USA > Indiana > Memorial and genealogical record of Representative Citizens of Indiana > Part 14
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Mr. Hayden was born at Coburg, Ontario, Canada, on Febru- ary 29, 1836. He was the son of Rev. William Hayden, the pio- neer Congregational minister of that section and a person of emi- nence in the religious world. The son reecived educational ad- vantages in his native province and eventually completed the course of study in Victoria College, from which he was graduated in 1864. Two years later he was honored by his alma mater with the degree of Master of Arts. After his graduation Mr. Hayden became prominently identified with industries in the Dominion, occupying for a number of years the position as secretary of the
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Coburg & Mormora Railway and Mining Company, of Ontario, and this incumbeney he resigned in 1874, coming to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he spent the rest of his life. Early in his career he took up the study of law in the office of Hon. James Cockburn, and was admitted to practice law by the Upper Canada Law So- ciety in the year 1866, and he became a lawyer of the first rank.
In 1873 Mr. Hayden was united in marriage with Eliza Hanna, the only daughter of the late Judge Samuel Hanna, one of the founders of Fort Wayne and for many years one of the state's most prominent citizens, a sketch of whom appears else- where in this work.
In Fort Wayne, Mr. Hayden gained distinction in business and official circles, having at various times been honored by the people with offices of responsibility and trust, the duties of which he ever discharged with ability and satisfaction, and he filled a number of important positions in the business world, ever per- forming his allotted tasks in a manner alike creditable to himself and to those whom he represented. He was an uncompromising Democrat and was a leader in political affairs. In the year 1884 he was elected by his party as representative from Allen county to the state Legislature and with signal efficiency served through two sessions. Still higher appreciation and honor was accorded him in 1888 by his election, by the Democrats, to the state Senate from the senatorial district comprising the counties of Allen and Whitley, and thus as joint-senator he served two sessions in the upper house. Senator Hayden was actively concerned in the passage of the Australian election law in 1889 and also in the passage of the new tax law in 1891, these being two of the most important enactments ever made in the Indiana Assembly to that date. While in that position le assisted in passing some advanced legislation, and took a very active interest in promoting the wel- fare of Purdue University. In the year 1893 he was appointed by the late Governor Hovey as a World's Fair commissioner for the twelfth Indiana district, and was later elected treasurer of the Indiana board of managers for the exposition, an office which he held with entire satisfaction to the commission and the people of the state. It has been very truthfully claimed that it was owing to his very careful and conservative management of the funds appropriated by the state that Indiana was enabled to make such a typical and representative exhibit and to keep its building open
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until the close of the Columbian Exposition at Chicago, and to still turn back into the state treasury the sum of nearly two thou- sand dollars of the appropriation which had been unexpended.
One marked characteristic in Mr. Hayden's life was his inter- est in agriculture. He had extensive real estate holdings and was a successful raiser of high grade horses, cattle and hogs, having been a frequent exhibitor at the Allen county fair, in which he took much interest, adding to the enterprise in every way within his power, being vice-president of the same for some time. He was for a number of years a director of the First National Bank, of Fort Wayne, which he also served as vice-president. He lived in the old Hanna homestead, a fine old colonial house, now in- cluded within the city limits, but his greatest pride, during the latter years of his life was in his fine farm, one of the most desir- able in the county. He kept it under a high state of improvement and cultivation. Like most Englishmen, he was a great lover of outdoor sports and recreations.
For military services rendered in 1876 Mr. Hayden received a beautiful silver medal from the British government and from the Ontario government a grant of two hundred and fifty acres of land in New Ontario, bordering on the Nepigon river, the most famous trout stream in the world, and this land is still retained by Mrs. Hayden, along with much other valuable property. .
Mr. Hayden was a worthy member of the First Presbyterian church, of which he was a liberal supporter and was active in its affairs for many years. He was a constant attendant up to the time of his last illness, which resulted in his death on Sunday, December 30, 1906, after a residence in Fort Wayne of over thirty years, during which time he was regarded as one of the city's foremost citizens, living a life whose influence was ever felt for good in the community, and in his death the city and county sus- tained a loss which was keenly felt by all, indeed, few men there are who have had a more interesting and at the same time useful career. No man in Allen county was more thoroughly respected in life and more honored in death than Mr. Hayden. The press, the pulpit and the people all paid tribute to his memory, but the loss which his wide circle of friends and the community in general bears is insignificantly felt beside that of his faithful and esti- mable wife, whose sympathy and encouragement did much. no doubt, toward his large snecess in material affairs and public
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usefulness during the thirty-three years in which they traversed the path of life in all its vicissitudes. Their home life was ideal and happy, and although the varied work of the world often re- quired Mr. Hayden's absence he spent as much time as possible by his fireside, among his many choice books and in the genial companionship of his devoted wife, never being happier than when at home.
Mrs. Hayden was the only daughter in a family of thirteen children, and she became tlie idol of the household. With many of the happy domestic characteristics of a most charming, affec- tionate mother, she inherited to a marked degree many of the noble characteristics of her distinguished father. She is a woman of superior executive ability and has filled many positions of honor and trust. She is a stockholder of the First National Bank and has vast interests about the city of Fort Wayne, to which she gives her personal attention. She is modest, unassuming and cultured, and has long been a favorite with a vast number of friends. She takes an abiding interest in the Young Women's Christian Association, and is on the board of directors and offi- ciates as vice-president of this society. She was very active and was one of the largest contributors in 1911 to the fund of one hundred thousand dollars raised for the erection of a new Y. W. C. A. building, which is at this writing in course of erection,, She is president of the Women's Club of Fort Wayne, and an influen- tial member of the First Presbyterian church, being one of the most active workers in the same up to the time of her husband's death. Her father and mother were founders of this church. Mrs. Hayden has no children.
In its issue of February, 1907, the Acta Victoriana, the pub- lication of the Victoria College, at Queen's Park, Toronto, Cana- da, of which Frederick J. Hayden was a graduate, concluded an article on his career with the following lines: "Victoria can well feel proud of the work that he did and the position that he at- tained to in the state of his adoption. Though he became a eiti- zen of the United States, he ever stood up for British and Cana- dian institutions, and nothing delighted him better than to return to his native town and to meet some of his old associates and col- lege chums. Victoria has sent away many of her most honorable graduates to foreign lands, and among them Frederick J. Hayden was among the most influential and the most honored."
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The following memorial was adopted by the directors of the First National Bank of Fort Wayne, January 8, 1907, on the oe- casion of the death of Mr. Hayden:
"The death, December 30th last, of Frederick J. Hayden, for ten years a member of the board of directors of the First National Bank of this city, closed a useful and successful career. Mr. Hay- den was primarily a business man and began his business life after an unusually well adapted preparation for it. His mind had been disciplined by a long continued course of severe study. He had already formed those habits of persistent industry, of method, of economy, of thoroughness, of a conscientious devotion to duty, which were characteristic traits of his whole subsequent life, in every department of activity to which he was called. As a legislator, commissioner of the state; as manager of a large landed estate, in the many and varied unclassified activities, re- ligious and secular, which, after all, probably make up the worth- iest and most important part of human life, the same traits were conspicuous, they were indicative of the man's character. Of a conservative temper, prudent and cautious, he was nevertheless fully alive to the necessity of timely innovations, and so was ready promptly to consider the merits of new methods and in- ventions.
"As a member of this board he had an intelligent compre- hension of his duties-not only of the routine work of a director, but he had also informed himself well concerning the nature and functions of a bank and its importance to the community, so that his opinions were well defined and were held tenaciously and with courage. :
"In private life, Mr. Hayden was a very agreeable compan- ion. Behind a reserve which to strangers may sometimes have appeared forbidding, lay abundant good-fellowship, a desire to please and be pleased, which was no ineffective means of smoothi- ing the unavoidable asperities and frictions of life, and, more- over, he could and did forgive and forget.
"Of his domestic life, it is not necessary to speak. Those who knew him best, knew it to have been a beautiful one. Mr. Hayden has left to his sorrowing friends as his choicest legacy the remembrance of a character without a stain."
The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, under date of January 2,
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1907, prints the following editorial by R. S. Taylor, under the caption, Frederick Jabez llayden, which appropriately expresses the feelings of the many who knew the subject of this memoir:
"A strong man has fallen by the way. Fred J. Hayden is dead. He was my friend and I am not willing to let the event pass without a word of tribute to his memory. I knew Mr. Hayden intimately from the time he came to Fort Wayne to live, which is now about thirty years ago, and esteemed him more and more highly as years passed by. He was a man of strong individuality of character. I never knew his exact counterpart in any other man. A good part of this individuality was racial. He was an out-and-out Englishman, although born in Canada. He had the strong, sturdy, enduring qualities which have made the people of the little island felt throughout the world. He was, before every- thing else, a business man. He rejoiced in business activity and enjoyed its rewards. Everything prospered in his hands. He undertook nothing sensational or risky, but moved along on lines of safe investment in business with never a failure in any enter- - prise.
"All his tastes were in harmony with these qualities of char- acter. He was greatly fond of outdoor sports, although he allowed himself only a moderate enjoyment of them. He was skillful with the rod and gun. He had one piece of property which I think he highly prized, although so far as I know he never saw it after he came to Fort Wayne. It was a tract of land far in the interior of Canada on the head-waters of the Nipigon river, where the speckled trout grow old waiting for men to come and catch then. He received that land, and a medal as well, for military services rendered to the government at the time of the Fenian raids into Canada.
"To those who did not know him intimately Mr. Hayden was just a little bit austere. But there is another side to his character revealed to his friends and in his home, in which he was a man of strong affections and tenderness of feeling. It is a good thing to say of a man after he has gone that his wife knew a better side of him than was ever known to anyone else. This may be said of Mr. Hayden with special truth. His married life was ideal in the harmony and devotion which always existed between him and his wife. He was proud of her and she of him. There are strange
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correspondences and differences among men in this world. Mr. Hayden's life and activity lay along a very different path from mine. And yet we were not only good friends, but could always entertain each other-at least, he could always entertain me and I believe I was able to render him the same service. I shall miss him from the rapidly thinning eirele of my old-time friends in Fort Wayne. The faults which he had will be easy to forget; the virtues which he had wholesome to remember and imitate."
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GEORGE W. SNIDER.
Praise is always due to merit and especially where merit is the product of unassisted energy and perseverance. The self-made man commands our highest respect. Those struggles by means of which he has risen from obscurity to honorable distinction ean- not fail to enlist sympathy and call forth our warmest applause. And, too, the record of a life well spent, of triumph over obstacles, of perseverance under difficulties and steady advancement from a modest beginning to a place of honor and distinction in the indus- trial world, when imprinted on the pages of history, present to the youth of a rising generation an example worthy of emulation and may also be studied with profit by those of more mature years whose achievements have not kept pace with their expectations. Ou the roster of the names of those who have been prominently identified with the development and upbuilding of the state of In- diana, that of the late George W. Snider merits a place of honor. From his boyhood days until his death he was a resident of this state, and in the early epoch of her development as well as in later years his energies were effectively directed along normal lines of industry and business enterprise through which he made distinct contribution to the progress of this favored commonwealth. His life was one of signal integrity and usefulness and such was his association with business and civic affairs in Indianapolis that it is altogether proper that a record of his strenuous, varied, useful and honorable career be perpetuated in this publication.
Mr. Snider was born in March, 1842, in Rush county, Indiana. He was left an orphan at the age of two years, and was reared on the Elston farm. He received a meager education in the district schools which he attended at intervals, but he was mostly self-edu- cated, having been a wide miscellaneous reader and by nature a close observer. When a boy he entered a general store at Milroy, Indiana, of which the proprietor was a son of Mr. Elston with whom he lived. At the age of eighteen, after many difficulties, he enlisted in the Sixty-eighth Indiana Volunteer Infantry, and at the suggestion of Doctor Wooden, a celebrated old physician of Greensburg, this state, the subject took a position as hospital
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steward, and during the war young Snider read medicine at night under his friend, Doctor Wooden, and he also took up the study of history and other subjects. He served very faithfully during the remainder of the war in a manner that reflected much credit upon himself and to the satisfaction of his superiors in the Union cause.
After his army experience Mr. Snider located at Indianapolis as bookkeeper for the hardware firm of Anderson & Schofield, re- maining in that capacity, giving the utmost satisfaction to his employers, until his marriage in 1870. In the fall of that year he, with three other young men, Doctor Schofield, William Taylor and William Baugher, purchased the hide, leather and belting business of John Fishbaek, at No. 227 South Meridian street. Each year following Mr. Snider bought out one of these men, later operating the business alone the rest of his life, enjoying a large trade with a wide territory, and prospering from year to year by reason of his close application, honest dealings with his fellow men and the exercise of rare soundness of judgment. He was suc- ceeded at his death by his son, Albert G. Snider, the present mana- ger of the firm, who is ably carrying forward the splendid system inaugurated by his father.
On August 11, 1870, Mr. Snider was united in marriage with Alice Secrest, a lady of many estimable characteristics, and to this union were born two children, namely: Albert G., who was men- tioned above, married Bessie Richards, daughter of Edward Rich- ards, deceased; Lillian died when ten years of age.
Mr. Snider was very successful in his business career, as be- fore intimated, Mrs. Snider owning a beautiful modern home on West Twenty-first street, and he was happiest when by his own fireside. Politically, he was a Republican, but while taking much interest in the affairs of the party and the general advancement of the community, he was not a public man. He belonged to the Grand Army of the Republic, and he was an active member of the Third Christian church and was a very liberal supporter of the same and of several missionary societies, also.
The death of this splendid citizen occurred on July 6, 1898, his passing away being a distinct loss to the business world, the church and the various cireles in which he moved.
Mrs. Alice Snider is a daugliter of Charles Scerest, a native of Kentucky, born in 1808, of German extraction. He was the youngest of a family of twelve children. When eighteen years of
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age he left Kentucky and moved to Putnam county, Indiana, and there worked on a farm a short time. He was married at Green- castle, that county, to Anna Atchison, a native of Kentucky also, who came to Putnam county, Indiana, about the same time as did Mr. Secrest, with her parents.
While living in the city of Greencastle, Mr. Secrest began brick contracting and later moved to Parkersburg, this state, where he engaged in the same business. In 1846 they moved to Indianapolis, when the place was small, and they cut the timber in a beech forest on what is now South Alabama street, in order to put up a residence, a frame house, which is still standing, and in this house George W. Snider and wife spent the first year of their married life. There were but few sidewalks in the capital city at that time, no street paving, the town being only one mile square, bounded by South street, North street, East street and West street. But Charles Secrest and wife, who spent the rest of their lives in Indianapolis, lived to see wonderful changes take place here, and the small frontier town develop into one of the nation's great metropolises. They each attained the advanced age of seventy-seven years, Mrs. Secrest dying first. They were the parents of the following children: Nathan, now deceased, was a major in a regiment of colored troops, and he became prominent in circles of the Grand Army of the Republic; Bettie E. is the widow of A. J. Cox; and Alice E., widow of the immediate subject of this memoir.
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DAVID H. TAYLOR
DAVID H. TAYLOR.
Change is constant and general; generations rise and pass unmarked away, and it is due to posterity, as well as a present gratification, to gather up and put in imperishable form upon the printed page as nearly as possible a true and succinct record of the parent's life. The late David H. Taylor was for a number of years one of the enterprising and highly respected business men of Indianapolis, and his life record has in it a valuable lesson, showing that success may be achieved in the face of discourage- ments, if one has persistency, courage and good habits, and his career cannot fail to interest the young men into whose cradle smiling fortune has cast no gilded scepter. Personally, Mr. Tay- lor was a gentleman of pleasing address and quiet appearance, frank and kindly in manner and popular with his friends and fellow citizens. Measured by the true standard of excellence, he was an honorable, upright, courteous Christian gentleman, true to himself and to others, and his influence wherever he lived was always potent for good. He gave close attention to his business affairs and amassed a sufficient amount of this world's goods to make his later years comfortable and free from embarrassment. He possessed tact and discriminating judgment, and was always ready to advise or help others, when necessary, and many were eager to avail themselves of his wise suggestions in matters of business. 'His home was all that good taste and kindness could make it and his social and family relations were of the most pleas- ant and agreeable character.
Mr. Taylor was born in Owen county, near Spencer, Indiana, March 4, 1855. He was a son of David and Mary (Ormstead) Taylor. The father, who was a farmer, was a native of Kentucky, and of Scotch extraction. He came to Indiana as a young man and located in Owen county among the pioneers and there became very well established through hard toil and close application, and there he and his wife spent some years, and later moved to Daviess county, where they spent their remaining years. Mary Ormstead was born in Scotland, and when a child her father brought her and the rest of the family to the United States, and
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here Mr. Ormstead became wealthy. Mrs. Mary Taylor survived her husband many years, dying in 1892.
To David and Mary Taylor the following children were born: David Henry, subject of this memoir; Thomas G. lives in Elnora, Indiana; Mrs. Harriet Lay, whose husband is deceased, lives at Vincennes, Indiana; Jane is the wife of James Watson, and they live in Kentucky; Semore lives in Illinois; J. Samuel makes his home in Vincennes, Indiana.
David H. Taylor spent his boyhood on the home farm in Daviess county, Indiana, and he received his education in the public schools, but, being a great reader and an extensive trav- eler, he gained an excellent practical education for himself. When a young man he started in life for himself by conducting a livery stable and general store at Elnora, Indiana, and he was made postmaster there under President Grover Cleveland. He was running the stable at the time of his marriage. Later he came to Indianapolis and ran a produce store for one winter, then re- turned to Washington, Indiana, the home of his wife, and there he conducted the same line of business for six years, dealing mostly in poultry, which he shipped to the Eastern markets. He then went to Louisville, Kentucky, where he became manager of the produce department for the well known firm of Herndon, Carter & Company, shipping produce by the car loads. After re- maining in Louisville four years, he came back to Washington and engaged in the produce and grain business, maintaining a grain sheller and elevator, and shipped his stuff to the Eastern cities.
In January, 1907, Mr. Taylor came again to Indianapolis and engaged in business for himself as proprietor of the Pearl Street Produce Company for three years, when he was induced by Swift & Company of Chicago, one of the world's largest packing con- cerns, who had long recognized Mr. Taylor's ability, to take the management of their Indianapolis branch. After disposing of the Pearl Street Produce Company to Harry Wright, Mr. Taylor de- voted his entire time to the Swift interests, regaining much of their lost trade and adding much new business, managing their affairs here in a manner which reflected much credit upon his ability and .to the eminent satisfaction of the company. He was especially successful in securing contracts from hotels and other public houses, and secured a great holiday business. He bought. sold, collected and, in fact, as manager of all local interests of
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this great firm, was kept busy and his work was highly commend- able in every respect, for he was industrious, painstaking and scrupulously honest. He understood as well, if not better, than any other produce man in the city, the various phases of the same, for it may be said truthfully that he spent practically his entire life in the produce business, and he was at all times very popular with the trade.
Politically, Mr. Taylor was a Democrat, but he was not spe- cially active in the ranks and never aspired to political offices. He was a worthy member of the Christian church, and in his frater- Dal relations held membership in the Woodmen of the World.
The death of Mr. Taylor occurred on Monday, January 1, 1912, at his cozy home, No. 531 East Fifteenth street, the home now being No. 639 Hamilton avenue. The funeral services were conducted by Rev. Allen B. Philputt, pastor of the Central Christ- ian church, in which the subject had held his membership for some time. Interment was made in Crown Hill cemetery.
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