A Centennial biographical history of the city of Columbus and Franklin County, Ohio, Part 110

Author: Lewis Publishing Company
Publication date: 1901
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1156

USA > Ohio > Franklin County > Columbus > A Centennial biographical history of the city of Columbus and Franklin County, Ohio > Part 110

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In the year 1893 Professor Galbreath became a member of the faculty of Mount Hope College and three years later was called to the presidency of that institution. During his residence in East Palestine he served for two years as editor of the Republican Reveille and during that period strongly

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advocated the night-school bill introduced into the state legislature by Hon. J. 1. Brittain, and now a law. His educational labors have included con- siderable institute work, in which he is particularly successful. He has occu- pied his present position as state librarian since 1896, having been appointed by the library commission, created by the seventy-second general assembly.

On the 29th of July, 1882, was celebrated the marriage of Charles Bur- leigh Galbreath and Ida A. Kelly, of Columbiana county, and their home has been blessed with one son, Albert W., born October 29, 1883. Socially Mr. Galbreath is connected with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and has served as district deputy grand master. He is in close touch with the most advanced thought and invention and has been an interested student of the political situation of the country, believing firmly in the principles of the Republican party, and gives his aid and influence toward its work in his locality, and from 1893 until 1896 served in the state conventions as a delegate from his district. When the condition of affairs in Cuba was a leading question before the country he organized the Columbus branch of the Cuban League of America, under the direction of Colonel Ethan Allen, of New York, and became its secretary. He has held no public office outside the line of his life work, but for eight years was county school examiner of Columbiana county. On the lecture platform he is well known and his writings have commanded attention throughout the country. He displays all the graces of literary style, and under the adornment of rhetoric there is a sub-stratum of thought and feeling that never fails to move the reader and awaken deep interest in the subject of which he treats. He has acted his part so well in both public and private life that Columbus and his state have been enriched by his example, his character and his labors.

ISAAC LONGSHORE.

Isaac Longshore, who resides in Blendon township, was born in Zanes- ville, Muskingum county, Ohio, October 17. 1844, his parents being Thomas and Mary A. (Evans) Longshore, whose family numbered six children, all vet living, namely : William H., a farmer of Pawnee Station, Kansas; George W., a fruit raiser of Grand Junction, Colorado; Isaac; Charles, a resident farmer of Missouri ; Thomas H., who is in business in Kansas City, Missouri ; and Margaret A., the wife of Martin Brown, of Fort Scott. Kansas. The father of this family was born in Pennsylvania in 1811, and was' a son of Amos Longshore, who came to Ohio during the early boyhood of his son Thomas, settling upon a farm in Hocking county, where Thomas was reared to manhood. In Muskingum county he married Miss Mary A. Evans, who was born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1817, and was a daughter of David Evans. They took up their abode in that city and Mr. Longshore engaged in the operation of a sawmill and the sale of lumber, carrying on business along those lines until the latter part of the '509, when he purchased a farm in Perry county, Ohio, six miles east of New Lexington; locating upon his land, he there

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engaged in agricultural pursuits until 1884, when he sold his farm and went to Kansas, making his home with his children, where he is still residing in the eighty-ninth year of his age and is a well preserved old gentleman, retaining all of his faculties unimpaired. In his political affiliations he is a stanch Republican, and for several years he served as justice of the peace and as township trustee. He has long held membership in the Baptist church and for some time was one of its deacons. In 1892 he was called upon to mourn the loss of his wife, who died at the age of seventy-five years.

Isaac Longshore remained with his parents throughout the period of his minority and in the meantime became familiar with the common-school Eng- lish branches of learning in the public schools of the neighborhood. At the age of twenty years he began his career as a farm hand, but soon afterward he married and purchased of his father the old family homestead of one hun- dred and twenty acres in Perry county. It was in 1867 that he married Miss Elizabeth Driggs, a native of Perry county, and a daughter of Jeremiah and Barbara (McKeefer) Driggs. Her father was a native of Connecticut and there learned the hatter's trade, which he followed for a number of years in the east. When he came to Ohio he located upon a farm in Perry county and there spent his remaining days. Mr. and Mrs. Longshore began their domestic life upon the old family homestead, where they resided for three years. On the expiration of that period our subject sold his farm and removed to Morgan county, purchasing a tract of eighty acres near Beavertown. For eight years' he operated that farm and on selling out came to his present home in Blendon township, Franklin county. Here he has since owned and occupied a tract of land of one hundred and three and a half acres. It is well improved with good buildings, fences and all modern accessories and the fields yield to him a good return.

Unto Mr. and Mrs. Longshore have been born five children: Jeremiah W., of Cincinnati, Ohio, is in the railway mail service. He married Grace G. Gantz and they have a son and daughter. Archie A. is an agriculturist and broom manufacturer of Blendon township. He married Minnie Buck. Josephine M. is the wife of the Rev. R. W. Kohr, a Presbyterian minister, of Larue, Ohio, and they have a son and daughter. Edward married Lulu Buck and resides in Blendon township. Cora M. is at home. The three sons are all members of the Masonic fraternity. In his political views Mr. Longshore is a Republican and keeps well informed on the issues of the day, always supports the party, yet has never been an office seeker, preferring to give his entire attention to his business, and is accounted one of the most enter- prising and progressive agriculturists in the community.

MARION T. BRINKER.

For seven years an active member of the bar of Columbus, within that period Marion T. Brinker has gained a good clientage and a representative position among the members of the profession in the capital city. He was

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born in Pickaway county, Ohio, October 28, 1860, and is a member of one of the pioneer families of that county, for his grandfather, George Brinker, located there during the early epoch of its development and materially assisted in its upbuilding and progress. Barnabas Brinker, the father of our subject, was born in that county in 1798, and died in the year 1887, at the very advanced age of eighty-nine years. Throughout his life he carried on agri- cultural pursuits and became a very successful farmer and much respected citizen. He married Miss Elizabeth Knight, who was at that time a resident of Pickaway county, but was a native of Virginia, whence she removed to Ohio with her parents during her early girlhood. She was a daughter of John and Maria Knight, and they became early settlers of this state.

In the usual manner of farmer lads Marion T. Brinker spent his youth, early becoming familiar with all the work and duties that fall to the lot of the agriculturist. His elementary education, acquired in the district schools, was supplemented by study in the National Normal School in Lebanon, Ohio, where he remained as a student for three years. He then entered the Ohio Wesleyan University, at Delaware, where he also continued his studies for three years, after which he matriculated in the Western Normal School, at Ada, Ohio.

With broad general knowledge to fit him for the practical and responsible duties of life he then entered upon his business career in the capacity of clerk, spending five years as a salesman in different stores in Pickaway county, but, determining to enter professional life, he began reading law with Judge Festus Walters as his preceptor. Subsequently he entered the Cincinnati Law School, and immediately after his graduation, in 1894, he began practice in Columbus. He now practices in all the courts, having a large clientage and handling many important litigated interests.

In 1884 Mr. Brinker married Miss Libbie Weaver, of Nebraska, Ohio, a daughter of D. F. Weaver. She died in 1891, leaving two children,- Arthur E. and Amy G. Mr. Brinker belongs to Palmetto Lodge, No. 513, K. P., of Ashville, Ohio, but is not active in lodge or political work, pre- ferring that his energies shall be devoted to his business affairs. His devo- tion to his clients' interests is proverbial, and with a good knowledge of the principles of jurisprudence, with earnest purpose and laudable ambition one may surely predict for Mr. Brinker a successful future.

JOHN F. McNAMEE.

Life is meaningless unless it is universal and coherent. It is the help- ful spirit of our times that has been the foundation of all organized effort for the good of mankind. Never before have the people of the country realized as now the truth of the old adage "in union there is strength," and to-day this finds exemplification in the organized efforts which are being put forth along all lines. It is this which has led to the establishment of many societies formed for the purpose of mutual helpfulness and protection. Permeated by

JOHN F. McNAMEE.

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this spirit the great army of American workers have combined forces in order to be of assistance to one another, to protect their rights against the infringe- ment of the power of capital and to aid in bringing about conditions that will be alike just and profitable to employer and employee. In labor circles John F. McNamee is a well known figure, his name in this connection being a familiar one throughout the country.

A native of the Emerald isle, Mr. McNamee was born in Stamullen county Meath, Ireland, October 29, 1867, a son of Patrick McNamee, one of the most eminent educators of Ireland, who filled the important position of district inspector of the national or public schools of his native land. After half a century's service in behalf of the educational department of his country he was retired on a government life pension. The members of his family are as follows : Thomas J., who resides in Portland, Oregon, where he is engaged in the dry-goods business; Patrick J., a credit man in the large wholesale house of D. Kelly, of Columbus; Mrs. George G. Pope, of Petersborough, Ontario; Mary J., of Versailles, France, a sister of the Order of the Congre- gation of the Infant Jesus, her name in religious circles being Sister Edmund ; Mrs. Donnellan, the wife of Dr. Donnellan, government physician of Castle- reagh, county Roscommon, Ireland; and Agnes, Martha and Gertrude, also residing in the Emerald isle.

John F. McNamee, the subject of this review, spent the first sixteen years of his life in the land of his birth, and in 1884, when yet a mere boy, bade adieu to home and friends and crossed the Atlantic to the United States alone, preferring to fight life's battles as a free American citizen than remain the sub- ject of a monarchical government, thereby sacrificing many excellent oppor- tunities, which through his father's influence he possessed, to his instinctive love of the stars and stripes and the glorious principles they represent. In 1890 he entered the service of the Panhandle Railroad Company as a locomo- tive fireman, being engaged in that capacity for about nine years, and in 1891 he joined the order of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, which ranks first among the great conservative and wealthy labor organizations of the world, his membership at that time being in Franklin Lodge, No. 9. He soon won the friendship and regard of his brethren in the fraternity and for four years served as receiver or financier of his lodge. In 1896 he was elected a delegate to the Brotherhood's Galveston convention. While in the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company he devoted continual effort and untiring energy to the complete organization of that great railway system as a result of which many new lodges sprang up along said lines, one of them being Abraham Lincoln Lodge, No. 445, of Columbus, Ohio, to which he trans- ferred his membership and which he served for two consecutive terms as master. He has represented his lodge as a delegate to all national conven- tions of the order since 1896. At the convention held in Toronto, Canada, in 1898, he was chosen as a member of the grand (international) executive board, being re-elected at the convention in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1900. He has great influence in the councils of the fraternity, being recognized as a

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lader in thought and action not only among the members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen but in the ranks of trades unions all over the country. He is a member of the Trades and Labor Assembly, of Columbus, Ohio, and has often been called upon by both employers and employees to adjust matters in dispute, being recognized as a fair, concervative and impartial arbiter.

In 1897 Mr. McNamee was united in marriage to Miss Caroline B. Welch, a daughter of Sergeant Major Thomas S. D. Welch, a highly re- spected citizen of Columbus and a Union veteran of the Civil war, who took part in many of the most hotly contested engagements of that terrible struggle, the last in which he participated being the fearful conflict at Gettysburg. Unto Mr. and Mrs. McNamee has been born a daughter. Miss Mary Louise, whose birth occurred August 6, 1890, and who is now a brilliant student, her ability attracting general attention and admiration. They also have a son, Master Thomas S. C. McNamee, born November 3, 1892, a bright and in- telligent lad of nine years.

Mr. McNamee is an active Democrat, and on the 8th of June, 1901, his fellow Democrats of Franklin county, recognizing his worth and ability, nominated him to represent their county in the state legislature. Mr. and Mrs. McNamee are active and influential members of the Catholic church, being prominent in St. Patrick's congregation. He has long been a close, earnest and discriminating student of the ethical and sociological questions which affect the welfare and happiness of mankind, and his thorough under- standing thereof has led him to enter heartily into the work of organized labor movements. By his success as a salesman in the employ of the Day & Night Tobacco Company, of Cincinnati, he has demonstrated his aptitude in com- mercial affairs.

WILLIAM S. CARLISLE.

Prominent in business circles in Columbus is William Smith Carlisle, who was born in the city which is now his home in 1863. His father, Henry Carlisle, came to the capital city when a young man from Columbiana county, Ohio, where he was born in 1825. The year of his arrival here was 1850, and throughout his remaining days he was identified with the interests of Franklin county, his death occurring here in 1897, at the age of seventy-two years. His wife, who bore the maiden name of Charlotte Lang, was a native of Pennsylvania. Her father resided in Columbus for many years.

In the city of his birth Mr. Carlisle, of this review, was reared and edu- cated, and throughout his business career he has been connected with import- ant industrial and commercial concerns. For five years he was with the Columbus Sewer Pipe Works, and from 1885 until 1890 he was a member of the fire department, and engaged in business for some time as a member of the firm of the Barnhart & Carlisle Oil Company. He is in the service of the Taylor Williams Ice Company, cccupying the important position of manager.

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He is a man of keen discrimination in business affairs, of sound judgment, and is thoroughly reliable at all times.

In politics Mr. Carlisle has taken a deep and active interest in Repub- licanism of Columbus. For some years he has served on city and county committees, and was the vice chairman of the county central committee for the year 1899. On the 6th of November, 1900, he was elected to the office of county commissioner on the Republican ticket. Socially he is a Master Mason.

Mr. Carlisle was married, July 10, 1889, to Miss Jennie Shelling, a daughter of Daniel Shelling, who was born in Franklin county August 31, 1830. Prior to her marriage Mrs. Carlisle successfully engaged in teaching in the public schools and is a lady of superior education and culture. Our subject and his wife are both prominent and highly respected people in the capital city, occupying a leading position in social circles where true worth and intelligence are received as passports into good society. He is a man of strong individuality and marked characteristics with a well-rounded char- acter. He looks at the world from a practical standpoint, and his sound com- mon sense-a quality too often lacking-has proved an important factor in his business career and his political work.

THOMAS J. ALEXANDER.

This is a utilitarian age, in which rapid progress has been made along all lines of invention, and no country has given to the world as many useful improvements in mechanical devices as has America. Her prominence in this regard is widely acknowledged and all nations recognize their indebtedness to the republic. Mr. Alexander is among those whose inventive genius has created labor-saving devices that have proved of great benefit and value in the industrial world. He is now living retired, enjoying the fruits of his former toil, and his rest is certainly well merited.

Mr. Alexander was born in Granville, Licking county, Ohio, August 31, 1824, and is one of the two surviving members of the family of seven children born unto James and Delilah (Clark) Alexander, his sister being Jane, widow of William R. Clemens, of Storm Lake, Iowa. The Alexander family is of Scotch-Irish lineage, and the grandfather of our subject was Joseph Alexander, who came from the new world from the Emerald isle and was numbered among the heroes of the war of the Revolution. After the establishment of American independence he located near West Alexander, Pennsylvania, upon a farm, and acquired extensive landed possessions, his property reaching the town limits. Later he took up his abode in the town, where he also owned considerable realty. For many years he was a justice of the peace and held other offices, discharging his duties with promptness and fidelity. He was a man of wide influence, and his labors proved of great benefit to the community which he represented. He was three times mar-

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ried, his first two wives being natives of Ireland, and James Alexander was born of the first marriage. The grandfather lived and died in West Alexander, passing away at the age of eighty years, and his third wife died at the age of eighty-two years.

The father of our subject was born in Washington county, Pennsylvania, near West Alexander, where they had located soon after the close of the Revolutionary war. He married Delilah Clark, a native of Granville, Massa- chusetts, whose people, with several families, formed a colony that in 1806 came to the Buckeye state and founded and named the town of Granville. Her parents, Samuel and Miriam Clark, were both natives of Massachusetts and spent their last days in Granville, the former dying in the prime of life, while his wife reached her eighty-seventh year. He was a blacksmith by trade. In early life James Alexander, the father of our subject, learned the trade of a millwright, and just prior to the war of 1812 he came to this state, locating in Granville. His first work there was the construction of the Gran- ville Mills, which have long since fallen into decay. When the country be- came involved in war with England for the second time he joined a company commanded by Captain Rose, and was present at Hull's surrender. Late in the '20s he came to Franklin county, Ohio, erected a mill on Rocky Fork and removed his family to this county, but after two years returned to Lick- ing county and built the Linas Thalls Mills, near Alexandria. His eyesight failed him and he was forced to abandon work along that line, removing to a farm near Johnstown, where he resided until 1839, when he again came to Franklin county, settling on what is known as the Cutler farm. It was his place of residence until within two years of his death, when he removed to Westerville, there passing away in 1854, in his seventy-fourth year. His wife survived him for nineteen years, and died in her eighty-third year. The father was an old-line Whig, and was one of the well-known and highly esteemed men of his day.

Thomas J. Alexander acquired his education as the common schools of the day afforded and remained at home with his parents through the days of his childhood and youth. In early life he entered upon an apprenticeship to the carpenter's trade, and on attaining his majority he was married. He then abandoned carpentering and established a turning factory in Westerville, also conducting a machine shop. He early displayed superior mechanical ability and ingenuity, and his thought and investigation of mechanical prin- ciples and properties enabled him to invent and place upon the market a ma- chine for cutting the sticks directly from the log ready for the lathe. This was in 1853, and he secured a patent on his invention. Immediately follow- ing this he retired from the manufacturing business, but in 1862 he again entered the field as a manufacturer and foundryman, carrying on operations along those lines until 1888. During that period of twenty-six years he took out some eight other patents on various contrivances, which have con- tributed much to the benefit of mankind. being very useful and important labor- saving devices. Since 1888 he has been living a retired life, for in the years

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of an active business career and as the result of his inventive genius he ac- quired a handsome competence, sufficient for all his needs through the remain- cler of his days.

It was on the 24th of September, 1845, that Mr. Alexander was joined in wedlock to Miss Charlotte E. Parke, a native of New Jersey, and a daugh- ter of Abner and Sarah ( Pennell) Parke, who were also natives of that state. The father was of English lineage, while the mother was of German and Irish descent. The grandfather, Abner Parke, served as a soldier boy in the Revolutionary war, and John Nickson, the maternal great-great-grandfather of Mrs. Alexander, was the first reader to the public of the Declaration of Independence. The marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander has been blessed with four children : James W., a millwright of Westerville; John F., a car- penter and builder of the same place; David M., who deals in slating and tinning materials and also carries a line of furnaces in Westerville; and Inez 1., wife of A. G. Crouse, a commercial traveler residing in the town where the other members of the family make their home. Mrs. Alexander died on the 18th of January, 1901.

In his early manhood Mr. Alexander gave his political support to the Whig party, and on its dissolution he joined the ranks of the Republican party, but in recent years he has been active in promoting the interests of the Prohibition party. His views upon questions of public policy are very pro- nounced, and his influence may always be counted upon in behalf of good gov- ernment and the advancement of the welfare of the whole people. He is a strict temperance man, and as such opposed saloon domination, and in every way exerted himself to hasten the era of advanced temperance sentiment which will reduce the rum traffic to a minimum by the rule of reason and sobriety among the people at large. He belongs to Blendon Lodge, No. 339, F. & A. M. Long years ago he was elected mayor of Westerville, and subsequently served for six more years in that office, doing all within his power to secure needed reforms and improvements in the city. He was also for four years justice of the peace, and is one of the well-known and highly esteemed men of the county, whose career, public and private, is worthy of emulation.

JOSEPH W. WICKHAM.

Joseph W. Wickham, of Columbus, was born in Delaware county, Ohio, in 1865. He is descended from good old Revolutionary stock, the family being represented in the colonial army by Joseph Welsh, who held the rank of captain. The paternal grandfather, Asa Wickham, married a Miss Wis- well, who belonged to a prominent family of the east and was a cousin of Benedict Arnold. Judge Wickham, of the common pleas court, was a cousin of our subject. Joseph Welsh Wickham, Sr., his father, was born in the Empire state, and during the Civil war he became a member of the Thirty- first Ohio Volunteer Infantry, in which he served for three years. He escaped

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A Centennial biographical history of the city of Columbus and Franklin County, Ohio, Part 110

Author: Lewis Publishing Company Publication date: 1901 Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1156

Author: Lewis Publishing Company
Publication date: 1901
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1156