USA > Indiana > Wayne County > Biographical and genealogical history of Wayne, Fayette, Union and Franklin counties, Indiana, Volume I > Part 48
USA > Indiana > Franklin County > Biographical and genealogical history of Wayne, Fayette, Union and Franklin counties, Indiana, Volume I > Part 48
USA > Indiana > Union County > Biographical and genealogical history of Wayne, Fayette, Union and Franklin counties, Indiana, Volume I > Part 48
USA > Indiana > Fayette County > Biographical and genealogical history of Wayne, Fayette, Union and Franklin counties, Indiana, Volume I > Part 48
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After he had arrived at maturity David B. Haworth supplemented the training which he had received at home by a course in the Farmers' Institute near La Fayette. He now owns all but eighty acres of the original home- stead, and has been prospered in the cultivation of the place and in the rais- ing and feeding of live stock, in which he has been extensively occupied, at various times. For a score of years in his early manhood he and his father carried on a gristmill, operated by horse-power, and people then used about ten bushels of corn to four of wheat. The frame barn standing on the farm and still in constant use is one of the oldest in the county, having been built in 1825. It was made of substantial timbers and was erected at a cost of but sixty dollars. The house in which our subject and his family have been sheltered since the year it was built, 1845, is likewise well constructed,
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with heavy joists and solid oak timbers, and though the actual cost of the building was little more than three hundred dollars it has proved a very comfortable home and is in a good state of preservation. The greatest pros- perity which Mr. Haworth has enjoyed was in the year 1867-68, when he sold wheat for two dollars and seventy cents a bushel and received ten dol- lars and a half per hundredweight for hogs. That year he sold farm produce to the value of thirty-two hundred dollars.
Soon after the close of the civil war Mr. Haworth purchased two farms in Illinois, and after running them for a few years he sold them. He also owned a half interest in some property in Florida. For seven years he was a stockholder and a director in the First National Bank of Liberty. In order to insure the building of the new railroad through this part of the county Mr. Haworth took two hundred and fifty dollars' worth of stock, and he and his brother, Hon. R. M. Hayworth, took a one-thousand-dollar bond, to be paid when the road reached Cottage Grove, and this amount they paid, never receiv- ing a dollar in return. Until 1896, Mr. Haworth was a loyal Republican, but after making a thorough investigation into the question of our monetary system he concluded that bi-metalism would be the best plan for the country to adopt, and he has since strongly advocated free silver. Being a birth- right member of the Society of Friends, he was actively associated with the denomination for many years.
The marriage of Mr. Haworth and Miss Martha Haskell, of Cincinnati, Ohio, was solemnized October 11, 1855. Mrs. Haworth, who died in 1897, was a sister of the late General Joseph Haskell, of Columbus, Ohio. The children born to our subject and wife are named: Henry, Eliza, Annie, Alice, Jose- phine, William, Charles and Daisy. Henry is a resident of Watertown, South Dakota; Eliza, wife of Charles Atkinson, lives in Upland, Indiana; Annie is Mrs. Franklin Hoyt, of Osceola, Missouri; Alice, Mrs. Lee Ardrey, makes her home in Butler county, Ohio; Josephine, of this county, is the wife of Ernest Barnard; William is living at home; Charles is in Kan- sas; and Daisy's husband, Arthur Watson, is assisting in the management of the old homestead of our subject. Without exception, the children of Mr. and Mrs. Haworth are worthy, respected citizens, a credit to their parents, whose honorable, upright example they are daily emulating.
ERASTUS H. HOWELL.
Erastus. H. Howell of Union township, Union county, Indiana, was born in Bath township, Franklin county, this state, December 24, 1841. His parents were Elias and Ruth (Heward) Howell. His father was a native of New Jersey and moved to Lebanon, Ohio, in 1804, in company with his father, James, and his grandfather, Chatfield Howell. They selected land
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in Bath township the same year and in 1806 settled on it, being one of the very first settlers in the township. Elias Howell was born in 1804 and was six years old when the family settled in this state. When he was sixteen or seventeen years old he began to work by the month and early learned the lesson of independence. He then returned to Ohio, but came back to Indi- ana and was married in Bath township. The lady he chose as his bride was Miss Ruth Heward, who was left an orphan at the age of five years when her mother died, and was taken into the family of Chatfield Howell, the grandfather of Elias. They liked the child so much and she was so con- tented with them that she remained with them until her marriage to the grandson. After the death of his grandfather, Elias purchased the farm from an aunt, Betsey Howell, moved upon it and died there March 1, 1880. His widow still makes it her home. She is now in her eighty-third year and nearly eighty years of her life has been passed on this farm. The Howells lived to advanced ages, Elias dying in his seventy-seventh year, his father, James, being about seventy-five years old, and the grandfather, Chatfield, the great-grandfather of our subject, eighty-five years old, at the time of death. Elias had six children, viz .: Maria, who made her home with her mother and died at the age of sixty-four years; James, who lived three miles east of the old home and died when forty-three years old; Isaac lives on a farm adjoining the homestead; Joseph died at the age of twenty-three, in a Paducah hospital; he was under Lew Wallace in the Eleventh Indiana Regi- ment; Erastus has charge of the homestead; and Susan married Smith Krom and died at the age of twenty-seven years.
Erastus Howell grew to young manhood on the farm, remaining there until he was twenty-one. He attended the Brookville College, four years, from 1865 till 1869. He then took up the life of an agriculturist as the one most congenial to his tastes, and has been very successful in it. He farmed the home place until 1880, when he purchased the one hundred and sixty acres upon which he now lives, one mile south of Billingsville. For this land he paid forty-eight dollars per acre, and has since improved it, making the actual cost to him of seventy-five dollars per acre. He now has a farm of which he may well feel proud. He has laid some fifteen hundred rods of tile, putting the land in first-class condition. He feeds a great many hogs, keeping from forty to one hundred and thirty head in his stock pens.
Mr. Howell was married December 14, 1880, to Miss Ella Sims, a daughter of John Sims, of Harvey township, Union county. A stepson, John Driscol, makes his home with them. Both Mr. Howell and his wife are connected with the Methodist Episcopal church, in which he has acted as trustee for many years. He is a Republican and has served as trustee of Bath township for two terms.
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ALBERT G. OGBORN.
The narrative of a life which has been filled with useful deeds, with duties well performed; a life which has exemplified the Golden Rule and recognized the principle of loving service to mankind as the supreme object of living, cannot lack interest, even to the casual reader or the stranger. Such a career has been that of Albert G. Ogborn, who, since the close of the civil war, has been one of the most respected citizens of Richmond.
His paternal grandfather, John H. Ogborn, was a native of the city of Baltimore, Maryland, where he passed his early manhood. He married Mary Pusey Elliott and had nine children, two of whom died in infancy. By trade he was a shoemaker, and that calling he followed, more or less exclusively, throughout his active life. By the time that some of his older children were meditating how they should begin the independent battle of life he decided to remove, with his family, to the new west, where they might have better opportunities. Accordingly they started for Indiana in a wagon, crossing the mountains in that manner, and having a memorable journey, not unfraught with dangers. They settled in Richmond, then a small village, where they made their home for many years. The last days of the aged couple were passed in Waynesville, Ohio, he dying in the '70s, at the age of eighty-one, and his wife entering the silent land two years before, when in her seventieth year. They were members of the sect known as Hicksite Quakers, and were very strict and severe in their ideas of life.
Thomas E. Ogborn, the father of our subject, was born in Frederick, Maryland, in November, 1820, and was a boy when the family came to this state. He worked with his father at the shoemaker's trade, becoming very skillful at the business. In 1861 he enlisted in Company A, Second Ohio Infantry, which was assigned to the First Brigade, First Division, Fourteenth Army Corps. He was promoted from the ranks to orderly sergeant, and soon afterward, on account of his ill health, was given the position of clerk to his captain. During his three years and one month of army life he par- ticipated in numerous important battles, among which were those of Perry- ville, Kentucky; Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, Ring- gold, Tunnel Hill and the engagements of the Sherman campaign, including the siege of Atlanta. In the latter part of 1864 Mr. Ogborn was granted an honorable discharge, owing to his continued ill health, which he bravely ignored as long as possible. Going to Mechanicsburg, Ohio, his former home, he recuperated during the ensuing winter, and in the spring following was elected mayor of the town on the Republican ticket. He occupied that office for fourteen consecutive years, then refusing re-election, as he was physically unable to longer discharge the duties of the position. He has
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always been one of the most honored and popular citizens of the place since he took up his residence there, and for the past six years he has been retired. For some ten or twelve years he served as a justice of the peace, and for several decades he has been actively concerned in the prosperity of the Republican party and the Grand Army of the Republic.
The first wife of Thomas E. Ogborn bore the maiden name of Julia A. Shepherd. She died in 1857, leaving four children, her first-born, Mary, having died in infancy. Elizabeth, the second child; lived to be sixteen years of age. Argus C., now a machinist in the employ of Gaar, Scott & Com- pany, of Richmond, was one of the heroes of the war of the Rebellion, in which he served for four years and four months, enlisting when he was but sixteen years of age. He was a private of Company B, Eleventh Ohio Vol- unteer Infantry, and took part in all the battles in which his father fought, and in many others, among which were Franklin and the second battle of Bull Run. For marked bravery he was promoted to be one of General Sher- man's body guard, and he continued at his post of duty, valiant and faithful, as long as his country had need of him. The two younger children were Emma, now the wife of William H. Horr, of Richmond; and Eleanora, who married Abram Thompson and is deceased. The second wife of Thomas E. Ogborn was Mrs. Caroline Miller prior to their marriage.
Albert G. Ogborn was born in Mechanicsburg, Champaign county, Ohio. February 9, 1848, and was consequently but nine years of age when his mother died. He went to live with his aunt, Mrs. Ruth E. Butterworth (whose husband was a cousin of Hon. Ben Butterworth), at Waynesville, Ohio, and was employed on a farm until the close of the war. Then, coming to Richmond, he learned the trade of a machinist with Baylies, Vaughan & Company (now the Richmond Machine Works), and for twenty-two years was employed by local firms, Gaar, Scott & Company, Robinson Machine Works and Richmond City Mill Works, among others.
In 1889 Mr. Ogborn was elected city marshal of Richmond, was re-elected, and continued in the office until 1891, when he received the nomi- nation for sheriff. Elected to that position the following year, he served for the four-years term, and since November, 1896, he has been associated with Mr. Doan in the undertaking business. In 1897 he was appointed by Governor Mount as a commissioner of police, as in 1892 Richmond inaugu- rated a metropolitan police system. For a short time Mr. Ogborn officiated as president of the board, but he resigned that position. He has always been an efficient and valued worker in the Republican party, and has been sent as- a delegate to many county and local conventions. In the fraternities he is influential and honored, being past master of Webb Lodge, No. 24, Free and Accepted Masons; a member of King Solomon's Chapter, No. 4, Royal Arch
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Masons, and of Richmond Commandery, No. 8, Knights Templar. In the last mentioned he is past eminent commander, and though he was elected to. the Scottish Rite degree, he was unable to take it, on account of illness. In the Odd Fellows' society he is past grand of White Water Lodge, No. 41, and in Osceola Tribe, No. 15, Improved Order of Red Men, he is past sachem. In the First Presbyterian church he has long been an active member, having served as a deacon and elder.
The first wife of Mr. Ogborn, to whom he was married in 1876, was Miss. Emma R. Morgan, of Richmond. Their only child, Nellie I., died at the age of ten years, and Mrs. Ogborn passed to the home beyond in 1894, in Petos- key, Michigan, where she and her husband were staying for a period in the hope of benefiting her health. On Thanksgiving day, November 30, 1896, Mr. Ogborn wedded Mrs. Alice T. Laws, of this city.
HEZEKIAH CLARK.
Few residents of Center township, Union county, are better known or more genuinely esteemed than Hezekiah Clark, who was born on the farm where he lives to-day, and has spent his whole life here. When he was two and a half years old his father erected the commodious and substantial farm- house which has since sheltered him and his, and has been the scene of many a joyous gathering and social event.
The father of our subject, William S. Clark, a native of North Carolina, was a typical pioneer, hardy, industrious, fearless and equal to all of the emergencies of frontier existence. Coming to Indiana in 1818, from Guil- ford county, North Carolina, where he had been born and had grown to man's estate, he secured a tract of land from the government, during Mon- roe's administration. His father, Hezekiah Clark, made the trip hither, in. 1820, and spent his declining years in this county. William S. had one sister, Polly, who became the wife of Mr. Rigsby, and lived on a farm adjoining that of our subject. In his youth William S. Clark had learned the carpenter's trade, and he found it very useful in this new country, where buildings were constantly being erected for the pioneers. Wages, however, were decidedly nominal, for money was scarce, and often he received but twenty-five cents per day, as when he was employed in the building of the Salern Quaker church. Clearing his farm in the intervals of work at his. trade, buying more property from time to time, and taking land in payment for labor performed, he gradually accumulated a fine estate. One tract of eighty acres was turned over to him for the building of a large barn, and at one time he was a large landholder. Reverses came, however, for he con- tracted to grade a mile and a half of the railroad through his locality, and, after completing his share according to agreement, he was forced to take
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some western lands in recompense, said property proving to be valueless. Other disasters befel him and he lost heavily. As a farmer he was very suc- cessful, and for some years he bought and sold hogs extensively. About 1844 he opened a store at Cottage Grove, and was concerned in the business for many years. A man of public spirit, he was one of the original stockholders in the Liberty and College Corner pike, which for years was a paying invest- ment, and was the only road in that locality which could be traveled with comfort. Politically he was a Whig and a Republican. During the last years of his life he lived near Cottage Grove, in a pleasant home, surrounded with the comforts which were the fruits of his busy, successful past. At the time of his death, June 27, 1885, he was in his eighty-eighth year.
Soon after coming to Union county, William S. Clark married Elizabeth Huston, a daughter of Thomas Huston, of Virginia, who lived on the farm adjoining. He was a veteran of the war of 1812, and both he and his wife, Tabitha, were honored residents of this township for many years. Thirteen children were born to William S. and Elizabeth Clark, and all, with the exception of one who died at the age of four years, lived to maturity. Seven of the number are still surviving, but the subject of this biography is the only one of the family left in the county. The wife and mother, a noble woman, loved and admired by all, died June 7, 1890, aged eighty-six years.
Hezekiah Clark was born April 20, 1831, and grew to manhood on the farm, his youth being occupied in the labors incident to the clearing and cul- tivating of the homestead. When he arrived at maturity he received eighty acres of his father's property, and continued to live under the parental roof until his marriage in 1857. He has been engaged in general farming and stock-raising and has prospered in his various financial undertakings. As a citizen his course has been worthy of commendation, for he has given his means and influence to the maintenance of law, order and good government. Firm in his conviction that the Republican party principles have brought this country to its present wonderful prosperity, he is never absent from the polls and manfully strives to promote its welfare, often attending local con- ventions.
When he was twenty-six years old Mr. Clark married Miss Sarah C. Lyons, daughter of Oren and Mary (Beach) Lyons. Mrs. Clark was born in Butler county, Ohio, and was brought to this county when a child. Her father died several years ago, but her mother is still living on the old home place in Center township. All of the thirteen children born to Mr. and Mrs. Clark lived to arrive at maturity. They are named as follows: Charley, Jen- nie, William, Mary, Susie, Sarah T., Bert, Rose, Pearl, George, Joseph, Henry and Roxie, the five last-mentioned being still at home. The eldest son is a painter by trade and resides in Connersville, and William is a carpenter and
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a resident of Liberty. Jennie has never married; Mary is the wife of Joseph Witter; Susie married Henry Eikenberry and died May 12, 1896; Sarah is Mrs. Douglas McKillop; and Rose is the wife of William Toler. Bert, like a true patriot, volunteered his services to his country in her late war with Spain, enlisting in Company B, One Hundred and Fifty-ninth Indiana Volun- teer Infantry, and was stationed chiefly at Camp Alger, in Virginia. Mr. and Mrs. Clark may well be proud of their fine family, as, without exception, their children are a credit to them and are taking honorable places in "the world's broad field of battle."
DANIEL HILL.
One of the most prominent workers in the Society of Friends, Daniel Hill has devoted many years of his life to the advancement of the cause of Christianity among men. His influence is ever found on the side of prog- ress, of liberty and of right, and the effect of his labors has been far-reach- ing. He is now an honored resident of Richmond, Indiana, which is the place of his nativity, his birth having occurred on the 18th of November, 1817. Only a short time previously his parents had left their home in Ran- dolph county, North Carolina, and located in Richmond, where they remained until the autumn of 1818, when they removed to Randolph county, Indiana, their home being a log cabin in the midst of the forest, five miles east of Winchester.
There Daniel Hill spent his boyhood days and resided for more than forty years. His educational privileges were those afforded in what were called the monthly-meeting schools, held for about three months during the winter season. There he pursued his studies between the ages of seven and twenty years, making the most of his opportunities, which were, however, quite limited. The text-books then used were the Lindley Murray series, the Introduction, the English Reader and the Sequel to the English Reader. He was very fond of reading, but that was before the era of cheap literature, and he does not remember to have seen a newspaper or a magazine until he was in his 'teens. The books to which he had access were the Bible and a small monthly-meeting library. In his early manhood he taught school for three or four terms, giving instruction only in the element- tary branches of learning. He began public speaking as an advocate of the emancipation of the slaves in the south, and was an ardent abolitionist all through the struggle which finally resulted in the liberation of the negroes. One of the schools he taught was for colored children. For several months during the war he was at Nashville, Tennessee, as agent of the Friends Freemen's Aid Society.
Mr. Hill is a birth-right member of the Society of Friends and has
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always loved the church and labored for its growth and upbuilding. For several years he was an elder, and in 1863 was recorded a minister of the gospel. in which capacity he has attended all the yearly meetings with the exception of those held in California and Oregon. From 1864 until 186; he was superintendent of the Children's Home, in Cincinnati, and on leaving that city removed to New Vienna, Ohio. On the organization of the Peace Association of Friends in America, in 1868, he was appointed president, and John Henry Douglass secretary, headquarters being established at New Vienna, where both gentlemen lived. At the close of the first year Mr. Douglass resigned his position in order to enter the evangelistic field, and Daniel Hill was appointed secretary, while Robert Lindley Murray was made president. in which position the latter continued to serve until his death, several years later. The former is still acceptably and capably filling the position of secretary. In 18;0 he began the publication of the Messenger of Peace. a monthly paper devoted to the cause of peace, and of this journal he is still editor and publisher. In the same year, in connection with John M. Hussey, Mr. Hill also began the publication of the Christian Worker, the name being suggested by J. J. Thomas, of Union Springs, New York. It was with some difficulty that this journal was placed on a firm financial basis. The Herald of Peace, which had been published for a short time in Chicago, had collapsed, leaving a number of people who had paid for the paper in advance, and who were in consequence rather backward about subscribing for a new paper published at a country village. However, in time this diffi- culty was overcome. and the paper was made one of the leading religious journals in this part of the country. Mr. Hussey was publisher and Mr. Hill editor, and in addition to his editorial duties the latter prepared the Bible school lessons each week, edited the Messenger of Peace and attended to a voluminous correspondence. The work demanded fifteen hours of labor each day, and brought but small monetary compensation. During the first twelve years of its existence the Christian Worker was published at New Vienna. Ohio, and then transferred to Chicago.
It was Daniel Hill who. in the Indiana yearly meeting, advanced a prop- osition to hold under the authority of that organization general meetings in different parts of the state, mainly for the benefit of those who did not attend the yearly meetings. The plan proved successful and has been inaugurated by nearly all the other yearly meetings. Mr. Hill served on the committee until the time came to change to the present plan of work, and it was due to his proposition that the committee on evangelistic work was appointed in the Indiana yearly, meeting. On the latter committee he also served for a num- ber of years until defective hearing caused his retirement. This plan of evan- gelistic work has also been largely adopted by other yearly meetings.
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In 1840 Daniel Hill married Arcadia Thomas, who died in 1863, and in 1865 he wedded Martha Ann Hussey, who survived their marriage eight years. He afterward married Tamar Thorne, who died in 1894. The maiden name of his present wife was Rachel S. Bailey. By his second mar- riage he had four children, three sons and one daughter, of whom two are now living: Mrs. Emma Hadley, of Richmond; and Murray Hill.
In 1856 Daniel Hill was elected to the state senate to represent the counties of Randolph and Jay, and served through two regular and one extra session of the legislature. There he was associated with such eminent states- men as General Lew Wallace, General Thomas Bennett and John Yaryan. In his political views he is a pronounced Prohibitionist, and by his vote, voice, pen and prayers has sought to annihilate the liquor traffic. As a min- ister, he endeavors to arouse the church on this subject, and from the plat- form appeals earnestly to his fellow citizens on behalf of "God and home and native land."
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