USA > Indiana > Decatur County > History of Decatur County, Indiana: its people, industries and institutions > Part 79
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George M. Scheidler, wagonmaker, of Marion township, was born on December 1, 1853, in Cincinnati. Ile is a son of John and Kunigunda (Steger) Scheidler. At the age of fifteen, he began to learn wagon making. and repairing and machine repairs, and now conducts a general machine and repair shop at Millhousen, Marion township, which was established in 1862 by his father, and now is operated as the John Scheidler estate. He is a stanch Democrat, was elected trustee in 1908, and served six years. He was justice of the peace from 1878 to 1898, twenty consecutive years, and was notary public from 1898 to 1908, and is a member of St. Mary's church at Millhousen. His present farm covers two hundred acres of land in Marion township.
John Scheidler was born in Waklthurn, Bavaria, on June 19, 1826, and died on December 18, 1898. His wife, Kunigunda (Steger) Scheidler, was born on November 6, 1831, in Bavaria, Germany, where she was reared to young womanhood. He learned the wagon maker's trade in Germany, where he served three years as journeyman wagonwright. He came to America in 1849, and was married at Cincinnati in 1850, to Kunigunda Steger, who had come over with her parents. John came with his two sisters, Mrs. Hager, of Marion township, and Mrs. Anna Haubner, who lives near Cincinnati. In 1862 John came to Millhousen and established the business now carried on by his sons. Of their children there are only five who are now living. AAdam died at the age of sixty years, at Earl Park ; George, subject : John is a blacksmith at Millhousen; Catherine, Michael and Joseph died in infancy ; Louis is a blacksmith ; Joseph is in the employ of Herbert & Son, millers, at Millhousen ; Herman is a farmer and lives in Ripley county : Edward, Francis and Anthony are all dead. John established his shop and dwelling in a little
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farm building still standing in Millhousen. The business grew to considerable proportions, and in 1870 Mr. Scheidler erected a brick wagon, blacksmith and general machine repair shop, as well as a handsome brick dwelling, in the town, and in addition to this, he owned several pieces of valuable town property. The shop is yet the property of the estate. Mr. Scheidler is a member of St. Mary's Catholc church at Millhousen. He was drafted in the Civil War, but paid a substitute to take his place.
George M. Scheidler was twice married, first to Catharine Koelker, on June 4, 1878. She died on September 10, 1883, leaving one daughter, Olivia (Heidlage) Oldenburg, who has a son, Victor. Mr. Scheidler's second mar- riage, on May 26, 1885, was to Josephine Huber, who died in April, 1895, leaving three sons, namely: Paul L., Lawrence J., and Carl R. Paul L. is married to Clara, daughter of Joseph Herbert, and has two sons, Norbert and Urban. He is a farmer; Lawrence attended the Terre Haute College, and graduated n 1915, and married Anna Moorman. He is a teacher in the high school, and Carl R. is in a clothing store at Greensburg.
MICHAEL HEGER.
Few farmers living in Marion township deserve greater credit for their achievements and their accomplishments than Michael Heger, the largest individual land owner in Marion township, and a man who has earned every dollar of his wealth by his own indomitable energy, frugal living and careful management of his agricultural interests. The Heger estate comprises four hundred and thirty-five acres of which one hundred and fifty acres is creek bottom, and very rich soil. The remainder of the land is fairly level, and is an ideal farm, taken as a whole, for mixed farming, and stock raising. As the passerby approaches Cobb's Fork there may be seen, overlooking the wide valley and situated on a prominent eminence, the Heger homestead, which is reached by a gravel driveway one-fourth of a mile from the road. The spacious lawn surrounding the house is bounded by a large stone wall built in 1911. This wall also surrounds the spacious barnyard, where there has been erected a large bank barn, forty-four by fifty feet, and which is thirty- two feet to the eaves. Equipped with two sets of buildings and this large acreage, the farm is admirably adapted to the purposes and methods of its owner and proprietor. Not only is he the largest individual landowner in Marion township, but he likewise takes a very high rank among the farmers
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of this township in the number of head of live stock raised and sold on the farm.
Michael Heger was born on January 5. 1859, in Oldenburg, Franklin county, Indiana, the son of Michael and Josephine (Scheidler) Heger, the former of whom was born in 1826, and who died on January 26, 1899, and the latter of whom was born in 1831, and who now lives at Millhousen. Both natives of Germany, Michael Heger, Sr., after coming to America, settled in Cincinnati, and when a young man married there, and removed to Franklin county, where he engaged in farming and manufacturing brick. Michael, Jr., was a mere child when the family moved to the Millhousen neighborhood. He is one of a family of nine children born to his par- ents, of whom eight are herewith named. John lives in Decatur, Illinois; Michael is the subject of this sketch; Jacob is deceased; Joseph lives in Mis- souri ; William lives in Oklahoma; Frank died in infancy ; Mrs. Wanner lives in Millhousen, and Mrs. Margaret Hardeback lives in Kokomo, Indiana.
Patience it may be said is the keynote of Mr. Heger's success. Until he was thirty-two years old he lived on the old home farm of his parents, and then invested first in the S. T. Lowe farin on February 2. 1891. From his savings since that time he has invested in additional land until he now owns four hundred and thirty-five acres, the largest single farm in Marion town- ship. And with the able assistance of his good wife and his family he has personally earned all the money which has been invested in this large tract of land.
On October 30, 1880, Michael Heger was married to Cassilda Witt, who was born on April 10, 1858, in Decatur, Illinois, and who is the daughter of Xavier and Marian Schott, natives of France, who died in Decatur, Illi- nois. They had been farmers by occupation. Mr. Heger journeyed to Decatur, Illinois, to meet and to marry his wife.
The parents of Michael Heger, Jr., having been natives of Germany, and the parents of Mrs. Heger having been natives of France, the Heger children combine the sturdy character of their Germany ancestry with the quick, adaptable and keen intelligence of their French ancestry on the maternal side. Mr. and Mrs. Heger have had six children, as follow: Mary Josephine, who was born on August 29, 1883, married William Cahill, of Indianapolis : Francis Xavier, who was born on December 6, 1884, lives at home on the farm; Mary Conacinda, who was born on September 16, 1886, married Albert Fry, a son of Henry Fry, and since their marriage in the fall of 1914 they have lived on a farm in Marion township; Mary Philomena,
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who was born on October 16, 1888, died on July 11, 1891; Jolin Anthony, December 27, 1890, lives at home; Ruth Cassilda, May 13, 1894, also lives at home.
Mr. Heger has been identified with the Democratic party during his entire life. The Heger family are members of St. Mary's Catholic church, and are active in the affairs of this denomination.
GEORGE S. PERRY.
George S. Perry, a well-known farmer of Washington township, who owns one hundred and fifty acres of land three miles east of Greensburg, which was entered in 1825 by his grandfather, was born on April 6, 1866, and is the son of Leonard and Cinderella ( Boyce) Perry, the former a native of Kentucky, who had come with his father, Dan S. Perry, Sr., from Ken- tucky to Washington township, Decatur county, in 1824, and the latter of whom was a native of Indiana and reared in Decatur county. After settling in Decatur county, Dan S. Perry, Sr., cleared a small tract and erected a log cabin. He was a soldier in the War of 1812, who had moved from the ancestral home in Virginia to the state of Kentucky, and it was his father, Frederick Perry, who was a member of the personal body guard of General Washington during the Revolutionary War. Leonard Perry, who lived on the ancestral farm for sixty years, was born in 1824 and died in 1909. His wife, who died in 1873, left a family of nine children, all of whom except George S., are residents of Greensburg, Mrs. Dinah P. Craig; Will L. and Louisa; Squire D., farmer; Mrs. Chester Edkins; Allen M. and Pierce, deceased, and Dan S., Jr., the cashier of the Greensburg National Bank.
George S. Perry was born on the old home farm where he now lives and where both his father and his grandfather had lived and died. Educated in the McCoy schools, he has been engaged in farming the ancestral farm of the Perrys his whole life. He raises a great number of cattle and hogs and specializes in Poland China hogs and Shorthorn cattle.
On August 16, 1892, George S. Perry was married to Retta Brodbeck, who was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. They were married in Los Angeles, California, and have one child, Jean, who was born on January 16, 1895, and who is now attending a girls' seminary at Nashville, Tennessee.
Mr. Perry is a Democrat. He is a member of the Free and Accepted Masons, the Knights of Pythias and the Benevolent and Protective Order of
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Elks. He is a worthy eitizen of Decatur county, a capable farmer and one who has added new distinction to the family whose name he bears. Mr. and Mrs. Perry are popular socially in Washington township and in Greensburg, where they are so well known.
JOHN W. DEMOSS.
In every community may be found men who are especially deserving the respeet and admiration of their neighbors on account of the severity of the struggle they have had for success and on account of the large measure of attainment which has attended their efforts. John W. De- Moss, the present sheriff of Decatur county, is a man who belongs to this class of citizens. Left an orphan at a tender age by the untimely death of his father while serving as a soldier in the Union army, he has had to. make his own way in the world practically since he was ten years old. By the hardest kind of labor, by diligent and intelligent application to this labor, by economical living, consistent saving and careful management he has attained a position of high influence in this county, and no better evidence of the respect and admiration he enjoys can be cited than his election in 1912, and his re-election in 1914, to an office which was practically unsought.
John W. DeMoss was born on August 27, 1856, in Sand Creek township. Decatur county, Indiana, the son of Benjamin Lewis and Harriet ( Masters) DeMoss, the former of whom was born in 1832 and died in 1863, and the latter of whom was born in 1840 and died in 1901. Benjamin L. DeMoss, the son of William and Elizabeth DeMoss, early settlers in Deeatur county, came with his parents to this county in the late thirties of the last cen- tury. His wife, who was the daughter of John and Hannah (Byrum) Masters, was a native of Kentucky, and her parents also settled in Decatur county, with a colony of citizens, in the early thirties.
Enlisting in the Thirty-seventh Regiment, Indiana Volunteer Infantry, at the breaking out of the Civil War, despite his physical weakness, because he believed it was his duty to go, Benjamin L. DeMoss became ill and died of pneumonia at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He left a widow and three children, John W., Edward Wallace, now deceased, and Belle, who married Andrew Martin, of Marion township. The widow and children had a hard time to get along after the death of the father and husband. With the kind assistance of the children's grandparents and the neighbors, however,
JOHN W. DEMOSS.
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they were able to live. Eventually, the mother married again, her second husband being E. E. Goodwin, and to this second union one child was born, Cortez, who is a carpenter.
John W. DeMoss has always worked hard. He began earning his own way in the world at a tender age, taking employment in a stone quarry when ten years old, carrying water for the men, and gradually worked himself into a good position. He saved his money and, from doing ordinary day's work has bought and paid for two hundred acres of excellent land in Sand Creek township. A highly qualified and skillful superintendent during his employment at the Harris.City quarries, he used not only his muscles, but his brain as well, and this combination of muscular and mental energy is largely responsible for his success. In 1904 he began devoting himself to farming, choosing this rather than the foremanship of the quarries.
On April 12, 1877, John W. DeMoss was married to Martha A. Jack- son, of Sand Creek township, daughter of William B. and Amanda Jackson, who was born on October 4, 1856, in Kentucky, her parents having come to Indiana during the Civil War times. To this union three sons and three daughters have been born. Of these children, Benjamin, a farmer, is oper- ating the home farm. He married Euphemia McFarland and they have six children. Mrs. Bird Borden lives in Sand Creek township and has three children. Her husband is foreman for the contracting firm of Craig & Son, of Greensburg. Mrs. Della Styers has four children. Her husband owns a farm in Sand Creek township. Grover, who married Lena Hamer, and has one child, is the deputy sheriff under his father; Mrs. Belle Vandiver lives on a farm in Jackson township, and has three children. Irdo is a farmer in Sand Creek township.
In the fall of 1912 Mr. DeMoss was elected sheriff of Decatur county, and was re-elected to the same office in the fall of 1914. The office was practically unsought and came to him largely as a reward for his service in the past in behalf of Democratic principles and Democratic candidates. Sheriff and Mrs. DeMoss and family are members of the Methodist Episco- pal church. Fraternally, he is a member of the Masonic lodge, which he joined in 1896, and the Knights of Pythias, which he joined in 1887.
Many men who have the advantage of a good start in life achieve a large measure of success, but the man who starts with nothing and who acquires a comfortable home, a competence in life, and rears a family of children, is undoubtedly entitled to the very greatest praise. Sheriff John WV. DeMoss is a man of this character. Naturally he is very popular in Decatur county where he is so well known.
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JOSEPH B. KITCHIN.
That there are enormous differences in the casual power exerted by different ininds, depending on their place of vantage in the social system, is, of course, true. Most inen merely echo the prevailing opinion or swell the general tide of passion. Even so, such men in the aggregate give to opinion its tendency to prevail, and to passion its tidal and overwhelming power. But the contribution of a single member of the mass is not comparable with that of the individual who occupies a place of prominence or authority. Such a mind operates at a source, coloring all that springs from it, or at a crucial point where every slight detlection is enormously magnified in the consequence. There are not a few such men of initiative in Decatur county, one of the best known of whom is Joseph B. Kitchin, secretary and treasurer of the Greens- burg Water Company and a man of very wide influence for good in the com- munity in which his whole life has been spent, the subject of the following interesting biographical review.
Joseph B. Kitchin was born on a farm in Washington township, Decatur county, Indiana, on December 29, 1850, the son of Thomas and Sarah L. ( Boone) Kitchin, natives, respectively, of Ohio and Kentucky, the former of whom was a son of Joseph Kitchin, a native of Pennsylvania, and who migrated to Ohio, coming thence to this county at an early day in the settle- ment of this section of Indiana. Joseph Kitchin was a farmer and blacksmith as well as a pioneer minister of the Methodist church. He came to this county from Pennsylvania after his sons had established homes here. He was the father of five children, Thomas ; John; Bryce, who is still living at the age of eighty-six, making his home at Arkansas City, Kansas; Sarah, who married Michael Shera, a merchant of the early days in Greensburg, and Maria, who married James Mums and became a pioneer settler in the state of Iowa.
Thomas Kitchin, who was born in Ohio in the year 1818, emigrated to Decatur county with his brothers in the year 1839 and settled on a farm of one hundred and sixty acres of land, two miles south of Greensburg. To this farm he added, by purchase, until he had three hundred acres in one tract. He sold this and for a few years made his home in Greensburg, later moving to Lebanon, Indiana, where he resided for seven years, at the end of which time, in 1902, he returned to Greensburg. whre his death occurred in 1904. Thomas Kitchin married Sarah Luffborough Boone, a daughter of Brumfield Boone, who was born in Kentucky, a son of Thomas Boone, a soldier in the patriot army during the Revolutionary War, and to this union seven children were born, Rachel, the wife of Charles I. Ainsworth, of Greensburg : Joseph B., the
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immediate subject of this sketch, and Frank B., formerly a farmer in a large way in this county, who lived in Greensburg until it became time to give his children the advantages of higher education, when, some years ago, he moved to Irvington, at Indianapolis, the seat of Butler College; the remaining four died in infancy.
The Boones are of Norman origin, the name at the time of the Norman invasion of England having been spelled Bohnn. The first family of the Bohuns to cross the channel into England settled in Lincolnshire and after- ward some of the same name settled in Devonshire. It is from this latter family that the American Boones are descended. The Bohnn coat-of-arms was used before the fourteenth century, probably having been granted by an Anglo-Norman king. Not until the sixteenth century are the names Bohnn and Boone found in the same document. The first of this family to come to America was George Boone, who was born about 1670 at the old family scat, Brodwick, about eight miles from Exeter, England. There he married Mary Mauridge, by whom he had nine sons and two daughters. The entire family emigrated to America, landing at Philadelphia on October 10, 1717. George Boone purchased a tract of land in what is now Bucks county, Pennsylvania, and called it Exeter, in memory of the town in England from which he had cmigrated. In this review it will be necessary to name but two of the sons born to the union of George and Mary ( Mauridge) Boone. Joseph and Squire. Joseph Boone was the father of Thomas Boone, Mr. Kitchin's Revolutionary ancestor, and Squire Boone was the father of Daniel Boone, thus establishing the relationship of Thomas Boone and the immortal Daniel Boone, showing indeed that they were first cousins.
Thomas Boone served in the Revolutionary War as a private in Capt. James Murray's company of the Tenth Battalion of Lancaster County Militia, state of Pennsylvania, Robert Elder, colonel; having enlisted on April 12, . 1781. He was born in the town of Reading, Pennsylvania, on August 21, 1759, and married Susannah Brumfield. a Pennsylvania Quakeress, being compelled to elope with her on account of the objections raised by the Quakers at that time to any of their number marrying outside the faith. After the war, he moved to Upper Sandusky, Ohio, where he lived for a short time, after which he moved to Limestone, which is now Maysville, Kentucky, and in the year 1791 moved to Bryant's Station. entering the blockhouse there, where Brumfield Boone was born in the same year. In 1794 Thomas Boone moved to a point on the little Miami river, just above Cincinnati, where. for a time, he operated a tavern, later going to Cincinnati. The Boone and Kitchin families still have old deeds showing Thomas Boone's ownership of property
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in what is now the Bay street section of Cincinnati and some of the property owned by him is still in the possession of the family. In 1807 Thomas Boone moved to Oxford, Ohio, where he and his wife spent the remainder of their lives, their bodies now resting in the old Baptist cemetery, four and one-half miles south and a little west of Oxford, near what was the old Boone farm.
Joseph Brumfield Kitchin was reared on the home farm in Washington township, this county, receiving his education in the home schools. Upon reaching manhood's estate he began farming on a tract of one hundred and sixty acres in the same township, near the town of Greensburg. He prospered and as the years passed he increased his land holdings and also became actively interested in other enterprises. He now owns two valuable farms near Greens- burg and has other extensive investments. Mr. Kitchin aided in the organiza- tion of the Greensburg National Bank in 1900 and for five years served this excellent financial institution in the capacity of cashier, still retaining a direc- torship in the bank. He is president of the Workingmen's Building and Loan Association and for some time has been secretary and treasurer of the Greens- burg Water Company.
On July 26, 1871. Joseph Brumfield Kitchin was united in marriage with Nancy Elmira Robbins, a daughter of John E. and Nancy ( Hunter ) Robbins, a member of one of the oldest and most prominent families in Decatur county. Mrs. Kitchin also is of Revolutionary descent, tracing from William Robbins, a distinguished soldier in the war which secured to America the independence for which the patriots fought seven long years. William Rob- bins married Bethiah Vichery, who was born on December 1, 1760, and to this union there were born three children, Abel, Charity and Benjamin. The father of these children was killed in the Revolutionary War soon after enlisting in the service of the patriots and his widow subsequently married the second William Robbins, the scene of the wedding being in Guilford county, North Carolina. To this latter union there were born nine children, namely : Elizabeth. on February 5, 1788; Marmaduke and John, twins, May 15, 1789: Polly, April 9, 1791 : Nathaniel, April 5. 1793: John, February 8. 1795 : William, August 6, 1797. and Dosha. May 20, 1804.
The father of the children above named was born in Randolph county, North Carolina. on October 21. 1761, and in October, 1777, when sixteen years of age, enlisted as a private in the army of General Washington, remain- ing in the service until August, 1781. during which time he had but one cap- tain, Capt. Joseph Clark, and two colonels. Colonel Dugan and Col. Anthony Sharp. Following the war. William Robbins moved from Virginia to Ken- tucky and in 1821 again moved, this time locating in Decatur county, Indiana.
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He entered a farm from the government, about nine and one-half miles south of Greensburg, where, amid the hills, he carved a home out of the virgin forest. The first home which he set up for his family consisted of but one room, the house being constructed of hewed logs, to which was attached a lean-to, in which the family loom was set up. Presently he also erected a rude blacksmith shop of logs nearby and thus life in the new country was begun, the wife busy with her loom and other household duties and the husband busy in his smithy. On September 11, 1834, thirteen years after settling in this county, William Robbins died, his body being laid away in Mt. Pleasant cemetery, about six miles south of Greensburg.
The third William Robbins mentioned in this sketch, son of above, was born in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia on August 6, 1797, as noted above, and was taken by his parents to Henry county, Kentucky, to which point they emigrated. When, in the year 1821, they moved to the New Pur- chase, the name applied to that part of the new state in which they settled, William Robbins, then twenty-four years of age, accompanied them and selected a site for a farm for himself about one and one-half miles north of that selected by his parents. In 1822 he returned to Kentucky, where he mar- ried Eleanor Anderson, one of the pioneer belles of the neighborhood in which he formerly had lived. With his bride at his side, he returned to his new Indiana home and during that year his three sisters, together with his brothers, John and Nathaniel, settled in the same vicinity. In a short time other relatives of the Robbins family arrived in the same township and the Robbinses became prominent, both numerically and in the matter of the large influence they exerted in the early affairs of that part of the county, Nathaniel Robbins being the first justice of the peace in Sand Creek township.
William and Eleanor Robbins lived on the farm originally selected as their home during the remainder of their days, he dying on February 3. 1866, his widow surviving him until the year 1872. To William and Eleanor (Anderson) Robbins were born four children, namely: Sarilda, in October. 1823, who married William Styers; John E., February 20, 1825, who mar- ried Nancy Hunter; James G., June 10, 1827, married Elmira Stout, and Merrit H., in 1829, married Janet Gilchrist.
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