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BIOGRAPHIES
Source:
1795
History of
Clermont County, Ohio
with
Illustrations and Biographical Sketches
of its
Prominent Men and Pioneers
Philadelphia:
Louis H. Everts
Press of J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia
1880
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Batavia Twp. -
JOHN J. HOWARD.
Associated with his father, Col. William Howard,
in the practice of the law, under the firm-name of
Howard & Howard, is John Joliffe, named for
that former eminent attorney of the clermont bar and
distinguished agitator in the anti-slavery cause,
Joliffe. John J. Howard was born in Batavia,
June 27, 1855, and was the second son and child of
William and Amaryllis C. (Bottsford) Howard.
He received his preliminary education in the high school
of his native town, was two year at Hanover College in
Indiana, in the preparatory department and freshman
class, and one year as sophomore at Dennison University,
at Granville, Ohio. He then commenced reading
medicine under Dr. James C. Kennedy, of Batavia,
and attended one course of lectures at the Ohio Medical
College of Cincinnati, but on account of a severe
accident, crippling his hand, he gave up the medical
profession and began the study of law in his father's
office, and at the September term of the Clermont County
District Court in 1877 was, with James B. Swing,
Charles T. Jamieson, and William Britton,
admitted to the bar as an attorney and counselor-at-law.
He was married Oct. 11, 1875, to Miss Delia D.
Dustin, a daughter of the late Col. Jesse S.
Dustin, of Batavia, by which union he has two
children, both sons, William Dustin and Lou
Carlton. In December, 1878, he took the
degrees in the I. O. O. F., in the Batavia Lodge, No.
136. In October, 1878, he was elected prosecuting
attorney of Clermont, over Capt. William A. Townsley
and Turpin D. Hartman, and was the youngest man
ever elected to that office in the county. His
father, Col. William Howard, was elected to the
same position in 1845 and 1847. John J. Howard's
term as prosecutor will expire in January, 1881, and
although now a comparatively young man, his
administration has been marked by ability, vigor, and
energy, and success in his prosecutions has
characterized his holding this most important station.
An unusual number of criminal cases and several of
capital offenses have been tried and prosecuted by him
during his term, and with an ability and success that
have redounded to his credit as an able, prompt, and
painstaking official, and given him the confidence and
respect of the public. The firm of Howard &
Howard have a very large and lucrative practice, and
is one that holds the esteem of the community in an
eminent degree for its faithful and conscientious
discharge of all business intrusted to it.
Source: 1795 History of Clermont County, Ohio, Publ.
Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts - Press of J. B.
Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia - 1880 - Page 281 |
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Batavia Twp. -
WILLIAM
HOWARD. Col. William
Howard, of Batavia, of the law-firm of Howard
& Howard (his son, John Joliffe
Howard, being his partner), is of English extraction
on his paternal side, and is of good Revolutionary
stock, that most actively participated in the struggle
for independence and fought on the side of the colonies.
He was born in Jefferson Co., Va., Dec. 31, 1817, and
was the third child in a family of seven children, whose
parents were Thomas Howard and Rebecca
(Likins) Howard, natives of the same county, in
which their ancestors had lived for over two hundred
years. His father followed through life
agricultural pursuits, and after his removal to
Wheeling, Va., died there in 1853. His mother,
whose decease occurred in 1831, was of English-German
descent, and was a woman of a noble Christian type.
She early inculcated in the breasts of her children
those sacred principles which lie a the foundations of
good society. Until his fifteenth year he was
employed as an assistant on the farm, and later was
placed to learn the saddlery trade in Jefferson Co.,
Va., which he pursued for several years. His early
education was limited, and was obtained at the common
schools, at that time few in number in the "Old
Dominion," and short in their terms, and by attentive
reading during the leisure hours of his service as a
saddler.
In 1835 he moved to Augusta, Ky., and preparatory
department of Augusta College, the first Methodist
institution of learning established in the United
States, and at that time at the height of its
prosperity. Its president was the distinguished
Rev. Joseph S. Tomlinson, D. D. There he
pursued a thorough curriculum of literary study, and
graduated with high honors in 1839. During this
time he became very proficient in mathematics, both pure
and mixed, - a branch of study for which he had early a
notable aptitude and talent, and which qualified him to
become noted as a surveyor, and which was of
incalculable service to him as a land-lawyer in the
tedious intricacies of land litigation in after years.
He supported himself in the mean time by working five
hours per day at his trade, and thus was enabled to
receive a splendid education by his own hard labor.
In his youthful days he had proposed to apply his
attention to the study of medicine, an intention whose
origin is attributable to the fact that in the ranks of
the medical profession several members of his family had
already acquired distinction. While pursuing a
collegiate course, however, he abandoned this design,
and resolved to apply himself to the study of law,
deeming the legal pro1ession one more in harmony with
his tastes and in accordance with his mathematical
abilities. Accordingly, in 1839, under the
guidance of Hon. Martin Marshall, an accomplished
scholar, and one of the most distinguished legal
practitioners of Kentucky, and a member of that
illustrious family which produced Chief Justice
Marshall, he began to prepare himself for the bar.
Within one year he qualified himself for admission, and
in 1840 established his office in Batavia, Clermont Co.,
where he has since resided, engaged in the profession
most honorably and extensively. He is to-day the
Nestor of the Clermont bar, having been in practice
longer than any other attorney. From 1842 to 1849
he was associated in his profession with Thomas L.
Shields, and the firm of Shields & Howard
was retained in nearly every important land-suit at a
time when litigation of titles ill the Virginia Military
Reservation absorbed the best part of the law practice
in the courts. Mr. Shields, shortly
after the dissolution of that famous law-firm, returned
to the large landed possessions at Sewickly, fourteen
miles below Pittsburgh, on the Ohio River, in
Pennsylvania, which he had inherited from his ancestors,
and there died in 1879. Col. Howard
has, as an heirloom of that happy
partnership and association, a compass which Mr.
Shields gave him, and which his maternal
grandfather Leet carried when he and George
Washington together surveyed thousands upon
thousands of acres of land in Western Pennsylvania, and
which the Father of his Country, it is thought, often
used in these surveying expeditions in the wilds of the
then Far West.
Col. Howard was elected prosecuting
attorney of the county in 1845, and was re-elected in
1847. In 1849 he was elected State senator to the
Legislature of Ohio from the district of Brown and
Clermont, and served one term, with great honor to
himself and with rare fidelity to his constituents.
In 1858 he was elected as a representative to Congress,
from the district comprising the counties of Clermont,
Brown, Highland, and Adams, and took his seat the first
Monday of December, 1859, and served one term of two
years, the closing part of which witnessed the election
of President Lincoln and the secession of the Southern
States, which drew upon Congress the eyes of all the
American people and of the world at large. At the
most critical time of that memorable period, just before
Sumter was fired upon, Col. Howard made an
eloquent speech in the House in defense of the Union and
against secession, and for preserving the unity of the
country at all hazards. His speech had a wonderful
effect in uniting all the friends of the Union and
Constitution to sustain the Federal government, and won
him great distinction and the applause of the American
people. It was considered by the press the ablest
speech of that famous session. In the district the
one-term rule then obtaining in the Democratic party,
which had elected him, he was not a candidate for
reelection, but in 1866 was the Democratic nominee for
Congress in the district at that time composed of
Clermont, Brown, Highland, Fayette, and Clinton, and
which being strongly Republican, he was not elected.
In 1876 he was a delegate from the Third Congressional
District, composed of Clermont, Butler, Clinton,
Fayette, and Warren Counties, to the Democratic National
Convention at St. Louis, at which Tilden and
Hendricks were the Democratic nominees. At the
Ohio Democratic State Convention of 1879 he was one of
the principal members of the select committee which
reported the famous resolutions of that year.
His first vote for President was cast for James K.
Polk, and he has always been intimately identified
with the Democratic party, working efficiently to secure
its welfare and develop its best interests. On the
stump, in exciting political campaigns, for forty years
his eloquent voice has been heard in defense of the
party to which all his life he has been so warmly
attached.
In military matters also he has been prominently and
most honorably before the public. In 1847 he
accompanied to the scene of operations in Mexico the
Second Ohio Regiment of infantry, and as second
lieutenant of Co. C, raised in Clermont and Brown
Counties, served actively with this body until the
termination of the war. During those
eventful days he was on the line, under Gen.
Winfield Scott, from Vera Cruz to Puebla.
In the war of the Rebellion he went to the front, in
September, 1861, as major of the Fifty-ninth Regiment of
Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and remained in the service of
his country some eighteen- months, and in 1862 was
promoted to the lieutenant-colonelcy. He was with
this gallant regiment in Kentucky, Tennessee,
Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama, and was actively
engaged in the battles of Shiloh, Corinth, Perryville,
Crab Orchard, and Stone River, besides innumerable
skirmishes and other minor engagements. In 1863 he
resigned his position in the army, his health having
become seriously impaired through the trials attending
extraordinary efforts necessitated by fatiguing marches
and exciting service in the field.
Col. Howard has ever manifested a warm and
far-seeing interest in educational matters, and has been
greatly instrumental in advancing many public
enterprises calculated to benefit the people of his
county. He is a zealous member of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, and having at a very early period of
his life been converted, has in his daily walk and
conversation and in his dealings with mankind ever
maintained a high Christian character above all
suspicion or reproach. He is a man of varied
experience in life, a public-spirited citizen, and a
lawyer of scholarly attainments, who has won distinction
at the bar, both before juries and courts, by his
abilities and genius, aided by his suavity of manner and
exemplary conduct of life.
He was married Jan. 29, 1852, to Amaryllis C.
Botsford, of Columbus, Ohio, a native of Oswego, N.
Y. She was a woman of superior natural
intelligence, and possessed a highly cultivated and
refined mind and extensive information, which, combined
with her amiability of manner, kind disposition, and
Christian character, made her a favorite in society and
the idolized wife and mother in her own household; and
whether in public or private life, she was her husband's
confidential adviser. She died July 13, 1875,
greatly mourned by the community in which she lived.
Col. and Amaryllis C. Howard had two children,
both sons, of whom William Howard was born
Oct. 31, 1852, graduated at Wittenberg College, at
Springfield, Ohio, in 1873, and died Aug. 31, 1875, in
his twenty-third year. He was a young man of rare
promise in intellect and strong character, and was cut
down by the fell destroyer, consumption, just after the
completion of his classical studies and in the flush of
bright manhood, only seven weeks after his loved mother
had been laid in the silent grave. The other son,
John Joliffe Howard, was born June
27, 1855; studied law with his father, and was admitted
to the bar at the September term of the Clermont
District Court in 1877, and in 1878 was elected
prosecuting attorney of the county, in which position he
is now acting, and is also in partnership with his
father in the practice of the law.
Col. Howard was married the second time on Nov.
27, 1877, to Mrs; Harriet A. Broadwell, of
Georgetown, Ohio, the widow of Hon. Lewis Broadwell,
a distinguished business man of Cincinnati, and who was
a senator in the Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth General
Assembly of Ohio from Hamilton County, in the years 1849
and 1850, and at the same time Col. Howard
represented the Brown and Clermont district. She
is the daughter of Benjamin and Anne (Philips) Penn,
early pioneers in Southern Clermont, and is a lady of
varied intellectual accomplishments and
belles-lettres, and to her marked natural genius and
talents she has added many treasures by extensive
research and travels in Europe. A lady of
dignified manners and culture, she presides most
elegantly over their beautiful home, and dispenses
hospitality in a style worthy of the noble lineage from
which she has descended.
Source: 1795 History of Clermont County, Ohio, Publ.
Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts - Press of J. B.
Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia - 1880 - Page 272 |
John M. Hunt |
Union Twp. -
JOHN M. HUNT. One of the
solid farmers of Union township, owning two hundred and
twenty-four acres, is John Moore Hunt, who was
born near Trenton, N. J., June 6, 1816. He was the
son of George and Sallie (Moore) Hunt, who
emigrated the fall after his birth to Batavia, in this
county, where George Hunt, his father, for
several years followed the profession of
school-teaching, and was the first schoolmaster in
Batavia, and subsequently taught two years at Columbia.
He afterwards returned to Batavia and settled on a farm
near this town, where he died in his sixty-eighth year.
He was the father of the following children: Charles,
Louisa, Jesse, Jonathan, John Moore, George W., Sallie,
James M., Elizabeth, and Mary. John Moore Hunt
lived in Batavia until about his fourteenth
year, when he went to his father's farm and there worked
until he began to learn the trade of a carpenter with
his brother Jesse
and Basil Thompson. This avocation he
followed with success for twenty-two years, and was
considered one of the best house-joiners in Clermont.
He then settled on a farm once owned by Col. William
Curry, in Batavia township, but afterwards purchased
the Conklin farm near Olive Branch, in
Union township, where he has ever since resided.
He was married, Oct. 27, 1841, to Miss
Elizabeth Conklin, daughter of Stephen
Conklin, formerly of Cincinnati, by Rev. Joel
Dolby, of the Protestant Methodist Church.
From this union there were nine children, to wit:
Sallie, intermarried with B. F. Bragdon;
Charles Moore, married to Mollie,
daughter of Col. James Given, and residing in
Kansas; Benjamin F., deceased in his nineteenth
year; Carrie; Emma; Clara, married
to William Dinkleman, residing in
Madisonville; Olive; William; and Elmer
Ellsworth. Mr. Hunt is a
practical farmer, and has always taken great interest in
the agricultural fairs of the county. He is a
member of no religious denomination, but all his family
belong to the Baptist Church, to which he is a regular
contributor. He always has refused to be a
candidate for local offices, but in politics is a
pronounced Republican. He has twice revisited New
Jersey, the scene of his birth, once in 1857 and again
in 1875.
His farm is located in one of the best neighborhoods of
the county, and on it Mr. Hunt lives in
independence, respected and esteemed by his neighbors.
Source: 1795 History of Clermont County, Ohio, Publ.
Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts - Press of J. B.
Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia - 1880 - Page (Betw. pps.
450 - 451) |
NOTES:
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