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Biographies
Source:
History
of Cuyahoga Co., Ohio
Published by D. W. Ensign & Co.,
1879
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BIOGRAPHICAL INDEXES FOR CUYAHOGA COUNTY >
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 |
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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 |
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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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