark, New Jersey, who had established a wheel factory in Defiance. Later Mr. Ritscher returned to Madison, where, in 1881, he established himself in the hardware business, as a manufacturer and dealer, and he continued to be actively identified with this line of enterprise for a period of twelve years, since which time he has lived essentially retired. In the home in which he now resides, on the 28th of December, 1857, Mr. Ritscher was united in marriage to Miss Sarah R. Gager, daughter of Aaron and Harriett (Swetland) Gager, who came to Ohio from Massachusetts. Salmon Swetland, father of Mrs. Gager, was one of the pioneers of Ohio, and settled on the shore of Lake Erie, near Conneaut. An interesting incident in his career is here related in brief : Mr. Swetland was called from bed early one morning and informed that his neighbors had driven a deer to the shore, where the animal took to the water. He proceeded to the scene, and, hurriedly seizing a piece of rail as a paddle, stepped into a dug-out canoe for the purpose of paddling to a point beyond the deer and turning it back toward the shore. By the time he had reached a position further out than that of the deer and had headed the animal toward the shore, the wind had risen to such an extent that he was unable to make his way back to the shore. To avoid overturning his canoe he had to keep it across the waves and was carried out into the lake. He held his course, and after about fifteen hours of battling with the storm and high-running sea, he landed on Land Point, Ontario, Canada. Upon disembarking, utterly exhausted, he chanced to see a box in the water, and upon bringing it on to the land he found it to be filled with fine fulled cloth, which he removed from the case and hung out to dry, after which he crawled under his canoe to sleep. Finally, upon awakening, he discerned a light in the distance, and, making his way to the same, he found a house, into which he was taken and made comfortable, though he was suspected of being an American spy. This event occurred while the war of 1812 was in progress. To convince his hosts that his story was true, he took them back to the spot where his canoe was left, and there gave them the cloth which he had saved from the water. The man of the house accompanied him to Buffalo, where he had' a coat made from the.goods mentioned. 1528 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE A number of days later Mr. Swetland secured passage on a sloop and was taken back to his home, where he was supposed by the little community to have lost his life on the lake. In fact, arrangements had been made to have his funeral, sermon delivered on the following day. The deer which caused all the trouble was captured and its skin was used to cover a trunk, which is still in existence now in Conneaut. Mr. Swetland eventually returned to Massachusetts and took up his residence in Boston, ,where he died. Aaron and Harriett (Swetland) Gager came to Lake county in 1831 and took up their residence in the little village of Madison, where they purchased the property which now represents the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ritscher. Mr. Gager, who was a carriage maker by trade, died at the age of sixty-eight years, and his wife died at the age of seventy-five years. He erected the present homestead, a portion of which was formerly his shop. Of the two children, the elder was Wilder F. Gager, who was a carriagemaker by trade and who was for twenty years a resident of Collinwood, Ohio, where he died when about seventy years of age. Sarah R., wife of the subject of this review, was born in the house in which she now resides, as was also her brother, and the date of her nativity was January 25, 1837. The house stands on Main street, and remains essentially the same as it was when her parents occupied the same. Upon the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage, in 1907, the golden wedding was fittingly observed, and that under unique conditions, as Mr. and Mrs. Ritscher were then remarried, standing on the same spot, before the fireplace, and on a rug made from the same carpet upon which they had stood to be married fifty years before. Many old friends were present, including a number who had been schoolmates of the bride, but in the entire number there was only one who had been present at the original ceremony—Mrs. Placentia Walding, who was born in the next house, a daughter of Orlando and Anna (Farrar) Selby. Mr. and Mrs. Ritscher have one daughter, Mary Hattie, who remains at the parental home. Mr. Ritscher is a Democrat in politics, is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and holds membership in the Methodist Episcopal church ; Mrs. Ritscher is a member of the Congregational church. In the early days when Mrs. Ritscher was about ten years old a dinner was given in the only town park, which is now the Ritscher front yard, by Jennie Bliss. This dinner was attended by such men as Joshua R. Giddings and Hon. Ben Wade, and men from all over this part of the Western Reserve. Mrs. Ritscher remembers this as one of the important events of this little village in the early days. JUDGE TERRENCE REYNOLDS.—Among the native-born citizens of the Western Reserve, conspicuous for their ability and worth, is Judge Terrence Reynolds, of Chardon, Geauga County, who holds a position of prominence in public affairs. A son of the late James Reynolds; he was born May 31, 1866, in Chardon, which has always been his home. A native of Ireland; James Reynolds came to this country when a young man, locating first in Portage County, Ohio. In 1854 he settled in Chardon, Geauga County, and was here a resident until his death. A man of patriotic spirit, he gladly served the country of his adoption during the strenuous times of the Civil war, enlisting in Company F, Seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry, with which he was actively associated for three years and ten months, taking part in many battles of importance. He -married, in Ravenna, Ohio, Mary Hennessey, who was born in Ireland, and to them twelve children were born, eight daughters and four sons, Terrence being the youngest son. Neither of the parents are now living. Receiving a substantial education in the public schools of Chardon, Terrence Reynolds began the struggle of life for himself when young, being for a short time employed on a farm. He was subsequently employed as a clerk in different mercantile houses in Chardon, and in 1891 was appointed teller of the First National Bank, remaining in that position nine years. Elected clerk of the courts of Geauga County in 1900, Mr. Reynolds served in that capacity three consecutive terms of three years each, performing the duties devolving upon him efficiently. and most satisfactorily to all concerned. In the fall of 1908 the citizens of .Geauga County showed their appreciation of his talents and ability by electing him probate judge of the county, a position which he assumed in February, 1901 and has since filled with credit to himself and to the honor of his constituents. Politically Judge Reynolds has ever been a - stanch supporter of the principles of the Re- HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1529 publican party, and has frequently been a member of the county, congressional and senatorial committees, and has served as a delegate to county, district and state conventions, taking an active and prominent part in the management of each. For several years he was a member of the village council and of the board of public affiairs, and is now rendering excellent service as a member of the Chardon board of education. Fraternally the judge belongs to the Ancient Order of Free and Accepted Masons ; to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows ; to the Knights of Pythias, and to the Sons of Veterans. Judge Reynolds has been twice married. He married first, February 5, 1888, Elizabeth Watros, a daughter of Hial and Ellen (McArthur) Watros, Scotch people, who migrated from New York State to Ohio in pioneer days. She died January 1, 1897, leaving one son, Hial Reynolds. The Judge married second, January 12, 1901, Cora A. Toop, a daughter of Mark and Mary (Whiston) Toop, who were of English descent, and came to the Western Reserve in early days. Of this union one child has been born, Lester Reynolds. Judge and Mrs. Reynolds deservedly hold a place in the estimation of the people that is worthy of note, their' large circle of warm friends and acquaintances including people in all walks of life, the humble workman as well as the captains of industry. GEORGE J. RENNER.—There is no country in Europe that has not given some of its best and strongest men to help in building up our great American republic, and from this fact the United States may well be compared to a crucible of continental dimensions. By the melting and fusing together of the elements of different nationalities the American nation was formed, and it is a well-recognized fact that from no source has the republic gained a more valuable element to enter into the complex social fabric than that derived from the great empire of Germany. The subject of this sketch stands as one of the sterling German-American citizens of the Western Reserve, where he has lived and labored to goodly ends, resolute in purpose, indomitable in energy and impregnable in personal and business integrity. He is an honored and influential citizen of the city of Akron, where he is president of the George J. Renner Brewing Company, and where he has other interests of important order. He has here maintained his home for twenty years, and the high esteem in which he is held in the community stands as effective voucher for his sterling attributes of character and his well-ordered endeavors as a successful business man. Mr. Renner was born in Germany in 1835, a representative of stanch old families of that section of the empire. In his native land Mr. Renner secured his early educational discipline and in 1849, when he was fourteen years of age, his parents came to America and took up their residence in Cincinnati, Ohio, in which state they passed the residue of their lives. Mr. Renner was reared to manhood in Ohio, and thereafter was identified with business enterprises in Cincinnati and its suburb, Covington, Kentucky, until 1882. He became familiar with the brewing industry through effective training in his youth and early manhood, and with the same he has been actively identified during the major portion of his business career. In the year last mentioned he removed to Wooster, Wayne County, Ohio, where he was engaged in the brewery business about four years, at the expiration of which he removed to the city of Mansfield, where he continued in the same line of enterprise until 1888, when he took up his residence in Akron, which city has since been his home. Here he purchased an old brewery plant, upon which he made improvements forthwith, both in the building and equipment, and since that time he has developed the property into one of the largest and best breweries in this section of the state. Its facilities, of the most modern type, are unexcelled by those of any other plant of the kind in the WeStern Reserve, and the superiority of the product constitutes the best advertisement for the same. The ice plant has a capacity for the accommodation of fifty tons daily ; the bottling department is adequate to meet all demands placed upon it, and all other departments are well equipped and in cnarge of thoroughly skilled operatives. The brewery now has sales aggregating about 30,000 barrels annually, and the. capacity of the plant is such that 50,000 barrels can be supplied without overtaxing any department. Mr. Renner still owns a well equipped brewery in Mansfield, has been identified with the kerosene oil industry for a number of years and has other capitalistic investments of importance. As a citizen Mr. Renner is liberal and public-spirited, and he is fully appreciative of the institutions and advantages of the country in 1530 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE which he has been enabled to attain so large a: measure of success through his own well-directed efforts. He is identified with various fraternal and social , organizations. He now relegates much of the active supervision of his brewery business to others and is living semi-retired, though he finds ample demands upon his time and attention in regulating and directing his various business and capitalistic interests. His beautiful home is one of the many attractive residence properties of Akron. In 1853; when but eighteen years of age, Mr. Renner was united in marriage to Miss Sarah Oppleheim, a native of Germany, whence her parents emigrated to America when she was a child. Mr. and Mrs. Renner have two sons and four daughters, concerning whom the following brief record is consistently given in this article : George, Jr., is engaged in the brewery business in Youngstown, Ohio, where he has a large and modern plant; Wiltiam is engaged in business in Wisconsin ; Laura is engaged in the millinery business in Akron ; Elizabeth is the wife of Edward C. Deibel, an executive of the Akron Oil & Gas Company; Eleanor is secretary and treasurer of the George J. Renner Brewery Company, and Emma remains at the parental home. HENRY H. KELLOGG.—The name of Henry H. Kellogg stands conspicuously forth among the representative men of Trumbull township, which is his native place and his home throughout life. Many years ago, in the early history of this community, the paternal grandfather of Mr. Kellogg made his way from his native state of Maine to Ohio with an ox team, and he established his home in Ashtabula county. He died, however, at Newton Falls in Trumbull county, Ohio, but was buried at Harpersfield in Ashtabula county. He was accompanied on his journey to this state by his wife and their son Ulysses, but they had other children, including Rastus, Walter and a daughter. Ulysses D. Kellogg early in life lived in Trunibull township, but later located at Newton Falls in Trumbull county. During his residence in this county he taught school for a few years, was a bookkeeper, a justice of the peace for twenty years, and was also employed in the Clyde Furnace. He .was married in Tompkins- county, New York, prior to his immigration to the west, to Miss Mary Livingston, and they had the following children : Adaline, who died in 1862 ; Emilie, who married H. T. Williams and lives in Trumbull township ; Oliver P., borne September zo, 1833, became one of the most prominent residents of Ashtabula county and also served as speaker of the House of Representatives in Wyoming for one term:, and he now lives in Trumbull township ; Henry, mentioned below ; Celesita married William Mead and lives in Seattle, Washington ; Lurene married Harvey Bartram and lives in Trumbull township, and. Charles F., who died in 1907, lived in the. town of Andover. Henry H. Kellogg, born in Trumbull township, Ashtabula county, Ohio, May 6, 1836, attended school at Newton Falls in Trumbull county and afterward became a house painter. In May of 1861 he enlisted in Loomis' Battery; Company A, First Michigan Artillery, and served as a soldier of the Civil war for three years, the first year as a bugler and the remainder 'of the time as hospital steward. Returning from the war he settled in Trumbull township, and during the five years following was engaged in a mercantile business in East Trumbull. He also served the town four and pa half years as a postmaster, while during the past twelve years he has served as a notary public and for twenty-eight years was a constable. Mr. Kellogg married first Adaline Churchill, and their'union was without issue. On the 15th of October, 1868, he married for his second wife Mary J. Carrier, who was horn on January II, 1850, a daughter of John and Mary (Burch) Carrier, and they have a son, and a daughter. The son, Max A. Kellogg, was born on the 22d of June, 1833, and now lives in :Cleveland, associated with the Bell Telephone Company. He married Lbleta Hudson, of Port Huron, Michigan. Bessie married C. W. Covell, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Mr. Kellogg is a member of the Grand Army. of the Republic, Union Post No. 483, of East Trumbull, and served the order twenty years as adjutant, one year as quartermaster and another year as the commander. Mrs. Kellogg is a member of. the Woman's Relief Corps, Union Corps No. .197, at East Trumbull, and both are acceptable members of the Church of Christ. MERTON W. CHAPIN has been a lifelong resident of Ashtabula county, and is now one of the leading farmers and business men of Lenox township. John Chapin, his father, HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1531 born at New Marlboro, Berkshire county, Massachusetts, came to Ashtabula county Ohio, in 1835, to make a home of his own in this section of the Western Reserve. In order to make the move he was obliged to purchase his time of his uncle, a prominent Massachusetts farmer. He was married to Miss Catherine Williams, in Lenox township, his wife being a Massachusetts woman, born April 20, 1821. She was brought hither by her parents when she was two years of age, and is now the oldest living settler in the township. Besides Merton' W., the following were born to Mr. and Mrs. John Chapin : Elizabeth, born May 19, 1843, who became the wife of Jerry Monroe, of Lenox township ; Alvin J., born November 3o, 1844, who married Alice E. Eldred and lives in Lenox ; George W., born January 4, 1847, who married Sophronia Pebbles ; Charlotte M., born August Io, 1848, who is a resident of Lenox, and has been twice married, first to Tyler Monroe and afterward to E. W. Root ; and Rush M., who was born September 4, 1852, married Alta Harmon, and is also living in Lenox. Merton W. Chapin, who was born September 21, 1856, attended the district school near his home, and then entered Grand River Institute at Austinburg. Since leaving the school r3om he has been engaged in agricultural pursuits, and now owns a farm of 190 acres, devoted both to dairy and general farming. At the present time Mr. Chapin is also interested in a retail lumber business. and he has served as a township trustee for five years, elected by the Republican party. He is a Master Mason, a member of the Odd Fello.ws fraternity and of the Grange. and was formerly connected with the Home Guards. On the 22d of December, 1880. Mr. Chapin married Miss Alice M. Collyer. who was born December 29, 186o, daughter of George E. and Ruth (Tompkins) Collver. The mother died in 1906 and the father is a resident of New Lyme. A daughter, Irma R . w-c born to Mr. and Mrs. Chapin on June 28, 1890. HENRY BROWN.—Prominent among the agricultural residents of Conneaut township is numbered Henry Brown, who represents one of the early families of this community. Peter Brown, his paternal grandfather, was born in Vermont in 1779, but at the age of thirty-five years he made the journey by canal to Buffalo and thence overland to Kingsville, Ohio, near which he settled on a partially cleared farm of seventy-six acres. But after a time he moved to Amboy, this state, although he subsequently returned to Kingsville, and died there at the home of his daughter, Caroline Newton, in the year of 1857, when seventy-eight years of age. He had married in Stafford, Vermont, Sarah Preston, who died in Kingsville in 1856, and they became, tne parents of the following children : Simon, Chauncy, Greenleaf (who died at the age of eighteen years), Elizabeth, Arivila and Caroline. Both Peter Brown and his wife were members of the Free Will Baptist church. Chauncy Brown, the second born son and child in the above family, was born in Stafford, Vermont, in 1811, and was twenty-two years of age when he came with his parents to Ohio. He became a tanner in Amboy, the proprietor of the Chauncy Brown Tannery, but about the year of 1855 he embarked in the fruit and 'cider business, with Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as his headquarters, and he continued in that business until his death, October 27, 1889, dying in Amboy. On the 13th of November, 1835, Chauncy Brown was wedded to Mary Hibbard, who was born in Monroe county, New York, and their only child is Henry Brown, of this review. Mrs. Brown survived her husband for over ten years, and both died in the faith of the Free Will Baptist church. Henry Brown was born in Amboy on the 25th of July, 1836, and he received his educational training in the district schools near his boyhood's home and in the Conneaut school and Kingsville Academy. His first experience as a business man was on his father's farm, but afterward he moved about considerably, buying and selling farms, until he finally located on his homestead near Amboy, where he has built a pleasant modern home. He is one of the directors of the First National Bank of Conneaut. In Bethany, New York, December 29, 1859, when he had arrived at the age of twenty-two years, Mr. Brown was married to Zoraida Stephens, a native daughter of that city, and she was twenty-three years of age at the time of her marriage. Although they have had no children of their own. Mr. and Mrs. Brown have an adopted daughter, Nellie, now the wife of Homer Woodburn, a contractor in Dayton, Ohio. Mrs. Brown received her educatibn in the Bethany (New York) Academy, and she taught school for eight years before her mar- 1532 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE riage. Mr. Brown affiliates with the Republican party, and both he and his wife are members of the Congregational church. GEORGE SOLOMON COOLEY.—Many years have passed since the Cooley family first became identified with Portage county, and in the many decades which have since come and gone they have been prominent representatives of its agricultural life. Ruben Cooley was the founder of the family in Shalersville township, and he became the father of George S. Cooley, long and prominently identified with its farming interests. The senior Mr. Cooley was born in the eastern part of the state of New York, a son of Ruben Cooley, also from that commonwealth, and moving from there to Pennsylvania the former was married to Catherine Dutter, a native of its county of Luzerne, and a daughter of Henry and Susan (Myers) Dutter, of the same state. Soon after his marriage Mr. Cooley came to Freedom township in Portage county, Ohio, arriving here in the year of 1839, and ten years later he sold the property he had purchased in that township to come to Shalersville township, where he bought a timbered farm in the southeastern part. He in time cleared and improved his land, erected a good frame residence, barns and other buildings, and he lived and labored there until called to his final rest in the year of 1885, at the age of seventy-nine years, his wife surviving him only two years and dying in 1887 at the age of seventy-eight. Of their large family of twelve children only the following are living : Henry, whose home is in Belleville, Kansas ; George S., of this review ; James H. of Akron, Ohio ; and Orlin R. and Joseph H., who are also living in Shalersville township. George S. Cooley was born at Murry in Orleans county, New York, April 10, 1835, and remaining at home with his parents until the age of twenty-six years he then bought a saw mill and rake factory in Shalersville township and continued their conduct for sixteen years. At the close of that period he bought a thirteen and a half acre farm here, and in 1872 he sold that property, and bought his present homestead of 13o acres, which was partly improved at the time of purchase. His large frame residence which was burned on February 11, 1897, was replaced two years later by a splendid new home of twelve rooms, and in addition to his own farm he also cultivates fifty acres of land belonging to his father's estate and located just across the road from his own. He follows a general line of agricultural pursuits, and is also quite extensively engaged in the raising of sheep. Mr. Cooley married on March 2, 1862, Harriet Barnes, who was born in Mesopotamia township, Trumbull county, Ohio, May 18, 184.4, a daughter of John and Sally Ann (Avery) Barnes, the father from Vermont and the mother from New York. The children of this union are : Byron W., who was born February 13, 1863, and resides in Ravenna township ; George E., who was born October 19, 1864, and died August 26, 1867 ; George Ernest, born November 11, 1870, now on the home farm. Mr. Cooley is a Democratic voter, and he has served Shalersville township twelve years as a trustee, four years as an assessor, and as land appraiser in 189o, and during many years he served on its school board, having ever been a true and earnest supporter of the cause of education. OHIO C. BARBER.—Among the honest citizens of the Western Reserve and the Buckeye state, Ohio C. Barber occupies a place of prominence and distinction, as did his father before him, and he has never been remiss in his loyalty to the great commonwealth whose name he bears.. He is president of that corporation of world wide fame, the Diamond Match Company, and controls other interests of broad scope and importance; but amid all the perplexities and exactions of the leading business enterprises with which he is identified he has remained deeply appreciative of his native city of Akron, and has liberally con- tributed to its upbuilding and progress in every sense of the word. There he continues to maintain his home and center his varied interests, being not only the head of the great match industry at. Barberton, but president of the First National Bank of Akron, the oldest institution of the kind in that city, and one of the strongest in the state. He is also a leading factor in the promotion of other well-known corporations. Ohio C. Barber was born in Akron, which was then a small village, on the 20th of April, 1841, and is a son of George and Eliza (Smith) Barber. His father was a native of Hartford, Connecticut, born on the 27th of January 1805, and was a child at the time of his parents' removal to Onondaga county, New York, where he was reared to manhood and HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1533 received the advantages of the common schools of the day. There he thoroughly learned the trade of a cooper, and when about twenty-one years of age came to Ohio, selling clocks throughout the country, and at the same time making a careful investigation of the attractions and home-making advantages of the various places which he visited on business. He finally decided that the little village of Akron, then known as Middlebury, would prove a favorable locality for a cooper shop. This enterprise he conducted until 1847, when he engaged in the manufacture of matches, in which line of industry he was one of the pioneers, not only in Ohio, but in the entire country. He began operations upon a modest scale and under conditions that did not offer more than meager business facilities, but his enterprise was successful from its inception. He not only continued the match business, but in 1852 became proprietor of a hotel in Akron, as well as served as postmaster of Middlebury. But it was his greatest honor to lay the foundation of one of the most extensive individual enterprises of the kind in the United States—a business which was virtually the nucleus of the gigantic concern now controlled by the Diamond Match Company, of which corporation his son is president. In 1862 George Barber resigned the active direction of the now extensive manufacturing business to his son, Ohio C. but upon the or- ganization of the Barber Match Company in 1868 he became its president, and continued thus until his death, which occurred on the 12th of April, 1879. He was a man of large business capacity and performance, in every way one of the foremost promoters of the industrial and commercial development of Akron, where he was known and honored as a loyal public-spirited citizen. He never sought or desired public office or notoriety, but was essentially a business man, and as such was ready to lend his co-operation in all movements tending to advance the welfare of the community in which he so long maintained his home. On the 1st of April, 183.5, was solemnized the marriage of George Barber to Miss Eliza Smith, who was born at Canton, Stark county, Ohio, January 15, 1817. They became the parents of eight children, of whom only two are now living—Ohio C., subject of this sketch, and Eleanor R., who is now the widow of Tohn K. Robinson, of Connecticut. Ohio C. Barber gained his early educational discipline in the public schools at Akron, and when but sixteen years of age became associated with the match manufacturing business established by his father. In 1862, when but twenty-one years of age, he assumed the entire management of the enterprise, which under his able and aggressive supervision, made rapid progress. In 1868, to meet the exigencies of the rapidly expanding business, the industry was incorporated, under the title of the Barber Match Company, with the following executive officers : George Barber, president ; Ohio C. Barber, secretary and treasurer, and John K. Robinson, general agent. Under this name the enterprise was continued until it became one of the most important of the kind in the country. In 1881 the Barber Company \became one of the twenty-six concerns to enter the combination known as the Diamond Match Company, and the corporation was capitalized for $2,250,000. Ohio C. Barber became the first vice president of the company and retained this office until 1888, when he became its head, as at present. The factory in Barberton is one of the largest in the combination and constitutes an industry which has magnificently contributed to the material up-building of the city. (A sketch of the place will be found in the general history of the Reserve.) Mr. Barber is also so identified with other industrial 'enterprises. as to be an acknowledged representative of the industrial power of the Western Reserve and of the middle west. With all his enormous outside interests he has never permitted his allegiance to his home city to flag or waver, and has done much to further its progress along normal lines of civic and industrial enterprise. He built and equipped, entirely at his own expense, the City Hospital at Akron, which, with the endowment made to that institution, amounted to more than a quarter of a million of dollars. He is a man of democratic views and attitude, places a true valuation upon men and affairs, and has so ordered his course in life as to retain the unbounded confidence and honor of all classes. He is one of the broadly successful men of the Middle West who has done things, unostentatiously and substantially, and has left his fame to take care of itself. Mr. Barber's wife was formerly Miss Laura L. Brown, to whom he was married October 10, 1865. Tw0 children were born of this union. Charles H., who died in infancy, and Anna Laura, now the wife of Dr. Arthur D. HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1534 Bevan, one of the leading surgeons of Chi- cago, and long a prominent member of the faculty of Rush Medical College. . FERDINAND SCHUMACHER.—The late Ferdinand Schumacher, former president of the American Cereal Company, was long identified with the great manufacturing enterprise which brought wealth and fame to the city of Akron. He was born on the 3oth of March, 1822, at Celle, Hanover, Germany, a son of F. C. and Louise Schumacher, and until he was fifteen years of age he attended school, then becoming. a clerk in a grocery store and later an employe in a sugar refinery. In 185o he emigrated to America, settling first on a farm near Cleveland, but his previous training had not been along the line of agriculture, so in 1851 he is found .at Akron engaged in a fancy goods business, while in 1856 he embarked in the business which through his enterprise developed into one of the great world industries and Won him the title of "Cereal King." Under his own name he continued in the manufacture of oat meal, pear barley and other cereal products until he consolidated with the firm of Cummins & Allen, under the style of F. Schumacher Milling Company, thus largely increasing the capacity of the mills and immediately repairing the great loss caused by the fire in 1886; which destroyed the mills and elevators at the depot. In about 1891 he consented to a further combination of interests under the great corporation known as the American Cereal Company, and was elected its president. With H. P. Crowell and Robert Stuart he continued as. the executive committee of this great concern until 1899, when he failed of re-election and gladly accepted retirement from the busy life he had led for so Many years, finding rest and quiet in his beautiful home at 258 Market Street, Akron. The American Cereal Company's head office is now located at Chicago, that city being a great center for the business, but the Akron mills are its most important property. On the 7th of October, 1851, Mr. Schumacher was married at Cleveland to Hermine Schumacher, who was born at Bevern, Brunswick, Germany, and died June 1, 1893. They had seven children, but only two survive—Louis, a resident of Akron, and the vice-president of the F. Schumacher Milling Company, and F. Adolph, who was secretary of the same company and is now envaged in business at Riverside, Iowa.. 1\,./Ir. Schumacher married for his second wife August I, 1899, Mary Zipperlen, a daughter of Dr. A. Zipperlen, of Cincinnati. Mr. Schumacher was always a valued citizen, not wholly because he busied himself in local political affairs, but because he was a man of broad views and generous inclinations, resulting in public-spirited enterprises and in liberal assistance to education, religion and charity. It was mainly through his benefactions that a number of religious edifices in the city were completed, this notably being the case in regard to the Universalist Church. By example and years of protest against the liquor evil he became known as one of the leading temperance advocates of Ohio. Time touched him but lightly, and notwithstanding his many years of intense devotion to business, with the cares that harass even the most successful, he retained his remarkable vigor almost to the time of his death, which occurred in 1907. JOSEPH A. HOWELLS, of Jefferson, for more than fifty-seven years foreman, editor and proprietor of the Ashtabula Sentinel, from June, 1852, to 1878, being his father's associate in its management, and identified with the development of the journal and with the Western Reserve for fifty-seven years, from the 29th of June, 1852, has enjoyed a longer continuous connection with one newspaper than any other man in Ohio. He was a Whig in politics before he could vote ; cast his first presidential ballot for the Free Soil (or Republican) candidates, Fremont :and Dayton, in 1856, and ever since, through his paper. and his person, has vigorously supported the party of his first choice. For more than forty years he was a Republican leader in the county and state, and October 30, 1905, was appointed American consul at Turks Islands, British West Indies, where he is still stationed. In his absence the Sentinel was conducted by his son, William Dean Howells, Jr. The Howells family is of Welsh origin, Joseph Howells, the paternal grandfather, being. a woolen manufacturer in the town of Hay, County Brecon. He married : Miss Ann Thomas, who was also born in Wales, but was reared in her uncle's family in England, where she was well educated. Eight children were born to this union. In 18o8 the parents emigrated to the United States with their family and, after residing for a year or two in New York city, moved to Virginia, and thence (180). to Steubenville, Ohio. There for many HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1535 years he held the position of expert wool sorter in the mills owned by Bazail Wells. He afterward moved to his farm in Ross county, and while residing there was mobbed by his proslavery neighbors because of his strong abolition sentiments. The feeling against him became so bitter that he moved to Hamilton, Ohio, about 1838, where he took quite an active part in politics, although he never held office. In 1844 he was chosen as an elector on the Liberty ticket, whose presidential candidates were Birney and Morris, and that year the party polled 62,300 votes. In his early life Joseph Howells was a Quaker, but as he "married out of meeting" he was dropped by the Society of Friends, and thereafter was a member of the Methodist Church. William Cooper Howells, the eldest son of Joseph and Ann (Thomas) Howells, was born in the town of Hay, County Brecon, Wales, on the 15th of May, 1807, and in the following year was brought by his parents to the United States. From early boyhood he was of a studious and literary turn, and as the most practical step in the realization of his ambitions learned the printing business. He worked both in the offices of Alexander Campbell, the founder of the present Christian Church, and of Elisha Bates, at Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, when the Quakers were being ruptured into the Orthodox and Hicksite branches. About 1828 the aspiring young man started a magazine called The Gleaner, published at Wheeling, Virginia, but as it' was not financially supported he was obliged to abandon his enterprise and return to the case as a journeyman printer. Upon the failure of his health he pursued other avocations until 1840, when he purchased the Hamilton (Ohio) Intelligencer and conducted it until 1848. In that year he refused to support General Taylor for president, on account of the latter's friendly attitude toward sl4very, and sold his newspaper plant. In 1852, with his wife and eight children, he located in Ashtabula county, where the strong anti-slavery sentiment was congenial, and bought the Ashtabula Sentinel, owned and conducted by his son and grandson until October, 1909. In 1863 he was elected to the Ohio senate by the largest majority ever given in the state to anyone but a state or national candidate. He was appointed United States consul to Quebec in 1872, and four years later .promoted to the Toronto consulate, where he remained until his resignation in 1883. In that year he moved to Virginia, but three years later returned to Jefferson, where .he died in 1894. The deceased was an honest, earnest, able man, whose influence was always for the good. As he was a pioneer in advocating the freedom of the slaves, so was he among the first to permanently protect them by providing them with the franchise. One of his first acts in the state senate, in the midst of the Civil war, was to introduce a bill, which became a law, striking the word "white" from the state statutes covering the election laws. During much of his public service he was closely associated with Joshua R. Giddings, Senator B. F. Wade and Presidents Hayes and Garfield. The influence which he exerted through the Sentinel is also felt to this day throughout the county and state. He was opposed to capital punishment and the law which practically abolishes it in Ohio may be traced, in a degree, to his influence on the public mind through his paper and his entire individuality. Joseph A. Howells is a native of St. Clairsville, Belmont county, Ohio, born on the 1st of September, 1832, the son of William C. and Mary (Dean) Howells. His mother was a native of New Lisbon, Columbiana county, Ohio, born September 5, 1812, daughter of John and Elizabeth (Dock) Dean, the father being of Irish descent and the mother of old Pennsylvania Dutch stock. Mrs. Mary Howells was also a cousin of Governor Bigler of Pennsylvania, Judge Dock of Harrisburg and Governor Bigler, of California. Although a resident of Virginia at the time of her marriage, she soon adopted the cause of the slave and did all that she could to foster the anti-slavery sentiment. As she was a wide reader, well posted on the literature of the day and a lady of strong and cultured character, her influence upon the community was decided and deep. Her death in October, 1868, at Jefferson, removed from the household a thoughtful, loving and wise mother and wife, whose memory is still a living inspiration,to her children. The influence of such high-minded and high-living parents upon the boyhood and youth of Joseph A. gave his life its unswerving tendency toward practical but superior usefulness. What, schooling he enjoyed before he was sixteen years of age he received in the public schools of Hamilton and at Professor Gile's Academy, at that place. Thereafter his education was in the printing office and in association with politicians and professional men who, in his earlier years, were prone to make the country newspaper office their favorite 1536 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE headquarters. He was, in fact, 'born in the next room to a printing office, and, as he once added, he "has never .got much further away." When his father bought the Sentinel in June, 1852, he entered it as foreman, and two years later, when he was in his twenty-second year, he bought a half-interest in the plant, and father and son conducted it together for twenty-four years. His father then offered him the full proprietorship, which he then assumed. Since that time Mr. Howells has been not only a constant and leading journalistic force in Ashtabula county, but has been prominent in the Republican politics of the state. As early as 1861 be commenced to give his valuable service in local affairs, being chosen a member of the board of education of Jefferson borough and serving thereon for more than twenty years. He was postmaster of Jefferson from March 1, 1869, to April 1, 1886, and from April 1, 1890, to April 1, 1894, and was also a member of the village council. Mr. Howells was chairman of the Republican central committee of Ashtabula county for some twelve years from 1874 and was a member of the state central committee in 1884 and 1885. In 1905 he was chosen an elector for the nineteenth congressional district of Ohio, being one of the twenty-three representatives from the state to cast its vote for president. In the same year, as stated, he was appointed, to his present post in the consular service in the British West Indies. It should also be added that in 1886 Governor Foraker appointed him a member of the board of trustees of the normal and industrial department of Wilberforce (Ohio) University, that branch of the educational work having then just been organized. Mr. Howells continued in that position for about eighteen years, during a portion of which period Governor Patteson was one. of his associates. On June 23, 1856, Mr. Howells married, at Jefferson, Miss Eliza W. Whitmore, daughter of James and Rebecca Whitmore, the ceremony being performed by Rev. William Burton, father of Senator Burton. Mrs. Howell's father was long a justice of the peace and, for eighteen years, recorder of Ashtabula county. He was also one of the original promoters of Portland (now Duluth), Minnesota. Eliza, the second daughter in the family, attended the Jefferson High School and Oberlin College. She has always been an active worker in the Congregational Church (of which her husband is also a member), and in 1878 was one of the organizers of Ihe Ladies' Literary ClaSs of Jefferson, now the oldest society in the Confederated Clubs of Ohio. Four children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Joseph A. Howells, as follows : William Dean Howells, II, was born in Jefferson, April 7, 1857, and first attended the Union and high schools of that place. After studying medicine for some time he abandoned the profession to enter the Sentinel office and journalism, being the manager of the busineSs in the absence of his father in the consular service in the West Indies. His wife was formerly Miss Alice.Pierce, and he has three children. His son is a student in the medical department of' the Ohio 'State University ; his eldest daughter is a graduate of the Jefferson Educational Institution, and a teacher in the school of which. the younger daughter is a student. Mary Elizabeth, the elder daughter, was born November 3, 1-864; married Willis Shumway, November 4, 1891, and died in March, 1902, leaving one daughter. Beatrice and Bernice, twins; were born August 14, 1869—the latter dying in infancy and the former (Beatrice) marrying Alfred W. Perlitz, an electrician at theOhio Iron Works, Youngs- town, on the 3d of July, 1907. Joseph A., Jr., was born August 23, 1878, and attended Jefferson schools and the preparatory department of the Western Reserve College at Hudson, Ohio. In 1898, at the time of the Spanish-American war, he was a member of the Fifth Ohio National Guard, and in 1903 married Miss Susan Halstead, a graduate of the Madison (Ohio) High School. GENERAL Si MON PERKINS.—Many of the prominent families of Ohio trace their ancestry to Connecticut, and this is also the case with the distinguished Perkins family. General Simon Perkins, for a long period one of the leading men of Ohio, was born at Lisbon in that commonwealth September 17, 1771, while in 1795 he is found at Oswego, New York, and in 1798 he was chosen by the Erie Land Company to act as its agent in the exploration of the Western Reserve, and while in this capacity spent his summers in Ohio. After his marriage he settled permanently at Warren, this state, and was postmaster there from 1801 to 1829, and also special agent of the government in establishing local offices and treating with the Indians. In August of .1812, as brigadier general of militia, he took HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1537 charge of the troops in northern Ohio and marched to defend the northern frontier, while at the close of the campaign in the following year he was offered by President Madison a commission as colonel in the regular army, but this military honor he declined on account of his many pressing business duties. In 1813 General Perkins organized the Western Reserve Bank and remained its president until 1836. He was a member of the Ohio Canal Fund Commission from 1826 until 1838. In 1825, in association with Pail Williams, he founded the village of Akron, while in 1831 and in connection with Judge King and Dr. Crosby, he founded that portion known as North Akron, and he donated ground for public buildings, parks, schools and churches, enriched in every possible way the young town and enjoyed passing much of his spare time there. He died at Warren on the 6th of November, 1844, aged seventy-five years, one month and nineteen days. On the 18th of March, 1804, he married Nancy Bishop, who was born at Lisbon, Connecticut, January 24, 178o, and who died at Warren April 24, 1862, aged eighty-two years and three months. Among their children was Colonel Simon Perkins, now deceased, who for many years was a leading figure in the affairs of Akron. And a grandson of General Perkins is Colonel George Tod Perkins, president of the B. F. Goodrich Company and of the Akron Rubber Company. ABEL A. BOSTWICK, of Seville, a successful and progressive citizen himself and son of a pioneer who wielded a strong and elevating influence in that section of the Western Reserve for more than half a century. He was born in the vicinity of Cleveland, Ohio, in April, 1854, and is a son of Abner Fitch and Amita Brown Bostwick. His father was a native of Franklin, Delaware county, New York. born May 24, 1824. At the age of fifteen he (Abner F.) moved with his parents to Canaan, Wayne county, Ohio, and after his marriage in 1850 settled in Parma, Cuyahoga county, that state. In 1856 he located in Lafayette township, and in 1866 moved to Westfield township, there continuing his farming .operations of the previous years. He passed his last years at Seville, where he died January 13, 1909. The only survivor of his family is a sister, Mrs. Sarah Robinson, who is residing in Bryan, Ohio, now eighty years of age. His faithful wife and three of their five children also survive him ; the widow having spent the summer of 1909 at San Jose, California. Of the children, Ella Augusta, the eldest, and Allis Elmer, the third, are deceased. Abel A. was the second born ; Mary Emeline is married to Sherman Squires and resides in San Jose, and Clara Helen, who is now Mrs. Frank Wideman, lives in Seville. The deceased and beloved father of this family was long one of the leading Baptists of Medina county. Converted at the age of seventeen years, he was baptized by Rev. Charles Morton, of Wooster, Ohio, a church being organized at . Canaan Center at the same time. Of that organization he became one of the constituent members. While living in Lafayette township he became a member of the Baptist church at Medina and remained in full communion with the organization at Seville from 1866 until his death. From the days of his youth until the frosts of old age came upon him he faithfully toiled in the Master's vineyard and was the means of bringing a goodly harvest to the Kingdom. In many places and in countless ways, his kindly presence and helping hand will be sadly missed. Abel A., of this sketch, received his education in various district and select schools, afterward assisting his father in the conduct of the home place until the elder man retired. The son remained on the old Bostwick homestead in Westfield township, and on the fine farm of 146 acres he has continued to reside and prosper. He has erected a substantial residence, commodious barns and outhouses and a modern garage. The farm has been maintained in a high state of cultivation, is well stocked with domestic animals and supplied with modern machinery and implements ; so that in everything which goes to make a modern country place the Bostwick homestead is complete. A representative farmer of Medina county, Mr. Bostwick is a director of the Savings Deposit Bank of Medina, and a man who is not only honored for his ability, but has gained numerous friends for his affability. While a Republican, he has never entered politics, and both he and his wife are connected with the Baptist church. In 1882 Mr. Bostwick married Miss Nettie Smith, of Michigan, a daughter of Charles Smith. Two children were born of this union : LaVonne and Lloyd. The mother died May 2, 1891, and on November 5, 1892, Mr. Bostwick married for his second wife Hattie Scheib, daughter of Enos Scheib. Of 1538 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE Mr. Bostwick's second marriage three children were born : Harold, and Jabez and Abner, twins. Abner died in infancy. JOB BRAZEE has lived in Ashtabula county for many years and is numbered among its agriculturists, soldiers and worthy citizens. The family was founded in Ashtabula county by his grandfather, Francis Brazee, who came from Connecticut prior to the year of 1838. He married and reared the following children : Peter, Ansori, Francis and John, and all are now dead. Anson Brazee was a minister of the Gospel. Peter became the father of Job. He followed the tilling of the soil for a livelihood, cleared his land, and was long one of the representative citizens of the community. He married Lucretia Wooden, and they became the parents of the following children: Olive, who was born in December, 1836, and now lives at Jefferson, in Ashtabula county, the wife of John Stone ; Job is mentioned below ; George, a retired wagon maker now living at Windham in Portage county, Ohio, married Celia Chapman ; Martha is deceased ; Sally married James Rose and lives in Pierpont ; Drucilla is deceased ; Peter died of sickness at Wilmington, South Carolina, during the Civil war service, and Vesta married Raymond Burr and lives in Jefferson. Job Brazee, born on the 29th of January, 1838, attended school in Pierpont township, Ashtabula county, and on the 19th of August, 1861, he enlisted in Company B, Twenty-ninth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, for service in the Civil war. After the expiration of this term he re-enlisted and served for four years lacking three weeks, and during that time he was held for two months in Belle Isle. prison at Detroit, Michigan. ' He has been a life-long tiller of the soil of Ashtabula county, and now owns a homestead of one hundred acres in Denmark township and is engaged principally in dairy farming. He is a member of the Grand Army Post and of the Republican party. Mr. Brazee married in 1869 Unice Craft, who was born August 4, 1845, and she died on the 18th of December, 1906, after many years of a happy married life. Their union was blessed by the birth of two children, a daughter and a son. The former, born January 22, 1871, married Hart Barber, and they are also living in Denmark township. The son was born in 1876 and died on the 18th of January, 1902, a young man of the highest promise and ability. HON. EDMUND B. KING.—No member of the bar of the Western Reserve stands higher both in his professional and private relations than Hon. Edmund B. King, of Sandusky. He is a native of Medina county, born at Montville July 4, 1850, and is a son of Cyrus and Harriet (Bennett) King. About nine years before his birth his father migrated from Onondaga county, New York, to Wadsworth township, Medina county, and in 1849 changed his residence to Montville. He was then a farmer in substantial circumstances; and Edmund B. was born the year after the family home was fixed at Montville. In the public and private schools of the place the boy received his education until he was fifteen years of age : spent the following four years at Medina Academy and Oberlin Academy, and one year at Baldwin University. Mr. King's professional studies were taken up at Norwalk, Ohio, in the office of Wickham and Wildman, and in August, 1873, he was admitted to the bar of Ohio. In October, 1873, he was elected prosecuting attorney of Medina county, but resigned that office in October, 1875, leaving for Sandusky, where he has since resided and been engaged in professional practice and judicial service. He has been an active Republican throughout this entire period, and in 1888-9 was selected as presidential elector by his party. In 1894 Mr. King was elevated to the bench of the sixth judicial district of Ohio, serving in that capacity for five years, when he resigned to engage in his profession and formed a partnership with W. E. Guerin, Jr., and the firm of King & Guerin continued until 1901, when R. K. Ramsey was admitted into the copartnership. Mr. Guerin withdrew in March, 1910, and the firm is now King & Ramsey. Mr. King has been for many years an active member of the American Bar Association; has served several times on the executive committee of the Ohio Bar Association, and in 1904 acted as delegate to the conference of the Universal Congress of Lawyers and Jurists which convened at St. Louis in that year. In Masonry he is. past grand commander of the Grand Commanclery of Ohio, having joined the order in 1877, and passed through all the local bodies. For many years he was also very prominent in the military matters of the state. HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1539 His record in this regard covers the years from 188o to 1897, including official rank as second lieutenant,. captain and major of the Sixteenth Regiment, Ohio National Guard. On February 26, 1874, Mr. King was united in marriage at Milan, Ohio, to Miss Emma Hackett, and a daughter and son have been born of this union. The former, Cora King (Graves), is the wife of a prosperous tobacco planter of Hatfield, Massachusetts ; the son, Clifford M. King, is a civil engineer of high standing, being a graduate of the Western Reserve University (B. A.), and of Cornell University (C. E.). For several years he was connected with the government reclamation service in the west, and in 1908-9 served as city engineer of Sandusky. At present he is engaged in private professional work. HENRY LEVI FRENCH for more than thirty years was a faithful and efficient employe of the Lake Shore Railroad Company, at Girard, Pennsylvania, and Jefferson, Ashtabula county, and was a widely-known pioneer railroad man of the Western Reserve, as well as the son of parents who were among the early colonists from the mother state of Connecticut. He was the son of Vincent and Eliza (Ray). French and his grandfather, Levi, was one of the first of the French family to settle in the Western Reserve, locating in Lenox township, Ashtabula county. The four children of Levi and Ruth (Hulbert) French were all reared in that section of the Western Reserve, the eldest, Vincent, having been born in 1812. The latter was a life-long farmer, who died at the home of his son, Henry L., in 1892. By his marriage to Miss Eliza Ray he himself became the father of Henry Levi, as mentioned ; Ella M., who married Albert T. Bushnell, of Jefferson, Ohio, but is now residing at Buffalo, New York, and George V., now a citizen of South Haven, Michigan. The late Henry Levi French was reared on a farm in Lenox township and received his education in the common schools and at Grand River Institute, Austinburg, Ashtabula county. At the age of twenty-one he abandoned the farm for a clerkship in a Jefferson grocery, but after holding that position for two years became a freight clerk for the Lake Shore Railroad at Girard, Pennsylvania, and after three years' service in that capacity was transferred to Jefferson, Ohio, as station agent at that point, to which the line had just been extended. He was Jefferson's first agent and retained the position by his faithfulness, integrity and efficiency until his death on the 29th of September, 1898. At the time of his decease, thirty-two years of his life had been spent in the employ of the Lake Shore Railroad Company, constituting a noteworthy record in the annals relating to the employes, of that corporation. On December 20, 1870, Mr. French married Miss Effie Sloat, daughter of David and Maria (Woodruff) Sloat, of Ashtabula, and one of a family of .eight children born in Rock Creek township. Of the Sloat family, only two are living—Lucien; Mrs. French's. brother, being now a resident of Rushville, Illinois ; the. deceased are Arthur, Ellen, Erland, Cassius, Nettie and Minnie. The parents of Mrs. French both died when she was a young girl. Her mother's family, the Woodruffs, were among the well-known pioneers of the Western Reserve ; so that all her connections, both by blood and marriage, bind her to those early days in the most substantial and honorable way. Her deceased husband had many warm friends, who had been attracted to him through his long railroad service and his reliability as a man. He was also a Mason of long standing, being a member of the Blue Lodge and the Chapter at Jefferson. At his death he had been active in the work of the Congregational Church for many years, and his widow and daughter (Lida Marie) are also in close affiliation with that denomination and society. The elder son, Louis V., is a telephone constructor at Ashtabula. He married Miss Grace L. Mixer, of Pierpont, and is the father of one child, Vincent Mixer French. FIRST NATIONAL AND DOLLAR SAVINGS BANKS.—On July 1, 1907, the Dollar Savings & Trust Company and the First National Bank of Youngstown were united under common ownership and management. This union brought into existence Youngstown's first dual banking institution, now known by the titles of its constituent principals—the Dollar Savings & Trust Company and the First National Bank. The principals of the institution are united through the agency of a third company, a holding trustee, the Union Safe Deposit Company, and keep their respective names and charters. The united institution is the result of several mergers effected in the natural evolution of business by and between 1540 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE banks, which in their day were well known to the people of Youngstown, and Well esteemed by them. The First National Bank, the senior principal, is through its predecessor, the old Mahoning County Bank, the oldest bank in Youngstown. The Mahoning County . Bank was organized August 7, 1850, and Judge William Rayen, founder of Rayen school, was its first president. At Judge Rayen's death, in 1854, Dr.. Henry Manning was elected president and continued in that office until June 2, 1863, when the Mahoning County Bank was closed and the First National Bank organized under the present national banking law. In the beginning, the real object of the national banking law, now lost sight of, was to provide money for the carrying on of the Civil war by furnishing a market for government bonds. At that crisis of the nation's history, it required an unusual amount of patriotism and courage to start a national, bank, but the founders of the old Mahoning County Bank were abundantly supplied with both, and the people of Youngstown proved their faith-in the new bank and the government by purchasing the stock. The First National Bank was the third bank in the United States to be Organized under the new law, and is still known as original No. 3. Dr. Manning was its first president, but resigned in 1866, on account. of his age, and was succeeded by William S. Parmelee, who resigned in 1877 on his removal to Cleveland. Mr. Parmelee was succeeded by Robert McCurdy, who was president of the bank until his death in 1904. The first, cashier of the Mahoning County Bank was Hon. Robert W. Tayler, afterwards comptroller of the United States treasury. In 1860 he was succeeded by Col. Caleb .B. Wick. John S. Edwards followed Mr. Wick, and was also the first cashier of the First National Bank when it was organized. In 1865 ,Mr. McCurdy became cashier and when he was elected president, William H. Baldwin succeeded him and held the office until his resignation in 1887. Mr. Baldwin was succeeded by Myron E. Dennison. The vice-presidents of the First National Bank have been as follows : William S. Parmelee, 1865 ; A. G. Bentley, 1866 ; Freeman O. Arms, 1868; Joseph H. Brown, 1869 ; William Powers, 1875 ; Freeman O. Arms, 478 ; Ralsa Clark, 1879; Sheldon Newton, 1880 ; W. H. Baldwin, 1889 ; Myron I. Arriis, 1901; Henry Tod and Henry M. Robinson, 1904; A. E. Adams, succeeding Henry Tod in 1908. The capital stock of the First National Bank was originally $156,000, but in 1866 it was increased by cash to $250,000, in 187o by profits to $300,000, and in 1875 by cash. to $500,000. It never passed a semi-annual dividend nor did it ever make a dividend of less than 4 per cent. After the death of Robert McCurdy—namely, March 25, 1904—the Second National Bank was merged with the First National. The former was chartered December 15, 1874, with a capital of $200,000. It started business in the Howell Block, in the room now occupied by Klafter & Sauber, but in 1878 moved into the Andrews-Hitchcock Building, where the Commercial National Bank is now located. In 1888 the Second National Bank erected its own building on the northeast corner of the public square, where the Realty. Trust Company is now now located. The first officers of the Second National Bank were,: Henry Tod, president ; T. K. Hall, vice-president ; George J. Margerum, cashier ; H. M. Garlick, teller and bookkeeper. At the time of its' merger with the First National Bank, Henry Tod was president ; Henry M. Garlick, vice-president, and R. E. Cornelius, cashier. Immediately after the merger, Mr. Garlick became president of the First National Bank and R. E. Cornelius, assistant cashier ; Myron E. Dennison, cashier, continuing in office. During the earlier period of Youngstown's industrial development, the First National Bank and the bank of Wick Brothers & Company . were among the most potent influences which made for her advancement ; were in fact indispensable factors, which furnished much of the impetus which, augmenting with time, has since carried, her to a point of, commanding prominence.. To the courage, integrity,' far-sightedness and conservatism of the men behind. these banks, moreover there is traceable much of the spirit to which today Youngstown owes her widespread reputation for sound success, financial integrity and substantial business institutions ; .to which she owes also in large part her unmarred banking record, her high standards and her broader business and public policies. HENRY MANNING GARLICK, president of the First National Bank of Youngstown, is a citizen whose life has been devoted to the interests HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1541 of the city, and whose active and striking career is identified with her most substantial progress. He was born in that city, December 28, 1848, of Richard G. and Caroline L. (Manning) Garlick. Richard, the father, came to Ohio from Vermont when about thirty-two years old, and engaged in farming and mercantile pursuits. The mother, Caroline, was a daughter of Henry Manning, one of the earliest and stanchest of Youngstown's citizens. He was president of the Mahoning County Bank, the predecessor of the First National Bank, and took a prominent part in the development of Youngstown's business interests. Richard Garlick belonged to a family of vigorous men who were powerful in whatever position they were placed. Caroline Manning was beautiful of face, figure and character. Her religious nature, her sense of justice and her determination to do her duty were so plainly written in her face that to meet her once was to realize her strength of character. She was an exceptionally conscientious soul and, living to good old age, enjoyed the prosperity and happiness of her son, Henry, and her daughter, who first married Sidney Strong and several years after his death became the vi le of Rev. Daniel H. Evans. Henry M. Garlick obtained his education in the public and high schools of Youngstown, and at the age of seventeen became bookkeeper of the Eagle Furnace Company, with which he remained for about three years. For a year or more thereafter he conducted a coal mine at Brazil, Indiana, but this venture not proving sufficiently remunerative, he returned to Youngstown, and soon after assisted in organizing the Second National Bank, of which ne was subsequently cashier for twenty-five years. On May 3, 1904, this institution was consolidated with the First National Bank, and Mr. Garlick was elected president, which office he has since held. In the early '80's Mr. Garlick was president of the Youngstown Malleable Iron Company, and so continued through its business life. About this time he was also .a partner in the hardware firm of J. H. Morris & Company, and at the organization of the business as a stock company, un'der the style of the Morris Hardware Company, was elected its president, serving thus until 1905. He was also interested in the firm of Lloyd, Booth & Company, which was afterward incorporated as the Lloyd-Booth Company. This in turn was merged into the United Engineering & Foundry Company. In 1887 Mr. Garlick. assisted to organize the Dollar Savings & Trust Company, of which he has been vice president for a number of years. In 1901, with G. M. McKelvey and A. E. Adams, backed by Youngstown capital, he established the Standard Table Oilcloth Company, one of the country's flourishing industries. The company named was formed by the consolidation of concerns widely scattered, and the organization is now known as the Standard Oilcloth Company, with a capital stock of $6,000,000 equally divided between preferred and common. Mr. Garlick was married April 5, 187o, to Sarah Stambaugh Ford, daughter of James H. and Arabella . (Stambaugh) Ford, of Youngstown. Arabella Ford was one of the best citizens Youngstown ever had. Her brilliant husband, James, died early and left her to rear and educate her four children. This she did and had time to do her duty in the community. She worked for church and for charity, and to her efforts was due largely the founding of the Youngstown City Hospital. In this enterprise she was ably assisted by her brother, John Stambaugh. Sarah was born in Youngstown on the old Tod homestead, Brier Hill, her parents having come to this city from Akron, Ohio. She possesses the wit of her father, and this fact, coupled with her generous sympathy for those in trouble or misfortune, makes her most popular in her social circle. Mr. and Mrs. Garlick have two children, Richard, treasurer of the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company, and Julia G., wife of William W. Bonnell. The grandchild of Mr. and Mrs. Garlick, Sarah Crea Bonnell, is connected by blood with more of the old and influential families of Youngstown than any one of her generation. On her father's side were the Wicks and Bonnells ; on the mother's, the Tads, Stambaughs, Mannings and Garlicks. HON. JAMES KENNEDY, representative of the eighteenth congressional district, has been a member of Ohio's delegation to the lower house of Congress since 1902. He is one of the most popular political leaders that Mahoning county has ever had. It was the strength of this county behind him that gained his victory in convention during his first campaign, the eighty-nine delegates from Mahoning acting as a unit throughout the long struggle that characterized the Republican dis- 1542 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE trict convention held in Salem in July, 1902. Finally, on the 208th ballot, on July 23, James Kennedy was declared nominated, and since that notable victory his position in the district has never been seriously assailed, except in the nominations which took place at Youngstown and Salem, which is historic. The convention adjourned without choice being made, after ballotting two weeks, and a primary election was called and Mr. Kennedy was then easily successful in winning his third nomination. At his first election he carried every county in the district by large majorities, having a plurality of 3,700 votes in Mahoning, and of 11,875 votes in the district. Mr. Kennedy's election to Congress was a tribute to a distinguished lawyer and an able leader in public affairs. He has for thirty years. been a prominent attorney of Mahoning county bar. He was born at Poland, Ohio, September 3, 1853, and is a member of one of the most noted families of the Western Reserve. His parents, Thomas W. and Margaret (Truesdale) Kennedy, were both born in Mahoning county. In the history of the iron and steel industry of eastern Ohio the name of Thomas W. Kennedy is one of the most conspicuous in the early days of the industry. He was the builder of the "old' Yellow Creek blast furnace in Mahoning, county. With the exception of James, whose prominence has been achieved in the field of law and politics, all of his sons have contributed to the fame of the family in industrial fields. Julian, the eldest, surprised the ruler of the Russians by his feats of civil engineering in that empire, and Hugh T. and Walter also made reputations for themselves in the same profession both in foreign countries and at home. Walter became chemical director of iron and steel and also a mine inspector in the Chinese Empire, and subsequently was made first secretary of the Chinese Imperial Railway. John is superintendent of the great iron works at Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, Samuel is superintendent of the Iroquois Iron Works at Chicago, and Thomas W. fills a similar, position in Dubous, Pennsylvania, Altogether there were eight children in the family, seven sons and one daughter. The latter is Mrs. Rachel Becker, who still lives in the old family homestead. While a boy at Poland James Kennedy's natural inclinations seemed to be similar to those of his brothers, but his attention was finally turned to the law. From the country schools he became a student at Poland Seminary, where William McKinley had also gone to school. He was graduated from Westminster College at New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, with the class of 1876, and won the distinction of being one of the best debaters and orators ever produced in the institution. These talents made natural a choice of the bar as his , profession, and he pursued his law studies under General T. W. Sanderson and was admitted to the Mahoning bar in 1879. He rapidly attained high standing in practice. For some years he was associated in practice at Youngstown with William A. Maline and later with Thomas E. Connell. Almost from the beginning of his active career he rendered service to the Republican party, and with the natural growth of his influence and ability in politics he became the uanimous choice of his party in this county for his present office. Mr. Kennedy is a member of the Ohio State and Mahoning County Bar associations and of the Republican Club of Youngstown. He affiliates with the B. P. O. Elks. He married, in 1884, Miss Phebe Irwin. Her father, Henry Irwin, vcias an old resident of Newton Falls. Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy have one daughter, Grace. Their Youngstown residence is at 13o Madison avenue. RUSSELL K. RAMSEY has attained prestige and success in the practice of law in Sandusky. He is a member of the professional firm of King & Ramsey, which is largely interested in corporate practice, representing to a very large extent local manufacturing and public service corporations; numbering among others the Sandusky Gas and Electric Company, the Pennsylvania Company, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company and the local lines of electric railway. And in this particular class of work Mr. Ramsey has taken a very active part. He is a director of The Cedar Point Resort Company and The Inter State Ice Company, a trustee of the Sandusky Business Men's Association and interested in a number of local corporations. Russell K. Ramsey was born on May 27, 1878, at Columbus, Ohio, born to Gustavus F. and Margaret A. (Young) Ramsey. His father his been in the telegraph service of the Pennsylvania railroad for more than thirty-five years, and is one of the oldest in point of service and one of the best known representatives of that company in Columbus, Ohio. The son continued a resident of the city of HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE -1543 his birth until July of 19oo, and was a member of the class of 1898 in the arts course of the collegiate department of the Ohio State University, and of the law class of the same institution of 1900. He was admitted to the state bar in May of the latter year, and at once became associated in the practice of law with the Hon. Edmund B. King, who had then just resigned from the circuit bench, and with the Hon. W. E. Guerin, Jr., later a representative from his district to the state legislature. In 1904 Mr. Guerin left for Oregon, and that law partnership was succeeded by the present firm of King & Ramsey, and while there have since been several changes of temporary duration in the office, the firm remains at the present time as it was organized in 1904. Mr. Ramsey in politics is a Republican, is a member of the Phi Delta Theta, a college fraternity, and is a thirty-second degree and a Knight Templar Mason. On September 25, 1901, he was married to Miss Florence L. Samuel, of Columbus. Her father, Mr. Samuel E. Samuel, of Welsh extraction and who died in 1890, was for many years a wholesale druggist in that city, but in later years retired from business and devoted his time to looking after his own financial interests and to the handling of real estate. Mr. Samuel was an able business man, of irreproachable reputation and character, one of the substantial citizens of Columbus and one who aided largely in the development and growth of that city. HENRY C. STRONG.—A sterling scion of one of the old and honored pioneer families of the Western Reserve, of which he is a native son, Henry C. Strong has well upheld the prestige of the name which he bears, and as a loyal and progressive citizen and substantial business man he has been prominently identified with the best interests of the fine old Reserve for many years. He is now living in the city of Sandusky, where he has been president and treasurer of the Ohio Motor Company from the time of its organization. For many years he was engaged in the wholesale grocery business in Newark, this state, whence he removed to Sandusky in 1893. He was born in Groton township, Erie county, Ohio, on October 4, 1841, and is a son of Lyman E. and Calista Lucinda (Nirris) Strong, concerning whom more specific mention will be made in another paragraph. The lineage of the Strong family in Amer- Vol. III-18 ica is traced back to Elder John Strong, who was a native of England and a scion of staunch English ancestry whose record is authentically traced for many generations in the "right little, tight little isle." On March 20, 1630, Elder John Strong sailed from Plymouth, England, for America, and he disembarked at Nantasket (Hull), Massachusetts, on the 3oth of the following May. He first settled at Dorchester, of which town he was one of the founders, as was he later of Hingham and Taunton; Massachusetts; Windsor, Connecticut, and Northampton, Massachusetts. About 1645 he removed to Windsor, Connecticut, but in 1659 he returned to Massachusetts and established his residence in Northampton. He was a man of strong individuality and much intellectuality, so that he was well fitted for leadership in the social and public affairs of the various communities in which he resided for varying intervals. He was a tanner. by trade, through which he gained decisive prosperity. He was the first ruling elder in the church at Northampton, and was ordained as such on June 24, 1663. He was made a freeman, of both Boston and Plymouth colonies and represented Taunton as deputy to the general court in Plymouth for several years. He died at Northampton on April 14, 1699, and at the time of his demise he had eighteen children, 114 grandchildren and thirty-three great-grandchildren—a total of 163 living descendants. His first wife, whose name is not a matter of record, died on shipboard on the voyage to America. For his second wife he married Abigal Ford, daughter of Thomas Ford, of Dorchester, Massachusetts. Thomas Strong, son of John and Abigal (Ford) Strong, was born about 1633 and died, in Northampton, Massachusetts, October 3, 1689, when about fifty-six years of age. On December 5, 1650, he married Mary Hewett, and after her death he married Rachel Holton,. on October 10, 1671. He was a member of the Connecticut militia, having served as a trooper under Major Mason in 1658, at Windsor. Joseph Strong, son of. Thomas and Rachel (Holton) Strong, was born December 2, 1672. In 1694 he married Sarah Allen. He was familiarly known as Justice Joseph Strong. In 1716 he removed with his family from Northampton to Coventry, Connecticut, where he served as town treasurer, justice of the peace and selectman. He was the first representative of Coventry in the colonial legis- 1544 - WESTERN RESERVE HISTORY OF THE lature, to which he was elected for fifty-two consecutive terms. Deacon Phineas Strong, son of Justice Joseph Strong and Sarah (Allen) Strong, of Coventry, Connecticut, was born about 1704. On November 5, 1724, was solemnized his marriage to Mary Parker,. daughter of Deacon Thomas Parker. He was a successful farmer in Coventry, was elected to the general assembly thirty-eight times, served as selectman for six years, was incumbent of the office of justice of the peace for many years, and for a protracted period was a deacon of the church in Coventry. Ozias Strong, son of Phineas and Mary (Parker) Strong, was born September 3, 1734, and on August 9, 1757, he married Susannah West. daughter of Pelatiah and Elizabeth (Lathrop) West,. of Tolland, Connecticut. He died in Homer, Cortland county, New York, November 21, 1807. Major Joseph Strong, son of Ozias and Susannah (West) Strong, figures as the founder of the Strong family in Ohio. He was born March 13, 1765, and on February 13, 1792, he married Chloe Cogswell, of Lanesboro, Massachusetts. She died July. 24, 1799, and on October 24, 1799, he married Lucy Elderkin, daughter. of Captain Vine Elderkin ,and Lydia (White) Elderkin, of Manlius, New York, whither they removed from Windham, Connecticut. Major Strong' served twenty-eight months and twenty-eight days as a valiant soldier in the war of the Revolution. In 1787 he removed from Massachusetts to Great Bend, Pennsylvania, from which place he later removed to Fabius, New York. From the latter place he removed to Manlius, that state, where he continued his residence until 1813. in which year he came with his family to the Western Reserve and established his home in Lyme township, Huron county, where he became one of the first settlers. He became a man of prominence and influence in the pioneer community and served for some time as judge of the court of common pleas of Huron county. He secured a large tract of land in this county and reclaimed much of the same to cultivation. He continued to maintain his home in Lyme until his death, which occurred on March 31, 1835. Lyman Elderkin Strong, son of Major Joseph and Lucy (Elderkin) Strong, was born at Manlius, Onondaga county, New York, on June 19, 1802, and thus was about eleven years of age at the time of the family removal to Ohio, in 1813. He became a successful merchant and farmer at Lyme, Huron county, and later at Plymouth, Richland county, where his death occurred in 1889. On May 1, 1831, was solemnized his marriage to Miss Calista Lucinda Nims, who was born April 3, 1812, at Shelburn, Massachusetts, and who was a daughter of Elihu and Zilpha (Long) Nims, of English ancestry. Mrs. Strong was summoned to the life eternal in 1891, and both she and her husband were devout and earnest church members. They lived lives of usefulness and honor and their names merit an enduring place on the roll of those who contributed their quota to the social and material development and progress of the historic old Western Reserve. Henry Clay Strong, whose name initiates this review, was the fourth in order of birth of the five children of Lyman E. and Calista Lucinda (Nims) Strong, and the date and place of his birth have been duly noted in the opening paragraph of this article. Of the children one son and one daughter are now living (19I0). Mr. Strong was afforded the advantages of the common schools of Plymouth, Richland and. Huron counties, Ohio. He was engaged in clerking at the time of the outbreak of the Civil war. His intrinsic loyalty and patriotism were significantly manifested when in the summer of 1861 he tried to enlist under the first call for three years' service, but failed to pass the surgeon's examination. He enlisted May 28, 1862, in Company B, Eighty-eighth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, for three months' service, and was appointed first corporal. At the expiration of his term .of enlistment he re-enlisted as a member of Company D, Hoffman Batallion, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and was appointed second sergeant. In December, 1863, the Hoffman Batallion was enlarged to a regiment, the One Hundred and Twenty-eighth, O. V. I., and be was appointed commissary sergeant of the regiment. On May 9, 1864, he was commissioned first lieutenant and regimental quartermaster; He served with the regiment and on detached duty until the close of the war. He was mustered out at Camp Chase, Columbus, Ohio, July 13, 1865. and duly received his honorable discharge. He is affiliated with both the Grand Army of the Republic and the military order of the Loyal HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1545 Legion of the United States, and has ever shown a deep interest in his old comrades in arms. After the close of the war Mr. Strong located at Sandusky, and in December, 1865, he was appointed paymaster for the Sandusky, Dayton & Cincinnati Railroad Company, with headquarters at Sandusky. From July, 1867, until January, 1874, he was engaged as a traveling salesman, representing a wholesale lumber house in Sandusky. On January 1, 1874, he became a partner with John S. Fleek in a well established wholesale grocery business in Newark, Ohio. This business was carried on with marked success until January i. 1903, when the firm of Fleek, Strong & Company was dissolved, Mr. Strong having been the senior partner for the last ten years. His impaired health made it necessary for him to retire from active business. He has since given his attention mainly to the supervision of his various capitalistic and property interests and in 1897 he became one of the interested principals in the organization and incorporation of the Ohio Motor Company, of Sandusky, of which he has since been president and treasurer and to the administration of whose business he devotes much of his time. This company is engaged in the manufacturing of gas and gasoline engines and represents one of the important industrial concerns of Sandusky, in which city Mr. Strong has maintained his home since 1893, as already noted in this context. Mr. Strong is known as a progressive and public-spirited citizen and his course in life has been so guided and governed as to gain and retain to him the inviolable confidence and esteem of all who know him. In politics, though ne,,zr a seeker of public office, he accords a staunch allegiance to the Republican party, and both he and his wife hold membership in the Protestant Episcopal church. On September 21, 1865, at Sandusky, Ohio, was solemnized the marriage of Henry C. Strong to Miss Mary Harper, who was born and reared in Erie county, Ohio, and who is a daughter of Rice and Susannah (Montgomery) Harper. Her father served as draft commissioner during the Civil war, was clerk of the courts of Erie county for a period of fifteen years and was numbered among the representative members of the bar of the county. He was a grandson of Captain Alexander Harper, who was born on February 2, 1744, in Middletown, Connecticut. In 1754 he accompanied his parents on their removal to Cherry Valley, Otsego county, New York, where he was .reared to manhood. In 177o Captain Harper removed to Delaware county, N6v York, and he served as a valiant soldier of the Continental army in the war of the Revolution. In 1777 he received commission as second lieutenant and in 178o he was made captain of his company. On April 7, 1780, he was captured by the Indians under Captain Brant. He ran the gauntlet and met the trying ordeal bravely and successfully, as he made his escape to Fort Niagara, where he was given protection by the British officers. Later he was again captured by the British, and he was taken in irons to Quebec, where he was imprisoned for a time and then placed on a prison ship. He was released in 1783, after having been held in capicity for two years and eight months. In June, 1798, this gallant patriot removed to the Western Reserve and settled in Harpersfield township, Ashtabula county. He was one of the first to there establish a home and he succeeded in reclaiming a considerable tract of land from the wilderness prior to his death. Henry C. and Mary (Harper) Strong became the parents of one child, Harper Lyman Strong, who was born on May 8, 1880, and who died on April 9 of the following year. On June 2, 1909, they legally adopted William Henry Spencer, a son of Mr. Strong's sister, and he has since borne the family name of Strong. Williani Henry Spencer Strong was born at Plymouth. Ohio, on July 10, .1869, and is a son of George Byron . Spencer and Sarah King (Strong) Spencer, the latter of whom is a daughter Of Lyman E. and Calista Lucinda (Mims) Strong, previously mentioned in this article. William H. S. Strong was afforded the advantages of the public schools of Plymouth, Ohio, and thereafter continued his studies in the Ohio State University, from which he graduated in 1891, with the degree of Ph. G. He is now secretary and assistant treasurer of the Ohib Motor . Company, of which his foster father is president and treasurer, as .stated in a preceding paragraph. On October 25, 1893. he was united in marriage to Miss Rena LaDow, daughter of Aipos and Lozina (Roaks) LaDow, of Plymouth, Ohio, and the two children ofthis union are: Mary Spencer Strong, born April 9, 1903 ; and George Henry Spencer Strong, born March 16, 1906. 1546 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE THOMAS MORRISON SLOANE, the oldest son of Hon. Rush R. and Sarah (Morrison) Sloane, late of Sandusky was born July 28, 1854, in Sandusky, Ohio, where he received his earliest education. Having completed the course of study in the Sandusky schools he in the fall of 1869 entered the Episcopal Academy at Cheshire, Connecticut, and in September, 1870, entered the Exeter Phillips Academy, at Exeter, New Hampshire, to prepare for college, while in June, 1873, he was graduated from that institution. In the following September he entered Harvard College, where he was graduated with the degree of A. B. in June, 1877. He subsequently studied law for a year in the office of H. and. L. H. Goodwin, in Sandusky, and in the fall of 1878 entered the law department of the University. of Michigan at Ann Arbor, from which he was graduated with the degree of LL. B. in the spring of 1880. In May, 1880, having passed successfully the examinations before the Supreme Court of Ohio, he was admitted to the Ohio bar. He has since been actively engaged in the practice of his chosen profession in Sandusky for six years, having been in partnership with E. B. King, the remainder of the time being alone. Judge Sloane has been prominent for many years in the leading affairs of the city, his influence being felt in educational, business, social and political circles. For two years he was secretary and treasurer and a director of the Sandusky Tool Company ; was for two years president of the city council, and served as a member of the Sandusky Board of Education, resigning the position on being elected judge. In November, 1905, he was elected judge of the Probate Court of Erie county, and served with such ability that in November, 1908, he was re-elected to the same office. The judge is very active in church work, and since 1881 has been a member of the vestry of Grace church parish in Sandusky and is now the senior warden. He is secretary and treasurer of the Samaritan Hospital and a member of its board of managers. Judge Sloane is a member of the standing committee of the diocese of Ohio, of which diocese he has been chancellor since 1895 and has been a deputy to the general conventions since 1895. He is a member of the Church Club of Cleveland. Socially the judge belongs to the Sunyendeand Club, of Sandusky, of which he was president for two terms and for years served on its board of trustees. He also belongs to the Men's Literary Club, and was formerly a member of the Harvard Club of New York. Judge Sloane also belongs, to the Business Men's Association of Sandusky, .,of which he is one of the directors ; and for thirteen years he was connected with the Ohio National Guard, the last six years of the time serving as adjutant of the Sixteenth Regiment of Infantry. On June 22, 1881, at Sandusky, Ohio, Judge Sloane was united in marriage with Sarah Maria Carswell, a daughter of Pitt and Mary Townsend Cooke, Rev. Louis S. Osborne officiating. The judge and Mrs. Sloane have two children, namely; Rush Richard, .born October 25, 1884, named for his grandfather, was graduated from Harvard University with the class of 1908; and Thomas Morrison, Jr., born January 14, 1893, who is preparing for Harvard University at Milton Academy in Milton, Massachusetts. CLARK CENTER deserves mention among the honored pioneers of Sandusky who took an active part in much of its early and subsequent development and among those whose citizenship have proved an honor to its name. He had his nativity in Wayne county, New York, September 3, 1833, the youngest of the nine children born to James H. Center from Lyons, that state. The mother died when this son was but three years of age, and shortly after her death, in about the year of 1836, the father came with his children to Ohio, journeying by boat to Buffalo, New York, and thence by team to their destination in Greenfield township, Huron county, Ohio, where James H. Center, the father, spent the remainder of his life" and died. The farm which he selected was on Huron river, and he continued its cultivation until his life's labors were ended. The son Clark after their arrival in Ohio was hired out to a farmer by the month, thus continuing for a number of years, and finally he learned the machinist's trade and came to Sandusky in 1854. Here he followed his trade, working by the day until appointed a foreman of a shop, and after the failure of the firm with which he was connected in 1857 he started a shop of his own and conducted it until 186i. This year marked the opening of the war between the north and the south, and, selling his shop, Mr. Center raised a company, first obtaining his commission from the U. S. government, which was dated September 3, 1861, HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1547 and he succeeded in raising Company I of the Ohio Volunteer Cavalry and was made its first lieutenant. Leaving with his command for Camp Denison they were stationed there for a time, were then in Cincinnati, next went down the river to Louisville, and then started on the march with horses and wagons through the country. Company I was composed of recruits from Erie, Huron and Ottawa counties, and some from Shelby, and it was organized entirely through the efforts of Mr. Center. Some time later he was stricken with typhoid fever and finally given up for dead and taken home, but in time sufficiently recuperated to rejoin his company in the mountains of Tennessee, although he was soon discharged on account of disability. He then re-enlisted in the 100-day service and was detailed with his command to guard the city of Washington. After the close of the war Mr. Center returned to Sandusky and again resumed the machinist's trade, opening a place of his own, and he has ever since retained an interest in the business. In 1872 he was appointed a revenue collector by the L. S. government, and during his four years' incumbency of that office collected $1,000,000 of revenue each year. Elected in 1868, he served twelve years as a councilman, and he also has the honor of organizing the first police force in Sandusky, the force having been organized with five men, and he has held many other positions of honor and trust in his home city. He always supported the Republican ticket until Bryan was nominated for president, for whom he voted twice, but voted for Taft in 1908. He has proved an efficient local worker for the party's cause. Mr. Center is honored in Sandusky as one of its pioneers and as one of its true and worthy citizens. ISAAC D. TUTTLE.—When it is stated that Mr. Tuttle was a member of a family whose name has been identified with the history of Portage county for more than a century it will be readily understood that the record dates back to the early pioneer epoch in the fine old Western Reserve. The second white family to make settlement in what is now Palmyra township, Portage county, was that of which Isaac D. Tuttle was a scion in the third generation, and by virtue of his ancestral prestige as well as by reason of his high personal standing as a representative citizen of his native county is he eminently entitled to consideration in this work, dedicated to the Western. Reserve and its people. He resided in the attractive little city of Kent, and in addition to being a prominent and extensive contractor was also vice-president of the Kent National Bank. The Tuttle family traces its genealogy back through a long line of stanch English stock, and the original orthography of the name was Tottle, derived, according to mythological tradition, from the name of a son of one of the gods who held. sway on the heights of Mount Olympus. The American branch was founded by three brothers of the name who came to the new world in the first half of the seventeenth century and established homes in New England, where was cradled so much of our national history. The generous old colony of Massachusetts figures as the original abiding place of the ancestors of Mr. Tuttle. Isaac Dexter Tuttle was born in Palmyra township, .Portage county,. Ohio, on the 1st of October, 1849, and was a son of Isaac Tuttle, who was born in the same township, on the 17th of October, 1816—one of the first white children to be ushered into the world in that section of the county. Isaac Tuttle was a son of John Tuttle, who was born in Massachusetts April 8, 1763, and who came to Ohio from that state in 1805, to number himself among the pioneers of the Western Reserve. After making the long and weary journey to Ohio, which was then considered on the very frontier of civilization, he located in Palmyra township, Portage county, where he secured a large tract of heavily timbered land and essayed the herculean task of reclaiming a farm from the wilderness. Thus from the year 1805 has the name of Tuttle been linked with the history of this favored section of the WeStern Reserve, and the name has ever stood exponent of sterling integrity and of productive activity in connection with the industrial and civic life of the community. None more than the Tuttles merit the title of founders and builders of Portage county. John Tuttle gave his attention to the work of the pioneer farm with all energy and ability, and became one of the influential men in the community in which he was the second white settler. At the inception of the war of 1812 he enlisted for service, and he thereafter took part in the various operations of the military forces in this section of the state. He and his faithful wife lived up to the full tension of the pioneer days and continued to reside on their homestead farm until their death. Their names have an enduring place on the 1548 - HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE roll of those who assisted in laying. broad and deep the foundations upon which has been reared one of the most opulent and attractive counties of the Western Reserve. Isaac Tuttle, father of the late Isaac D. Tuttle, was born on the old homestead just mentioned, and there was reared to maturity under the environments and conditions marking the pioneer era. His scholastic opportunities were confined to the primitive subscription schools and were limited to a degree, owing to the very exigencies of time and place. The major portion of his active career was marked by close association with the great basic industry of agriculture, and it was his to attain to prestige as one of the representative citizens of his native township and county. In Ravenna, this county, August 27, 1840, was solemnized his marriage to Miss Martha Lena Glass, who was born at Beaver, Columbian county, Maryland, October 12, 1820, and the young couple then located in the little village of Palmyra, where they remained until 1867, and where Mr. Tuttle followed the vocation of carpenter and contractor. In the year last mentioned he removed to a farm a half mile south of Palmyra Center, where he passed the residue of his life, and where he died at the venerable age of eighty-four years. On the same homestead occurred the death of his'wife, who passed away at the age of eighty-seven years, five months and five days. They lived lives of signal honor and usefulness, and their memories are revered by all who came within the sphere of their gracious influence. They became the parents of ten children, whose names are entered in order of birth : Amy, Martha, Emeline, Lester, Isaac Dexter, Francis, Lafayette, Tibbals, Mary and Oliver. Isaac Dexter Tuttle, who was commonly designated by his second name, Dexter, gained his early educational discipline in the common schools of his native township of Palmyra, and from his boyhood he assisted his father in the work of the home farm and also in carpenter and stone work, in which he became a competent artisan. At the age of twenty-one years he began his independent, business career by identifying himself with railroad work, in the capacity of stone mason, and he followed this vocation until 1882, when he engaged in contracting for the construction of railroad bridges. His first contract was for the building of a bridge in the village of Kent, for the Pittsburg, Cleveland & Toledo Railroad, now a part of the Baltimore & Ohio system. He continued in contract work of this order during the long intervening period of more than a quarter of a century, within which his operations had been extensive, involving the handling of many important contracts. He completed contracts reaching as high a figure as $100,000, and his record was one notable for its fidelity to terms of contract and for marked executive and administrative ability. He gained prestige as an honorable and progres sive business man, and his success, which was pronounced, represents the direct results of his own efforts. He maintained his home in the city of Kent since 1884, and was one of the chief stockholders of the Kent National Bank, of which he was vice-president. As a citizen he was essentially loyal and public-spirited, and while he never consented to become a candidate for public office he accorded a stanch allegiance to the. Republican party, though he was reared in the faith of the Democratic party. He was a man of broad practical information and alert mentality, genial and kindly in his intercourse with his fellow men, and one of the popular citizens of the county which was ever his home and in which the family name is one of the most honored. Mr. Tuttle attained .to the chivalric degrees in the Masonic fraternity, in which he was identified with Akron Commandery, Knights Templars, at Akron, and was also a member of Al Koran Temple, Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Cleveland. He died March 5, 1909. In 1873 Mr. Tuttle was united in marriage. to Miss Phoebe Olmstead, who died in 1876. January 25, 1884, Mr. Tuttle wedded Miss Frankie Newnham, and to them were born two children, Isaac Leigh, who has taken up his father's work, and Harriet Ruth, who is attending high school at Kent. Mrs. Peter Boettler was a daughter by the first marriage. SAMUEL J. CATHERMAN is Sandusky's oldest railroad mechanic, and to him also belongs the honorable distinction of inventing the present form of passenger cars. His name is ineffaceably traced on the pages of the city's history, and his influence here has been far-reaching and effective, his life's span covering an era of splendid achievements. He well remembers the day, seventy-five years and more ago, when the first engine was put together in the old shops of the Mad River Railroad in this city, and the engine was the "Sandusky," the first ever run west of the. HISTORY OF THE WESTERN RESERVE - 1549 Allegheny mountains and the first in the world, so history tells, that was equipped with a steam whistle. During his association with the old Mad River shops little side door cars, much resembling the present clay box cars, were used on all steam roads, and to the general overseer. Gregg, Mr. Catherman suggested the idea of building a car with doors on the ends and reversible seats, and the idea appealing to Mr. Gregg, Mr. Catherman was instructed to go ahead and design such a car, and from the coaches designed by him and built at the Mad River shops the present clay luxurious coaches had their origin. Mr. Catherman was born in Union county, Pennsylvania, in 1817, a son of George and Philadelphia (Jones) Catherman, the father horn in Union county and the mother in Philadelphia. At the age of fifteen the son Samuel was bound out to David Moore to learn the carpenter's trade, and the young lad's association with him continued through seven years, and after the third year he had control of all the work. After a time he returned to Pennsylvania for his mother, his sister and brother, and brought them to Sandusky, makin; the journey in a covered wagon. He subsequently had charge of the work of Mr. White. a carpenter, for three years, and then becoming a contractor, on his own account he continued along that line for forty years, Laurence Cable being his first partner, and one of their first contracts was the construction of 2,000 reapers, known as the Hero reaper and invented by a Mr. Henderson. This contract was received in the spring of 1856, and in the following fall they were warded the contract for building the Washgton street pavement; the partnership being dissolved. when that work was completed. Mr. Catherman built some twenty-two lime-kilns and many residences, and later assumed the contract for the building of the cribbing for the,Mad River Railroad Company in the bay at the east and west ends of the city of Sandusky. His next contract was the building of the Bay Bridge, in which he employed some 300 men, and that work gained for him the reputation of performing the fastest work of its kind ever accomplished. It being necessary to have an engine and two flat cars at Danbury, he loaded the engine on the two cars and towed them across the bay on a scow and unloaded them, all this done in a single. day. His work was not always quickly, but well done, and he gained a wide reputation in his line. In 1844 Mr. Catherman wedded Clarissa Gregg, a daughter of Benjamin and Clarissa (Hibbard) Gregg, the father born in New Hampshire and the mother in Vermont. They came to Sandusky during an early period in the city's history, and their daughter Clarissa was born here in the year of 1823. Six children blessed this marriage union, and four are yet living, but the wife and mother is deceased, dying in 1907, after many years of happy married life, leaving the companion of so many years to continue the remainder of life's earthly pilgrimage alone. He has always supported the principles of the Republican party, casting his first presidential vote for General Harrison. He is a member of the Methodist church. LAURENCE CABLE.—The name of Laurence Cable is revered and honored in Sandusky. The city was his home for many years, and these were years of purposes well directed and years of far-reaching influence which affected for good many of its institutions. He was born in the village of Siegen, Alsace-Lorain, Germany, but which was at that time French territory. He was born in the year of 1824, and in the spring of 1843, to avoid being conscripted into the French army, he left this native place for America, while in the spring of 1844 he arrived in Sandusky He had previously learned the cabinet maker's trade, and he continued at the work here until in the fall of 1846 he went to Washington, Indiana, to visit a brother who had been in America some time. Realizing the advantages of an education as well as the advantages to be derived from a proper use of the English language this brother advised young Laurence to go to school, and the latter accordingly matriculated in Notre Dame University at South Bend, Indiana, he being able to pay his own way through school through work at his trade, and he continued in college until the spring of 1847. Mr. Cable then returned to Sandusky on a visit, but was prevailed upon by his acquaintances to remain, and in the spring of 1848 he married Miss Josephine Zuercher and returned to Washington, Indiana, where his young Wife died in 1849 of cholera. There was one child born of the union, a daughter whom they named Josephine, and she is now Mrs. Alex