1878 History
of
Ashtabula Co., Ohio
with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of its' Pioneers and Most
Prominent Men. Philadelphia Williams Brothers 1878 256 pgs.
ALSO NOTE: I will transcribe biographies upon request. Please
state the County and State in the Subject line of the email. ~ SW
BIOGRAPHIES
Hon. D. C. Allen
Conneaut, Ohio |
HON.
DANIEL C. ALLEN. Among those who are widely known to
and highly esteemed by the people of this county is he whose name
heads this sketch. Prominently connected with the material
interests of the county, and especially of his own township, which
he labored in a signal manner to promote; occupying a position as
the editor of an influential newspaper, which, through many years,
carried his name, his words, and his influence to the firesides of a
large number of residents in the county; stanch and persistent in
the advocacy of measures calculated to improve the habits and morals
of his fellow-men; his has been a career of which any citizen might
well feel proud.
Mr. Allen was born in Sommer Hill, Cortland
county, New York, January 10, 1818. He died in Conneaut,
Ashtabula County, Ohio, March 5, 1878. When fifteen years of
age he commenced to learn the printers trade at Cortland, New York,
and in 1837 came to Conneaut, Ohio, and began work in the Gazette
office. In the following January he associated himself with a
Mr. Finch, and began the publication of the only daily
paper ever published in Ashtabula County. It was called The
Budget. It was devoted chiefly to news relating to the
troubles in Canada at that time. Mr. Allen, as
soon as navigation opened, walked to the harbor—two and a half
miles—every evening to gather the latest intelligence, upon the
arrival of the daily steamer from Buffalo, for his paper, which
would appear the next morning, and on which he would work until a
late hour in the night, so as to issue it early in the morning, and
have it delivered by carriers to its readers at breakfast-time.
The Gazette suspended June 12, 1841, for lack of patronage,
but on the 11th day of September, of the same year, its publication
was resumed by Messrs. Allen and Tait. In September of
the year 1842, Mr. Allen retired from connection with
the paper, and the following April it ceased to exist. The
inconvenience of not having a newspaper was soon appreciated by the
people of Conneaut, and in the winter of 1843-44, Mr.
Allen raised a small amount of money, went to Buffalo, and
purchased new material, which he transported from that place as one
wagon-load, and in January of 1844 issued the first number of the
Conneaut Reporter. The struggle for a long time was a
severe one. It required great business tact, indomitable
perseverance, rigid economy, and unremitting toil to establish the
paper on a paying basis. Mr. Allen possessing in
a high degree these essentials, succeeded when most other men would
have failed. Under his management the paper became
remunerative for the labor expended upon it. It seldom happens
in the history of journalism that so long and fierce a battle, with
seemingly insurmountable obstacles, is so successfully maintained,
and in the end so signally won, as was the case in this instance.
In 1860 he sold the establishment to John P. Rieg, Esq., the
present proprietor of the Reporter.
To show the character of Mr. Allen and to
illustrate his adherence to principle and to his convictions, we
give the following incident in his life:
In the spring of 1847, at the township election, when a
vote was taken for “license” and “no license,” Mr. Allen,
being a stanch temperance man, took a decided stand against license.
The feeling ran high, and the excitement was great. The
license men were bitterly incensed against Mr. Allen
for his course. After counting the vote and ascertaining that
the license party had been successful, Mr. Allen was
called out into a shed and was faced by two men with whips in their
hands, since quite prominent citizens, who demanded a retraction in
his paper of what he had said against license. This he refused
to do, and the men would undoubtedly have executed their threats of
violence but for the timely arrival of some of Mr. Allen's
friends. In the next issue of the paper, instead of a
retraction, appeared a full account of the dastardly attack, with
the names of the two assailants published in full.
He lost about fifty subscribers from among the license
party, but this fact nor nothing else could make him swerve from his
honest convictions.
In 1858 and 1859, Mr. Allen represented
his county in the Ohio house of representatives. His name
being the first on the roll of members, he was invariably called
upon for the first “ aye” or “ no” on all questions, and so prompt
and decided were his responses that the house tendered him a
unanimous vote of commendation on the last day of its session.
In March, 1861, he was made postmaster at Conneaut, and retained the
office six years. These offices he filled acceptably to the
people and creditably to himself.
On the 16th day of February, 1840, he was united in
marriage with Rachel L. Gifford, daughter of Elijah and
Esther Stevens Gifford, of Conneaut. Mr. and
Mrs. Allen have been the parents of six children, whose names
and dates of birth are as follows:
Oscar E., born December 9, 1840, died September
24, 1871; Lydia E., born May 18, 1845; Henry C., born
January 26, 1849; Jeannette W., born April 30, 1852;
Mary A., born December 28, 1858; Laura F., born
January 7, 1861. The eldest son married Martha
Houston, May 4, 1866; Lydia E. became the wife of
Corwin N. Payne, October 2, 1867; Henry C. married May
E. Fowler, July 19, 1868.
Mr. Allen was for forty years a member of
the Baptist church. He was a prominent and influential member
of the Republican party. He was connected with a lodge of Good
Templars, and was ever, both in his life and teaching, a strong
advocate of temperance. For more than twenty years he was a
prominent member of the Conneaut Agricultural society, holding the
office of secretary and treasurer of that society for about eighteen
years from its organization. His life was one of great
usefulness, and his death was deeply and widely deplored.
Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations
and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by
Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 166 |
Mrs. B. Andrews
Benoni Andrews |
BENONI ANDREWS
was
a practical and successful farmer and dairyman, industrious,
energetic, determined, and persevering in character. The
manufacture of dairy products was his specialty, in which he was
self-taught and eminently successful, have been awarded the
first premiums at the State fairs in Cleveland, Columbus,
Cincinnati, Zanesville, and Sandusky, and wining for his products
prices far above the general market. He was a critical
observer, analyzing and comparing in order to understand the
philosophy of his manipulations. He was a good financier,
meeting his obligations, promptly, and never suffered the
humiliation of a dun. He performed the duties of magistrate
with honor to himself and to the satisfaction of his
fellow-citizens.
In his domestic relations he was kind and affectionate,
an obliging neighbor, and a true friend. As a temperance man
he was a model, his only beverage being water. He yielded his
influence and gave his support to all movements for elevating the
condition of humanity, morally, intellectually, and religiously.
He bitterly opposed to the extension or perpetuation of slavery, and
well acquainted with the working of the "underground railroad."
From an earnest Whig he became an active Republican, and gave the
party his warmest support. He was a warm friend of education,
and gave several of his large family the advantages of academical
instruction.
Benoni Andrews was born on the 8th day of April,
1809, in the town of German, county of Chenango, New York. He
emigrated to Wayne with his father's family in the year 1821.
He was married to Betsy Palmate in 1825. He soon
purchased about three hundred acres of wild land on credit,
lying on the north and south centre road, near the north line of the
township, which he cleared, improved, paid for, and on which he
erected good farm buildings without pecuniary assistance. Here
he carried on his business until the financial inflation of 1865,
when he sold the entire property at inflation prices, and moved his
homestead to Conneaut, where he died Apr. 27, 1876, at the age of
sixty-seven.
-----Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations
and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by
Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 168 |
|
Lenox Twp. -
JOSIAH ATKINS. Josiah
Atkins, Jr., a well-known citizen of Ashtabula
County for more than sixty years, was born in Wolcott, New Haven county,
Connecticut, Oct. 16, 1789. He was a younger brother of Hon.
Quintus F. Atkins, and came to Ohio when quite a young man.
For several years previous to 1821 he was a
confidential clerk in the mercantile house of Austin &
Hawley, in Austinburg, one of the most important business houses
in northern Ohio. In 1821 he was a clerk and a deputy in the
county auditor’s office in Jefferson, and a year or two later surveyed
the lands in northwestern Ohio, granted by congress to the State, for
the purpose of building a road from the west line of the Connecticut
Reserve to Perrysburg, through what was known as the “Maumee Swamp.”
Afterwards he pursued the occupation of surveyor and
builder, varied occasionally by services as storekeeper and accountant.
He also held the office of county surveyor for several years. At a
later period, ill health and infirmities intervening, he gave up
surveying, and for a few years served as justice of the peace and
postmaster in Lenox.
In 1847, assisted by Colonel Erastus N. House,
he wrote, for the county historical society, an interesting history of
the pioneer settlement of Lenox, which, with many other valuable
documents of like kind, is supposed to have been destroyed by the
subsequent burning of the court-house, in which they were deposited.
He was a diligent student and ardent lover of sound
literature, as well as an industrious workingman, and in the course of
his long life had accumulated a large and valuable library, which he
gave, by will, to Tabor college, Iowa.
He was widely known and justly esteemed as a man of
strict integrity, great intelligence, and pure morals.
He died Mar. 12, 1871, at Oberlin, Ohio, in the
eighty-second year of his age. He had never married.
-----Source: 1798
History of Ashtabula County, Ohio with Illustrations and Biographical
Sketches of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men by Publ. Philadelphia -
Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 225 |
Quintus F. Atkins |
QUINTUS
FLAMINIUS ATKINS, the oldest son of Josiah Atkins, Sr.,
and Mary Gillett Atkins, was born May 10, 1785, in Wolcott, New
Haven county, Connecticut. His father, descended from an English
family of good repute, was a man of more than usual bodily vigor and
energy.
His mother, Mary Gillett, a daughter of
Captain Zaccheus Gillett, and sister of Rev. Alexander
Gillett, the first settled minister in Wolcott (then called
Farmingbury), was a woman of superior intelligence and many virtues.
Josiah Atkins was the youngest son of Joseph
Atkins, one of the early find honored settlers in Wolcott, a man
foremost in every good word and work, during a residence of many
years.
During the years 1798 and 1799, a war with France
seeming probable, an army was raised by the United States
government, into which the subject of our sketch, at the age of
seventeen years, enlisted. The regiment to which he belonged was
encamped in or near New Haven, Connecticut. The war-cloud having
passed away the forces were disbanded, and our young soldier sought
employment in the west.
In 1801 and 1802 he worked at road-making on the
"Genesee turnpike," in central New York.
In October, 1809, he joined a party of emigrants from
Connecticut, bound for the then land of promise, "New Connecticut."
They arrived in Morgan, Ashtabula County, in November, 1802.
Two settlers (with their families) had preceded them by
a few months, viz., Timothy R. Hawley, a surveyor, and agent for the
proprietors of the town, and Captain John Wright.
Mr. Atkins selected a farm in the east
part of the town, but during the first year worked chiefly for
others, chopping and clearing lands, making roads, etc.
On the 22d of February, 1804, he was united in marriage
to Miss Sarah Wright, the youngest daughter of
Captain John Wright, above named.
During a considerable part of the year 1805 lie was
engaged in carrying the United States mail between Cleveland and
Detroit, his usual route being from Cleveland to Sandusky. This
difficult and dangerous service was performed on foot through the
wilderness, carrying the mail, a gun and axe. It required great
courage and perseverance; but he was a man who never objected to any
necessary service or duty, no matter what its hardships or
privations.
In the spring of 1806, Rev. Joseph Badger, then
a missionary to the northwestern Indians, engaged Mr. and Mrs.
Atkins as assistants at the missionary station at Sandusky.
Having built a boat on Grand river in Austinburg, and
loaded it with supplies for the mission, the party, consisting of
Rev. Mr. Badger, Mr. and Mrs. Atkins: and their little daughter,
Emily (afterwards Mrs. Colonel George Turner, of
Geneva, Ohio), descended the river to its mouth, where they were
joined by a party of Indians, who, with their families, in canoes,
accompanied the missionary party along the southern shore of Lake
Erie to Sandusky. Here they remained about one and a half years,
when repeated attacks of ague and fever forced them to abandon the
mission and return to Morgan. During 1808 he was again engaged in
carrying the mails on foot, in a more rapid manner than before,
called the "express mail." His route was between Cleveland and
Vermilion river.
In June, 1811, the county of Ashtabula was organized,
and Mr. Atkins was appointed its sheriff, serving
until July, 1813, when he resigned to enter the United States
service, as a lieutenant in the northwestern army under General
W. H. Harrison.
Previous to this service, however, in the fall of 1812,
while sheriff, he, with other prominent citizens exempt from
military services by age or official duties, viz., Colonel
Eliphalet Austin, Major Levi Gaylord, Captain Roger
Nettleton, Matthew Hubbard, Esq., Samuel Hendry, Esq., and many
others, spent some time as mounted volunteers in scouting the
country about Sandusky bay and Huron river, then threatened with
invasion by the British forces and their Indian allies. Their
effective service, it was believed, prevented an attack upon Camp
Avery, an unfinished and therefore weak stockade upon Huron river.
Upon the reduction of the army to a peace
establishment, in 1815, Lieutenant Atkins received an
honorable discharge from the service, and returned to his farm in
Morgan.
At the first general election after the close of the
war (October, 1815), Mr. Atkins was again elected
sheriff, and removed his family to Jefferson, where he continued to
reside for the ensuing twenty-three years, save a brief sojourn on
the lake-shore, in Geneva, about the year 1830.
Having served as sheriff the legal limit of four years,
he was appointed, in the winter of 1819-20, to the then new office
of county auditor, and served in that capacity until March, 1822.
At the next session of the Ohio legislature (1823-24)
he was appointed to superintend the building of a turnpike-road
through the "Maumee Swamp," so called, and to survey and sell the
lands granted by congress to the State of Ohio, for the purpose of
building said road. He was engaged in the duties of that appointment
until the road was completed, occupying about three years.
He next turned his attention to the Ohio canal, then
being built from Cleveland to Portsmouth. In company with a young
man of some previous experience on the Erie canal, New York, a
considerable job was undertaken, which proved a much more expensive
and difficult work than had been anticipated by engineers or
contractors, involving a very heavy loss. To add to the difficulty,
his partner, having possessed himself of all the company funds,
suddenly decamped to parts unknown. This misfortune and treachery
forced Mr. Atkins into hopeless insolvency. He
voluntarily placed in the hands of a trustee, for the payment of his
liabilities, all the savings of his previous life, and having a
large family, was unable in after-years to do much towards
retrieving his ill fortune.
In 1835 and 1836 he was in the employ of the "Arcole
Furnace Company," in Madison, Ohio, and was a careful and efficient
agent in its then large business.
In the autumn of 1836 he went to Olean, New York, in
the employ of a land company, to take charge of a considerable
property, comprising most of East Olean, with grist- and saw-mills,
pine lands, etc.
The reverses of 1837-38 so crippled the company that it
was forced to sell the property, and early in 1839, Mr. Atkins
removed to the farm of Edward Wade, in Brooklyn, near
Ohio city, now Cleveland. At this place he resided most of the time
until 1854. While residing there he was appointed an associate judge
of the court of common pleas of Cuyahoga county, and held the office
until, by a change in the constitution, that court was abolished. In
February, 1853, his amiable and much-respected wife, Mrs. Sarah
Wright Atkins, died at their home in Brooklyn, they having lived
together in the marital relation forty-nine years.
Subsequently he resided for a time with his son,
Captain A. R. Atkins, in Chicago and Racine, but usually had a
home with his daughters, Mrs. H. R. Gaylord, in Geneva, and
Mrs. P. Judson, in Brooklyn.
He died at "Barber Cottage," Brooklyn, then the home of
Mr. Judson, January 23, 1859, in the seventy-seventh year of his
age.
During a large part of his life Mr. Atkins
was an active and efficient promoter of religious observances, and
during all his later years was an earnest and unwearied laborer for
the abolition of slavery. At first he held aloof on the ground of
its impracticability; but the tendency of pro-slavery opinion to
enforce its views with stale eggs and other objectionable arguments
soon brought him to the side of the party weak in numbers, but using
only reasonable arguments. He was a sturdy believer in free speech,
and held mobs in utter abhorrence.
Between the years 1841 and 1853, Mr. Atkins
devoted much time and means in aid of the anti-slavery movement in
northern Ohio and western New York. His earnest and able addresses
doubtless assisted in awakening the public mind in the localities he
visited to the great wrong and injustice of the institution of
slavery then darkening the whole country.
In a long service as justice of the peace in Jefferson,
and later, as a judge of the courts in Cleveland, when party spirit
was often bitter and unreasoning, his sterling love of justice and
his dealing was ever apparent. And although his friendships and
aversions were strong, he never permitted them to affect his legal
administration of justice.
Through a long life his bodily and mental powers were
vigorous, and whatever he undertook to do, whether chopping and
clearing lands, splitting rails (in his younger days he was a famous
"chopper and rail-splitter"), making roads, carrying mails on, foot
through the wilderness, or arresting desperate criminals as sheriff,
all was thoroughly well done.
In his later years Mr. Atkins often wrote
for the press; his contributions of most general interest probably
being "Recollections of Pioneer Life in Northeastern Ohio,"
"Road-Making in Central New York at the Beginning of the Present
Century," "A Trip through Iowa in its Early Days," and
"Recollections of Military Service about Huron River and Sandusky
Bay in the War of 1811-15."
Of the children of Mr. and Mrs. Atkins, ten (one son
and nine daughters) lived to maturity. The son, Captain Arthur R.
Atkins, is married and resides in Chicago. Five of the daughters
are still living, in 1878, vie., Mrs. Stella M. Gaylord, in
Saginaw, Michigan; Mrs. Ophelia Bostwick, in
Oberlin, Ohio; Mrs. Mary Lynch, in Santa
Barbara, California; Mrs. Martha Todd, in
Tabor, Iowa; and Mrs. Bertha Judson, in
Cleveland, Ohio.
Helen Atkins died in Brooklyn, Ohio, in
1839; Mrs. Emily Turner, in Geneva, in 1841; Mrs. Flora
Wheeler, in Portville, New York, in 1850; and Mrs. Sarah L.
Wade, in Brooklyn, Ohio, in 1852.
The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Mr. and
Mrs. Atkins are numerous, intelligent, and actively engaged in
various pursuits in life. They reside in the States of New York,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri,
California, and Texas. They comprise clergymen, lawyers, college
professors and teachers, railroad-builders and managers,
manufacturers, mill-owners and lumbermen, ship-builders,
ship-owners, and ship-captains, who have sailed on all our lakes and
on every ocean and nearly every sea on the globe.
One of the latter, Matthew Turner, a
native of Geneva, Ohio, while engaged in commerce between San
Francisco and the Amoor river, in Siberia, in the year 1863, was the
first to discover and open to the traffic of the world the Pacific
cod-fisheries, in the Gulf of Tartary and on the coast of Kamschatka
and subsequently about the Aleutian islands.
-----Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio
with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches
of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men
by Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 113 [Photo
Available] |
|
HON. ELIPHALET AUSTIN was born at Youngford, Litchfield
County, Connecticut, in 1761. His father was Aaron Austin.
There were six brothers, and the most of them were soldiers in
the War of 1776. The elder, Judge Aaron
Austin, of New Hartford, was a captain in the Revolutionary war.
Nathaniel Austin, father of Jacob Austin,
was a lieutenant. Cyrenius died with the smallpox in
the service. Eusebius was a physician, and settled in
the State of New York. Colonel Samuel Austin
settled in Vernon, New York, removed to Randolph, Portage county,
Ohio. Colonel Eliphalet left the army in 1781,
and married Sihette Dudley, of Bethlehem. He for
some years remained in the old homestead, taking care of his then
aged parents, but subsequently removed to New Hartford, and
developed his natural bent and taste for a close business by keeping
a tavern, a store, and an ashery, and buying beef cattle to supply
the market at Hartford and New Haven, and was the president of a
turnpike company.
-----Source: 1798 History of Ashtabula County, Ohio
with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches
of its Pioneers and Most Prominent Men
by Publ. Philadelphia - Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 114 |
NOTES:
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