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Source:
History
of Cuyahoga Co., Ohio
Published by D. W. Ensign & Co.,
1879
 

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R. P. Ranney
RUFUS P. RANNEY.     The subject of this sketch has been a resident of the city of Cleveland for the last twenty-one eyars.  He was born in Hampden county, Massachusetts, Oct. 30, 1813.  His father, who was a farmer of moderate means in that rugged region, having exchanged his land for a larger tract in the West, removed with a large family in the fall of 1824 to what was afterwards known as Freedom, in the county of Portage, in this State, and erected a log hut near the center of a nearly unbroken forest of about seven miles square, without roads, schools or churches, and still filled with wild beasts, including the bear and wolf, in such numbers as to make the rearing of domestic animals next to impossible.  It is needless to say that such a state of things must be attended with many privations, and, for those who had nothing but wild land, the provision of food and clothing became a consideration of the first necessity.
     To secure these, the land must be cleared of the heavy timber upon it, and to this very hard labor, for a growing boy, Rufus P. devoted himself for the next six years, with only one winter's schooling in a neighboring town during the period.  This course of life then began to tell on his health, and an irresistible desire to acquire some education ensued, which his parents warmly second by their wishes, although they were ignorant of the way to accomplish it, and without the means to furnish any considerable aid.
     But the departure was to be made, and, having no reliance but upon his ax, he chopped cord-wood for a merchant to pay for a Latin dictionary, a Virgil and a razor - this being an implement his age began to demand, while the others, he was told, were necessary to commence a literary career.  Thus prepared, he commenced study with Dr. Bassett, of Nelson, who taught an academy part of the year and gave private instruction the residue.  After staying a considerable time with him and contracting a very strong attachment for him, he pursued his studies at the Western Reserve College, supporting himself during this period by frequent intervals of manual labor, and by teaching two terms, the first in a district in Hiram, where Mormonism first broke out in the West, and the last in the academy building in Nelson formerly occupied by Dr. Bassett.  At the end of this term, in the spring of 1834, when he was preparing to return to Hudson, a mere accident, without previous thought or calculation, ended his plan of completing a classical education, determined his profession and settled the course of his whole life.
     Accidentally meeting an old college friend who was designed for the bar, and who had been a year with Joshua R. Giddings and Benjamin F. Wade (who have since acquired such marked distinction) his friend advised him to give up the college, and go back with him to Ashtabula county and read law.  He received the proposal with the utmost astonishment, knowing absolutely nothing of courts, law or lawyers; but having a vague idea that a college graduation was indispensable to such an undertaking.  His friend knew how to correct this impression, and so effectually to remove other objections that a single night's reflection decided him to go to what then seemed a distant point, where he had never been, and where he knew no one, having until the day before never heard even the names of the lawyers whose office he proposed to enter.  His reception and treatment were, however, such as to make the two and a half years ensuing the most enjoyable and profitable of his life, and resulted in the formation of personal friendships between him and his instructors and fellow students which no subsequent events ever impaired.
     The study of jurisprudence as a science was so exactly suited to his tastes that a constant incentive existed to master its fundamental principles, which he accomplished so thoroughly as to account for the ease and readiness with which he has ever used them.
     In the fall of 1836 he was admitted to the bar of the supreme court, and soon after located at Warren, in the then large county of Trumbull, where he commenced practice alone.  But in the course of the ensuing winter, the firm of Giddings & Wade being dissolved and Mr. Giddings elected to Congress, at the earnest request of his old preceptor, Mr. Wade, he returned to Jefferson and formed with him the partnership of Wade & Ranney, which lasted for ten years, and until Mr. Wade was elected a judge of the court of common pleas.
     During this period he married a daughter of Judge Jonathan Warner, and in 184.5 he took up his residence again in Warren.  The firm of Wade & Ranney was rather noted for the extent of its business than for the gains from it, and at its conclusion, such was the confidence of the partners in each other, its affairs were settled by simply passing mutual receipts.  In addition to the heavy labor which their practice imposed, neither of the partners neglected the interests of the political party to which they respectively belonged.  The junior, from his majority, was an ardent Democrat of the Jefferson and Jackson school, and without a thought for his personal interests or prospects he cast his lot with the small minority then comprising the party in this part of the State, and at once became one of the leading advocates ofits doctrines.  Without any hope of local preferment, it was nevertheless a settled principle with the leaders that in aid of the general State ticket the best local nominations should be made, and that those who urged others to stand by the cause should, without a murmur, take such positions as their associates assigned them.
     In accordance with this idea, Mr. Ranney was first nominated for the State senate, but was obliged to decline because he was not of an age to be constitutionally eligible.  He was three times a candidate for Congress; once in 1842 in the Ashtabula district, then including this county and Geauga: and in 1846 and 1848 in the Trumbull district, which embraced also the counties of Portage and Summit.  But his exertions were not limited to law and politics.  Conscious of the deficiency of his general education, he resolvedto supply it so far as possible by individual exertion.  While he was yet a student, availing himself of the aid of a French scholar and his books, he had commenced the study of that language, and from that day to this has constantly read a French newspaper,
and the solid literary and scientific productions of French authors, including the Code Napoleon and
the commentaries upon it, in the language in which
they were composed.
     After the dissolution of the firm of Wade & Ranney he continued the practice alone until 1850, and in the spring of that year, in connection with the late Judge Peter Hitchcock and Jacob Perkins, he was elected, by a large majority, a member from the counties of Trumbull and Geauga of the convention called to revise the constitution of the State.  In that convention, comprising, as is well known, a very able body of men, he served upon the judiciary committee, and was chairman of the committee on revision, to which the phraseology and arrangement of the whole instrument was committed.  He took a very active part in the debates upon most of the important questions considered, and may be said to have done as much as any one to impress upon the instrument those popu-

Source: History of Cuyahoga Co., Ohio - Published by D. W. Ensign & Co., - 1879 - Page 397
Portrait Source: History of Cuyahoga Co., Ohio - Published by D. W. Ensign & Co., - 1879 - Page 68a
DANIEL P. RHODES

Source: History of Cuyahoga Co., Ohio - Published by D. W. Ensign & Co., - 1879 - Page 375
Portrait Source: History of Cuyahoga Co., Ohio - Published by D. W. Ensign & Co., - 1879 - Page 304a


Ansel Roberts
ANSEL ROBERTS

Source: History of Cuyahoga Co., Ohio - Published by D. W. Ensign & Co., - 1879 - Page 377

JOHN P. ROBINSON

Source: History of Cuyahoga Co., Ohio - Published by D. W. Ensign & Co., - 1879 - Page 378
Portrait Source: History of Cuyahoga Co., Ohio - Published by D. W. Ensign & Co., - 1879 - Page 206

WILLIAM G. ROSE

Source: History of Cuyahoga Co., Ohio - Published by D. W. Ensign & Co., - 1879 - Page 379
Portrait Source: History of Cuyahoga Co., Ohio - Published by D. W. Ensign & Co., - 1879 - Page 324a

 

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