L. A. STALEY, Esq.
This well-known citizen of Cincinnati, treasurer of Hamilton county, traces his ancestry on the paternal side to Switzerland. The first of the family to reach the new world is Peter Staley, his great-great-grandfather, who came to this country early in its history. The more recent ancestors of Mr. Staley on this side are all American born. His grandfathers on both sides and two of his maternal uncles were soldiers of the War of 1812 - 15. His maternal grandfather, Thomas Connor, came from Ireland when an orphan boy, and settled in Maryland, where he married and brought up his family. His youngest child and daughter, Rebecca Conner, was a native of Georgetown, District of Columbia, born in 1809, and was united in marriage at Frederick, Maryland, the seventeenth of Dec., 1835, to Henry Staley, great-grandson of the pioneer above named, and father of the subject of this notice, and a native of that county, born in 1810. The youthful pair lived in Frederick, where two of their children were born, until 1840. In that year Mr. Staley came on foot to the Miami country in company with several of his neighbors, on a prospecting tour for a place in which to settle his family to advantage. He fixed his affections upon Dayton, Montgomery county, Ohio, and in the absence of railroads and of an over full purse, he walked all the way back to Frederick, nearly six hundred miles, and soon started with his family for the great west. They settled in Dayton, where the elder Staley engaged as a carpenter and builder and has sine resided, in the successful prosecution of his business. Himself and wife are both still living.  He at the age of seventy-one is now building a handsome double house in Dayton, as an investment. He is yet vigorous and enterprising, and has accumulated a good share of this world's goods. The first child born to Henry and Rebecca (Connor) Staley in this place was Luke, who was ushered into this world August 11, 1840. The public schools of Dayton offered his chief opportunities of education, and he pushed his way pretty well through them, but was ambitious to get into active life, and when only about seventeen years of age he took a position as salesman in the dry goods store of Thomas Shafer, in Dayton, where he remained for one and a half to two years, and then was compelled by the state of his health to seek more stirring and out-door employment. He began to learn the trade of a brick mason, and worked for some time at the business, but did not take very kindly to it, and in the fall of 1861 he came to Cincinnati and accepted an agency for the Cincinnati Mutual Insurance company, an institution now merged with others in the Union Central Life Insurance company, of which Mr. Staley has been the general agent since 1871, and still retains his agency, devoting his business energies apart from the duties of his public office to the interests of this company.
     During the whole time the Cincinnati Mutual was in existence, after Mr. Staley came to the city, he was its agent until the consolidation, and then took the general agency above mentioned. Our subject was early in politics, both in sympathy and action. His father had been an old-line Jeffersonian Democrat until the rise of the Republican party shortly afterward. His opposition to the slave-power and institution of slavery twenty years before, had led to his removal from Maryland, in the face of a very eligible offer made by his employer there, and when Mr. Lincoln became a candidate for the Presidency, he received the warm support of the elder Staley. Under his advice and influence young Luke likewise cast his vote for the statesman of the prairies, and has since been steadfast in his allegiance to the principles and policy of the Republican party. He is one of the most active workers in politics in southwestern Ohio, and his voice is influential in the councils of the party. He was for a time chairman of the Republican executive committee of Hamilton county, and also a member of the Republican State central committee. He had never, however, sought office, but his services to the party, as well as his eminent qualifications, in the canvass of 1879 fixed the attention of the Republicans of the county upon him as a candidate for treasurer, and he was nominated in July of that year, at the largest convention of the kind ever held in the city or State, numbering about one thousand delegates. He shared in the grand success of his ticket the ensuing fall, and was elected by the handsome majority of nearly two thousand five hundred. He assumed the duties of his office in September of the next year, and has since attended to them with thorough fidelity and efficiency. The importance of his post may be estimated from the fact that about six millions of the public money pass through his office yearly, and the good people of Hamilton county are to be congratulated that their financial interests are reposed in hands so honest and capable.
     Mr. Staley's parents are both members of the German Reformed church, and he has been a constant attendant upon its ministrations from early childhood, and is a cordial sympathizer with the practical teachings of Christianity. He was one of the founders and incorporators of the Lincoln club of Cincinnati, is specially active in its membership, and served as one of its directors in its earlier years. He was one of a committee selected to form its by-laws and give it a name, and upon his suggestion the society received its present very fitting and potent name of Lincoln club.
     Mr. Staley has for his wife Lucretia Ellen (Kessler) Staley, daughter of Mr. Henry Kessler, a well-known resident of the Queen City, to whom he has united January 9, 1866. They are blessed with four offspring – Charles Kessler (named from a maternal uncle), born August 27, 1866; Henry Kessler, (from his maternal grandfather, his paternal grandfather also being named Henry), born August 22, 1869; Laura Rebecca (from her paternal grandmother), whose natal day is January 19, 1872; and Ida Kessler (from a sister-in-law of her mother), born June 8, 1874.
Source: 1789 - 1881 History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches - Publ. L. A. Williams & Co. - Page 447