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LAWRENCE COUNTY,
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History & Genealogy

BIOGRAPHIES

Source:
A Standard History of
THE HANGING ROCK IRON REGION OF OHIO

An Authentic Narrative of the Past, with the Extended
Survey of the Industrial and Commercial Development
Vol. II
ILLUSTRATED
Publishers - The Lewis Publishing Company
1916

*
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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  WILLIAM H. NEAL.  An able and honored member of the judiciary of Lawrence County, Mr. Neal is one of the representative citizens of Ironton, the county seat, and here he is giving a most effective administration as justice of the peace, his services being such as to make the office justify its name.
     Mr. Neal was born at Keystone Furnace, Jackson County, Ohio, on the 31st of May, 1856, and is a son of Levi and Nancy (Hunt) Neal, the former of whom was born in Pennsylvania and the latter of whom was born in Lawrence County, Ohio, in 1835, a date that indicates that she is a representative of a pioneer family of this section of the Buckeye State, her home being now in Elizabeth Township, this county, where she is held in affectionate regard by all who know her.  Levi Neal promptly manifested his patriotism when the Civil war was precipitated on a divided nation.  In response to the first call for volunteers he enlisted in an Ohio Regiment, and he sacrificed his life in the cause of the Union, as he was killed on the field of battle, in 1862, when about twenty-seven years of age.  His widow subsequently became the wife of Philip S. Justin, whose death occurred in 1914, he having been a prosperous farmer of Lawrence County.  Of the nine children of the first marriage William H., of this review is the only survivor, and by his mother's second marriage she became the parent of five children, of whom four are living—Frank, Philip, Daniel and Charles.
     William H. Neal attended the public schools of Lawrence County until he had attained the age of eighteen years, and he thereafter became a workman in the iron mines of the county.  While thus employed he was injured by a caving in of the section of mine in which he was working, and the result of the injury was that it became necessary to amputate
his right leg at a point below the knee. This injury incapacitated him for further manual labor of the more strenuous order, and after attending school for another year he proved himself eligible for pedagogic honors.  For the long period of sixteen years he was numbered among the successful and popular teachers in the public schools of Lawrence County, and this discipline, in connection with earnest study and reading, enabled him to round out a liberal education, the while he achieved marked prestige in his chosen profession, besides gaining secure vantage-ground in popular confidence and esteem.  For nine years after his retirement from the pedagogic profession Mr. Neal was engaged as manager of the general merchandise store of Halley & Company at Pedro, Lawrence County, and he then removed to Ironton, the county seat, while he engaged in the insurance business.  To this line of enterprise he devoted his attention for three years, at the expiration of which, in 1912, he was elected justice of the peace, of which office he has since been the efficient incumbent. He has accurate knowledge of the basic principles of the science of jurisprudence, and his judicial rulings have invariably been marked by circumspection and mature judgment, so that he has wielded emphatic influence in the conserving of equity and justice.  While a resident of Elizabeth Township Mr. Neal was called upon to serve in various local offices of public trust, including those of township clerk, assessor, trustee and land appraiser, besides which he was for a number of years a member of the school board of his district.  Mr. Neal is a stanch advocate of the principles of the democratic party and both he and his wife are zealous members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
     At Ironton, on the 11th of September, 1882, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Neal to Miss Lyda Grant, daughter of the late Stephen Grant, of Pedro, this county.  Concerning the eight children of Mr. and Mrs. Neal the following brief record is given: Otis, who is station agent for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad at Russell, Greenup County, Kentucky, married Miss Ethel Taylor, and they have two children—William A. and Estherlin ; Harry and Jessie are not married and both reside in Lawrence County; Ray, who occupies a responsible clerical position with a representative firm at Norwood, Ohio, married Miss Mabel Fowler; Inez died in childhood, as did also Clara and Clarence, who were twins; and Nora remains at the parental home.

Source: A Standard History of The Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio, Vol. II - Illustrated - Published by The Lewis Publishing Company, 1916 - Page 752
  ELIAS NIGH.  Born and reared in Ohio and a scion of one of the honored pioneer families of this favored commonwealth, it was given to Colonel Nigh to confer distinction upon his native state, which shall ever owe to his memory a debt of special honor.  As a lawyer, soldier and legislator he wielded large and benignant influence, and his life was guided and governed by the loftiest principles of integrity, the while he had a deep sense of personal responsibility and so ordered his life as to make it a veritable beatitude.  Colonel Nigh died at his home in Ironton, Lawrence County, on the 24th of February, 1899, and his memory is revered by all who came within the compass of his strong and noble influence, so that this publication would impair its consistency were there failure to enter a proper memorial tribute.
     Colonel Nigh was born in Fairfield County, Ohio, on the 16th of February, 1815, and thus his death occurred about one week after he had celebrated the eighty-fourth anniversary of his birth.  His father, Samuel Nigh, was a native of Maryland and came to Fairfield County, Ohio, in 1802, before the admission of the state to the Union.  This worthy pioneer lived up to the full tension of responsibilities and vicissitudes incidental to the formative period of Ohio history, was influential in his community, and passed the closing period of his life in Wyandotte County, where he died in 1877, at the age of eighty-three years.  From a previously published memoir are taken, with slight paraphrase, the following statements concerning Colonel Nigh:
    
"As a youth he was employed in business by General Reese, brother-in-law of Senator Sherman, and he passed several years in the home of Mrs. Sherman after the death of her distinguished husband.  While thus engaged he diligently employed his time in reading and study.  For two years after attaining to his legal majority Colonel Nigh was engaged in business for himself, and he then began the study of law under the preceptorship of Hon. Hocking H. Hunter, of Lancaster, the judicial center of Fairfield County.  In the same county he pursued also a classical course in Greenfield Academy, an institution conducted by Professor John Williams, a very accomplished scholar.  In the spring of 1843 Colonel Nigh was admitted to the Ohio bar, at Lebanon, Warren County, and in the autumn of this year he located at Burlington, Lawrence County, whence, in 1852, he removed to Ironton, the county seat.  He was made colonel in the State Militia; he was thrice elected representative in the Ohio legislature - in 1847, 1859, and 1876.  In 1877, as chairman of the standing committee on miles and mining, he introduced a bill to establish a chair of mining and mining engineering in the Ohio Agricultural College; also a bill to consolidate land titles in Ohio.  He also prepared, and presented in the house, joint resolutions for the amendment of the state constitution in such manner as to make provision for the organization of its judiciary.
     "In 1861, at the inception of the Civil war, Colonel Nigh was tendered the rank of major in the First Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and also that of assistant quartermaster of volunteers with the rank of captain.  He accepted the latter overture and received his commission in August, 1861, with assignment to General Thomas' division, at Camp Dick Robinson, Kentucky.  In the spring of 1862 he was placed on the staff of General Buell, as the chief quartermaster of the Army of the Ohio, and remained until General Buell was relieved from the command, in the following autumn.  He was then assigned to duty as depot quartermaster at Louisville, Kentucky, and about this time he was tendered to office of colonel of a new Ohio regiment.  He forwarded his resignation as quartermaster, but the government recognized the value of his services in the latter capacity and refused to accept his resignation, with the result that he was soon afterward made chief quartermaster of the Sixteenth Army Corps, with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
    
"In April, 1863, as a further reared for his meritorious services, Colonel Nigh was commissioned assistant quartermaster in the regular army, with the rank of captain.  In June, 1864, he was given to the additional duty of acting as disbursing officer of the entire Mississippi valley, from Cairo to Natchez.  Early in the following month, after having rendered very valuable and distinguished service to his country, Colonel Nigh resigned his office.
     Testimonials of appreciation of his services as quartermaster were given in many letters from official and representative sources, and there can be no impropriety in perpetuating in this review certain extracts from some of these letters.  Lieut. Col. J. D. Bingham, chief quartermaster of the Department of the Tennessee, under date of June 13, 1864, wrote to Colonel Nigh, relative to the latter's retirement from the post of chief quartermaster of the Sixteenth Army Corps, in the following words:  "I regret exceedingly that you are compelled to resign.  You have rendered me such valuable assistant and performed your duties in such a satisfactory manner  that I fear your place can not be filled in this department."
     Gen. S. A. Hurlburt, major general of volunteers wrote as follows:  " Dear Colonel:  I can not permit you to go off the military state without some testimonial from me of my appreciation of your qualities as a man and an officer.  I have no hesitation in saying that your duties as a chief quartermaster of the corps were discharged with a punctual fidelity and intelligent foresight and integrity that I have never known equaled.  You retire, my dear Colonel, with unblemished honor, with the highest reputation for efficiency and integrity, and with the most complete condence (confidence?) and regard from your commanding general."
    
In his final settlement with the government, Colonel Nigh's accounts footed up more than six million dollars.
     On the 1st of July, 1862, to meet a special exigency, Colonel Nigh ordered a detail of thirty negroes to be enrolled from among the camp followers to man a supply train, the detail of Union soldiers previously ordered for that purpose arriving too late for the train.  This was the first instance in which negroes were similarly employed, and Colonel Nigh thus had the distinction of being the man who introduced negro labor into the Union service.  This example was immediately followed by other officers, the innovation being made known to and approved by the government authorities at Washington.  Soon large bodies of negroes were actively engaged in doing much of post and other labor which had theretofore been performed by details from the volunteer Union ranks.
     For several years Colonel Nigh served as a member of the Ironton City Council, being called to the presidency of this municipal body, and also having been chairman of the committee on the construction of the Ironton waterworks.  Further evidence of his strong hold upon popular confidence and esteem in his home city was shown in his election to the office of mayor of Ironton.
     In 1869 Colonel Nigh was appointed assessor of internal revenue for the Eleventh Ohio district, and he retained this position until the office was abolished, in 1872.  All the positions which Colonel Nigh was thus called upon to fill were conferred upon him entirely without his seeking.  Shortly after the close of the war he organized the Sheridan Coal Company of which he was president.  After the war he brought from the South a number of those pitiable and helpless waifs of humanity, the negroes who has been slaves and had been made homeless and desolate by the Emancipation Proclamation, - a class thus suddenly compelled to depend on their own resources, while previously they had been care-free and without responsibility.  Colonel Nigh brought them to Ironton, Ohio, and helped them to find homes in a quarter of the town set apart for their exclusive use, and he became at once their guide and counselor, with the result that he became deeply loved and revered by them.
     During the flood of 1884 Colonel Nigh devoted all his time and energies to the alleviation of suffering and the saving of property throughout the devastated district.  In this connection he collected through personal effort large sums of money for the benefit of the sufferers. 
     In politics, it is scarcely necessary to state, Colonel Nigh was a stalwart republican, and in a fraternal way he manifested his deep and abiding interests in his old comrades of the Civil war by retaining affiliation with the Grand Army of the Republic.  Of him the following consistent estimate has been written:  "A leader in all good public works, a lawyer of marked ability, he was privately modest, retiring and unostentatious.  The fundamental principles of his religion were honesty, uprightness and absolute justice, with charity to all men.  I known of no more fitting words with which to close a brief sketch of this honorable, Christian life that those used by his life-long friend and admirer, General Sherman, in a toast made to Colonel Nigh during a meeting of the Army of the Cumberland, at Washington, some years ago:  'A man who devoted four years of his life to his country in its greatest need, and saved for it millions of dollars; who may not leave to his children great wealth, but will leave to them that which is a far more precious inheritance, an absolutely honest name.'"
     On the 5th of March, 1848, was solemnized the marriage of Colonel Nigh to Miss Alice Henshaw, of Lawrence County, who survived him by several years.  They became the parents of eight children: Reese, Samuel Henshaw, Jennie, Julia, Mary, Elizabeth W., Alice Henshaw, and William Henshaw.  Reese is deceased as are also Jennie and Julia, the latter of whom was the wife of Charles B. TaylorMary is the wife of E. Stanley Lee, and Alice H. is the wife of John Henry Queal.  Samuel H. and William H. are associated in the conducting of an important lumbering business in Ironton and in the State of Kentucky, as will be noted by referring to the sketch of the career of William H. Nigh, on other pages of this work.
Source: A Standard History of The Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio, Vol. II - Illustrated - Published by The Lewis Publishing Company, 1916 - Page 650
  WILLIAM H. NIGH.  On preceding pages of this publication is entered a memoir to the late and distinguished Col. Elias Nigh, whose name is held in enduring honor in his native State of Ohio, and whose noble achievements are briefly noted in the circumscribed tribute possible of incorporation in a work of his order.  The son William H. is known as one of the representative business men of his native City of Ironton, where he is well upholding the prestige of the family name, but in the article here presented it is unnecessary to repeat the data that are given in the memoir of his honored father, as ready reference may be made to the article mentioned.
     William Henshaw Nigh, secretary and treasurer of the Nigh Lumber Company, of Ironton, is thus identified with one of the important industrial enterprises contributing to the commercial prestige of his native city, and the president of the company is his elder brother, Samuel H., the two owning and controlling the business, in which they own equal shares and which has been by them developed to large proportions.  William H. Nigh was born in Ironton on the 8th of November, 1858, and continued his studies in the public schools of the city from an early age until he had completed the curriculum of the high school.  At the age of eighteen years he became associated with his brother Samuel H., who was engaged in the buying and shipping of lumber, with headquarters at Ironton.  At the end of one year William H., then nineteen years old, was sent by his brother to Mississippi to assume the management of a saw mill owned by the latter on the Yazoo River.  William H. passed about three years in the supervision of the business in Mississippi and then, in 1890, he became associated with his brother in the purchase of a portable saw mill at Catlettsburg, Boyd County, Kentucky.  This mill they continued to operate successfully in that part of the Bluegrass State for four yeas, and they still have large lumber interests in Kentucky.  Mr. Nigh returned to Ironton, the two brothers here erected their present saw mill, at the foot of Ellison Street, in January, 1890, and having placed the same in operation in addition to their lumbering activities in Kentucky.  The mill has been kept up to the highest standard and has the capacity for the output of 50,000 feet of lumber a day.  Through progressive methods and definite circumspection the enterprise has been built up to a status of marked prosperity and it proves a valuable adjunct to the industrial activities of this section of the Buckeye State, as one of the foremost of its kind in the Hanging Rock Iron Region.  The brothers effected the organization of Nigh Lumber Company, which is incorporated with a capital stock of $10,000, shared equally by the two.  The plant and business at Catlettsburg, Kentucky, are conducted under the firm name of S. H. Nigh & Brother.  He whose name initiates this review owns a half interest in each of these important business enterprises, as already intimated, and he is likewise associated with his brother in the ownership of a valuable tract of 7,500 acres of timber land in Kentucky.  In Ironton he owns his attractive modern residence, known as a center of generous hospitality, besides other houses and lots.  Mr. Nigh has proved a reliable and progressive business man and a loyal and public-spirited citizen, with abiding interest in all that pertains to the welfare of his home city and county.
     In politics Mr. Nigh is aligned as a supporter of the cause of the republican party, and he is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias and the Masonic fraternity, in the latter of which he has received the thirty-second degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, besides being affiliated with the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.  Both he and his wife are zealous communicants of the Protestant Episcopal Church and he is a member of hte vestry of the parish of his church.
     In September, 1899, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Nigh to Miss Josephine Wood, daughter of George and Martha Wood, of Maysville, Kentucky, and the two children of this union are William H., Jr., and Samuel H.
Source: A Standard History of The Hanging Rock Iron Region of Ohio, Vol. II - Illustrated - Published by The Lewis Publishing Company, 1916 - Page 653


 



 

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