OHIO GENEALOGY EXPRESS - Seneca Co., Ohio

BIOGRAPHIES

Source:
History of Seneca County : from the close of the Revolutionary War to July, 1880 :
embracing many personal sketches of pioneers, anecdotes,
and faithful descriptions of events pertaining to the organization of the county and its progress
Published: Springfield, Ohio: Transcript Print. Co.,
1880

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WILLIAM H. GIBSON was born in Ohio, May 16th, 1822, and soon thereafter his parents moved to Seneca County, in the same year. His paternal grandparents were from Ireland, and his maternal grandparents from Wales. He was reared on a farm in Honey creek, in Eden, and worked with his father, John Gibson, at the carpenter trade. After he had attended the common schools, he attended one year at the Ashland academy. He read law in Tiffin in the office of Rawson & Pennington, and was admitted to the bar in 1845. He was the Whig candidate for attorney general in 1853, but was defeated. He was elected treasurer of the state in 1855, and resigned in 1857. He entered the army as colonel of the 49th O. V. I., in 1861, and commanded a brigade and division of the army of the Cumberland, leading his command in forty-two conflicts. He left the army with the rank of brigadier-general, and resumed the practice of the law in Tiffin. He quit the practice in 1872, and applied himself very industriously to railroad enterprises. He bore a very conspicuous part in all the political campaigns ever since the organization of the Republican party. He is an orator of no ordinary calibre, and during the past two yeas he preached under a license in the M. E. church. When Governor Foster was inaugurated governor of Ohio on the second Monday in January last, General Gibson was appointed adjutant-general in Ohio, which office he holds to this day.
Source: History of Seneca County : from the close of the Revolutionary War to July, 1880 - Springfield, Ohio: Transcript Print. Co., 1880 - Page

JAMES GOETSCHIUS, his oldest son, who came here with his father, lives on the old homestead. He was born September 24th, 1807, in Franklin county, Ohio. His wife, Permelia Smith, came here with Joseph Biggs from Maryland.
When they settled in Clinton there was no house for seven miles east on the North Greenfield road. Samuel Scothorns, in Reed, lived there. There was no road open to town. They had to underbrush a road to Tiffin, and then followed the blazed threes. hunter's mill was built in 1825.
Source: History of Seneca County : from the close of the Revolutionary War to July, 1880 - Springfield, Ohio: Transcript Print. Co., 1880 - Page

NICHOLAS GOETSCHIUS, was a soldier in the war of 1812, under General Harrison. He was born in Montgomery county, New York; moved from there to Franklin county, Ohio, and came to Seneca in 1825, in April. He first located on the North Greenfield road, near Egbert's and located on the Portland road in 1835, upon the eighty acres he had entered. He was about seventy-eight years old when he died at one of his son's-in-law in Sandusky county. He had two sons and three daughters.
Source: History of Seneca County : from the close of the Revolutionary War to July, 1880 - Springfield, Ohio: Transcript Print. Co., 1880 - Page

HENRY GROSS. In the outset of this enterprise, the writer intended to say as little as possible about the living, but to recall the past and present it to the reader in its true light. Having unavoidably touched a few of the living, it would wrong the harmony of the work did I not also mention another distinguished Tiffinite, who, by his genius and skill, has won for himself a national reputation.
     Seneca county has not been slow in producing men of distinction in almost every department of life. Our farmers are celebrated for having made Seneca county the first "wheat county" in Ohio; our mechanics are equal, at least, to the best of them; our lawyers and doctors are men of note; the nation found a president as near to Seneca county as possible; we have furnished the state with two state treasurers, one governor, one lieutenant-governor and came within 29,000 votes of furnishing another; we have sent four of our citizens to congress and three colonels to the war, with a fair prospect of sending another; the United States sent one of our citizens to represent her in China, and Pere Hyacinthe married one of our fair daughters.
     Henry Gross is the second son of Henry Gross, sen., mentioned in a former chapter. He was born July 21, 1813. When a boy he made himself busy in his father's gun shop and learned the use of tools. As he grew up he formed a great taste for music and the fine arts, and while he acquired and mastered the gunsmith trade, became also an inventor. He secured a patent for a breech-loading rifle, and, in company with Mr. Ed. Gwynn, started a factory. In this, as in almost all his business undertakings, he allowed himself to be over-reached and proved to his friend that he was more of a genius than a financier. He secured many patents on ingenious steel and iron works, time-locks on safes, etc. While he was in the employ of the "Hall Safe and Lock Co.," in Cincinnati, for many years, he was sent for from very many places in the United States to open safes that by some accident had become fastened and nobody found to open them. Mr. Gross traveled many thousand miles on missions of that nature, and never failed in any case. He often astounded the by-standers in opening safes in a few minutes when others had worked for days. It is safe to say that there is not a safe made anywhere that Mr. Gross cannot open in a very short time without knowing anything about the combinations. Were it not for his high order of character and strict integrity, he would certainly be a dangerous man to run at large.
     Of his latest and best invention, the papers are full of praise, and a copy of an article that appeared in the Southern Merchant of November, 1879, is here added to show how Mr. Gross' genius is appreciated by other people, and not to have it said that William Lang runs wild with his love for old Seneca and his friends.
     But here is the article:
     In our occupation as journalists, recording the current events of the times - the affairs of governments and political movements, the evil doings of the criminal classes, the gyrations of society, the theatrical stellar attractions, the condition of the great manufacturing interests, the prospects of the growing crops, and the excitement in the great commercial marts, and the educational, religious, and aesthetical interests, it sometimes becomes our duty as well as pleasure to sing the praises of the great geniuses and thinkers who overcome the obstacles of nature and utilize her forces for the good, comfort and happiness of mankind - the men who have a keen appreciation of the disadvantages under which sorrowing humanity toil, and strive to attain happiness, and put forth their best energies to dissipate them.
     As one of this illustrious band we take pleasure in classing Mr. Henry Gross, of Cincinnati, Ohio, with whom we had a delightful and instructive interview, learning of his achievements in the various branches of the mechanic arts to which he has turned his attention and thoughts. His name is familiar to almost every banker throughout the country as a skilled expert and the inventor of the finest time and permutation locks extant, and they will no doubt be pleased to learn that he has again come to their aid, promising them still further protection from the hands of lawlessness.
     We have neither time nor space to record all the incidents of his eventful career, devoted as it has been to many fields of inventive research, but we wish to speak somewhat limitedly of his later achievements in the construction of devices for the preservation of accumulated wealth, the reward of industry, from the natural and human enemies which beset the possessor- we mean his improvements in the construction of those trusty safeguards of the merchant and banker, the fire and burglar-proof safes and vaults, and the locks and bolt-work thereof.
     Mr. Gross has had the most intimate and varied experience in the construction of safes and locks during the past ten years, and as an expert has been invariably successful in exposing the weaknesses of safes put upon the market by their makers with the false claims to security. As the result of this rich and varied experience, we are not therefore surprised that Mr. Gross has apparently reached the goal of excellence in this particular art, and we will take pleasure in speaking somewhat in detail of his various improvements.
     First and foremost he exhibits a burglar-proof safe for bankers' use, the door of which is guarded when closed by the most simple and compact bolt work, so constructed that it presents a resistive strength to fracture equal to five times that of any system of train bolts now in use, and this bolt work, with the locks to guard it, is operated by a massive invulnerable welded steel and iron disc, hung upon inner and outer bearings so truly and perfectly that it can be revolved like a top under the slightest pressure, while it is secured so strongly and closely in a corresponding opening in the body of the door that it would require tons of pressure or shock to remove it. The more immediate cause that developed the necessity of this new department in safe construction lay in certain discoveries made by Mr. Gross in the course of his expert occupation of opening safes whose locks had become deranged or the combinations lost by carelessness.
     He found by experimental test that the various spindles or arbors in common use, by means of which the locks and bolt work were manipulated, could be successfully assailed, so that he seldom consumed more than two hours, and usually about half that time or less, in utterly destroying them and entering the safe. Feeling that such safes could not be conscientiously recommended to the public as burglar-proof, he devised the above described improvement, which entirely does away with the use of spindles or arbors, and with this disc arrangement the safe has then nothing passing through it, and the door and walls are solid alike. Mr. Gross stakes his professional reputation on the merits of this invention, which only requires to be seen to be appreciated; its simplicity is apparent to everyone, and the practical man can readily see that the inventor has simply taken advantage of the best construction to secure maximum strength in the materials used.
     The locks employed to secure this safe are the result of much study, and are most admirably adapted to the purpose. The time movement and permutation tumblers are closely connected within a space of two inches square, and perform all the functions of the ordinary bulky time and combination locks of ten times the size while possessing new features of convenience and security that will be readily appreciated by users. Mr. Gross also finally presents a fire-proof safe, of excellent design and calculated per maximum efficiency in the protection of its contents from fire.
     All the inventions of Henry Gross, from his first "time lock," show the master's hand of genius, and now that he has practically demonstrated the excellent and invulnerability of the two last efforts of his skill, it is sincerely to be hoped that bankers, county treasurers, and those who use safes generally, will look at the merits of his make before they buy the productions of mendacious manufacturers, whose main merits consist in the liberal use of printer's ink.
     If Mr. Gross' executive and financial abilities were equal to his genius, he would have been a millionaire long since.
Source: History of Seneca County : from the close of the Revolutionary War to July, 1880 - Springfield, Ohio: Transcript Print. Co., 1880

CHARLES GUERNSEY (Brown & Guernsey) was born in Wood county, Ohio, Jan. 31, 1858; admitted to the bar July 11, 1879; located at Fostoria immediately thereafter. On the 31st of January, 1880, he was married to Miss Mina G. Brown, of Fostoria.
Source: History of Seneca County : from the close of the Revolutionary War to July, 1880 - Springfield, Ohio: Transcript Print. Co., 1880

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