|
BIOGRAPHIES
Source:
1798
History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio
with Illustrations
and Biographical Sketches of its Pioneers Most Prominent Men
Philadelphia - Williams Brothers
1878
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
< CLICK HERE TO
RETURN TO 1878 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX >
< CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO
LIST OF BIOGRAPHICAL INDEXES >
O. S. Farr |
ORRIN SMITH FARR
is of direct English descent, his grandfather migrating to this country
and settling in Connecticut, opposite Bellows Falls. The father of
Orrin was the oldest of the family, and went to Ohio in 1813;
served in the United States army in the War of 1812. He returned
to Connecticut, and after two years married Betsey, oldest child
of Nathaniel Mastick, and with her removed to Ohio,
settling first in Lorain county, near the site of the present town of
Elyria.
Of Mr. Farr's great-grandfather, on the
mother's side, whose name was John Salter, this story may be
told. He was the only son of a rich Holland family,
and when nine years old he went on board a British man-of-war, was
decoyed below, and carried to sea. He was retained on ship-board
in various capacities, and remained in the English service nine years.
Finally, when his ship was in Boston, he deserted, changed clothes with
a stone-mason, and pushed inland, under the name of John
Mastick, and, though pursued, escaped. He settled, married,
had children; afterwards an advertisement appeared in a New York paper
for the heirs of the rich Holland house, and one of his
sons, with such proofs as he could gather up, went to Europe, and was
never heard of after.
Orrin Smith was the seventh of ten
children, and born in Shalersville, Portage county, May 24, 1835.
In 1840 the family moved to Troy, Geauga County, purchased and lived a
little north of Fox's Corners. Young Farr early evinced
much energy, supporting himself at thirteen, and having the care of the
family at eighteen, and from that time for many years. After the
father's death the property became the subject of litigation, which
lasted thirteen years, and till May of the present year, when it
resulted in Mr. Farr's favor. Judge H. K. Smith, of
Chardon, then at the bar, and who had charge of Mr. Farr’s
interest, suggested to him that he enter upon the study of the law under
his care, and loaned him Walker's “American Law" and Blackstone.
Acting on this suggestion Mr. Farr, on his way home,
purchased a small law library and took up the study, carrying on his
farm at the same time. He pursued the law with commendable
diligence, and was admitted to the bar in August, 1868, then at the
mature age of thirty-three.
Mr. Farr early had a decided inclination
for the bar, but was hampered by so many embarrassments that the chance
did not seem to come to him till an age when the experiment is usually
deemed hazardous, unless to one with special aptitude, which Mr.
Farr undoubtedly possessed. His friends and acquaintances
had such confidence in his ability, that when at the bar but a year, he
was brought forward, nominated, and elected prosecuting attorney of
Geauga County, and removed to Chardon, where he has since resided.
He was elected mayor of the town in 1876.
Mr. Farr’s opportunities for an education
were limited, but a quick, shrewd mind made up for much of the
deficiencies. His father was a life-long Democrat. At
nineteen young Farr secured the Boston Liberator, The New York
Tribune, and Cleveland Plaindealer. Whoever read the two
former, even in connection with the Plaindealer, would be certain
to have healthful and enlightened political ideas, and as a matter of
course he graduated a stanch Republican, and is known as an occasional
effective political speaker.
He has all his life been a practical temperance liver
and advocate, in support of which he is an able advocate, and recently
won the deserved commendation of the Painesville press for a speech
delivered in Kirtland.
In person Mr. Farr is medium size, well
made, of pleasing person and manners, calculated to win his way, and
sustains himself at the bar, where, for his length of practice, he has
gained a. satisfactory position.
His health disqualified him for military service.
During the war he was an ardent patriot, and devoted his time and means
liberally to the common cause.
There is every reason to expect from Mr. Farr
a growth and maturity at the bar which steadiness of application is sure
to win for men of less ability.
In 1860 he was joined in marriage with Cynthia,
youngest daughter of Chester and Caroline Nash, and
granddaughter of Joseph Nash, Esq, of Troy.
Her mother, Caroline, was eldest daughter of Benjamin
Kingsbury, also of Troy. Joseph Nash and
Benjamin Kingsbury both have honorable mention in our pioneer
history of Troy. Mr. Farr is highly esteemed by a
wide circle of friends and acquaintances.
Source: History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio,
Publ. Philadelphia by Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page 100 |
|
|
ABEL FISHER
Source: History of Geauga and Lake
Counties, Ohio, Publ. Philadelphia by Williams Brothers - 1878 - Page
184
|
|
|
CHARLES H. FOOTE was
born in Newtown, Connecticut, May 18, 1812; was the son of Heber
and Lucy Foote, direct lineage of Nathaniel Foote, who
settled in Wetherfield, Connecticut, about the year 1615. Mr.
Foote came to Chardon in the year 1829, a boy seventeen years of
age, in company with Mr. G. J. Ackley, from the State of New
York, who then commenced the mercantile business in this place.
In the spring of 1834 Mr. Ackley left
Chardon, and Mr. Foote remained to settle up the business.
He then went into partnership with Mr. Wm. Wilber
in the mercantile business; afterwards sold out to Mr. Samuel
Squire. He was then engaged for many years as deputy in
Mr. D. D. Aikens' county clerk's office. Afterwards was
elected county treasurer, and from that he was elected sheriff' of the
county, holding that office as long as the law allows; after that he
engaged in various kinds of business until his death, which occurred
Oct. 15, 1874.
Mr. Foote was a man of much enterprise
and activity and always identified with Chardon, where he was among the
first settlers.
Sept. 17, 1835, he was married to Mary French,
daughter of Joseph and Mary French, and a niece of Governor
Converse, of Vermont, Jude Converse, and Mrs. S. N.
Hoyt; a very intelligent and attractive woman. They became the
parents of three children, of whom the eldest, Mary, resides with
her mother in Chardon. Julia, a beautiful accomplished
girl, excelling in musical studies, and a general favorite, died at the
age of twenty-one. The other they lost in infancy.
Source: History of Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio - Publ. Philadelphia,
Williams Brothers - 1878 - Pg. 126 |
|
|
ELIAS FORD,
second son of John A. and Eliza A. Ford, was educated at Hiram,
and taught school, just before the outbreak of the Rebellion, in
Missouri. In the spring of 1861 he assisted in raising a volunteer
company in Geauga County for the three months’ service, and reported at
Chardon with the company, but was too late to be mustered in. He
returned to Burton, and raised a company of “militia of the Reserve,”
under the Ohio State law, and was elected captain.
He drilled and kept up the organization until
President Lincoln called for three years’ men, when he
stepped out from the State company, with seven others, and formed the
nucleus around which Company B, “ Hitchcock Guards,” Forty-first Ohio
Volunteer Infantry, was formed.
Mr. Ford drew up the enlistment-roll himself,
and was the first to sign it. The company formed, an election of
officers was had by calling the roll. Mr. Ford’s
name being first, he nominated William R. Tolles
for captain, W. W. Munn for first lieutenant, and H. W.
Johnson for second lieutenant, who were elected, and commissioned by
the governor of Ohio. He then took his place in the ranks, but was
at once appointed by the three officers to the highest place in their
gift, - that of first sergeant. The company went into service in
the fall of 1861, and early in 1862 he was promoted to second
lieutenant, and soon after to first lieutenant, of the company.
At the battle of Stone River, Dec. 31, 1862, he had
command of Company B, Forty-first Ohio Volunteer Infantry. The
regiment had been the pivot upon which that day's battle had turned, as
they had fought steadily, swinging around face to front on almost every
point of the compass during the day. The terrible artillery fight,
which began in the afternoon, brought the brigade in range of the
enemy's shot and shell, and to save them every regiment had been ordered
to a new position. After fighting gloriously, the order came for
the Forty first Ohio to “ fall back” and get shelter across the pike.
His company rose up in good order, and as his sword waved in the light,
and his voice shouted in the roar of that awful cannonade, “Steady on
the left!" a minié-ball struck his right shoulder, and, passing through
the right lung, was afterwards cut from under the skin of the right
breast. Giving the command of his company to the sergeant, he
started for the field-hospital, feeling as if a cannon-ball had passed
directly through him, but not knowing what the wound was. One of
his sergeants, C. P. Bail, seeing that he was likely to fall,
being weak from the loss of blood, hurried to him in time to support him
across a corn-field and to the hospital. The ball being taken out,
by Dr. Cleveland, surgeon of the Forty-first, he was removed to
the division hospital, and as the surgeons passed round that “New
Year's" morning, they whispered to the private soldier at his cot, “He
will die.” At nine o’clock that morning he was put upon a mattress
and into an army-wagon with out springs with Lieutenant H. P. Wolcott,
whose foot had been shot off, and started back to Nashville, where he
had begged to go rather than stay and die in the hospital.
For nine miles that day it was a race for life, the
horses running from the rebel cavalry that gained the pike and were
capturing everything; but the “will of a driver,” Charley
Stantial, refused to surrender, though the boys in his wagon ordered
him to “give up," as they could not longer stand the jar of the terrible
race and jolt over the stony road. He finally drove through an
artillery cut on the bank of the pike, and, crossing back of a curve,
came in the rear of the Fourth Michigan Cavalry, where the pursuit
ended. Pushing on twenty miles, the oozing blood jolting out from
Ford’s lung through the wound until the mattress was covered with
gore, and until he was so weak he could not whisper, they reached
Nashville in the evening, and the two lieutenants were well cared for in
the hospital. The fearful ride over the stony pike that day so
cleared his lung of clotted blood as, without doubt, to save his life.
He was the regular army correspondent of the Forty-first to the
Cleveland Herald, and from the date of his letter to the Herald, which
is before the writer now, it appears that he was able to write on the
20th of January, twenty days after the ride, and on the 21st was started
for home on a furlough. His recovery was slow, and his physician
certifying that it would be a long time before he would be fit for field
duty, he resigned, and was honorably discharged in May, 1863. His
lung healed, but, on taking cold, the scar feels tight 0n the lung,
though no serious difficulty has been experienced. Colonel
Wiley, of the Forty-first, says of him at Stone River, that he
“commanded his company with coolness and steady and cheerful
courage, until disabled by a wound in the body." His company
passed resolutions complimentary of his service as a soldier and
officer, and forwarded them to the press for publication at the time of
his discharge.
Apr. 15, 1863, he was married to Miss Lucy J.
Jeffery, of Cleveland; was agent in the Union ticket-office in
Cleveland one year, and at Union depot six months. His abilities
were recognized by the superintendent of the Cleveland, Cincinnati and
Chicago railroad, and he was employed as general western passenger agent
of the road; was promoted to general passenger agent of the
Bellefontaine railway the full of 1867, with an office at Indianapolis.
On consolidation with the Cleveland, Cincinnati and Chicago road he was
made general passenger agent of the whole line. May 15, 1871, he
was promoted to general passenger and ticket agent of the Missouri
Pacific railroad at St. Louis and salary raised; was with that company
until September, 1876, when he was offered a better position and pay,
which he accepted, and was made general passenger and ticket agent of
the St. Louis and Iron Mountain railroad, controlling the passenger
department of six hundred and eighty-four miles of railway, where he now
is. Great energy and executive ability, with steady perseverance,
have given him success.
Source: History of
Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio - Publ. Philadelphia, Williams Brothers -
1878 - Pg. 136 |
|
|
JOHN A. FORD
was born at Cheshire, Connecticut, Sept. 18, 1798, and died June
23,1878, at Wilmington, Illinois. Eliza A. Barnes was born
at East Haven, Connecticut, Mar. 30, 1804, and died at their residence
in Wilmington, Illinois, Jan. 5, 1875. They were married Apr. 1,
1820, and resided in Burton until the fall of 1857; then in Newburg,
Cuyahoga county, until the spring of 1860; after that in Wilmington,
Will county, Illinois, where both died.
Of these were born the following children:
Esther Lovilla, born May 3, 1826, and married to
A. L. Tinker, Dec. 31, 1846; lived in Unionville, Ohio, to 1851,
and since in Painesville, Ohio.
Third daughter, born May 26, 1831, died in infancy.
Wallace John, born Nov. 21, 1832, in Burton;
married, June 7, 1868, to Mary E. Staples, of Lubec, Washington
county, Maine, in the Christian church at that place; lived in
Cleveland, Ohio, Corry and Newcastle, Pennsylvania, and now in Burton.
Emily Lovilla, born in Burton, Oct. 15, 1835;
married at home to Dr. Charles B. Lacy, May 22, 1856; lived in
Michigan until the summer of 1860, and since in Wilmington, Will county,
Illinois.
Altha Esther, born in Burton, Sept. 2, 1837;
married to O. B. Hoadley, at home in Newburg, Feb. 2, 1860, and
lives in Burton.
Elias Alonzo, born in Burton, Apr. 15, 1840;
married to Lou. E. Jeffrey at her home in Cleveland, Ohio, Apr.
15, 1863; residing in Cleveland to about 1868, except the year 1867, in
Indianapolis, and since in St. Louis, Missouri.
Albert Eugene, born in Burton, Aug. 1, 1842;
married, in Wilmington, Illinois, Aug. 23, 1867, to Cornelia L.
McIntosh, and lived in Columbus, Ohio, until his death, July 6,
1876.
Cyrus Charles, born in Burton, June 24, 1844;
married in Wilmington, Illinois.
Colonel John A. Ford was the second son of
John Ford, Esq., and one of the four colonels of militia produced by
the family. He was a man of clear understanding, well informed,
esteemed, had largely the confidence of the community, and quite as
popular as his more famous brother, Governor Ford.
Source: History of
Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio - Publ. Philadelphia, Williams Brothers -
1878 - Pg. 136 |
Seabury Ford |
GOVERNOR SEABURY FORD
Source: History of
Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio - Publ. Philadelphia, Williams Brothers -
1878 - Pg. 59 |
| |
JOHN
FRENCH belongs on one side of the Vermont and Chardon
Converses. His mother was a sister of Governor Julius
Converse, of Vermont, and Jude Converse and Mrs. Eleanor Hays.
On the father's side, equally reputable. He was born at
Randolph, Vermont, dec. 1, 1817. He received a good academical
education for that time and place, and went West to Chardon in 1835.
He there entered the store of his brother-in-law, Charles H. Foot,
where he remained until 1837, and was then in the service of the
engineers of the old Ohio railroad company. He was next in the
service of D. D. Aiken, clerk of the county, and mastered the
forms and be came an adept in the business of that and the various
county offices, and formed acquaintances useful to him in
after-life. In 1844 he was elected recorder of the county, and
re-elected till his period of office covered four full terms.
In 1851 he became a law-student in the office of Riddle &
Thrasher, but was not admitted till 1858. He then formed a
copartnership with Judge D. W. Canfield, and continued in the
practice of the law till his death, Oct. 20, 1861, in the forty
fourth year of his age.
Mr. French’s long and intimate
acquaintance with every form of business, his strong, native good
sense, clear judgment, and poise of mind made him one of the safest
of counselors and most accurate lawyers within the range of his
practice. In the conduct of his business and cases he relied
on the perfection of his preparation, the thoroughness of his study,
rather than on any special gift of oratory or skill. His mind
was characterized by that uncommon thing in this world, common
sense. He was, in the good use of terms, one of the truest and
best of men, —frank, generous, loyal, pursuing none but the most
honorable ends by none but the most honorable means.
If success in life is measured by acquisition of
property, Mr. French’s life was not a failure. If
estimated by the position he gained and held in the regards and
judgments of honorable men,—by the confidence and esteem he won from
the world of all classes,—there was his success eminent. His
death was untimely. The world can never well spare such men.
To take them off at forty four is in a way robbing the community.
It was his fortune, with perfect frankness of manner, and a
character with none but firm and manly lines in it, to win none but
friends. No man of Chardon was ever more generally and deeply
deplored.
In the autumn of 1846, Mr. French was
united with Miss Martha J. Smith in marriage, a lady of
pleasing person, vivacious and sparkling manners, highly esteemed,
and who survives him. Though childless, the union was one of
rare felicity.
Source: History of
Geauga and Lake Counties, Ohio - Publ. Philadelphia, Williams Brothers -
1878 - Pg. 127 |
| |
THOMAS FULLER
Source: History of Geauga and Lake
Counties, Ohio, Publ. Philadelphia by Williams Brothers - 1878 -
Page 185
|
. |
