BIOGRAPHIES

Source:
A History of Northwest Ohio
A Narrative Account of Its Historical Progress and Development
from the First European Exploration of the Maumee and
Sandusky Valleys and the Adjacent Shores of
Lake Erie, down to the Present Time
By Nevin O. Winter, Litt. D.
Assisted by a Board of Advisory and Contributing Editors
ILLUSTRATED
Vol. I & II
The Lewis Publishing Company
Chicago and New York
1917

Transcribed by Sharon Wick

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Geo. R. Campbell	GEORGE R. CAMPBELL is one of the prominent young bankers of Northwest Ohio, and is now identified as the cashier of the Liberty State Savings Bank at Liberty Center in Henry County.  Mr. Campbell undertook the organization of this bank under state supervision in July, 1914, and since its establishment, under the same management, it has enjoyed a very prosperous career.  It has a capital of $25,000 and in less than two years its deposits have aggregated nearly $2000,000.  The directors are local Henry County men with Dr. Daniel E. Haag, president.  The bank occupies excellent quarters in its own building and it is perfectly fitted and appointed for a thorough banking service.  Mr. Campbell is secretary and treasurer of Group No. 3, Ohio Bankers Association.      Mr. Campbell was formerly for nine yeas cashier of the Whitehouse State Savings Bank of Whitehouse, Ohio, and prior to that was connected with the establishment of the Waterville State Savings Bank at Waterville, Ohio.  Both these institutions are still enjoying a prosperous existence.      Altogether he has devoted fourteen years of his life to banking, in fact since he was nineteen years of age, his hard work in the one line is undoubtedly the explanation of his success.  The first two years were spent with various banks in Toledo, where he gained a knowledge of city banking, and at the age of twenty-one he helped organize and manage the bank at Waterville.      He was born at Bucyrus, Ohio, in 1882, and was reared in that city and received his education there.  His father was Capt. George R. Campbell, who was born in Boston and as a young man located in Fremont, Ohio.  He was there when the war broke out, and enlisting he became captain in a regiment of light artillery, and not only served through three years of the terrible conflict between the North and South but spent three years more in the South protecting the negroes from the Ku Klux Clan.  After returning home he located at Bucyrus, and there began the real work of his life as a railroad contractor, inventor and manufacturer.  He patented seventeen mechanical devices of various kinds, and was quite successful in the manufacture of them.  He died in 1892 at the age of fifty-six, when in the prime of his career.  His successor in business was Patrick Carroll, who on the basis of the Campbell patents developed a very extensive business.  His widow survived him a number of years and died in Toledo in 1900.  Her maiden name was Amanda E. Ritsman who was born at Tiffin, Ohio, but was reared and educated at Bucyrus.      In Lucas County George R. Campbell married Miss Harriet B. Lautzenheizer.  She was born in Maumee, Ohio, and received her education in the Toledo schools.  Her parents were German and English people and her father was one of the pioneers in the woolen mills at Napoleon and Maumee.  Mr. and Mrs. Campbell have one daughter, Mary Gertrude, now eight years of age.      The family are members of the Methodist Episcopal church, and Mr. Campbell is affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Knights of Pythias, his Knights of Pythias affiliation being at Whitehouse, Ohio.  He is an active republican, and was a delegate from his district to the national convention at Chicago in 1916.  For twelve years he has been a member of the Toledo Club, and is well known in that city and throughout Northwestern Ohio. Source: History of Northwestern Ohio - Vol. II _ Publ. 1917 - Page 726-27
	ELI C. CLAY has been a resident of Henry County since 1873.  He has lived a very active as well as useful life, and as a young man he saw active service during the Civil war as a member of the Ohio Home Guards.      He came to Henry County as a cooper by trade, and was a man of unusual proficiency in that line.  This trade he turned to advantage as a stave manufacturer, and thus he became a factor in clearing off many acres of the heavy timber which formerly covered the fertile soils of Henry County.  Much of his clearing was done in the vicinity of Grelton before the village  of that name was known.  He was also a lumber manufacturer in the Grelton community.  Mr. Clay was one of the local men who had a part in promoting the building of the Toledo & St. Louis Railroad, now known as the Clover Leaf System.  He cleared out the right of way for that road in section 1 of Monroe Township, in Henry County, and altogether he cleared off the manufactured into lumber 160 acres of timber land in Section 1.  He was in business in that community until 1896 when he traded his property for 100 acres in the northeast quarter of section 18, in Washington Township, and has made his home there since 1897.  Mr. Clay has a good farm, has buildings of substantial character, and having won financial independence by his hard work in earlier years he is now in a position to enjoy life at leisure.      Mr. Clay was born in Scipio Township of Seneca County, Ohio, in August, 1845.  Thus he was not yet sixteen years of age when the war brook out, and the service he rendered as a soldier came before he reached his majority.  As he grew up he had the advantage of the local schools, but early turned to a mechanical trade.  He served an apprenticeship as a cooper, and within three months after beginning he had secured an equipment of tools and he was soon pronounced letter perfect at the business.  At the end of the first year he had saved $175, and after that he started out on his own account.  In 1871 he removed to Wood County, where he was in business as a cooper for about two yeas and then came to Henry County, where his general activities have already been traced.  Mr. Clay has the reputation among his associates of being a very practical as well as hard-working man, and his success has followed as a matter of course.      He represents old Pennsylvania ancestry.  His great-grandfather was a soldier in the Revolutionary war.  Late in life, and some years after the war, he brought his family to Trumbull County, Ohio, and lived there the rest of his days.  He is one of the Revolutionary soldiers buried in that county, and his wife also found her last resting place there.  Of their children, Isaac, grandfather of Eli Clay, grew up in Trumbull County and was married there to Elizabeth Wise, a native of the same county.  All their children were born in Trumbull County, but about 1838 the family moved into the wilds of Seneca County.  Here Isaac established a home and cleared up a farm from the wilderness.  His wife died at the age of sixty yeas, and he subsequently removed to Wood County, where his death occurred when ninety-three years of age.  This family in the various generations have with few exceptions supported the English Lutheran Church, of which they have been devout members.      John W. Clay, father of Eli, was born in Trumbull County about 1820, and was eighteen years of age when he accompanied the family to Seneca County, where he came to maturity.  There he married Helen Heater.  She was a native of Union County, Pennsylvania, but at the age of six years had come to Seneca County with her parents, and for a time the family lived in a brush-covered log cabin.  Her father, Adam Heater, met his death soon afterward while raising a log cabin.  He was a veteran of the War of 1812, having served under General Harrison at Fort Meigs.      After his marriage John W. Clay settled on a farm in Seneca County and lived out their years, hard working people, thrifty, and devout Christians, members of the English Lutheran Church.  They are buried side by side in the old Heater Cemetery, John W. having died at the age of eighty-five and his wife when nearly fifty-four.  In matters of politics he was one of the early Free Soilers of Ohio.  He had also seen service in the Mexican war, having been a driver in a light artillery regiment.      Mr. Eli C. Clay married for his first wife, at Napoleon, Addie Duffey.  She was born in Grand Rapids of Wood County, Ohio, and died at her home in Henry County in 1883, at the age of thirty-three.  She was survived by two children; Gertrude is the wife of Clarence Mohler; they live in Lucas County, Ohio, and their three children are Luella, Ila and Gladys.  Newton E., still single, assists his father in the management of the home farm.  For his second wife Mr. Clay was married in Richfield Township, of Henry County, to Margaret Mahler.  She was born in that township July 7, 1857, daughter of George and Susanna (Paulus) Mahler, who were of French stock.  They were born in Stark County, Ohio, were married there; their first child was born there, but in 1845 they came as pioneers to Henry County, developed a farm in the midst of the woods, and they spent the rest of their years in Richfield Township.  Mr. Mahler died at the age of seventy-one and his wife at eighty.  They were Lutherans in religion.      Mr. and Mrs. Clay have one son, Ralph W., who is now twenty years of age and still at home.  Mrs. Clay is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  Politically Mr. Clay gives his active support to the prohibition party. Source: History of Northwestern Ohio - Vol. II _ Publ. 1917 - Page 843
	JAMES CRAWFORD, who died at his home in Harrison Township of Henry County, Feb. 1, 1911, had a long and honorable career, marked with industry and with an integrity of character which gained him the esteem and affection of every one with whom he came in contact.  He lived in Henry County for a great many years, and his widow and family still reside at the old homestead in section 24 of Harrison Township.      He was born in Coshocton County, Ohio, Dec. 23, 1830, and was therefore eighty-one years of age at the time of his death.  His parents were Thomas and Mary Crawford.  His father was born in Ireland of an old Scotch-Irish Presbyterian family.  He came to America when a young man, locating in an Irish settlement near Carlisle in Coshocton County, Ohio.  He married there and he and 'his wife soon afterward blazed their way into a new and almost unsettled part of Coshocton County, erecting a log cabin and starting to make a farm out of the woods.  Thomas Crawford was a man of great industry and in time had cleared up about 300 acres of land.  This he improved with a fine brick house, brick barn, with a large orchard, and for many years he lived in affluence and comfort, dying when about seventy years of age.  His widow survived him and was about eighty when she passed away.  She was noted for her hard working ability and in the early days she spun the yarn and made many of the clothes for her household.  They were active workers in the Presbyterian Church and had to do with the organization of a church of that denomination in Coshocton County.  In their family were ten children, all of whom grew up and married and all had families of their own.  The two now living are: Robert and Mrs. Elizabeth Clark, the former a resident of Napoleon and the latter of West Carlisle, both of them being past seventy years of age.  Nearly all the family remained in the faith to which they were reared, the Presbyterian.      The late James Crawford grew up on the old homestead and received a public school education.  He was married in Coshocton County to Elizabeth Maxwell.  She died in the prime of life, leaving two children.  Hannah, the older of these two children, died in 1895, leaving seven children by her marriage to Clarence L. Fast, who passed away in 1905.  Jacob, the other child, is a resident of Cleveland, a former clerk of that city, and by his marriage to Elizabeth Snyder has two sons.      In 1872 James Crawford married for his second wife Miss Catherine Lynch.  They were married near West Carlisle and Mrs. Crawford was born in Coshocton County June 15, 1841. Her parents were William and Elizabeth (Wolf) Lynch, both natives of Pennsylvania.  When was a small boy his father, who was a native of Ireland, died, and the young man was thus thrown upon his own resources.  He learned the trade of hatter, and moved to West Bedford, Ohio, where he followed his trade and where he married Miss Wolf, who was of Pennsylvania Dutch stock, and had come to Coshocton County with her parents.  William Lynch and wife located on a tract of wild land, containing about 300 acres, after their marriage and while following his trade Mr. Lynch cleared up most of this and made it a fine farm.  He also manufactured many of the fine hats worn by the men of that time, most of them of the very best material, silk and beaver.  A distinctive feature of his own attire for many years was a tall hat which he continued to wear even after the style had become somewhat obsolete.  Mrs. Crawford was about two years old when her mother died.  She was the youngest of nine children.  After her mother's death her father married for a second wife Miss Martha Thornhill.  There were no children by that marriage and she died at the age of seventy.  William Lynch died at the old home near West Bedford Dec. 16. 1864, and had he lived to the following Christmas Day would have been seventy-five years of age.  He and his wife were members of the Baptist Church and in politics he was a republican.      Mrs. Crawford and her brother Absalom are the only two now living of the family. Her brother occupies a part of his father's old estate in Coshocton County, and is now alone, having lost his wife and children.  Two of Mrs. Crawford's brothers, John and Hugh Lynch, were soldiers in the Civil war. John was wounded in one of the battles around Richmond, died there and had a soldier's burial on the battlefield.  He left a widow and three daughters, one of whom is still living.  Her brother Hugh became captain of a company in an Iowa regiment, was promoted to the rank of major, lost his health during the later months of the war and died from consumption soon after his return, leaving a wife and daughter.      In 1877 Mr. and Mrs. Crawford and their one daughter came to Henry County, locating on the Ridge Road in Harrison Township.  Mr. Crawford bought the old Lemert farm and thereafter was busy with its cultivation and improvement until he owned one of the best estates in that locality.  It is a farm conspicuous by its fine house, barns, its drainage, and its many evidences of thorough cultivation, and systematic husbandry.  Besides this farm Mrs. Crawford also owns another place of forty acres.      Mr. Crawford was a Methodist and a democrat in politics, and Mrs. Crawford was also reared in the Methodist faith.  She is the mother of two children. Mary C. is the wife of Lon Morgan Blue, a farmer of Bartlow, Township of Henry County, and they have two children, Consuela and Ford Blue.  Charles L., the only son, operates the old homestead for his mother, and by his marriage to Miss Lena Barton has four sons, James, Gale, Ray and Byron. Source: History of Northwestern Ohio - Vol. II _ Publ. 1917 - Page 1536

 

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