USA > Michigan > Lenawee County > Illustrated history and biographical record of Lenawee County, Mich. > Part 18
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JOHN ALLEN was born in Farrington, Ontario County, N. Y., April 19, 1829, came to Michigan in 1848, and settled in Medina Village, Lenawee County. His father, Timothy Allen, was born near Bennington, Vt., in March, 1788, and was the son of Elijah Allen, a native of Vermont, who was a nephew of Gen. Ethan Allen. Timothy Allen, when he was about twenty-four years old, in 1812, removed to Farrington, Ontario County, N. Y., where he followed his trade of brick and stone mason. He lived there until 1848, when he came to Michigan and lived in Lenawee County until his death, which occurred in January, 1857. About the year 1815 he married Miss Prudence M. Eddy, daughter of Elikim and Eunice Eddy, of Massachusets, and they had seven children, six of whom came to Michigan and settled in this county, as follows: Marvin, Seymour, Franklin, Darwin, Thomas and John. John is the only one now alive. Mrs. Prudence M. Allen was of Quaker parentage, a native of Vermont, and was born in March, 1790, went to Far- rington, N. Y., when a girl, with her parents, and died in Farring-
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ton, in September, 1847. John Allen, subject of this sketch, came to Michigan, when he was about nineteen years old. He learned the trade of watchmaker, and jeweler, and has followed it for 52 years in this county. He has been in business in Morenci for 50 years. In July, 1861, he enlisted in the 14th Ohio regimental band, and was in the service for one year when, by act of Congress doing away with the regimental bands, he was mustered out. He has served as treasurer and trustee of the village of Morenci, and school inspector of Seneca under the old law. He is a member of Morenci Lodge, F. and A. M., No. 95, and of Baker Post, No. 33, G. A. R. For several years he was agent for the U. S. Express Company, and about two years for the American Express Company. September 15, 1852, John Allen married Miss Jane C. Williams, daughter of Thomas and Charlotte Williams, of Medina, this county, and they have four children, as follows : Clara M., born in Morenci, April 14, 1854, married, April 2, 1879, Dr. O. S. Armstong, has two children, and resides in Detroit; Harris E., born June 9, 1872, married April 14, 1897, Miss Susan Whaley, and resides in Morenci; Grace W., born September 28, 1874, and resides in Detroit; Edith T., born Sep- tember 2, 1878, married April 7, 1903, Alfred A. Hammett, and re- sides in Seattle, Wash. Mrs. Jane C. Allen was born in Batavia, N. Y., May 19, 1833, came to Michigan with her parents in 1836, settled in Medina, this county. Her father was born near Batavia, Genesee County, N. Y., and her mother was born near Attica, in the same county.
ALMOND L. BLISS was born in Blissfield, Lenawee County, Mich., November 7, 1832. His father, Hervey Bliss, was born at Royalston, Mass., in 1779, and was married October 28, 1815, to Nancy Woodbury, and of their lives more will be said further on in this sketch. It is usually a difficult task to trace family history far back into the past, but John Homer Bliss, of Norwich, Conn., the faithful and painstaking chronicler of the Bliss family, says "'tis supposed they are of Norman descent; that the name was originally Blois, (gradually modified to Bloys, Blyse, Blysse, and in America to Bliss) ; that its introduction into England occurred at the time of the Norman conquest (1066), previous to which time hereditary sur- names were not assumed in England." The coat-of-arms as de scribed in Edmonson's Heraldry, and also in volume II., of "En- cyclopædia Heraldica," of the Bliss family, was "Gules, a bend vaire, between two fleur-de-lis; or, it appears that gules, (red) is a royal color. The origin of vaire is from the fur of a beast called varus, the fleur de-lis representing a lily, and as in English Heraldry, the fleur-de-lis indicated the sixth son, it is supposed the orignal grant of arms to a Bliss was to a sixth son. The motto (on the shield)
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Almond L. Bliss.
Mrs. Almira A. Bliss.
1
Frederick B. Stebbins.
Mrs. Elois M. (Bliss) Stebbins.
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"semper sursum," translated, means "ever upward." The ancient traditions of the family represent them as living in the south of England, and belonging to that staunch class known as English yeomanry or farmers. From time immemorial they had inclined to Puritanism, detesting the looseness of the clergy and laymen, and the Sunday sports in which they indulged. These Sunday sports had been fostered by Elizabeth, and her successor, James, had re- duced them to a system by publishing a book of "Sports on Sun- day," and enjoining the practice of them by those of his subjects who had attended church in the morning, and it is said that one of the Blisses was fatally injured while passing the scene of these sports on Sunday. The beginning of the misfortunes of this family in England appears to have occurred in this wise, and brought about by the contentions of King Charles I. and his Parliament. Writs were issued by this King, January 29, 1568, for the assembling of the two Houses of Parliament. There was great excitement throughout the country, and Cassell's History, volume III., pp. 134, shows as one of the causes the court enmity directed against this family (Bliss) a number of foreign troops were about to be brought into the country, and the people were worked up to a pitch of ex- treme excitement, and sent to the House of Commons men not readily intimidated. Westminster sent up one Bradshaw, a brewer. Hunt- ington elected Oliver Cromwell, a farmer. Two of the men who went up from Devonshire with their "member" were the brothers, Jonathan and Thomas Bliss. They rode two iron grey horses, and remained in the city long enough to be observed by the spies of Charles the I., and very soon thereafter they were fined £1,000 for nonconformity and thrown into prison, where they lay for many weeks. Even their old father, Thomas Bliss, was dragged through the streets, with great indignity. At another time the three broth- ers, with twelve more, were led through the market place in Oke- hampton with ropes around their necks, and fined heavily ; and Jon- athan and his father were thrown into prison, where the sufferings of the former caused his death. They began to think England was no longer a home for them, and they turned their eyes toward the wilds of America. First Generation .- The first generation of the Bliss family of which we have any reliable information, is comprised of a single individual, Mr. Thomas Bliss, of Belstone Parish, in the County of Devonshire, England. Very little is known of him, except that he was a wealthy land-owner ; that he belonged to a class stig- matized as Puritans, on account of the simplicity and purity of their worship, and that he was maltreated, imprisoned and finally ruined in health (and financially) by the many indignities and hardships forced upon him by the intolerant church party. He is supposed to have been born about the year 1550 or 1560. Second Generation .- The second generation of this family comprises the children of Thomas Bliss, of Belstone, England, two of whom (Thomas and George) removed to America in 1635, while another, Jonathan, (the
14
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ancestor of the subject of this biography) languished in prison, where he contracted a fever of which he eventually died. Jonathan Bliss, third generation, son of Thomas Bliss of Belstone, England, was born at that village about the year 1575, and, like his father, was doomed to bitter persecution, on account of his nonconformity and opposition to the dominant church party, which had assumed, not only to control the government, but the consciences of men. He died about 1635 or '36. Thomas Bliss, fourth generation, of Re- hoboth, Mass., son of Jonathan Bliss, of Belstone, England, was born at Belstone, and upon the death of his father in 1636, emigrated to America, landing at Boston, whence he removed to Braintree, Mass., thence to Hartford, Conn., thence to Weymouth, Mass., from which place he removed in 1643, and commenced a new settlement called Rehoboth, and died there in June, 1649. Jonathan Bliss, fifth generation, of Rehoboth, (son of Thomas), was born in Eng- land about 1625, and died in 1687. He was one of the eighty who made the Rehoboth "North purchase" in 1666, and March 18, 1668, according to "Daggett's History of Attleborough," drew a lot in said purchase. Samuel Bliss, sixth generation, of Rehoboth, Mass., son of Jonathan, born June 24, 1660, died February 8, 1705
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Residence of A. L. Bliss, No. 31 Front Street, Adrian.
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or '6. Captain Nathaniel Bliss, seventh generation, of Rehoboth, Mass., born August 28, 1702, died February 21, 1767. Timothy Bliss, eighth generation, of Royalston, Mass., son of Captain Na- thaniel, born January 4, 1733, died January 4, 1822. Israel Bliss, ninth generation, a farmer of Royalton, Vt., son of Timothy, born February 14, 1760, died Hervey Bliss, tenth generation, of Blissfield, Lenawee County, a farmer, son of Israel, was born in 1789, and was married to Nancy Woodbury (as above stated.) He died in December, 1841; she died April 28, 1849, aged fifty-eight. In 1814 Hervey Bliss, with his brother Sylvanus, moved to the (then) far West, and settled in Huron County, Ohio. In the spring of 1816 he removed to Monroe, then a hamlet of four families, and a year later, with several other families, settled on government land, thir- teen miles up the river Raisin, from which, in 1819, with the other families, they were driven from their houses by the Indians, who claimed the land, and which land was subsequently set apart as the "Macon Reserve." He then removed to Rainsville, three miles be- low, and resided there until the year 1824, when he removed some twenty miles up the river, cutting his way through heavy timber from Petersburg, a distance of ten miles (which was the nearest place from whence supplies could be had), and purchased and settled on government land now occupied by the village of Blissfield, of which he was the founder, and which was named in his honor. He was ruling elder in the Presbyterian church, which he joined in 1829. In 1827 he was commissioned by Governor Cass, as Justice of the Peace, which office, with that of Township Clerk and Post- master, he held at the date of his decease. He left four sons and two daughters, (a son, Whiting Bliss, having died in in- fancy), William W. Bliss, the eldest, was a successful merchant at Blissfield, having held many offices of honor in his town and county, and prominent in the religious and social interests of his locality ; Hiram W. and Harvey K. Bliss were worthy men and farmers in this county. The daughters, Emeline E. Printup and Caroline L. Knight, being also residents of this county, and crowned in their old age with the laurels of a life of pure womanhood. Almond L. Bliss, eleventh generation, son of Hervey Bliss, attended the district school in his native village until sixteen years of age, when he entered the employ of Marvin L. Stone, then the leading merchant of Blissfield, and gained the confidence of his employer so rapidly that the second year he was selected from the force of employes as book-keeper of the establishment and confidential clerk to his employer. At the age of nineteen years Mr. Bliss formed a co-partnership with his then brother-in-law, Myron E. Knight, under the firm name of Knight & Bliss, and kept a general stock of merchandise, the firm continuing business about two years, when a new firm was organ- ized (Mr. Knight retiring), under the firm name of A. L. Bliss & Co., with Sewell S. Goff as copartner, and the business was con- tinued until 1856, when Mr. Bliss was elected County Clerk on the
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Republican ticket, in the ever memorable "Fremont campaign" of 1856, and his services being so acceptable to his constituents he was re-elected in 1858 and again in 1860, a compliment to efficient ser- vices then unprecedented in the political history of the county. Mr. Bliss was elected clerk of his township as soon as he arrived at his majority, and was continued in said office until 1856, and was twice elected by the Board of Supervisors as one of the county superin- tendents of the poor. In 1858, (while clerk of the county) Mr. Bliss commenced the compilation of the records of land titles of Lenawee County, which system has since been universally adopted in all the Western States, and has built up an extensive land business, and ac- quired a well merited reputation as an examiner of land titles. He has a complete history of the title of every tract of land in the county, written on his books, which makes a library of about 150 large volumes, and contains an abstract of every piece of land in Lenawee County, and cost to compile and perfect over $25,000. So important is this compilation of titles, that no person at this time thinks of purchasing a piece of property in Lenawee County, with- out an abstract from the books in his office. Mr. Bliss removed to Adrian in January, 1857, and was connected with the choir of Plymouth church and Sabbath school most of the time as chorister, for more than twenty years, and until the disorganization of the church and society in 1879, and is identified with the musical interests of the city and county, and has gained much local notoriety as a singer, and is active and efficient in all public enterprises of the day. Mr. Bliss, on the 25th of November, 1853, was married at Blissfield, to Miss Almira A. Goff only daughter of the late Sewell S. Goff (his former partner), by whom he has had two children, as follows: Nellie S., born October 6, 1854, died May 1, 1857; Eloise M., born at Adrian, Mich., May 27, 1860. She was a graduate of the public schools of Adrian, and the musical department of Adrian College. Married Frederick B. Stebbins of Adrian, October 31, 1895, and died October 15, 1902. Fred B. Stebbins is a son of the late F. R. Stebbins, one of the very early settlers and business men of Adrian. Fred B. Stebbins is an active young business man of Adrian. For some time he assisted in carrying on his father's extensive business, but is now conducting an extensive real estate and insurance busi- ness. Mrs. Frederick B. Stebbins was one of the prominent young married ladies of Adrian. She was a fine musician, an accomplished conversationalist, much loved by her friends and acquaintances for her many virtues, accomplishments, and happy, cheerful personality. She was an active worker in all benevolent undertakings, and always sought to relieve and help the suffering graciously, but un- ostentatiously. Mrs. Almira A. Bliss was born at Blissfield, Janu- ary 7, 1834, received a good common school education, and takes a lively interest in educational matters in the city. She is interested in music, and has sung in the church choirs with her husband since her childhood. During her long residence in Adrian Mrs. Bliss has
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been active in all benevolent, social and literary enterprises. Her father was born January 29, 1811, at Royalston, Mass., removed to Blissfield in 1829, was supervisor and justice of the peace of his township for many years, and represented his district creditably in the State Legislature for one term; was a successful farmer and merchant, and died January 23, 1865, respected and honored by his fellow citizens. The mother of Mrs. Bliss, Esther Margaret Goff, was a woman possessed of all the womanly virtues of her sex, and died at Blissfield in 1839.
"One generation comes, Another goes and mingles with the dust; And thus we come and go. Each for a brief moment filling Some little space; and thus we disappear In quick succession. And it shall be so Till time in one vast perpetuity Be swallowed up."
HENRY HART. From either parent Henry Hart inherited, on the one hand, the traditions of a long line of hard-headed, hard- fighting Dutch ancestry, the kind of men, for liberty's sake, to tear down their dikes and come trooping up into the new world in the wake of Hendrik Hudson's keel ; and, on the other, a strain of that thrifty and sterling British commercialism that is forever pushing its way into new fields under a colonial flag ; qualities not unfitted to blend in the great crucible from which the builders of the west were to draw their strength and inspiration. His father was a son of that next preceding Henry Hart (born in London, England, about the middle of the eighteenth century), who came early to this coun- try to become one of the first settlers of Albany County, New York, and his wife, Elizabeth Visger, whom he married there in 1782. Herman Visger Hart, their eldest son, afterward an influential citi- zen and politician of Albany (and later of Adrian), and his wife, Miriam Leonard, granddaughter of stout old Colonel Cornelius Van Vetchen, of revolutionary renown, and his wife, Anna Knicker- bocker, became the parents of eleven children, the second of whom, born in Albany, N. Y., on January 28, 1818, was destined to bear the ancestral name of Henry, and, like his grandsire of that name, to plant the surname anew in distant soil. Who shall write the life of a boy? Who can say from what chance surroundings, from what accidents of environment and influence his character may take form and color and impulse? We know that the public school is the product of a later growth ; education was not then dragging us from every hid- ing place ; the college was not yet built on every village green. And yet there were compensations; and the old Albany Academy stood well in the lead of a class of institutions in the East that turned out some strong and notable men. It was left for one of its
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Henry Hast
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own alumni, the firm but gentle Dr. Joseph Henry, one of the brightest scientists of his day, to raise it to its highest plane of ef- ficiency. And thus it happened, under the man who invented the electro-magnet (and made telegraphy possible to Morse), and who later for nearly half a century was the world-famous first secretary and director of the Smithsonian Institute at Washington, that Henry Hart received his education. Mathematics, the practical sciences and the rudiments of engineering were the topics to which the young man most naturally turned, and in these his opportunities were unsur- passed. Graduating early, young Hart secured employment for a time on the preliminary survey of the Boston and Albany Railroad, his father's friend, Erastus Corning, then at the outset of his great railroad career, being one of its promoters. But this Henry regarded as temporary. His future was calling him. At home the family was large, and there had been reverses, and he felt that the serious business of his life was a problem no longer to be deferred. All eyes were turned to the West, and especially to Michigan, the new- est in the galaxy of states. Though in one view only a far off wil- derness of swamps and fevers, and Indians and bears, to the hope- ful eye of youth it took all the colors of a very fairy land of promise. There was lumber there, and more than a suspicion of minerals; ru- mors there were too of various projected railroads. Its future was somehow in the air. And when did youth hesitate? And so it fell out that in August, 1837, Henry Hart came West, by way of the Erie Canal and Lake Erie, arriving at Monroe, Michigan, in com- pany with Henry Waldron, who had graduated from the same school, the young men being then respectively 19 and 18 years of age. Both readily found employment at their profession as civil en- gineers in the survey and construction of the Michigan Southern Railroad, which was then being built by the State. Their first em- ployment was near Jonesville, and they continued in this work until the final location of the route. Mr. Hart was then put in charge by the commissioner of the final location and construction of the work between Monroe and Adrian. The road was completed to Adrian in 1840, and in the fall of that year Mr. Hart finally located in Adrian. Mr. Waldron settled in Hillsdale at about the same time, and after- wards served 12 years in Congress. Mr. Hart at once formed a co- partnership with Abel Whitney and opened a dry goods store in Adrian, which firm continued for about two years, when Mr. Hart purchased Mr. Whitney's interest, and carried on the business con- tinuously until 1866. During that time he was appointed, under President Franklin Pierce, special agent of the Postoffice Depart- ment for the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North- ern Illinois, which position he held for about six years. During his absence in New York in the spring of 1859 he was elected Mayor of Adrian, and held the office one year, declining a re-nomination. In 1866 he was elected secretary of the Michigan State Insurance Com- pany of Adrian, which, under his management, became known as one
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of the most successful enterprises of its kind ever organized under Michigan laws. He was one of its founders in 1859, and remained its secretary up to the time of his death. In 1865, at a called meet- ing of the citizens of the county for the purpose of organizing a Sol- diers' Monument Association, he was elected its president, and con- tinued in that position until the erection of the fine memorial which now stands on Monument Square, in Adrian, the main shaft of which was originally one of the pillars of the old United States Bank at Philadelphia, which, through Mr. Hart's solicitation, the Hon. Henry Waldron, then in Congress, was influential in obtain- ing. The monument was dedicated July 4, 1870, and Mr. Hart acted as president of the day. He also acted in a like capacity at the cen- tennial celebration in Adrian July 4, 1876. The meager outlines of a busy career, thus faintly sketched, afford no hint of the living, breathing presence of the man as he moved and played his part among his fellows; and so deep is the poverty of words, and so nar- row the limitations of human expression, that only by those who knew him long and well can the gaps be filled, and the life of the man, in its higher form and meaning, be read between the lines ; youth unfolding into manhood, and manhood ripening, rounding and mellowing to its close.
On Thursday, October 2, 1879, Mr. Hart received injuries at the fall of the grand stand on the county fair grounds in Adrian, a memorable and most distressing accident, which took place at about 3 p. m., and resulted in 16 deaths and many permanent injuries. Mr. Hart was removed to his home, but lingered only long enough to be surrounded by his family, and expired in the arms of his wife at about 5 o'clock on the following morning. In the city of his adoption, already steeped in the profoundest sorrow of its history, there were few hearts not stirred to an added sense of a personal calamity, as on Sunday, October 5, the remains of Henry Hart were borne to fair Oakwood, that city of the dead which he had helped to plan and beautify. For it is safe to say that through forty years, in the community with which his life and work were interwoven, no name stood more positively for all the qualities to which men accord respect ; for integrity in its highest and most unselfish sense; for broad intelligence and enlightened public spirit, and for quick and helpful feeling for every form of need. Never were the kindly spirit and the strenuous life more deftly blended than were his, and if, be- tween them, the quick, impatient flash of resentment sometimes answered to the touch of injustice, indolence or untruth, it passed almost as quickly as it came. Like Brutus, he carried anger
" As the flint bears fire, Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark And straight is cold again."
A man of broad sincerity and simple directness of purpose, a citizen who in any strain of conflicting interests looked last after his own, a friend and helper of his fellow men without the instinct of leader-
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ship, a life-long adherent of the democracy of Jackson and of Jeffer- son, with none of the small ambitions of the politician, a never-failing counselor in matters of local concern, with a judgment that was sought and an influence often quietly felt in the larger affairs of the state and nation, the life of Henry Hart was narrower than his en- dowments, and greater than its opportunities. On January 12, 1842, Mr. Hart was married at Adrian to Miss Jane Swan Chitten- den, daughter of Joseph and Olive (Hooker) Chittenden, who was born at Aurora, Cayuga County, N. Y., on January 5, 1818, and removed with her parents to Michigan in 1836. She survived her husband nearly twenty years, dying at her daughter's residence in Detroit on June 26, 1899. A woman of rare sweetness and gentleness of charac- ter, whose life and influence were particularly beautiful in their bear- ing upon the less patient but more forceful temperament of her com- panion, and are cherished as a priceless legacy by her descendants. Though never narrow in beliefs or practices, both husband and wife were always active and consistent members of the Protestant Episcopal church, Mr. Hart serving Christ church in Adrian for many years as vestryman. Four children were born to this union : Joseph Chittenden, in 1843; Henry Chittenden, in 1847; Jen- nie Chittenden, (now Mrs. James D. Standish), in 1851, and Her- man Visger Chittenden Hart in 1856. Of these the three former have long been residents of Detroit, while Mr. H. V. C. Hart is still a well-known citizen of Adrian.
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