USA > Indiana > Wabash County > History of Wabash County, Indiana, Volume 2 > Part 29
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But two years old when he came with his parents to Wabash county, William A. Richards grew to manhood on the old homestead, acquiring his education in the pioneer log school house, at the same time obtaining a good knowledge of the various branches of agriculture under his father's instruction, and later working some at the carpenter's trade. In August, 1863, inspired by patriotic ardor, he enlisted in Company C, One Hundred and Eighteenth Indiana Volunteer Infantry, under com- mand of Captain E. W. Fluhart, and served until March, 1864. During the time he was with his command, Mr. Richards took part in two import- ant engagements, one at Blue Springs, Tennessee, and one at Walkers Ford, in the same state. After the latter battle he was detailed to nurse duty at the hospital in Taswell, Tennessee, and there continued until re- ceiving his honorable discharge, at Indianapolis.
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Returning home, Mr. Richards again became an inmate of the par- ental household, and worked both in Paw Paw township and in Illinois, going back and forth by rail. Marrying in 1872, he rented land for three years, and was then appointed by the county commissioners as superintendent of the Wabash County Infirmary, a position which he filled most efficiently and satisfactorily from March 17, 1875, until March 17, 1885. During that period Mr. Richards had purchased fifty-five acres of his present farm from Nancy A. Long, and to the original acreage he has since added by purchase from time to time until now he and his wife own one hundred and thirty acres of finely improved land, on which he has erected substantial buildings. He retired from active farming about eighteen years ago, the farm being now ably managed by his son.
Mr. Richards married, May 12, 1872, Margaret Foster, a daughter of William and Sarah (Drake) Foster, of Coshocton county, Ohio. Two children have blessed their union, namely : Glenn, of Toledo, Ohio, a rail- way mail clerk between Toledo and St. Louis, married Mae Louise Stokely; and George A., running the home farm. Politically Mr. Rich- ards has always been a stanch republican, and is now actively identified with the progressive republicans. He is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, and takes much interest in the organization.
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HOWARD SQUIRES. As a worthy representative of the prosperous agri- culturists of Paw Paw township, and as a former sheriff of Wabash county, Howard Squires is eminently deserving of special mention in this biographical work. A native of Kentucky, he was born December 15, 1841, in Owen county, a son of Martin Squires.
Born, reared and married in Kentucky, Martin Squires began life for himself as a farmer in Owen county. Disposing of his land in that vicinity in 1848, he came with his family to Indiana, making the tedious journey with teams, there having been neither railways nor canals at that early day. Locating in Wabash county, six miles north of Wabash, in what was then Noble township, but is now Paw Paw township, he bought eighty acres of heavily timbered land, and having erected the customary log cabin began the improvement of a homestead. A few years later, again seized with the wanderlust, he sold out there, and started with his family for the newer country of Minnesota. He traveled as far as Chi- cago with teams, thence by railroad to Galena, Illinois, where he was stricken with pneumonia, died, and was there buried, his death occurring in 1857, at the age of sixty-one years. His widow continued with her children to Minnesota, going up the Mississippi river on a steamboat. Eighteen months later she returned with her family to Wabash county, Indiana, by wagon, and located on a farm which her husband had pre- viously purchased in Paw Paw township, two miles west of the present home of their son Howard. She subsequently removed to Roann, where her death occurred March 12, 1913, at the venerable age of ninety-four years. The maiden name of the wife of Martin Squires was Sarah Williams. To them ten children were born, as follows: Eveline, de- ceased, was the wife of W. R. Keep; Caleb, deceased; Mary, wife of J. W. Strausberg and lives in Detroit, Mich .; Howard, with whom this sketch is chiefly concerned; Catherine, wife of Ed Williams; John, de- ceased; George, deceased; Sarah; Thomas; and Ella, wife of John Overley.
A small boy when his parents left Kentucky, Howard Squires was scarce out of school when the family started for Minnesota, where his wi- dowed mother lived with her children for eighteen months. After return- ing to Paw Paw township, he assisted in the care of the home farm until September, 1861, when he enlisted in Company F, Forty-first Regiment, Second Indiana Cavalry, under command of Captain Alexander Hess. Continuing in service three years, one month, and two days, Mr. Squires participated in all of the important engagements of his regiment. At Archville, Tennessee, he was taken prisoner, but was soon released on parole. After being honorably discharged from the service, Mr. Squires returned to the home farm, where he remained until his marriage.
Ile subsequently farmed on rented land for a time, and then bought one hundred and twenty acres of land in Paw Paw township, northeast of Roann. Disposing of that a few years later, he bought the hotel at Roann, and ran that for a year. Then trading the hotel for eighty acres of land in Paw Paw township, Mr. Squires was there engaged in tilling the soil until elected sheriff of Wabash county, an office that he filled most satis-
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MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM BRIGHT
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factorily for four years. Assuming possession then of his present farm, he has since been successfully engaged in agricultural pursuits.
Politically Mr. Squires is a stanch republican. Fraternally he is a member of the Ancient Free and Accepted Order of Masons, and of the Grand Army of the Republic.
Mr. Squires married, in 1873, Miss Alice McCoy, daughter of Thomas and Lucinda (Gamble) McCoy, and into the pleasant household thus established five children have been born, namely : Maude, who married Dow Van Buskirk, cashier of the bank at Roann, has two children, Cath- erine and James; Ed, who married Jessie Leffel, has three children, Helen, Elizabeth and Fred; Jessie, wife of Fred I. King, of Wabash, has two children, Howard and Miriam; Hazel; and Hugh, who died at the age of eight years.
WILLIAM BRIGHT. When the Bright family settled on a wilderness farm in Waltz township, this county, in 1845, they probably had not the vision that would enable them to see that farm seventy years later and realize something of the change that would be wrought in the place with the passing years. They did their best with the rugged and primitive means at their command in that early day, and even in their generation great indeed was the extent of progress. But their son, William Bright, today owns the place and has in it one of the finest farming properties in the township. He was born on the old place on February 17, 1854, and is a son of William and Eliza (Compton) Bright. The mother was the daughter of David and Hannah (Beesely) Compton. When Mr. and Mrs. Bright first came to Indiana it was in the year 1837, and they first settled in Decatur county, there continuing until 1845. In that year they came to Wabash county and chose a farm of 160 acres in Waltz township. It was a veritable wilderness then, untouched by the hand of man, and it offered the prospect of years of vigilant toil before more than the barest living might be wrested from its grasp, but these hardy pioneers were nothing daunted by the prospect, and, instead of being discouraged, were filled with a courageous zest that in every age has been the backbone of the pioneer movement. To such men and women is Indiana and every other great state in the union indebted for the progress and growth that is today evidenced, and it is fitting and proper that some mention of their careers, however brief that mention may be, should be sketched into the historical facts of the country.
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On November 30, 1869, after years of struggling with his new farm, the father died, his widow surviving him until November 29, 1889. They were the parents of nine children, all now deceased with the exception of the subject and one daughter, Sarah, who married Henry Holderman and lives in this county. All the deceased members of the Bright family lie buried in the Mount Vernon cemetery, with the exception of one son, Richard L. Bright, who was buried in Colorado.
William Bright of this review had his education in Waltz township, where he was born and reared. Here he saw much of pioneer condi- tions, and remembers the time when a letter back to the old home in New
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Jersey required twenty-five cents in postage. He spent his boyhood days between work on the farm and in the school room, and continued on the home place without a break until the spring of 1914, when he moved to Vernon, this county, on a farm of forty acres, which he also owns. In 1879 he married Alice Cochran, a daughter of Frank and Elizabeth (Flook) Cochran, who were the parents of five children, all born in Waltz township. The father of Mrs. Bright served in the Union army during the Civil war as a member of the Eighth Indiana, and he died while yet in the service. The mother still lives in Somerset.
To Mr. and Mrs. Bright were born three children. Edwin was born on September 7, 1881, and died in October, 1912. He married Eliza Vaughan, and their three children were LeRoy, Lorine and Clifford. Myrtle was born on November 21, 1883, and she married Elwood O. Har- vey, and has three children: Derwood, Darwin and Dorothy. They oc- cupy Mr. Bright's farm of 185 acres south of Vernon. Clarence, born on February 17, 1886, married Winnifred F. Garst, and he died on May 29, 1913. All three were born on the old home place where the father was born in 1854.
That farm is one of 185 acres, and is one of the comfortable and prosperous places in the township. All the buildings in use today were built by the original owner of the place and were put up by hand, all of the interior work being hand work and very attractive in design. It was finished in the year 1851, and so well was the work carried out and so properly has the place been kept up that the home today looks like a modern dwelling. Mr. Bright also owns a forty-two acre and an eighty acre farm, all in Waltz township, making a total of 307 acres.
Mr. Bright is one of the prominent men of the community, socially and otherwise, and is a member of the Masonic fraternity, Somerset lodge, at Somerset. He is a progressive in politics, and has a healthy interest in the political activities of the town and county, though he has never been an office seeker or holder. His name is one that stands well to the front in the community, and his labors in his chosen work have made for continued progress all his days.
JOHN SCHULER. One of the oldest residents of Wabash county is the venerable John Schuler, now more than fourscore years of age, and who from boyhood to his present lengthened span of existence has witnessed the changing course of civilization and the progress of mankind in Wabash county since 1837. While he still gives active attention to busi- ness, and is a member of the firm of Schuler & Schuler, conducting an undertaking and house furnishing establishment in the village of Roann, Mr. Schuler many years ago was relieved from the necessity of hard work, but it is a part of his nature to continue active and he prefers to wear out rather than rust out. His experiences have been many, it has been given him to observe the work of nearly three generations of men in Wa- bash county, and through it all he has borne his own part worthily and with many contributions to the good of the community.
John Schuler was born in Lycoming county, Pennsylvania, on Decem-
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ber 19, 1832, a son of Robert and Elizabeth (Rantz) Schuler. Both par- ents were born in Pennsylvania, and the father was a farmer, owning a place in Lycoming county. In 1837, being inspired by the news of the great western country, he sold out his land in Pennsylvania, started west with wagons and teams, and after a six weeks' journey across the mountains of western Pennsylvania, across Ohio, he arrived in Wabash county. The little family party consisted of the husband and wife and eleven children. At the time of their arrival the Wabash and Erie canal had not yet been completed, so that practically the only means of reach- ing this part of the state from the east was by the overland roads. In the village of Wabash at that time was a double log cabin used as a tavern, but the Schuler family did not spend the night there, electing to remain in the shelter of their own wagon. The Indians throughout this section were more numerous than the whites, and the progress of civilization had hardly made a clearing except here and there, so that the country was practically in its primitive state of nature. Robert Schuler, the father, bought eighty acres of land three miles north of the present village of Roann in Pleasant township. Subsequently, as his prosperity and means increased he bought three or four other eighties. On the first farm there stood a hewn log house, which furnished a shelter for the family for some time. The equipment of that early home was extremely primitive. A large walnut door, two windows, covered with greased paper, a puncheon floor, an open fire place, with a mortar and stick chimney, were the more familiar and conspicuous features of the residence. In 1840 the father built a new home on the river, two miles north and a mile east of Roann in Paw Paw township, but on the Pleasant township line. This new home was considerably in advance of the first, but its outer structure was still of hewn logs. Some years later the father and mother went east to visit old friends and relatives in Pennsylvania, and while there they were thrown from a buggy and the father died in 1848, as a result of that accident. The mother recovered from her in- juries, returned to Indiana, and died twenty years later in the state of Minnesota. Their twelve children are mentioned briefly as follows: Han- nah, who married William Johnson, both are deceased; Daniel, deceased; Philip, deceased; Polly, who married William Robinson, both are de- ceased; Elizabeth, who became the wife of William Townsend, both now deceased ; Henry, deceased; Sarah, who died at the age of sixteen; Sam- uel, deceased; Margaret, the deceased wife of Theo Sower; John; Jacob; and Nancy, who married Daniel Thurston, and both are deceased. The brothers John and Jacob now own the old homestead of one hundred and seventy-three acres on the Pleasant township line in Paw Paw township.
John Schuler was about five years old when the family made its long trip from Pennsylvania to Indiana. He retains many interesting recol- lections of early days in Wabash county, and while he was developing his strength at home, in the pursuits of the fields and the woods, he had many acquaintances which are no longer possible to the children of Indiana. Indians came and went so frequently as to excite no surprise, and it was possible to stand in the doorway and with a rifle shoot deer
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and other wild game, and in the recesses of the woods, from which they would come forth at night, were a number of wild cats, catamounts, and other beasts of prey. Elkhart was the nearest market and a center of sup- ply for flour, salt and other necessities. At that time the site of the village of Roann was in the midst of the wild woods, and only two or three tav- erns stood between the Schuler home and the village of Wabash. About three months every year John Schuler would go to school. The old school which he recollects attending during those sessions was kept in a log house, with split log benches, supported from the floor by wooden pins, with a broad board around the room for a desk, and the boys and girls studied from books that are now hopelessly out of fashion and out of print, and wrote with a quill pen, manufactured for the occasion by the schoolmaster. He not only developed his mind but also his body by helping clear the land, plant the fields, and harvest the grain with scythe and sickle. In 1857 John and Jacob Schuler went to Kansas, and while there on an Indian reserve between Manhattan and Topeka, Jacob con- tracted small pox. During the five weeks of his illness he was cared for by his brother John, and so successfully did the latter cope with the dread disease that no marks were left.
On February 21, 1861, was celebrated the marriage of John Schuler to Jennie W. White. Her parents were Robert and Elizabeth White, who had come from Ohio. Mrs. Schuler was a young woman when she left her Ohio home to find a place in the home of her uncle, Robert Chin- worth in Pleasant township of Wabash county, her father having died when she was a small girl.
After his marriage John Schuler moved to a place two miles west of Laketon, and he spent two years on a brother's farm. Returning to the old place he lived there until 1900, and in the meantime he and his brother Jacob had bought the interests of the other heirs in the one hundred and seventy-three acres. Mr. Schuler and his brother have added to the area of the old homestead, and John Schuler now has forty- three acres of his own adjoining the old place. In 1900 Mr. Schuler moved into the village of Roann, and engaged actively in business with his son Robert. In 1898 they had bought the undertaking and furniture store at Roann from Colt & Oswald, which during the following year was conducted under the firm name of Lowman & Schuler. Then Ed Case bought the Lowman interest, and after running for a year as Schuler & Case, the establishment passed entirely into the control of the Schulers, father and son, and is now run by the firm of Schuler & Schuler. The first store stood across the street, and the building was burned in February, 1901. On the present site they erected what is the largest and best equipped store building in Roann, built on foundations 44x76 feet, with a basement and a second story. They keep a complete stock of house furnishing goods, and also have a complete equipment of funeral supplies, with a large barn and rooms for caskets, keep a funeral car, and all other facilities for first-class service in the undertaking busi- ness. There is no other town in the state of Indiana that has a finer under- taking service than is furnished by Schuler & Schuler. The entire store is
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a credit to a community of this size, and it is due largely to the enterprise of its owners, and partly to the fact that Roann is situated in the midst of as fine a farming community as can be found in Indiana, and the people who live in that section are willing to support the very best. Robert Schuler, the son of John, studied a course of embalming at home, and took the examination before the state board and made a very creditable grade with an average of eighty-six.
Mr. Schuler and wife have three children: Robert F., who married Emma Hensler, a daughter of George Hensler; Laura, who married F. W. Eby of Paw Paw township, and has two children, the first being Mabel and the second Harry, who by his marriage to Hazel Long has a daughter Jane Josephine; and Maggie E., the wife of Edward Case, of Akron, Indiana, and by their marriage there is a daughter, Ruth Janette. Mr. Schuler is a member of the Presbyterian church. He is distinguished as one of the very few original members of the Republican party in Wabash county. He cast his first presidential vote for John C. Fremont in 1856. Notwithstanding that original alliance and long con- tinued support of the republican party, Mr. Schuler is now found in the ranks of the progressive party. Outside of his local interests at Roann, he oversees the management of his farm, and at one time did a consider- able business as a stock shipper.
CHARLES MILLER. While Charles Miller claims the Buckeye state as his birthplace, it was only three months after his name was added to the family roll that the Miller family settled in the woods of Paw Paw town- ship, only a mile east of where Mr. Miller has his fine country home. In all other particulars he is a Wabash county product, and is a loyal and progressive citizen of this favored section of Indiana. Few farmers are more emphatically business men than Charles Miller. He has kept up with the times, and often in advance, though his keen judgment has given him as much success as some more conservative neighbors. His home- stead comprises two hundred and fifty-five acres on both sides of the Lake- ton road, in Paw Paw township, about eight miles north of Wabash, his comfortable residence being located on the west side of the highway.
Charles Miller was born near Massilon, Ohio, October 23, 1856, a son of Jacob and Elizabeth (Fetzer) Miller. His parents were both natives of Germany, were married in that country, and then seeking better oppor- tunities for themselves and their family they emigrated to the United States and found a home in the state of Ohio. They bought a small farm in Stark county, but in 1856 came further west and settled in what was then Noble township, now Paw Paw township, one mile east of Charles Miller's place. All the land in that vicinity was then covered with woods, and it was necessary to clear a space among the trees in order to have room for a log cabin home. Both the parents lived there until the close of their days, and the father passed away in 1886 at the age of fifty-eight and the mother in 1907 aged seventy-five. Jacob Miller was a poor man when he came to America, was industrious, thrifty, and honorable in all
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his relations, and the family reached a position of prosperity, owning three hundred and twenty acres of land.
The third child in the family, Charles Miller was just three months of age when his parents moved to Wabash county, and his early recollec- tions were of that community. The old homestead was the scene of his boyhood days, and while at home he learned the lessons of industry, he also attended the district school in that neighborhood. His labors helped to clear a portion of the father's farm, which is now owned by Charles Carnes. Mr. Miller lived at home until March 20, 1879, which was the date of his marriage to Caroline Pretorius. Her parents were Jacob and Catherine (Schultz) Pretorius, and the Pretorius family, which has long had a prominent part in the activities of Wabash county, is sketched else- where in this publication under the names Jacob and Joyce Pretorius, brothers of Mrs. Miller. After his marriage Mr. Miller moved to a portion of his present farm, at that time owned by his father. His career began as a renter, and he and his wife contrived to prosper stead- ily and to provide a good home and living in that way for nine years. He then bought the eighty-six acres from his father, and has added more lands from time to time, until his is now one of the large and valuable farm estates of Paw Paw township. His business is general farming and stock raising, and there are few farmers in Wabash county who have more business transactions than Mr. Miller. He has remodeled all the buildings on his farm, has put in many rods of tile, and his work has contributed to the substantial improvements of the land and its resources.
Mr. Miller and wife are the parents of eleven children, mentioned briefly as follows: Albert, who lives on a farm owned by his father west of the homestead in Paw Paw township, married Rose Schultz, and their children are Kenneth, Elmer and Gilbert; Clarence, who lives on his father's land across from the neighboring schoolhouse, married Freda Barker, and their one child is Edward; Katie is the wife of Osro Fau- cett, whose home is south of Manchester in Chester township, and their children are Maxwell, Eunice and Paul; Anna married Fred Barker, living south of Wabash and in Waltz township, and is the mother of two children, Howard and Irene; Mary, who lives in Paw Paw township, is the wife of George Flora, and their children are Ethel and Beulah; Freda is unmarried; Pauline married William Barker, who lives west of Laketon in Pleasant township, and their daughter is Dorothea; Earnest, Ida, Homer and Edith are the youngest of the family, and all still at home or in school. All of the children were born on the Miller farm, and Mr. Miller and wife have taken great pains to give them the best of home training and suitable school advantages. Mr. Miller and wife are mem- bers of the German Lutheran church at Urbana, and in politics he is a republican.
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