USA > Indiana > Blackford County > Blackford and Grant Counties : Indiana a chronicle of their past and present with family lineage and personal memoirs > Part 62
USA > Indiana > Grant County > Blackford and Grant Counties : Indiana a chronicle of their past and present with family lineage and personal memoirs > Part 62
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In August, 1913, his wife was eighty years of age, and is still possessed of her faculties. They are both members of the Presbyterian church and have been for many years. There were five sons and three daughters, and four sons and one daughter still live. Laura, the only surviving daughter is unmarried and has her home in St. Louis. The son Orin died in 1911, leaving a wife and two children. George lived in Meadville, and has five sons and one daughter; Henry is a resident of Indianapolis, being at the head of the Brown Stam Company, and has three sons and one daughter. Wallace, who is connected with a hardware company in Greenfield, Indiana, has a son and a daughter.
Frank W. Templeton was born in Fayette county, Iowa, May 9, 1850. Most of his youth was spent in Indiana, and he credits the public system of education as the source of his early training. He was with his father and brothers in their stock and farming operations up to July, 1910, when he came to Uplands and established the Templeton Lumber Com- pany. This is a large and important concern, handles large quantities of lumber, coal, cement, lime and all kinds of house building supplies.
Mr. Templeton was married in Lafayette, Indiana, to Miss Frankie Shilling. She was born in Indiana, and educated in Lafayette. They are the parents of the following children: Ray, who was educated in the schools of Benton county, and is now employed as a skilled mechanic on the great dam recently completed across the Mississippi River at Keokuk, is married but has no children. Fred, who is married, but has no children, is a farmer in Marion county, Indiana; and the youngest son, who is married, but also without children, is employed as a ma- chinist with a mining company in Nevada. Mr. Templeton is affiliated with the Masonic Order, and he and his wife are Presbyterians in religious faith.
CHRISTOPHER SWARTS. Among the progressive agriculturists of Grant county, it will be found that many are turning their attention and devoting their best activities to specializing. The field of berry and small fruit growing, for instance, has attracted a number of the most substantial men of this locality, and prominent among them one who has gained and is gaining a full measure of success from his operations is Christopher Swarts, of section 4, Mill township. Mr. Swarts has
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built up an excellent business by taking advantage of opportunities as they have presented themselves, and by making a careful and compre- hensive study of his business and its best methods.
Mr. Swarts comes of pure German stock. His father, Adam Swarts, was born in the Fatherland, August 14, 1836, was but six years of age when his father died, and as the only child accompanied his mother to the United States in the same year. Embarking on a sailing vessel, Mrs. Elizabeth Swarts and her son finally landed at New York City, and subsequently made their way to Hamilton county, Ohio, settling in the vicinity of Cincinnati, and there Mrs. Swarts was married to a Mr. Surluff. Later she went to live with her son, with whom she continued for many years, and died in Marion county when eighty years of age. She was a woman of many excellencies of mind and heart and was a devout member of the Protestant church.
Adam Swarts grew up in Hamilton county, Ohio, where he was given a common school education and was reared to agricultural pursuits. Upon attaining manhood, he was married to Miss Christina Flinch- paugh, who was born and reared in Hamilton county, her father, Christo- pher Flinchpaugh, having come to this country in young manhood from Germany. Here he married an American girl and they subsequently settled in Hamilton county, where for a number of years Mr. Flinch- paugh carried on farming. In young manhood he heard the call to preach the Gospel, and accordingly became a pioneer minister of the United Brethren church, experiencing many adventures white riding his circuit on horseback, for his services in this connection during the first year he was presented with a long-barrelled rifle, valued for its excellent shooting qualities, and with this weapon the itinerant preacher was wont to supply his family with game during the early days. For his services during the second year he was given a large silver watch. The latter is now lost to the family, but the rifle still decorates the wall of the old hewed-log cabin which was the original family home in Hamilton county, and which is still in use as an outhouse and meathouse, a more modern residence having been built for the widow and children of the pioneer.
Some years after his marriage, in 1867, Adam Swarts moved from Hamilton county, Ohio, to Marion county, Indiana, later went to Missouri, where he spent two years, and in 1870 came back to Marion county where he purchased fifty-five acres of land. This he sold in 1904 and pur- chased another tract of eighty acres, in Hamilton county, and still owns it, but lives in Bethel, Marion county, Indiana. His wife, born July 10, 1829, died in February, 1887, at the Marion county, Indiana, home, and in the faith of the United Brethren church, to which Mr. Swarts also belongs. He has been a lifelong Democrat, and while not a politician in the generally accepted use of the term, has been influential in his party. Of his children, Christopher is the second child and son of a family of three sons and five daughters, all living over forty years of age, all married, and all save one with issue.
Christopher Swarts was born near the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, July 6, 1858. He grew up at home and received a good education in the schools of Marion county, Indiana, and in the latter attained his majority. At the age of twenty-eight years, Mr. Swarts came to Fair- monnt township, Grant county, locating near Galacia Lake, that town- ship, where he made his home until 1910, and in the latter year settled on his present tract of forty-one acres, just beyond the corporation limits of the city of Jonesboro. This land Mr. Swarts farms in a general way, but specializes in strawberries, raspberries, potatoes and small fruits. His strawberries include the Haverland, Baubach, Senator Dunlap, Clyde and Pokenoke varieties; he has also several choice brands of
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potatoes, and grows one and one-half acres to raspberries. He makes a study of his business, adopts modern ideas and methods, and as a con- sequence has made his land well adapted to small fruit growing. He has already produced as high as 14,000 quarts of strawberries and 600 bushels of potatoes in a season. The farm is well equipped with modern machinery and appurtenances, and has been improved with substantial barns and a handsome house.
Mr. Swarts was married in Ottawa county, Michigan, to Miss Ida M. Gillett, who was born in that county and educated there. Three children were born to this union: Emory, Maggie and Susanna, all now married, settled down, self-supporting and with children. Mr. Swarts was mar- ried to Mrs. Sarah E. Glespie, nee Nottingham, at St. Joseph, Michi- gan, a review of whose family will be found in the sketch of Clark Nottingham. By her former marriage to Mr. Glespie, of Canada, Mrs. Swarts had five children: Mildred and Inez, who married; Parker and Dolly, single; and Pearly, who is deceased.
EUGENE N. SWARTS. As a farmer and business man Eugene N. Swarts is well known throughout this part of Grant county, and he has lived here all his life. At the incorporation of the village and at the first election of officers he was honored with the position of town treas- urer, and his name will always be found on the records of first village officials.
The birth of Eugene H. Swarts occurred in Center township of Grant county on the 1st of November, 1853. His parents were John and Mary (Yount) Swarts, both of whom were natives of Bedford county, Pennsylvania, and in that county, married and started out as farmers. During their residence in Bedford county four children were born : Henry, John, James and Franklin. John died in Pennsylvania, and James passed away while the family were coming to Indiana. This migration from Pennsylvania to Indiana occurred in 1847, so that while they were not among the first settlers they were here in time to bear a share of early difficulties and hardships. John Swarts made settlement in Center township, on Monroe Pike, and the eighty acres which he bought had some improvements. In 1876 he sold that land and bought seventy acres in Jefferson township, and that land is still in the family ownership. In June, 1877, John Swarts died on the last named place. His widow survived him many years, living in the homes of her children, and her death occurred in the home of her daughter, Mrs. Solomon Wolf, on the last day of the last century, when more than eighty-three years of age. Both she and her husband were of the faith of the Lutheran church, but later became Protestant Methodists. John Swarts was a Democrat in politics. There were nine children in their family, and besides the two who died before they reached Indiana the youngest child, Williard, died at the age of two years. The remaining five sons and one daughter still living are: Henry, who resides on a farm near the Soldier's Home at Marion, and has living two sons and two daugh- ters ; Franklin has a farm, in Jefferson township, and has two daughters living; Andrew is a farmer on the old home place, is married, and his wife by a previous marriage has one daughter; Abraham lives on the David Wall farm in Monroe township, and has two sons and two daughters; the next in line is Eugene; Mary E. is the wife of Solomon Wolf, a farmer in Center township, and they are the parents of three sons and five daughters.
Eugene N. Swarts grew to mature years in his native township, went to school there, and his early experiences and training were acquired from practical acquaintance with farm work. In 1876 the family moved
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to Jefferson township, and in March, 1882, Eugene Swarts located near Upland. The land on which he settled was owned by his wife, which she had acquired in 1881, a year before their marriage. In March, 1882, Mr. Swarts erected a dwelling house thereon, and on the 27th of that month they took up their abode there. The original tract consisted of fifty acres, but about twenty-two and a fourth acres have since been sold, and two and a 'quarter acres, now owned by Andrew Gage, of this original fifty, now lies within the corporate limits of Upland. Mr. Swarts owns sixty-seven and three-fourths acres of land at the present time. While a large part of the time and energies of Mr. Swarts have been applied to farming, he has also done a considerable amount of business as a teamster in the village since this place began to grow from a cross roads store into a thrifty town. He possesses a genial and happy temperament, is liked by everybody in the community, and has prose- cuted all his enterprises with an intelligence which brings ample reward.
At Upland, on the 5th of February, 1882, Mr. Swarts was married to Miss Emma S. Smith, who was born in Fayette county, Ohio, June 20, 1851. Her early life was spent in Mill township of Grant county, where her parents, Charles and Beulah (Haines) Smith, settled in 1852, locat- ing on eighty acres of land in that township, and they spent the remainder of their lives in improving a good home. They died within a week of each other, both being about sixty years of age. Mrs. Swarts, who was a member of the Methodist church and lived up to the high standards of her faith, was a good neighbor and much beloved in the community. She died suddenly on the 3d of May, 1913. There were no children by their marriage. Mr. Swarts for many years was a regular Democratic voter, but is now a Prohibitionist.
GEORGE S. ACKERMAN. Among the most successful dairymen and farmers of Mill township George S. Ackerman has a proper place, and it is consistent with the proprieties that he should be given mention in a historical and biographical work of the nature of this publication. For twenty-five years has Mr. Ackerman carried on his activities on this, his present place, and while he has been successful, his prosperity has come wholly as a result of his thrift and ability, and he is deserving of a deal of credit therefor.
Mr. Ackerman was born in Richardson county, Nebraska, on Novem- ber 20, 1862, and was a small child when his parents came to Grant county. They were Benjamin G. and Julia (Landry) Ackerman,- natives of Ohio and Madison county, Indiana, respectively. They were married in Nebraska, where they had gone as young people, and in Richardson county the Ackerman brothers had owned a thousand acres of land.
After Benjamin Ackerman came to Indiana he was for a time engaged in the business of heading oil barrels, and he was thus engaged for some years in Madison county, after which he came to Marion and has here since been engaged in the manufacturing and heading of oil barrels, up until five years ago, when he became identified with the coal and wood business. Mr. Ackerman has been faithful to his business interests, and his record of service is that he has never lost a day from business except because of illness since he became of age,-a record that few, if indeed any, men could equal.
Mr. Ackerman is hale and hearty, well preserved and though he is now seventy-five years old, still gives regular attention to business. His wife is sixty-eight years old now and is alert and active for one of her years. She is a Presbyterian, and her husband, though not a member, attends church with her. He is a Democrat, and has always been an admirable citizen.
Vol. II-27
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George S. Ackerman is the eldest of the five children of his parents, four of whom are yet living, and three of whom are married. Mr. Ackerman himself was married in the house he now occupies to Miss Nettie, daughter of Jacob and Almedia (Moore) Leapley. He died but recently at the age of seventy-six years, after long residence in the county, during which time he had been engaged in contracting and farming. His widow now lives in Marion and is in her seventy-third year of life. She and her husband were long prominent members of the Methodist Episcopal church, and he was a Republican in politics.
Mr. and Mrs. Ackerman have two daughters, Grace, the first born, is aged thirteen, and Louise is ten years of age. Both are attending the public schools.
The Ackermans have a comfortable and commodious home, and their farm is reckoned among the best in the county. It is worthy of mention that it has reached its high plane of productiveness solely as a result of the thrift and good management of its owner, for when the place came into Mr. Ackerman's hands it was in a sadly run-down and unpro- ductive condition. It required some years of steady endeavor to bring it up to anything like its present state of productiveness, and Mr. Acker- man has made a thorough study of intensive farming in recent years. He has of late given his best attention to dairy farming, however, and the dairy products of his place find a ready market at top-notch prices at all seasons of the year.
A Democrat, Mr. Ackerman takes a lively interest in the political activities of his town and county, and is a man of considerable influence and position in his community.
ROSS CRETSINGER. The record of the Cretsinger family in its older generations has been written elsewhere in this publication. Attention is here called to the vigorous and enterprising young farmer, Ross Cret- singer, who has been identified with Grant county practically all his life, and has made a particular success as a crop raiser and stock grower and now directs the activities of a fine farm located along the rural free delivery route No. 11 out of Marion.
Ross Cretsinger was born on Sunday, October 5, 1884, the third son in the family of Holmes and Sarah Cretsinger, whose careers are sketched elsewhere. His childhood was spent on the farm known as the Old Joe Oates farm on the Lagro road north of the Country Club and now owned by Holmes Cretsinger. His place was under the parental roof and at the side of his father as his assistant farmer until he was twenty- two, and up to the age of about sixteen he attended the No. 4 district school in Washington township. The school which supplied him with early training in the fundamentals was the same which his father had attended in his boyhood. At the age of twenty Ross Cretsinger got his first real start in life when his father gave him a fourth interest in twenty acres of corn. His share of the crop he traded for his first driving horse and during the following two years he was given one- fourth of all the grain raised on the farm.
On July 27, 1908, Mr. Cretsinger married Zona A. Endsley. She was born January 17, 1887, on the William O. Endsley farm near Van Buren, and lived there until her marriage. Her schooling was received in the No. 3 schoolhouse in Van Buren township until she was fourteen years of age, and then left school in order to assist her mother in the care of a large household. She was the oldest child of William O. and Susan Endsley, and has five brothers and one sister, two of whom are married, while the others are still at home. The Endsley home is one of the most attractive in Van Buren township, and its delightful hos-
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pitality makes it a favorite resort for the many friends of the family. Mr. Cretsinger and wife have one child, a sturdy young son, Holmes F. Cretsinger, Jr., five years of age and already proving his willingness to assist his mother in her work and the idol of the household.
After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Cretsinger lived on the old home place for two years, and then with his father bought eighty acres of land on the county line in Huntington county. After a year and a half residence there the father and son traded the Huntington county farm for the Frank Mullen farm in Grant county, and that is the seat of Mr. Cretsinger's activities as a farmer and stock man. He has the direction of one hundred and thirty-seven acres, and has lived on that place since the fall of 1912. Some idea of his enterprise as an agricul- turist is obtained from the record of his last year's crop of about three thousand bushels of corn, and most of this is fed to his hogs, the big type Poland China.
Mr. Cretsinger when twenty-one years of age joined the Odd Fellows Lodge No. 96, and has been a faithful member of that order ever since. He manifests a helpful interest in every thing connected with the welfare of his rural community, and while his prosperity has already been note- worthy the promise for the future is even greater.
A. WILMONT BRELSFORD. A resident of Grant county for more than sixty years, Mr. Brelsford has followed farming in Mill township for the greater portion of this time, and his home on section one is a fine farm which has all the outward appearances of thrift and prosperity, and those who are acquainted with the enterprise of Mr. Brelsford testify as to his substantial success as a farmer, and his usefulness as a citizen. A. Wilmont Brelsford was born in Greene county, Ohio, September 11, 1848. He was three years of age when he came to Grant county, in 1851. His parents were Thomas and Lydia Ann (Mann) Brelsford, both natives of Green county, Ohio. The father was Irish and the mother English in ancestry. They were married in Green county, and in 1838 came to Grant county, locating in Center township, where Thomas Brelsford started to make a new home with his wife and small family of children. Early in life he had acquired the trade of carpenter, and it was in that capacity that he was first known in Grant county. Some of the early homes in and about Marion were built by this skilled artisan and some of them still stand to testify to the substantial industry of the builder. Later he bought a farm in Liberty township, and about the time the war broke out sold that place and located in Mill township near Gas City. Finally in 1880, having sold his interests in Grant county, he moved to Jackson, Michigan, where he resumed his work as a carpenter, and lived there until his death. He was nearly fourscore when he passed away, while his wife was sixty-eight years of age. Besides his industrious career as a farmer and carpenter, he worked as a lay preacher in the Methodist church. There were three sons and four daughters, five of whom are still living and are married and have children of their own.
A. Wilmont Brelsford grew up in Grant county, spending most of his boyhood on a farm, and with a common school education. Having been reared on a farm he chose that vocation, and has followed it suc- cessfully for more than forty years. His home has been on his present place in section one of Mill township since 1877.
Mrs. Brelsford was married in Jonesboro, September 11, 1875, to Miss Jennie Wiley. She was born on the farm which she and her husband now occupy in Mill township, June 4, 1856, and was reared and educated in this county. She is a woman of superior character and
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has proved an excellent wife and mother, and the success of Mr. Brels- ford in no small degree may be credited to his wife's capable efforts in cooperating with him. The children born to their marriage are mentioned as follows: Leota B., who is the mother of five children, is the widow of the late Guy Heath, who was accidentally killed on the Pennsylvania Railway, June 9, 1913; Arlie F. lives in Forsyth, Montana, and has one son ; Alvary T. died at the age of six months; Alvin R. is a bookkeeper with the Tin Plate Company at Gary, Indiana, and is unmarried; Garr is at home with his parents. Mr. and Mrs. Brelsford and family are Methodists in religion, and in politics he votes the Progressive ticket.
JOE KLAUS. When Joseph Clouse, who has just closed his relations with Grant county as its recorder, left his native heath in Germany in 1853, he adopted the English spelling of the German name, making it Clouse, and coming to Marion in 1860 from Lima, Ohio, where he and a brother, Philip Klaus, had lived, he established the Clouse Carriage Works. Now that he has retired from industrial pursuits the son who bears his name continues the business established so long ago, but the son has returned to the original and German spelling of the name, Klaus. When it came to the matter of writing his personal checks Joseph Clouse, Jr., became Joe Klaus, and the Clouse Carriage Works is now indeed the Klaus establishment.
When the father left his native place in Germany he was a devout Catholic, but when he married Anna Maria, a daughter of Jacob and Anna Maria (Snyder) Smith, September 17, 1862, he went the way of his wife in religious matters, and they reared their children in the faith of the Methodist Episcopal church. Afterward, however, he reverted to the faith of his childhood-the religion of the family in Germany. His brother, Philip Klaus, of Lima, Ohio, continued the original spelling of the name and the religion, and three brothers and two sisters in the Fatherland are all Catholics. Mr. Clouse has one daughter who adopted his faith. In the business directory of Marion Clouse and Klaus designate one and the same family, the differing versions indicating the German and English forms of the name. Joe Klaus, however, has been the only member of the family to adopt the German form, and while many people designate him Clouse, his signature gives the original spelling of Klaus.
While Joseph Clouse is a German, his children have never seen his relatives across the water. They seemed blessed with longevity, and counting his brother at Lima, Ohio, and the three brothers and two sisters in the Fatherland, there are seven in the family.
There were twelve children in the Smith family of which Mrs. Clouse is a member. Her father, Jacob Smith, came from Pennsylvania to Grant county in 1837, and he had much to do with the early history of Marion. Mention is made elsewhere of the lime kiln over the "forty- foot-pitch" operated by Jacob Smith. He opened the S. R. Fankboner farm beyond the "forty-foot-pitch" on the Wabash Pike, and there is another substantial, old time brick residence at the corner of Western avenue and Second street, Marion, once a farm house but now in the center of a prosperous business community, and the name of Jacob Smith is still remembered by many of the older residents. Adam Smith, the eldest son, disappeared soon after his return from the Civil war and was never seen again. Mrs. Frances Parks, Mrs. Catherine Webb, Mrs. Mary Zent, Joseph Smith and Mrs. Clara Osborn are his children who married. John Smith died in the army, and Henry, Jacob, David and Daniel died in early life.
The home of the Clouse family has always been in Marion, and the children born to Joseph and Anna Maria (Smith) Clouse are all married
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