HENRY TABLER,  a member of the Butler county infirmary board and clerk of that body, was born in Hamilton on the  20th of February, 1841, and is a representative of a family of three children born to Henry and Mary A. (Von Benken) Tabler, natives of Hanover, Germany.  The father was born in 1800 and came to America in  1836, establishing a home in Hamilton, Ohio.  The wife of Charles Beck, who was Miss Catherine Tabler, is, besides the subject of this sketch, the only survivor of the family.  The parents were early residents of Hamilton and closely identified with the city's growth and progress, where they contributed their share in establishing a branch of the thrifty and prosperous German-American citizenship now so prevalent and popular in Butler county.  The father spent his life here in various pursuits and lived to advanced age.
     Henry Tabler, the subject of this article, was reared and educated in the city of his birth.  His parents were devout Catholics in religious views and he was educated in the parochial schools until he attained his fifteenth year, when he began life's struggles on his own account.  In later years he added to his educational acquirements and took a business course in Bartlett's Business College, at Cincinnati.  He served an apprenticeship to the carriage painter's trade under the tutorship of Christian Morganthaler, with whom he worked until the beginning of the Civil war.
     Mr. Tabler was one of the first to respond to the President's call for seventy-five thousand men for the three-months service.  He enlisted on the 17th of April, 1861 and was assigned to Company K, First Ohio Volunteer Infantry, this being the first company to leave Hamilton for the seat of war.  Mr. Tabler went with his command to the defense of the national capital and took part in numerous skirmishes leading up to the historic battle of Bull Run.  In that sanguinary engagement the First Ohio bore a conspicuous part and assisted in ushering in the struggle, with a true appreciation of the formidable character of the enemies of the national union.  A depleted treasury, plundered arsenals, and a chief executive whose sympathies were clearly on the side of disunion, - it is ot strange that the first great battle proved a national disaster.  The poorly armed and equipped volunteers from the offices, shops and farms, with scarcely a knowledge of the manual of arms, met thoroughly skilled troops, well-armed and equipped, under command of some of the best generals the nation has ever produced.
     Mr. Tabler served out his term of enlistment, received an honorable discharge from the service, and located in Buffalo, New York, where he followed his trade until 1865.  Returning west, he completed a course in bookkeeping and commercial work and continued at his trade until 1870, when he became a partner in the mercantile and tailoring establishment of Kortemeyer, Freer & Company, of Cincinnati.  Mr. Tabler subsequently disposed of his interests in this firm and became associated in the boot and shoe business with his brother-in-law, Charles Beck. Soon after this Mr. Beck was elected to a county office, in which he served nine years, his father having purchased his interest in the mercantile business, which was continued by the elder Beck and Mr. Tabler.  Retiring from office, Charles Beck repurchased his former interest, and the two brothers-in-law continued in profitable business associations until 1883, when Mr. Tabler sold out.  After a year's retirement, he engaged in the grocery business for a period of three years, and in 1888 he took up insurance, in which he is still profitably engaged.  The subject took his initial work as a salesman in the employ of the well-known house of T. V. Howell & Son.  In an official capacity Mr. Tabler has served in various offices of trust and responsibility.   He was secretary of the Hamilton board of health for five years, and served several years as assessor of real and personal property in the third ward.  He was a member of the board of county infirmary directors for six years, when he retired for two years, and was re-elected and is now serving the fifth year since his return to that office, and was president for four years and clerk for one year.  In his official capacity Mr. Tabler is careful and conservative, ever alert to the interest of the taxpayers, yet generous and open-handed towards the deserving poor.  His long continuance in the responsible position is the best evidence of his fitness for it.  He is a man of great energy and perseverance, coupled with broad experience in the world of affairs and a close observation of human nature.  His keen detection of fraud and imposition has been the means of saving many dollars to the county, while the same discriminating power has sought out the deserving wards of the county and rendered to them timely aid.  Mr. Tabler is careful and methodical in all of his business relations and bears an enviable record for honesty and integrity in his public life.
     On the 26th of June, 1866, Mr. Tabler was united in marriage with Miss Mary Josephine Tieben, a highly accomplished young lady of Covington, Kentucky.  This happy union has been blessed with a family of ten children, eight of whom are now living.  The names are, in order of birth, Charles H., a machinist employed in Niles Tool Works Company; Herman A. has charge of the repairing department in the Deuber-Hampton Watch Company, at Canton, Ohio; Eleanora is the wife of Walter F. Cahill, of Lindenwald, her husband being a pattern maker; Albert J. is a machinist at the Niles Tool Works; Adeline is at home; George T. is a soldier in the regular army, new in the Philippines, being clerk  of Troop E, Fourteenth United States Cavalry; Louisa is in the senior year of the city high schools; Robert is a student in the public schools; the first two born are dead; Elizabeth married John M. Fallert, with whom she had a daughter named Antoinette Cornelia.  Mrs. Fallert died in 1897, at the age of thirty years.  The infant child was taken by the maternal grandparents in whose family she is being tenderly reared and characterized as the "baby of the household."  One child, Henrietta, died in infancy.  Mr. Tabler and his family are devout Catholics in religious belief, sustaining membership in St. Stephen's church.  They are members of the various social and religious societies within the sanction of the church and the family stands very high in the community.  Mr. Tabler is a member of the Catholic Knights of America, the Catholic Knights of Ohio, and of Wetzel-Compton Post No. 96, Grand Army of the Republic.  In his political affiliations he is an active and zealous Democrat, with which party he has always wielded a potent influence in local politics.  He is quiet and unassuming in manner and genial and courteous in manner and genial and courteous in temperament.  No citizen of Butler county is better known or more universally esteemed than Henry Tabler.|Source: Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio - Publ. B. F. Bowen & Co., Publishers - 1905 - Page 498

Source: Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio - Publ. B. F. Bowen & Co., Publishers - 1905 - Page 446

PETER G. THOMSON, president of the Champion Coated Paper Company, who more than any other man is responsible for the conception and final construction of the Hamilton Belt Railway, was born in Cincinnati on Dec. 16, 1851.  His education, so far as schools are concerned, was limited to what was offered by the public schools of Cincinnati and his commanding position in the business world has been reached by no influence but his own brains and his own exertions.  Without a capital of one dollar, Mr. Thomson went to work at the age of seventeen years, for Robert Clarke & Company, the Cincinnati book dealers.  For three years he worked for three dollars per week and when, at the end of a service of six years, he left his employers to embark in an enterprise of his own, he carried with him a knowledge of the trade and a literary taste that marked the first pronounced stage in his unusual business career.  At twenty-three years of age he opened a book and stationery store at the southwest corner of Vine street and the Arcade.  Here Mr. Thomson became the first tenant of the then new Emery building.  While in this business Mr. Thomson did much literary work, both as an author and a publisher.  His most notable work was a "Bibliography of the State of Ohio," prepared after vast research in the leading American libraries.  It won for its author recognition throughout the literary circles of the entire English speaking world, and as a result Mr. Thomson is today a member of the Royal Geographical Society of France, to which he was elected in 1881, and a life member of the Historical and Geographical Society of Ohio.  Eulogistic notices of the work were printed in the literary journals of England and America, and personal letters of commendation and interest were elicited from many men of eminence, including Presidents Hayes a nd Garfield, Francis Parkman, the historian, Rufus King and many others.
     After Mr. Thomson had sold out his book business, he embarked in the novel field of the publication of children's toy books and games at Everett and Baymiller streets, Cincinnati.  His plant was burned on Oct. 9, 1884, but he promptly removed to the Russell-Morgan building, on Race street, opposite Shillito's, and resumed business.  It was soon after this that his first great successful business coup was made.  The firm of McLaughlin Brothers, of New York, had previously enjoyed a monopoly of the toy-book and game publication business of America, and the existence of live competition in their field did not rest well on their commercial stomachs.  Meantime Mr. Thomson kept on increasing and expanding his business until, in 1887, they were glad to buy out his good will for one hundred thousand dollars, cash, and retire him from the field.  Today he is under bond to forfeit five hundred dollars on every toy book or game that he sells during the remainder of his life.  After the sale above stated Mr. Thomson, in 1892, bought the one-hundred-and-eighty-seven-acre tract known as the Prospect Hill and Grand View Addition, Hamilton, Ohio.  It was to develop this property that he conceived the idea of building the Black Street bridge, to which he contributed a bonus of fifteen thousand dollars.  And too, it was to further develop this property, rather than to primarily establish a business, that he purchased certain patents connected with the coating of paper, which greatly simplified. the process, and established the Champion Coated Paper Company, now the largest paper mill and the largest coating mill in the world.  It was then also that the idea of a belt railway, which would give the best shipping facilities to the new territory, was conceived, though five years were required for the execution of the plan.
     Mr. Thomson's home is on College Hill, and it is not too much to say that what that beautiful suburban village has beyond the gifts of a prodigal nature, it owes to him.  He has been for years and is today its leading spirit in every enterprise.  For sixteen years he has served as a member of the village ouncil, and to Mr. Thomson's efforts is due the fact that the village has street-railway connections with Cincinnati.  By his personal efforts the bonus of thirty thousand dollars was raised, which induced the consolidated company to extend its tracts to the village.  He is a director of Belmont College and the Ohio Military Institute, and was chairman of the building committee that gave College Hill her handsome new Presbyterian church.  So highly were these services appreciated that in December his fellow townsmen presented Mr. Thomson with a loving cup.  Next day, when he returned to his business at Hamilton, his employees presented him with another.  To have been the recipient of two such tokens in two consecutive days, and to have builded, at fifty-two years, an honorable fortune, from no capital but brain and energy, is not given to many men.
Source: Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio - Publ. B. F. Bowen & Co., Publishers - 1905 - Page 772