Chapter VIII.

THE DISTINGUISHED DEAD
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     SEVERAL of the following brief sketches are the only biographies ever given to the public of their subjects.  If some of them appear meager, it should be remembered that the facts stated in the most imperfect sketches were only obtained after patient research.  It is believed that these brief sketches will be found to possess something more than a local interest.  The subjects were men who either took a prominent part in the early settlement of the Miami country, or participated in the early conflicts with the Indians or in the last war with England, or were prominent in civil affairs.  Some of them were men of national renown, of whom no complete biographies have ever been published.
To the writer, the preparation of this chapter, which is intended to preserve the names and to record the services of some of the departed worthies of a county which, in its early history at least, was celebrated for the number of its great men, has been a labor of love.

ROBERT BENHAM.

     This pioneer and soldier, whose name is familiar to readers of the early history of the Ohio Valley. was born in Pennsylvania in 1750.  He was an officer in the Revolutionary war, and, after the close of that struggle, became one of the early settlers in Symmes’ Purchase.  He is said to have built, in 1789, the first hewed log house in Cincinnati and to have established the first ferry over the Ohio at Cincinnati February 18, 1792.  He served under Harmar in his campaign against the Indians, was in the bloody defeat of St. Clair and shared in Wayne’s victory.  About the commencement of the present century, he settled upon a farm southwest of the site of Lebanon, which was his home until his death.  He was a member of the first Legislature of the Northwest Territory and of the first Board of County Commissioners of Warren County; in the latter capacity, he served several years.  Judge Burnet. who served in the Legislature with him, says: “He was possessed of great activity, muscular strength and enterprise; had a sound, discriminating judgment and great firmness of character.  He was the grandsire of the accomplished Mrs. Harriet Prentice, of Louisville.”  Joseph S. Benham, his son, became a distinguished lawyer and orator of Cincinnati, and delivered the oration on the reception of La Fayette at Cincinnati.  Robert Benham died early in the spring of 1809, and was buried at Lebanon, a troop of cavalry following his remains to the grave.
     The most interesting event in the life of Capt. Benham is his survival after being wounded at Rodgers' defeat, and his life on the battle-field.  Strange as this story is, its truthfulness has been indorsed by Judge Burnet and other careful historians.  The account below is from "Western Adventures:"
     "In the autumn of 1779, a number of keel-boats were ascending the Ohio under the command of Maj. Rodgers, and had advanced as far as the mouth of Licking without accident.  Here, however, they observed a few Indians standing upon the southern extremity of a sand-bar, while a canoe, rowed by three others, was in  the act of putting off from the Kentucky shore, as if for the purpose of taking them aboard.  Rodgers immediately ordered the boats to be

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MORE TO COME...........

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FRANCIS DUNLEVY

     This distinguished pioneer was born near ...

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JEREMIAH MORROW

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JUDGE M'LEAN ON GOV. MORROW.

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John Perrine

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MATTHIAS CORWIN.

     The subject of this sketch was a prominent and influential pioneer and the father of Gov. Thomas Corwin.  He was born in 1761, in Morris County, N. J.; removed with his father to the Bedstone country, in Pennsylvania, thence to Bourbon County, Ky., and thence to what is now Warren County, Ohio, in 1798, and settled on a farm near where Lebanon now stands.  He was one of the first Justices of the Peace in Warren County; a member of the first Board of County Commissioners; Representative in the Legislature by annual elections for ten years; Speaker of the House at the sessions of 1815 and 1824;

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JOSHUA COLLETT

     This distinguished lawyer and Judge was born in Berkeley County, Va. (now West Virginia), Nov. 20, 1781.  Having obtained a good English education, he studied law at Martinsburg, in his native county.  About the time he reached the age of twenty-one, he emigrated to the Northwest Territory, and stopped temporarily at Cincinnati, where he remained about a year. While he was at Cincinnati, the first constitution of Ohio was adopted and Warren was created a county, with a temporary seat of justice at Lebanon.  In June, 1803, before the first court had been held in Warren County, he established himself at Lebanon for the practice of law, and was the first resident lawyer in the place.  Here, it may be said, he commenced the practice of his profession, in which he afterward became distinguished, both at the bar and on the bench.  Modest, diffident, unassuming and unpretending, to a degree seldom met with, he had great difficulties to overcome.  He traveled the whole of the First Judicial Circuit, comprising the counties of Hamilton, Butler, Warren, Clermont, Montgomery, Miami, Greene and Champaign, and was thus brought into competition with the older and distinguished lawyers of Cincinnati and the bar of the whole Miami Circuit.  Notwithstanding the embarrassments resulting from his modesty and diffidence, and the learning and eloquence of his competitors, his knowledge of the law and his sound judgment made him a successful practitioner.  In 1807, he was appointed Prosecuting Attorney for the First Judicial Circuit, a position he held for ten years, when he was succeeded by his pupil, Thomas Corwin.  The diligence, integrity and ability, with which he discharged the duties of this office, made him widely known and universally respected.  In 1817, he was elected by the Legislature, President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the term of seven years, and, at the close of his term, was re-elected.  He continued on the Common Pleas Bench until 1829, when he was elected by the Legislature a Judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio.  His duties as Supreme Judge were onerous; he was compelled to attend courts in distant parts of the State, and to ride on horseback from county to county.  At the end of his term, in 1836, he retired to his farm, near Lebanon, where he resided until his death.
     After his retirement from the bench, he permitted his name to be placed on the Whig electoral ticket, in 1836, and again in 1840, and, having been elected both times, he twice cast an electoral vote for his friend, Gen. Harrison.  He was, for seventeen years, a member of the Board of Trustees of Miami University, and, during all that time manifested an earnest solicitude for the welfare of that institution.  He was interested in the cause of education, and held for some time the office of School Examiner in Warren County.
    Judge Collett, on emigrating to the West, left in Virginia six brothers and one sister, who, about the year 1812, followed him to Ohio.  Their descendants are now numerous in Clinton and Warren Counties.  Joshua Collett, in 1808, married Eliza Van Horne.  William R. Collett, his only son and only child who survived him, was the leading spirit in the organization of the Warren County Agricultural Society.  He died on the farm he inherited from his father, July 19, 1860, in the forty-ninth year of his age.
     For the last twenty-five years of his life, Judge Collett was a member of the Baptist Church.  He was a benevolent and kind-hearted man, and, though

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an able lawyer and Judge, the crowning glory of his life was his spotless purity, his scrupulous honesty and his unsullied integrity.  He died on his farm, near Lebanon May 23, 1855, and was buried at Lebanon.  A plain tombstone was erected at the head of his grave, but it is now fallen to the ground, and is broken into several pieces.  It born his inscription:

JOHN MCLEAN.

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THOMAS ROSS

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THOMAS CORWIN.

     This eminent orator, statesman and wit was born in Bourbon County, Ky., July 29, 1794.  He was the son of Judge Matthias Corwin, and, in 1798, came with his father to a farm near Lebanon.  The ancestors of Thomas Corwin had moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, and thence to Kentucky.  They had long lived on Long Island, N. Y.  The original ancestor of the family in America came from England about 1630.  David Corwin, an uncle of Thomas,
claimed that his family was of Welsh origin, which may have been suggested by the fact that there is a town named Corwen in Wales.  The statement has often been published, and, among other works, in the American Cyclopedia, that the family came originally from Hungary.  This extraction seems to have been suggested by the Similarity of the name to that of the Hungarian King, Matthias Corvinus.  Thomas Corwin, in 1859, wrote to Rev. E. T. Corwin, author of the “Corwin Genealogy,” that he had in his possession several letters showing the connection of the family with the Hungarian Corvinus, and that, at the time he read them, the account struck him as quite probable.  He added: “I could never bring myself to feel interest enough in the subject to withdraw me from necessary labor long enough to enable me to form even a plausible guess as to the persons who might have been at work for ten centuries back in the laudable effort to bring me nolens volens into this breathing
world on the 29th of July (a most uncomfortable time of the year), in the year of grace 1794.”
     A full account of the early life and education of Thomas Corwin, by his schoolmate and fellow law student, is appended to this sketch.  A summary of the leading events in his life will here be given.  Commencing the practice

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of law at Lebanon in 1817, he soon became a leading spirit in the courts of flour or five counties he attended.  In 1818, he became Prosecuting Attorney of Warren County, and served in that capacity for more than ten years.  He said, in the Ohio Legislature, in 1822: “In the prosecution, and sometimes in the defense, of criminals, I have had frequent opportunities of viewing and considering the occult and secret sources of crime more distinctly than I possibly could had I been an unconcerned observer.  I will venture to assert that there is not, in the whole circle of society, a situation so favorable to the discovery of the true nature and causes of crime as a practice at the bar of a court of criminal jurisdiction.”  This was said in a speech against corporal punishment.  In 1821, he was first elected a Representative in the Legislature, and was re-elected in 1822, and in 1829.  In 1830, he was first elected to Congress, and served ten years, resigning in 1840, to become the Whig candidate for Governor.  The district he represented was composed at first of Warren and Butler Counties; afterward, of Warren, Clinton and Highland Counties.  In 1840, he was elected Governor, but. two years later, when a candidate for reelection, the Democratic party was successful, and he was defeated.  In 1844, he was tendered a unanimous nomination by the Whig State Convention as candidate the third time for Governor.  This he declined, and his name was placed by the convention at the head of the Clay Electoral ticket in Ohio.  In 1845, he was elected to the United States Senate, and served in that body until July 22, 1850, when he became Secretary of the Treasury in the cabinet of President Fillmore.  At the expiration of that administration, in 1853, he resumed the practice of law, having his office in Cincinnati, but retaining his residence in Lebanon.  In 1858, he was again elected to Congress, and was reelected in 1860.  In 1861, he was appointed by President Lincoln United States Minister to Mexico, which position he held until 1864, when he resigned.  He died at Washington City, Dec. 18, 1865, from a paralytic attack, and was buried in the Lebanon Cemetery.
     Mr. Corwin began his public life as a supporter of the administration of Monroe.  In 1824, he supported Henry Clay for President; in 1828, he supported John Quincy Adams.  He was afterward a firm supporter of the Whig party.  After the rise of the Republican party, his views on the slavery question, which then agitated the country, continued to be in unison with those formerly advocated by him as a Whig, and differed considerably from those both of the Republican and the Democratic party.  He was, however, elected to Congress in 1858 and in 1800 by the Republicans.
     The reminiscences of Gov. Corwin, quoted below, give more information concerning the early life and education of “the Wagoner Boy” than anything yet given to the public.  They are extracted from a paper read by A. H. Dunlevy at a meeting of the members of the bar held in the court house in Lebanon soon after the death of Gov. Corwin:
     “I first met Thomas Corwin at a school taught by my father, about one half mile west of where I now stand, in the summer or autumn of 1798.  He was then about four years old, and I a few months older.  I then, of course, at this tender age of him and myself, saw nothing remarkable in him.  I always understood that he learned with great ease and rapidity, and remember to have heard that he acquired a perfect knowledge of the whole alphabet the first day he came to school.  We did not. however, long continue together in that school, and, as we lived some three miles apart, we had little more intimacy than a mere acquaintance for several years afterward.  Our parents, however, belonged to the same church, and the two families were always intimate.  In the winter of 1806, or about that time, I again attended a school in which Mr. Corwin acquired nearly all the school education he ever had the opportunity

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to enjoy.  It was in this that his peculiar talent for public speaking was first developed.  This school was taught by an English Baptist clergyman, the Rev. Jacob Grigg, of good education, and possessing great influence in exciting among his scholars the spirit of emulation and determination to excel, to a greater extent than any school-teacher I have ever known.  He encouraged school exhibitions - recitations of all kinds, and especially dialogues, and under his care and direction. they were not only attractive to the pupils, but to parents and the little public of Lebanon and vicinity, at that early day.  For want of a hall, a bower was erected in front of the little schoolhouse (then standing on the spot now occupied by the parsonage of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Lebanon), and its interior fitted up to suit the various plays to be performed on the particular occasion.  It was in these exercises that I first noticed the development of Mr. Corwin’s particular talent for oratory - that attractive manner and fine elocution which so distinguished him in after time.  In a dialogue, then found in all our school books, by the common title of Dr. Neverout and Dr. Doubty, taking the character of the former, while his elder brother, Matthias, took that of Dr. Doubty, he gained universal applause.  This was when he was but a little over twelve years of age, and yet I think it formed an important era in his life and history.
     “From that time, he had a strong desire for the advantages of a liberal education.  But his father was poor, the owner of a small farm only, had a large family to support, and had concluded that he could make a scholar of but one son, and that was the elder brother, Matthias, called after himself.  Matthias, therefore, was kept at school, and Thomas on the farm.  To young Tom Corwin, as he was then and all his life familiarly called, this was a severe trial of filial duty; but he submitted patiently and labored hard and assiduously on the farm and business connected with it Wagoning for our merchants, from Cincinnati, in certain seasons of the year, was an important part of the neighboring farmers’ business.  The roads were then merely tracks through the woods, with few bridges, and, in the new and fresh condition of the soil, often became deep and almost impassable.  For mutual aid. in these trips, it was common for five or six teams to go together, and young Thomas Corwin generally drove his father’s on these occasions.  It was here he first acquired the name of ‘wagon boy.’  He drove his four-horse team with great skill, and, as these wagoners camped at night in the woods together, this young wagon boy, by his ready wit and humor, contributed greatly to their entertainment when about their camp-fires, as well as on their tiresome journeys.  It was said, too, if any team stalled in the deep roads of that day, as was not uncommon, Corwin’s skill in managing a team was called into requisition to get out of the difficulty.
     “In the war of 1812. when Hull’s disastrous surrender at Detroit exposed the whole northern frontier of Ohio to the combined attack of British and Indian forces, it became necessary to hurry an army to our outposts with all speed and without the possibility of furnishing supplies.  In this emergency, it is known how rapidly Gen. Harrison hurried up a little army raised in Kentucky on the spur of the occasion and marched with unparalleled rapidity, all the way by land, to the relief of Fort Wayne. then besieged by a strong British and Indian force.  The brother of Thomas Corwin - Matthias, before named - commanded a company, of which I was a member, in the Ohio Division of that little army, on which, now that Hull had surrendered all under his command, depended the defense of the Ohio and Indiana frontier, extending some four hundred miles, and embracing in its lines many strong and warlike savage tribes.  Under these pressing circumstances. the farmers of Ohio were appealed to for teams and provisions to be carried to this now quite large military force,

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James Perrine
(Deceased)

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MORE TO COME......

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GEORGE J. SMITH

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JOSEPH WHITEHILL

     Joseph Whitehill was born in

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JOHN PROBASCO, JR.

     The subject of this sketch was born in Trenton, N. J., Jan. 19, 1814.  He was the son of Rev. John Probasco a Baptist preacher of Huguenot extraction. who moved with his family to Lebanon, Ohio, in 1823.  The removal was effected in wagons, and the family were on their journey just one month.  His mother’s maiden name was Elizabeth Olden.  She belonged to a family long settled in New Jersey, and died at Lebanon in 1881, in her eighty-eighth year, having survived her distinguished son more than twenty-three years.  Young John Probasco received a good English and classical education at Lebanon.  He entered the Junior class at Miami University and remained one year, not waiting to graduate. Returning to Lebanon, he commenced the study of law, under the instruction of Hon. Thomas Corwin, then a Member of Congress.  He was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of law in the year 1836.
     For the four years subsequent to his admission to the bar, Mr. Probasco devoted himself unremittingly to the study and practice of his profession.  This was called for by his limited circumstances, for he did not inherit wealth.  It was accordant, too, with his ardent love for the law, and was rendered in dispensable by the competition he had to encounter.
     One of the earliest cases in which the extent of his talents and the vigor of his character were displayed was in a State prosecution against a man of influence and talents.  The defendant was a lawyer of ability and considerable practice - a member of the Lebanon bar; but he was violent and reckless in his temper, and unforgiving and vindictive in his character.  While under a paroxysm of anger, he shot at a man who had given him some offense, and was recognized to the Court of Common Pleas to answer the charge of shooting with intent to kill.  The offense was punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary.  The Prosecuting Attorney happened to be distantly related to the

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defendant. and was excused from appearing against him.  Many of the bar were retained in his defense; others were unwilling to appear against him, as they had practiced at the same bar.  The court appointed Mr. Probasco, the youngest member of the bar. as special prosecutor.  He accepted the appointment and conducted the prosecution with masterly energy.  Every effort of the able counsel of the defendant was unavailing. and he was found guilty.
     On the 13th of February, 1838, Mr. Probasco was married to Miss Susan Jane Freeman.  She was the daughter of Thomas Freeman. Esq., who died in 1818, and who practiced law at the same bar with such lawyers as Judge McLean and Judge Collett, with great success.
     In 1840, Mr. Probasco was first called into public life.  During that memorable period of political excitement which aroused the whole country, he was too ardent to remain inactive.  A Whig from conviction and principle, he had ever been faithful to his party attachments, but he was too much devoted to his profession to mingle in the ordinary conflicts of politics.  But when, in 1840, he was, though little more than eligible, invited by his party to take a seat in the legislature of his State, he accepted the place.  In the Lower House, to which he belonged, his party was largely in the ascendant, but the Democrats had a majority in the Senate.  The most exciting question which divided the two parties was the banking system; and the Whig Speaker showed his appreciation of Mr. Probasco’s abilities by placing him on the Standing Committee on Banks and Currency.  This was posting him in the van of the battle, and he sustained himself triumphantly, though he was then in a legislative body for the first time, and though among the Democratic members was a large number of their able leaders, who have since been Governors, and Supreme Judges, and Members of Congress.  His legal attainments were thus early very strikingly displayed in a protest which he put upon the journal against the passage of a bill whose provisions he alleged to be unconstitutional.  He was re-elected in 1841, and was now in a minority.  The same stormy conflicts were renewed, and he was still one of the leaders in shaping both the course of debate and the course of business.  It was the intention of Mr. Probasco, at the close of this second term of service, to decline a re-election; but this design was changed by the events of an extra session held in July and August, 1842.  Congress had delayed so long the passage of a law to apportion the members of the House of Representatives among the several States under the census of 1840, that the regular session of the State Legislature was ended before that apportionment was made.  An extra session was therefore called to divide the State into districts for Congressional elections.  That session proved to be the stormiest which had, up to that time, occurred in the annals of Ohio.  The parties were almost equally balanced in both Houses, although the Democrats had a slight ascendancy.  The Whigs, under the lead of Seabury Ford, Robert C. Schenck and John Probasco, in order to prevent the Democrats from redistricting the State in a manner that would have left the Whigs almost without representation in Congress, adopted the bold, but questionable, policy of dissolving the General Assembly by tendering their resignations in a body, and thereby leaving both Houses without a quorum of two-thirds.  The movement succeeded, and the two Houses were compelled to dissolve and go home without districting the State for Congressional purposes.
     However impolitic and revolutionary this movement may seem, since the excitement which produced it is past, it serves strongly to indicate the extent of party feelings at that period, and as strongly illustrates the energy and courage of men who could venture all their future prospects and hopes by leading in so daring a movement to defeat the tyranny of a majority.
     Mr. Probasco now very naturally desired to have his course approved by

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DAVID BROWN
(Deceased)

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his constituents, and was therefore a candidate for re-election.  He was elected again, with scarce a decreased majority.
     In the Legislature, Mr. Probasco was always an active and laborious member, and introduced a number of important measures of legislation.  He did not speak frequently, considering the excitement of the times, but he was always listened to with great interest and attention, for he always spoke to the point.  The solidity of his judgment and the determined energy of his character gave him his influence.  He showed himself in debate rather a forcible and impressive speaker than a brilliant declaimer.  He derived great improvement from the intellectual conflicts of his legislative life, and returned to the bar more fully prepared for the successful prosecution of his profession.
     From 1843, when he retired from the Legislature, for the subsequent period of seven years, Mr. Probasco devoted himself to the practice of the law with eminent success.  This period of his life, quiet as it seemed to be, he spent so as to lay deeper and broader the foundations for a life of future usefulness.
     In February, 1850, though he had not been a candidate, he was elected, by the Legislature a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas.  He remained upon the bench two years, when his term of service was cut off by the adoption of the new constitution.
     Having declined a re-election to the Common Pleas bench under the new constitution, he resumed the practice of law at Lebanon in 1852.  He soon afterward, in partnership with Gov. Corwin, opened an office at Cincinnati.  As a member of the Cincinnati bar, he at once took high rank, and was regarded as one of the ablest lawyers in the city.
     But he was not long permitted to engage in the contests and achieve the victories of his profession in this new field of labor.  A sickness, brought on by labor in the harvest-field of his farm in Illinois, cut off his life in the prime of his manhood and the midst of his usefulness.  He died at his residence in Lebanon, Sept. 18, 1857, in the forty-fourth year of his age.
     Judge Probasco was nearly six feet high, large and well proportioned, of robust health and vigorous constitution.  Though not corpulent, he was of full habit.  His hair was black, his eye quick, sparkling and black, and his features and head well formed.  His voice was sonorous, clear and distinct.  Though warm-hearted and social, he was quiet and reserved in his manners.  In company, he was rather a listener than a leading talker.  He always evinced the tenderest attachment for his family, and spared no pains in the proper nurture and education of his children.  He was a member of the Presbyterian Church, and a man of the purest and most exemplary morals.

J. MILTON WILLIAMS.

     This distinguished member of the bar was born at Lebanon Dec. 17, 1807.  His father, Enos Williams, was an early teacher of Warren County, and held several important civil offices, and among others, that of County Recorder for a period of fourteen years.  John Milton received a good English education.  In his boyhood, he assisted his father in the Recorder’s office, and also wrote .in the office of the Clerk of Court.  His handwriting was legible, bold and rapid, and the training he received as a copyist at the court house was of benefit to him in his future profession.  He studied law with Judge George J. Smith, and, before he had reached the age of twenty-four years, on the 7th of June, 1831, was admitted to the bar at a term of the Supreme Court held at Lebanon, with Judges Peter Hitchcock and Charles R. Sherman on the bench.  Gen. Robert C. Schenck, who had completed his legal studies under Thomas Corwin, was admitted at the same time and place.

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     Young Williams was poor, and was compelled to rely wholly on his own exertions.  In after years, he wrote: “ When I went out into the wide, wide world in business, on my own hook, I had two dilapidated shirts and a poor suit of clothes to match them.  I opened my office in a cellar, with three musty old Ohio statutes, given me by my old father, which he had held as a public officer.  This was my entire stock in trade.”  He soon acquired distinction at the bar.  Not long after he began practice, he became Prosecuting Attorney - a position he held for twelve consecutive years.  He was candid with his clients, and never misrepresented sense in consultation to encourage litigation.  He charged lower fees for his services than other lawyers of the same rank.  His popularity and personal influence with the masses were very great.  For several years, he had a larger number of cases on the dockets of the courts than any other lawyer of the county, and was the attorney on one side of almost every important case.  He could readily sway the minds of jurymen, and in the examination of witnesses he exhibited consummate skill.  In 1850, he was elected a member of the convention which framed the second constitution of Ohio, and in 1857 he was elected Representative in the General Assembly of Ohio as an independent candidate over the regular Republican nominee.  He was Major of the militia, and was uniformly known as Maj. Williams.  In politics, he was a Whig, and afterward a Republican.
     The last years of the life of Maj. Williams are a sad history, over the details of which it is best that the mantle of oblivion should be drawn.  Habits of intemperance separated him from his wife and family, and brought him to misery and want before he was yet old.  He saw the extremes of life.  He rose from poverty and obscurity to wealth and distinction; he sank again to obscurity and poverty.  When possessed of considerable means, accumulated by his own energy and ability, he erected for his residence one of the finest mansions which had, up to that time, been constructed in the county; he died without a home.  When the legal proceedings were commenced which took from him the ownership and control of his property, he wrote and read in the court in which he had practiced with eminent success: “God help me!  I am a miserable and ruined man!  Let the curtains of oblivion rest over the whole affair until that great day when all things shall be brought into judgment”  He died July 21, 1871, aged sixty-four years, and was buried in the Lebanon Cemetery.

GEORGE  KESLING.

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EPHRAIM KIBBY.

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JOHN BIGGER

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maker."  He was the father of Gov. Samuel Bigger, of Indiana.  After an illness of about ten days, he died on his farm north of Union Village, John 18, 1840.

WILLIAM C. SCHENCK.

     William C. Schenck was born in New Jersey in 1773, and was the son of Rev. William Schenck, a Presbyterian clergyman, and Anna Cummings, his wife.  He was a surveyor by profession, and came to Marietta in 1793, and to Cincinnati in 1795.  In the winter of 1795-96, in connection with Daniel C. Cooper, he laid out the town of Franklin, and in 1801, with two associates, laid out the town of Newark, Licking Co., Ohio.  In 1798, he was married to Betsey Rogers, of Long Island, and, with his wife, reached Cincinnati Jan. 1, 1799, where they resided until about 1803, when they became residents of Franklin.  He was elected Secretary of the Council in the first Legislature of the North west Territory in 1799.  His name appears in the court records as Foreman of a Grand Jury of Hamilton County in 1799, and as Foreman of the first Grand Jury of Warren County in 1803.  He served as a State Senator from Warren County in 1803, 1804 and 1805, and Representative in the Legislature in 1821.  In 1814, he was appointed by the Legislature a Commissioner for the perpetuation of the evidence of the original field notes of the survey of the Miami Purchase, the original notes having been lost in a fire, which destroyed the house of Judge J. C. Symmes.  He died at Columbus, Ohio, while serving as a member of the Legislature, on his forty-eighth birthday, Jan. 12, 1821.
     Gen. William C. Schenck left a large family, of whom the sole survivors, in 1881, were Gen. Robert C. Schenck and Admiral James F. Schenck, both of whom were born in Warren County.

MICHAEL H. JOHNSON.

     Judge Johnson was born in Virginia Nov. 10, 1769.  Having received a better English education than was common at that time, he went, when a young man, to Kentucky, where he taught school.  He soon afterward moved to the north side of the Ohio, and served as Quartermaster Sergeant under Gen.
Wayne, and thus formed an intimate acquaintance with William Henry Harrison, an Ensign, a few years younger than himself.  This acquaintance ripened into an ardent friendship.  Their last meeting was at the Williamson House, in Lebanon, while Gen. Harrison was a candidate for the Presidency.
Johnson was one of the first settlers at Deerfield, being there as early as 1797.  According to the manuscript notes of Judge R. B. Harlan, M. H. Johnson sold goods at Deerfield for Mr. Hinkson, and was the first store-keeper in Warren County.  About 1801, he moved to the high ground immediately north of Hopkinsville, where he resided until his death.  He was appointed Assessor of Deerfield Township, Hamilton County, Northwest Territory, and afterward, Auditor of Supervisors’ accounts for the same large Township, embracing the greater part of Warren County.  He received a commission from Gov. St. Clair as a Lieutenant in the Territorial militia.  After the organization of Warren County, he was, in 1803, elected and commissioned one of the first Justices of the Peace of Hamilton Township, and discharged the duties of this Office at intervals for about twelve years.  He was the first Recorder of Warren County, and, after the creation of the office of Auditor, in 1820, he was the first person to hold that position in the county.  In 1809, he was elected a member of the Senate of the General Assembly, and, in 1812, a Representative, serving, in all, seven terms in the Legislature between 1809 and 1819.  In the last-named year, he was commissioned by Gov. Brown Collector of Taxes for the Second District.  In 1825, he was elected by the Legislature an Associate Judge, and served in that position for about ten years.

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     In politics, Judge Johnson was a Jeffersonian, or anti-Federalist, and afterward an active and ardent Whig.  On election days, he was always to be found at the polls.  He died at his home, near Hopkinsville, in the seventy-seventh year of  his age.

THOMAS B. VAN HORNE

     The subject of this sketch was born in New Jersey June 1, 1783, and came to Warren County in 1807.  He was the son of Rev. William Van Horne, a Baptist clergyman, who served as Chaplain in the Revolutionary war, and died in 1807, at Pittsburgh, on his journey to Ohio.  His remote ancestors were emigrants from the Netherlands Thomas B. settled on a farm one mile east of Lebanon in December, 1807, where he engaged in the arduous labors of opening a farm in the forests.  He was among the earliest volunteers in the war of 1812, and was placed in command of a battalion in Col. Findley’s regiment, with the rank of Major, and was surrendered with Hull’s army at Detroit.  He was soon exchanged, and received a commission as Lieutenant Colonel in the regular army, in which capacity he continued until the close of the war, being for a long time in command of Fort Erie.  At the close of the war, he returned to agricultural pursuits.  He was elected a Senator in the Legislature of Ohio in 1812, 1816 and 1817, and was afterward appointed, by President Monroe, a Register of the Land Office in the northwestern part of Ohio, which position he held until 1837.  On returning from this position, he again established himself on his farm near Lebanon, where he remained until his death, a quiet and sober, but industrious and useful. citizen.  He died Sept. 21, 1841, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. and was buried at Lebanon.

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