BIOGRAPHIES

† Source:
A. History of Northwestern Ohio
A Narrative 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. II
Published by
The Lewis Publishing Company
Chicago and New York
1917

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	DAVID A. YODER † Source: History of Northwestern Ohio - Vol. II _ 1917 - Page 1096
	GEN. CHARLES L. YOUNG.  When, on the 17th of September, 1913, death set its seal upon the mortal life of General Charles Luther Young, there passed forward a noble, gallant and loyal soul from its incarnate vehicle, and Ohio lost a man who had dignified and honored the state by his large and worthy achievement, by his exalted character and by that gentle simplicity that ever marks the truly great heart and great mind.  A publication of this nature exercises its supreme function when it takes cognizance, through proper memorial tribute, of the life and labors of so distinguished a citizen as the late General Young, to whose name special honor shall ever attach by reason of the splendid service which he gave as a gallant soldier and officer of the Union during the dark and climacteric period of the Civil war.  In the "piping times of peace" he manifested the same loyalty and high ideals that thus prompted him to go forth in defense of the nation's integrity, and, all in all, he was a gracious, noble personality whose memory shall long be cherished and venerated in the city and state in which he so long maintained his home, his residence in Ohio having compassed a period of nearly half a century.      Gen. Charles Luther Young was born in the City of Albany, New York, on the 23rd of November, 1838, and thus his death occurred about one month prior to the seventy-fifth anniversary of his birth.  He was a son of Eli and Eleanor (Thomas) Young, the former of sterling Holland Dutch lineage and the latter of Welsh descent.  Eli Young was born at Caughnawaga, Montgomery County, New York, a scion of one of the sterling Dutch families that was founded in America and in the Empire State in the very early colonial period of our national history.  The mother of General Young was born at Albany the fair capital city of New York, at a time when it was still lacking in all metropolitan pretensions.  The hoe of the Young family was maintained at Albany until the inception of the Civil war, when removal was made to the City of Buffalo, where Eli Young thereafter lived retired until his death, in 1876, at which time he was seventy years of age, his widow surviving him by a number of years.      General Young, whose father was in substantial financial circumstances, was afforded excellent educational advantages in his youth.  He attended different educational institutions in his native state and his more advanced scholastic training was obtained principally in Albany Academy and in the Classical Institute conducted in the same city by Prof. Charles H. Anthony, a man of high scholastic attainments.  In this latter institution General Young was graduated, and early in life he formulated definite plans for his future career, but from his intention to prepare himself for the legal profession he was deflected when there came to him the call to higher duty, with the precipitation of the Civil war.  After having given all of loyal and gallant service as a soldier of the Union he was compelled to abandon his ambition for the profession noted, as he had received injuries that rendered it imperative for him to seek other than sedentary vocation.      In April, 1861, when but twenty-two years of age, General Young, as a zouave cadet, found it possible to render his initial service to the Union, by acting as guard for recruits that were being mobilized in his native city.  In the following month, assisted by Hon. J. K. Porter, LL. D., he took an active part in recruiting men for the celebrated Excelsior Brigade that was commanded by General Sickles.  On the 13th of June, 1861, he was commissioned first lieutenant and was assigned to the First Regiment of the Excelsior Brigade.  In the preliminary way may be given the following quotations from a previously published record concerning his military career:      "He became an officer of General Sickles' Staff, and through McClellan's Peninsular Campaign served on the staff of General Joe Hooker.  After a battle of Williamsburg he was promoted to captain, dated from May 6, 1862.  On the 28th of Juy, 1862, on the field, he was recommended for major, by Generals Sickles, Hooker and Taylor, after the Peninsular campaign.  In recommending him for promotion General Hooker wrote as follows: 'Captain Young, late of my staff, has been in all hte engagements with his command, and has been distinguished for a good conduct and gallantry.  He is an excellent officer and in all respects deserving of your favorable consideration.  He is a young officer, but with his present experience, is qualified to fill a Majority in any regiment.'      "In Pope's Virginia campaign (18620 he commanded his regiment, which participated in the memorable battles of Bristoe Station, Groveton, Bull Run and Chantilly, and he was probably the youngest officer in command of a regiment.  After this campaign General Sickles announced this gallant young officer as assistant inspector general in the Third Army Corps.  In the battle of Chancellorsville, May 3, 1863, while engaged in executing an order from the corps commander, General Sickles, General Young was struck near the jugular vein by a piece of shell, which severed the external carotid artery, and at the time he was supposed to be fatally wounded, being so listed in the official report.  The details of the service which led to his receiving this dangerous wound are worthy of being noted at this juncture.  On May 2d, at Chancellorsville, after the line of the Eleventh Corps broke and the Second Division of the Third Army Corps, under General Berry, pressed forward in the line of battle, General Sickles ordered Major Young to remain with General Berry and report the situation.  Upon General Berry's suggestion, Major Young passed along the entire line of battle, directing that breastworks be thrown up.  So when, on the morning of the 3d of May, General Stonewall Jackson threw his exultant and almost irresistible legions against Hooker's old division, he found an artificial wall, together with a living one, more than a match for his splendid generalship.  It was here that General Berry lost his life.  After conveying this news to General Sickles and while riding back over the field with an order to General Whipple, commander of the Third Division, Third Army Corps, General Young received the terrible wound that so nearly terminated his life.     ''In response to a general order for all officers to return to the front, when the Gettysburg campaign opened, General Young, with an unhealed wound, was again in the field.  He was again disabled in the spring of 1864, in the Wilderness campaign, but did not leave the field.  He was with his command in all the battles in which it engaged, including those of Grant's campaign of the Wilderness,— Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg and other historic engagements.  On the staffs of General Hooker, Sickles, William R. Brewster and other commanders, General Young served with characteristic fidelity and. efficiency,—as aide-de-camp, as provost marshal, as assistant adjutant general, and as assistant inspector general.  He was in the inspector general's department of General Hancock's Second Army Corps.  At Spottsylvania, on the 12th of May, 1864, in response to a call for volunteers, on the part of General J. H. Hobart Ward, Assistant Inspector General Young and Assistant Adjutant General Ayers, of General Mott 's staff, galloped upon the breast works at the historic 'bloody angle.'  These were the only volunteers, and only Generals Ward and Young returned, Ayers having fallen, riddled with bullets.  After the close of the war General Young was commissioned and brevetted lieutenant colonel, 'for gallant and meritorious services during the war of the Rebellion.' "      So germane to the military career of General Young in the Civil war was his later service in connection with military affairs in Ohio that mention of the same may consistently be made before passing to data pertaining to his business activities after the war.   On the 14th of January, 1878, General Young was appointed quartermaster general and commissary general of subsistance on the staff of Governor R. M. Bishop, with the rank of brigadier general, this preferment having been given with the consent of the Ohio Senate.  He accompanied the Governor on his official visit to the Dominion Exposition of Canada, and until the close of his life he continued to take a deep interest in the Ohio National Guard, the while his interest in his old comrades in arms was a dominating element in his makeup.  This was signally reinforced and demonstrated during his efficient service as superintendent of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans' Home, at Xenia, a position of which he was the zealous incumbent from 1890 until 1904, all wards of the institution within his regime holding his name in reverent affection.      On the 9th of January, 1880, General Young received from his comrades of the Grand Army of the Republic, from the Ohio National Guard and other fellow citizens, a general-officer's sword, belt and sash of splendid material and workmanship and with appropriate inscription.  Upon the death of General Hooker the family presented to General Young the sword and sash worn by that distinguished officer throughout the Civil war, the presentation being made as a memento to him as a former staff officer of "Fighting Joe."  General Young was an active, appreciative and honored member of Forsyth Post, No. 15, Grand Army of the Republic, and later became affiliated with Toledo Post, No. 107.  In this noble fraternal order he served on the staff of Commander in Chief Enshaw, of the Department of Ohio, 1879. In 1880 he was a member of the national council of administration of the Grand Army of the Republic; in 1881 he was elected senior vice-commander in chief of the National Encampment of the order, and subsequently he was a financial and property trustee of Forsyth Post. The military prestige of General Young was further indicated by his affiliation with the following named and distinguished organization: Third Army Corps Union, Second Corps Club, Society of the Army of the Potomac, Society of the Army of West Virginia, and Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, of which Commandery he was a charter member.  The General served also as vice-president of the Toledo Soldiers & Memorial Association as a director of the Gettysburg Battlefield Association, and was an honorary member of the Ohio National Guard Officers' Association, and an honorary member of the Continental Guards of New Orleans, Louisiana.      After the close of the war General Young was engaged in business in Buffalo, New York, from 1866 to 1869, in which latter year he came to Ohio and established his residence in the City of Toledo, as representative of the extensive lumber firm of Sears, Holland & Company, which was founded in 1835.  He was manager of the firm's business in Toledo until 1873, when, upon the death of F. P. Sears, the Toledo branch was reorganized under the title of Nelson Holland & Company, General Young becoming the resident partner and manager.  In 1884 the plant of the firm was destroyed by fire, and the business was then transferred to the firm of Young & Miller, of which General Young continued the senior member during the years that the enterprise was continued, his associate in the firm having been George A. Miller.       Mention has already been made of the fact that in 1904 General Young retired from the office of superintendent of the Ohio Soldiers & Sailors' Orphans' Home, at Xenia, and thereafter he lived retired at his home in the City of Toledo until his death.      General Young was a patriot of the highest type, and as a citizen he was most progressive and public-spirited.  He accorded unwavering allegiance to the Democratic party and was repeatedly importuned to accept public office, but he manifested no ambition along this line.  In 1883 he consented, however, to become his party's candidate for the office of mayor of Toledo, and though he ran against great odds his personal popularity in the city was significantly shown when the returns on the election were made, for he was defeated by only eighty-seven votes out of a total of about 10,000 cast.  He was one of the first to serve, and that with marked efficiency, as a member of the board of park commissioners of Toledo, and this was the only public office he held within the long period of his residence in this city.  He was widely known and held in the highest honor throughout the State of Ohio, and when he passed away an entire metropolitan community manifested a sense of loss and bereavement, while tributes of sorrow and honor came from men of distinction in this and other- states.  In the Masonic fraternity the General continued until his death his affiliation with  DeMolay Lodge, Ancient Free & Accepted Masons, in the City of Buffalo, New York. In January, 1871, was solemnized the marriage of General Young to Miss Cora M. Day, daughter of Dr. Albert Day, who was a representative physician and surgeon in the City of Boston, Massachusetts.  The ancestors of Mrs. Young were among the more prominent families of New England.  Her maternal grandfather, General Jotham Moulton, commanded the Eastern Division of the Continental troops in the war of the Revolution at the battle of Bunker Hill.  His grandfather, Colonel Jeremiah Moulton, was in command at the reduction of Norridgewock, Maine, in 1724, and participated in the siege of Louisburg, in 1744.  Dr. Albert Day, the father of Mrs. Young, was not only an eminent physician of Boston but also represented that city as a member of the Massachusetts Legislature.  At the time of the Civil war Mrs. Young assisted in the establishing of the first ''Contraband" School in Boston, the same being opened for the instruction of negro children, and she continued her gratuitous work for this institution until impaired health compelled her retirement. In Toledo, Ohio, Mrs. Young has been actively identified with various charitable and benevolent activities, including the Home for the Friendless and the Adams Street Mission. In former years she was specially active and influential in Forsyth Post Auxiliary Society and Woman's Relief Corps, No. 1, and had the distinction of serving as national senior vice-president of the Woman's Relief Corp, an auxiliary of the Grand Army of the Republic. Of the two children who survive the honored father the elder is Dr. Nelson Young, who is serving as assistant superintendent of the Ohio State Hospital for the Insane, at Toledo, and who is individually mentioned on other pages of this work.  The widowed daughter, Mrs. Eleanor Cunningham, with whom Mrs. Young maintains her home, resides in the City of Brooklyn, New York. † Source: History of Northwestern Ohio - Vol. II _ 1917 - Page 1135
	MORRISON W. YOUNG is president of the Second National Bank of Toledo.  This is a distinction in the financial affairs of Northwest Ohio well justified by Mr. Young's connection with business affairs and his enviable record as an executive, financier and citizen.      The Second National Bank is one of the largest banks in the Middle West and has total resources of over $14,000,000.  It was organized Jan. 18, 1864, only a few months after the passage of the National Bank Act.  Many men of prominence in Toledo's business and financial life were identified with its original organization and with its later development and growth.  It began business with a capital of $100,000, and its first home was in a building on land adjoining the bank's new twenty-one-story skyscraper.  The bank occupied several homes, and in January,1894, it was in the path of the destructive fire which destroyed its building and a number of other structures in that part of Toledo.  The magnificent structure which is now its home was completed in 1913, and stands at the corner of Madison and Summit streets.  The bank occupied its new home Oct. 12, 1913.      In the course of its fifty odd years of successful existence and Second National absorbed several other institutions in Toledo, and on May 1, 1907, it and the Merchants National were consolidated. Edwin Jackson, former president of the Merchants National, was made president of the consolidated institution, but death intervened before he took the place.   Then on Jan. 14, 1908, Morrison W. Young was elected president.  During the eight years since Mr. Young became president the Second National Bank has more than doubled its resources, and at the present time its capital stock is $1,000,000, while surplus and undivided profits are nearly $2,000.000.      Morrison W. Young was born in Maumee, Ohio, in September, 1860.  He is a son of the late Samuel M. and Angeline L. (Upland) Young, reference to whose careers is found on other pages.      Until 1876 Mr. Young attended the Toledo public schools, his parents having moved to Toledo to Maumee a few months after he was born.  Prepared for college in the Hopkins Grammar School at New Haven, Connecticut, and in the fall of 1879 entered Yale University, where he was graduated with the class of 1883.  His first business experience on leaving college was with the Clover Leaf and the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroads.  Two years later he engaged in the hardwood lumber business and in getting out ties for the Pennsylvania and Lake Shore Railroad.  He was successfully identified with that business until 1890. After the death of his honored father he took the management of the Young estate, and also became president of The Blade Printing and Paper Company, which for years had been his father's chief business concern.  Mr. Young has for many years been connected with the Second National Bank, either as an officer or director, and it was his undoubted ability, his mature judgment, and his popularity in business circles which caused the directors to make him president as successor of the late Edwin Jackson.  Mr. Young is also a director of The Northwestern Elevator and Mill Company and was formerly a director and vice president of The Toledo Gas Light and Coke Company.  He has served as president of The Toledo Club and is a member of the Toledo Commerce Club and the Toledo Country Club. † Source: History of Northwestern Ohio - Vol. II _ 1917 - Page 993
	NELSON H. YOUNG, M. D.  Discouraging as it may be, nevertheless it is a fact that serious disturbances of mental functions in individuals are on the increase, chargeable perhaps to the demands of modern life, to the disorganizing forces of industrial stress and to the hardship and shock of cruel, unexpected war.  The world turns to men of medical science for help, and, notwithstanding their faithful efforts, the list of unfortunates has grown.  In some modern institutions in the United States, however, enlightened views have prevailed and systems have been adopted that are promising well.  Perhaps Toledo, Ohio, in its State Hospital for the Insane, with its staff of trained scientists, presents one of the most encouraging examples of possible curative institutional care.  Connected with this institution is Dr. Nelson H. Young, as assistant superintendent.      Nelson H. Young was born at Toledo, Ohio, Aug. 3, 1874, and is a son of Gen. Charles Luther and Cora (Day) Young, the latter of whom is a resident of Brooklyn, N. Y.  The father of Doctor Young was a very prominent man in Ohio for many years and died at Toledo, Sept. 17, 1913.      After being graduated from the Toledo High School, in the class of 1892, the family removed then to Xenia, Ohio, where General Young took charge of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Home.  Having determined to study medicine, the young man had some early training in the Children's Hospital, and a year later entered the Cincinnati Medical College, now the medical department of Cincinnati University.  At the time Doctor Young matriculated, that was the oldest medical college west of the Allegheny Mountains.  From that institution Doctor Young was graduated with his degree in the class of 1896.      Upon his return to Xenia, Dr. Young re-entered the children's department of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans' Home of which his father was still superintendent, after which he came to Toledo, and during 1898-99 was on the regular staff of the physicians and surgeons at St. Vincent Hospital.  He was also a member of the staff of the Humane Society and was appointed one of the city physicians.  During the Spanish-American war he was a member of the body of medical men connected with the Bushnell relief train which only proceeded as far as Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee, the close of the war making further progress southward unnecessary.  For three years afterward Doctor Young was a surgeon in the Naval Reserves, of which the Bushnell medical body had been a part.  On the occasion of the funeral of the late President McKinley, when such a vast concourse of people who had loved and honored him strove to pay tribute by their presence, many accidents and some fatalities occurred, and to succor those in need the surgeon-general of the state called six other surgeons to his aid, Doctor Young being one of these.      On Mar. 17, 1900, Doctor Young was appointed by Superintendent H. A. Tobey, assistant superintendent of the State Hospital for the Insane at Toledo, on which board Governor Charles Foster was serving as president.  The Ohio Board of Administration is made up of four prominent citizens of thes state:  C. C. Philbrick, president; T. E. DAvey, D. S. Creamer and Dr. E. H. Rorick.  E. F. Brown is the fiscal supervisor and secretary.  The medical staff is made up of men of wide scientific reputation:  Dr. George R. Love, superintendent; Dr. Nelson H. Young, assistant superintendent; and Drs. Clyde C. Kirk, Frank L. Farman, Sidney Niles and George Nutt, assistant physicians.      On Mar. 20, 1907, Doctor Young was united in marriage with Miss Beryl E. Jones, a daughter of Thomas Jones of Ashland, Ohio.  They reside at the state hospital, where attractive quarters are provided.      Since 1898 Doctor Young has been a member of the Toledo Academy of Medicine.  He belongs also to the Ohio State Medical Society and has served as president of the Association of Assistant Physicians of the State of Ohio upon two different occasions.  Doctor Young and wife are members of the First Congregational Church of Toledo. † Source: History of Northwestern Ohio - Vol. II _ 1917 - Page 957
Saml. M. Young	SAMUEL M. YOUNG.  Few if any had broader and more influential relations with the life and larger affairs of Lucas County during the first fifty years of its organized existence than the late Samuel M. Young, whose only living son, Morrison Waite Young, is now president of the Second National Bank in Toledo.      When Samuel M. Young died at the age of ninety-one on New Year's day of 1897, there came to a close an exceptionally eventful career.  It would be impossible to estimate the history of Lucas County without frequent mention of this strong individual factor.      A New Englander, he was born at Lebanon, Grafton County, New Hampshire, in 1806.  He grew up there, had the environment of the average New England boy during the early decades of the last century, but came to manhood with only a common school education.  It was his ambition to become a lawyer.  He carried out this resolution by reading law in the office of John M. Pomeroy at Burlington, Vermont, and eventually was qualified and admitted to the bar.      His active relations with this part of Northwest Ohio began in 1835, when he located at Maumee in Lucas County.  There he opened an office and started to practice law in what was still a pioneer community.  He was identified with Lucas county during the memorable controversy so familiar to students of Ohio history as the Toledo war.  However, he was an active participant in any of its phases, since Maumee was outside the disputed territory.  When Lucas County was organized he was honored by election as its first auditor, and he served in that capacity two years.      For several years he was associated in practice with a lawyer who subsequently honored the State of Ohio by his distinguished attainments.  In 1838 Morrison R. Waite, a graduate of Yale University, located at Maumee, and for a year read law in the office of Mr. Young.  He was then admitted to the Ohio bar, and the preceptor and pupil became associated in practice under the name Young & Waite.  The firm was soon recognized as second to none in the possession of legal talents and ability to render unexcelled legal service in any case to which their attention was called.  It need hardly be stated that the junior member of the firm subsequently was regarded as one of Ohio's most eminent attorneys and closed his career as chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.  In 1855 the firm established an office at Toledo, and Mr. Waite took charge, while Mr. Young remained in the office at Maumee.  Maumee was his home until 1860, after which year he lived in Toledo.      It was not so much in the domain of law as a man of affairs that the late Samuel M. Young was distinguished. In 1852 he became a stockholder and director in the Cleveland & Toledo Railway Company, which road was then in process of construction.  He was connected with the original company until it merged with the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern.  Subsequently he acquired stock in the Columbus & Toledo Railway Company, in which he became a director, and continued as such until the road was consolidated with the Columbus & Hocking Valley Railway, which was part of a still larger organization known as the Columbus, Hocking Valley & Toledo Railroad Company.      On account of his growing financial interests Mr. Young retired from active practice in 1856.  The preceding year, with other associates, he bought the old Bank of Toledo.  To its management he gave much of his time until 1865, when it was reorganized under the new national banking law as the Toledo National Bank, and the directors chose Mr. Young as the first president.  Hundreds of people, not acquainted with his various other business relations, recall the name of the late Mr. Young particularly in its association with the Toledo National Bank, of which he remained president until January, 1895.      In 1862 he was associated with Abner L. Backus, under the firm name of Young & Backus in the erection of the giant elevators on Water Street near Adams Street, designed especially to furnish facilities for the canal grain trade, then one of the most important factors in Toledo's commerce.  For eighteen years Mr. Young was actively identified with the grain and elevator business in Toledo, and after his withdrawal the firm was succeeded for many years as the A. L. Backus & Sons Co.      Some of the older citizens can recall the old toll bridge across the Maumee River at Maumee, which in 1877 was purchased jointly by Lucas and Wood counties.  While it was still a private enterprise Mr. Young owned the bridge for several years.  In 1866 he acquired a substantial interest in the Toledo Gas Light & Coke Company, assisted in reorganizing the business and during his presidency of the company the facilities of the company were widely extended.  One of the first-class hotels of Toledo today is the Boody House.  Back in 1870 Mr. Young organized the Toledo Hotel Company, which two years later erected the Boody House, and he remained president of the company for several years.  He sold his interests in the hotel company a few years before his death.      While he rendered his greatest service to Northwest Ohio as a business man and financier, he took considerable interest in and exercised not a little influence in politics.  From boyhood he had been a great admirer of Daniel Webster, and later of Henry Clay, the two dominating political figures in national councils during the existence of the old whig party.  In his part of Ohio Mr. Young did much to keep up the strength of this party, and after it was dissolved following the national campaign of 1852 he did not delay long in espousing the principles of the newer and more vigorous republican organization, and thereafter until his death he was one of its stanch advocates.  For many years he was active as a member of the Trinity Episcopal Church of Toledo, and gave liberally of his means to church and other religious and charitable organizations.      The late Mr. Young was not only distinguished by the possession of singular faculties as an executive and business genius, but had qualities of leadership among men, a devotion to duty, a fidelity to high ideals, and conscientious performance of every obligation imposed upon him.  By sixty-one years of residence he was easily one of Lucas County's most distinguished citizens.  However, his name and the recognition paid to his abilities were not confined to his home county.  He was well known in financial and political circles all over Ohio and even in the larger centers of the nation. Along with the dignity that goes with large practical achievements he possessed that dignity that comes from character and true gentlehood.      On June 29, 1841, Samuel M. Young married Miss Angeline L. Upton.  She was a step daughter of Dr. Horatio Conant of Maumee.  Their home life was ideal, and for nearly three score years they lived together and shared in common their joys and sorrows and various responsibilities.  Mrs. Young survived her husband but five months, passing away June 8, 1897.  To their marriage were born six children.  Four of these, Horatio S., Frank I., Elizabeth and Timothy died before their parents.  The only living son has already been mentioned, and the only daughter is Mrs. F. B. Swayne of New York City. † Source: History of Northwestern Ohio - Vol. II _ 1917 - Page 967
	JOHN OTTO ZABEL.  During the past ten years one of Michigan's best known lawyers has enjoyed a large and influential practice at Toledo, though he still retains his legal residence across the state line in Monroe County, Michigan.  John O. Zabel has been an active member of the bar for more than thirty-five years, and has also played a notable part in Michigan politics.      On coming to Toledo in 1906 Mr. Zabel became a member of the law firm of Southard, Zabel & Carr, and after Mr. Carr retired he and Mr. Southard continued under the firm name of Southard & Zabel until May, 1913.  Since that date Mr. Zabel has been in individual practice with offices in the Spitzer Building.      John Otto Zabel was born near Postenkill, Rensselaer County, New York, October 29, 1856, a son of John and Sophia (Korf) Zabel.  Both his parents were born in Loumburg,  Germany, were married in the City of Hamburg, and about 1851 came to America, landing at New York City and soon after ward locating in Rensselaer County, where their son John O. was born.  In the old country John Zabel served an apprenticeship and followed the trade of brickmaker, but was a farmer in the United States.  He was a highly educated German, and measured up to the standards of able and industrious citizenship set by the German colonists of the '40s and '50s.  After coming to America he identified himself heart and soul with American life and institutions, and in his desire to make his children thoroughly American he did not permit them to attend the German parochial schools and gave them a typically American education.      In the spring of 1860 when John O. Zabel was less than four years of age, the family moved out to Monroe County, Michigan.  During the first year they lived on the old Judge Christiancy farm at the mouth of the Macon River in Dundee Township, and in 1861 they moved to a farm of their own in Summerfield Township, where they spent the rest of their years in the quiet vocation of farming.  John Zabel, Sr., was a man of no little note and prominence in Monroe County.  He was highway commissioner of Summerfield Township for over fifteen years and held other minor offices, especially in the schools.  In politics he was a loyal republican.  His death occurred in June, 1910, at the age of eighty-four, while his wife passed away in August, 1914, aged eighty-six.  Of their three children the two older were born in Rensselaer County,. New York, while the youngest is a native of Monroe County, Michigan.  A daughter is Sophia, now wife of Charles Kleversaat, a farmer of Saline, Michigan; John O., the first son; and Justus W., who still occupies the old homestead farm in Summerfield Township near Petersburg, Michigan.  All the children were educated in the public schools of Monroe County, and John O. and his brother Justus W. attended the high school at Petersburg.      John O. Zabel finished his education in the University of Michigan, and was graduated in law with the class of 1879.  In March of that year he was admitted to the Michigan bar.  In November, 1907, he was admitted to the Ohio bar before the Supreme Court.  He began practice at Petersburg, Michigan, for several years was alone, then formed a partnership with Charles A. Golden at Monroe under the firm name of Golden & Zabel.  Later this firm was dissolved when Mr. Golden was elected circuit judge of the Monroe Circuit.  Judge Golden is now deceased. Mr. Zabel practiced actively with offices both at Monroe and Petersburg until 1906, since which year his professional interests have been identified with Toledo.      Special mention should be made of his political activities.  He started out as a greenback, and when that party ceased to wield an important influence in 1891 he became one of the organizers of the people's party, attending the national conference at Cincinnati which brought about that organization.  He was a delegate to all the national conventions of the party and was its candidate for congress for the Second District of Michigan in 1896.  In the spring of 1897 he was the people's party candidate for judge of the Supreme Court of Michigan.  After the people's party died out, or perhaps more strictly speaking its principles were adopted by the dominant party, Mr. Zabel became a republican. As already mentioned he has had his legal residence in Monroe County except during the summer and winter of 1906-07, and four years ago he attended the national convention in Chicago as a Roosevelt progressive from Michigan, and was in the convention that nominated Theodore Roosevelt for president on the progressive ticket.  In 1914 he was a candidate for circuit judge of the Monroe Circuit on the progressive ticket, and although defeated he ran more than 1,100 votes ahead of his ticket, carrying every republican township of Monroe County, his defeat being due to the plurality strength of the democrats.  Mr. Zabel has served three times as village president of Petersburg, and has held other minor offices.      Some years ago he promoted the Toledo, Ann Arbor & Jackson Railroad, and for many years was its attorney and is still a director and stockholder.  This road runs from West Toledo into Michigan as far as Dundee, and it is planned to be extended as far as Jackson.  It is now operated as a steam road, but it is contemplated making it an electric line, and that will assure its prosperity and will furnish splendid facilities for transportation over a route through one of the most populous districts between Toledo and Detroit.  Mr. Zabel rides back and forth over this road every day in order to reach his office in Toledo.  He is an active member of the Lucas County, the Monroe County and the Ohio State Bar Associations.      Mr. Zabel married Miss Mary S. Swick, daughter of John and Elizabeth (Travis) Swick of Lodi, Seneca County, New York.  Her parents in 1865 moved to Petersburg, Michigan, where they spent the rest of their years.  John Swick had two sons who served as soldiers in the Civil war.  Mrs. Zabel was born in Lodi, New York, and obtained her education there and in the public schools of Petersburg.  She is a graduate of the Petersburg High School and, for a number of years before her marriage was a teacher in the local schools.  Mr. and Mrs. Zabel had two children.      J. Golden Zabel, who was named in honor of Mr. Zabel's law partner, the late Judge Golden, was born in Petersburg, Michigan, is a graduate of the Cleary College at Ypsilanti, was for several years a commercial teacher in the Mount Clemens High School, and after his marriage served as court stenographer at Monroe until elected to the office of county clerk, which he still fills.  He married Miss Nellie Cady of Mount Clemens, Michigan, in 1906 and their two young daughters are Mary Elizabeth and Helen, both of whom were born at Monroe.      The second son of Mr. and Mrs. Zabel was Allen G. Thurman Zabel, named in honor of the noted democratic statesman.  This son was entering upon a bright and promising career when stricken by death in February, 1907, at the age of twenty-two.  He had graduated from the Petersburg High School and was in his junior year of the law department of the University of Michigan.  He had shown brilliant qualities as a student and it was overwork in the university that brought about his death.  He was an exceedingly popular young fellow in his home community at Petersburg and also in university circles and Mr. and Mrs. Zabel still keenly feel their heavy loss in the death of this young son.  Some time before his death Mr. Zabel had established his home in Toledo, but when the son returned ill from the university it was his desire to return to the old place at Petersburg, where he died.  The kindly associations Mr. and Mrs. Zabel have always had with their home community at Petersburg, in addition to this sad event, were the reasons which caused them to give up their Toledo residence and establish their home permanently in Petersburg.  There Mr. Zabel built a beautiful rural residence in 1910, and his home is surrounded by spacious grounds of twelve acres, a part of it within the corporation limits of the village.  On this place is a woodland of six acres of native timber, and Mr. Zabel now finds his principal recreation in looking after his trees, shrubs and flowers which furnish so attracticve a setting for his Petersburg home. † Source: History of Northwestern Ohio - Vol. II _ 1917 - Page 960

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