USA > Ohio > Lorain County > A Standard History of Lorain County, Ohio: An Authentic Narrative of the. > Part 10
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Politically Chief Stankard is a democrat and has affiliations with the Woodmen of the World, the Knights of Columbus, the Elyria Chamber of Commerce, and is a member of St. Mary's Catholic Church.
Mr. Stankard and Miss Helen G. Swindell of Cleveland, were mar- ried in the St. Ignatius Catholic Church of Cleveland, April 28, 1908. Her mother is Mrs. Sarah Reynolds, still living in Cleveland. Mrs. Stankard's father died when she was a child, and her mother later married Mr. Reynolds, who is also deceased. Mrs. Stankard was born in Grafton, Lorain County, and received her education in the Cleveland public schools. To their marriage have been born two children: Edward G., who was born in Elyria, April 26, 1909; and Marion V., born November 7, 1911.
Mr. Stankard finds his chief delight in his home and in his associa- tions with his small children. He is devoted to the interests and responsibilities of his office and is also a lover of the great national pastime of baseball. At the meeting in Mansfield, Ohio, August 8, 1914, Chief Stankard was elected vice president of the Ohio Police Associa- tion, a large organization composed of the chiefs of police, detectives and constables in the state, and with a membership of over 200. This fitting honor which came to "Big Ed," as he is known among his asso- ciates, was followed in August, 1915, by his promotion to president of the same association. The meeting of the association in 1915 was held at Cedar Point, and Mr. Stankard was elected by a vote of sixteen to- fourteen, the choice being subsequently made unanimous. As president he succeeds Jake Mintz of Cleveland. As a local paper said in comment on his election, "the honor that has come to Chief Stankard is worthily disposed, and we are sure he will wear it in the same quiet way in which he goes about his daily duties in this city."
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JOHN ADAMS TOPLIFF was born April 11, 1827, in Mansfield, Connecti- cut, the tenth child of Horatio and Sally (Sargeant) Topliff. The father, who was born August 31, 1785, married November 12, 1806, and died April 16, 1857. Horatio Topliff was the fifteenth child of Calvin and Jerusha (Bicknell) Topliff. Calvin Topliff was born in Milton, Connecticut, August 24, 1729, married on January 9, 1758, and died December 23, 1809. He was the seventh child of Capt. Samuel and Han- nah (Prescott) Topliff of Dorchester, Massachusetts. Captain Topliff was born May 30, 1695; married February 8, 1715, and died November 1, 1754. He was made captain after the birth of his second child and moved with his family to Connecticut. He was the tenth child of Samuel and Patience Topliff. Samuel Topliff was born in Dorchester, Massa- chusetts, May 7, 1646, and died December 10, 1722. He was ordained deacon August 1, 1692, and ruling elder February 3, 1701. He was the fourth child of Clement and Sarah Topliff. Clement was born in England November 17, 1603, and came to America in 1635. He was one of the early settlers of Dorchester, Massachusetts. He died December 24, 1672.
John A. Topliff was one of twelve children and his father was a New England farmer. John was twenty years younger than his eldest brother. His father found it a severe tax to educate his large family, and John worked as an apprentice and later for wages until he earned $100, which he paid to his father for the purchase of the minor years of his life. He then earned enough to educate himself, first at Wilbraham Academy, at Wilbraham, Connecticut, and later at Union College, Sche- nectady, New York. After leaving Union College he studied law, and only gave up entering the profession on the advice of Lewis Beers whose daughter, Caroline, he wished to marry, Mr. Beers advocating that the professions were crowded with men who could not even obtain recogni- tion, although they might have merit, but that good business men were scarce, and in the business world there was a place for every man of ability.
John Topliff went to Lexington, Kentucky, in 1852 and engaged in the manufacture of carriages. A year later he moved to Elyria, Ohio, thinking that the opportunities for advancement greater in Ohio than in Kentucky.
On September 9, 1854, he was married in Stratford, Connecticut, to Caroline Beers, who was born July 14, 1827, and died March 2, 1895. She was a daughter of Deacon Lewis Beers, born August 18, 1799, and died July 15, 1870. He was married April 19, 1826 to Rebecca Curtis, who was born December 14, 1801, and died November 21, 1836. Lewis Beers was the son of Matthew Beers (born October, 1759, and died November 25, 1837) and Sarah (Curtis) Beers (born April 23, 1769, and died January 6, 1823). Matthew Beers was a Revolutionary soldier who received a grant of land for "distinguished service." He was wounded in battle and carried the marks to his grave. He was the son of Joseph and Elizabeth Beers.
Joseph 3rd, born October 13, 1727, was the son of Joseph 2nd (mar- ried March 6, 1721) and Sarah Clarke. Joseph 2nd was the son of Joseph and Abigail. This Joseph was the son of James and Martha (Barlow) Beers. James 2nd was the son of James Ist of Kent, England, who was a descendent of Anthony Bere, 1486.
John A. Topliff was a mayor of Elyria in the year 1856, and took a prominent part in the civic life of the city, and always aided in its up- building. He was public spirited and generous. There are men of mark in the United States today who were helped to receive their edu-
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cation by him. His motto was "Help others to help themselves." A motto that he lived up to in a way that even his best friends little realized.
He was the senior partner of the firm of Topliff and Ely whose business was the manufacture of carriage hardware. They made a specialty of the tubular carriage-bow, which John Topliff invented and patented.
John and Caroline Topliff were members of the First Presbyterian Church of Elyria, which later changed its name to the First Congre- gational Church. They had five children: . Fanny Maria, born August 20, 1855, was a student of Oberlin College. She married August 8, 1877, Walter Egerton Brooks, of Elyria, and she died December 5, 1893. There were three children by this marriage: Harold Topliff, born December 19, 1882, deceased; Margaret Egerton, a graduate of Vassar, class 1906, married Theodore E. Faxon, a graduate of Cornell, who died in 1914, and they had one child, Theodore Brooks Faxon, born Sep- tember 20, 1908; and John Prentice, a graduate of Cornell. Frank, born January 1, 1857, died in 1860. Edmund Lewis, born September 2, 1860, was drowned while skating on December 8, 1877. Susan Caroline, born December 14, 1862, class of '86 Smith College, married September 3, 1889, Archibald Hunt Davis, a graduate of the University of Virginia and a resident of Atlanta Georgia, and they have three children-Archi- bald Hunt, Jr., born July 13, 1890, a graduate, class 1910, of Georgia Technological School, awarded a Silver Carnegie Medal in 1909, and settled in Schenectady, New York; John Topliff, born June 15, 1893; Noah Knowles, born February 20, 1904. Harry, born in 1864, died in 1866.
John A. Topliff was a man of broad culture, with a keen appreciation of art and letters. He traveled extensively both in Europe and America, and gave the privileges of travel to the others of his family. He lived in Elyria until the time of the death of his wife, in 1895, when he went to Atlanta, Georgia, and made his home with his daughter Susan until his death, on March 27, 1899.
SUSAN TOPLIFF DAVIS.
STANLEY G. SHAW. Of that prominent and well known Lorain County family of Shaw, one of the younger generation now has a con- spicuous place in local affairs as county treasurer.
Born at Ridgeville in Lorain County, June 23, 1881, Stanley G. Shaw was educated in the public schools, graduated from the Elyria High School in 1898, and for three years was a student in Oberlin Col- lege. On leaving college he became bookkeeper with the old Lorain Machine & Forge Company for two years, and then entered the county treasurer's office as deputy in 1904. In 1912 he was elected county treasurer, and reelected in 1914, and has held that office and given it a most capable administration since 1913. In politics he is a republican.
Mr. Shaw is a director in the Elyria Savings & Banking Company, is treasurer of the Associated Charities, and has interests as a stock- holder in a number of enterprises both at Elyria and elsewhere. He is affiliated with King Solomon Lodge No. 56, Free and Accepted Masons, with Marshall Chapter, Royal Arch Masons, and belongs to the chamber of commerce.
At Nashville, Tennessee, June 27, 1904, he married Miss Ellen E. Wright, a daughter of Herbert H. and Frances (Bosworth) Wright. Her parents formerly lived at Oberlin, and Professor Wright held a position as dean in Fisk University at Nashville, Tennessee. In 1914
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the Wright family moved to Elyria, and Professor Wright is now re- tired. Mrs. Shaw was born at Defiance, Ohio, and completed her educa- tion in the Oberlin Academy and Oberlin College, graduating in 1902. She represents a very old American family, her first ancestor in direct line having been Thomas Wright, who was born in England in 1610 and died in Massachusettts in 1670. The Wrights were also connected with several well known families who came over in the Mayflower in 1620. Mr. and Mrs. Shaw have three children, all born in Elyria, and named Marguerite F., Ralph H. and John F.
The ancestry and family relationship of the county treasurer is one of note. His grandparents, Samuel Horatio and Juliaett ( Wiley) Shaw established their home in Ridgeville Township in 1851, and they are still living, venerable people, who celebrated their sixty-fourth wedding anniversary in January, 1915. Their home is still at Ridgeville. The first ancestor of the Shaw family was Abraham Shaw, who was married in Halifax, England, in 1616, and died at Dedham, Massachusetts, in 1638. He came to America during the decade of the '30s, and the family was numerously represented in Massachusetts until 1800 or later. Be- ginning with Abraham Shaw there are eleven successive generations down to and including Stanley G. Shaw. In a later generation was Constant Shaw, who was born in 1778, and died in Summit County, Ohio, December 27, 1863. His wife, Mercy Pitts, was born in 1781 and also died at Bath. Samuel Shaw, a son of Constant, was born at Bristol, New York, in 1804, was married in 1827 to Charlotte Hale, and he died at Bath, Ohio, January 24, 1836, while his wife, who was born in Bristol, February 28, 1809, died December 24, 1894.
Horatio Shaw, the venerable Ridgeville citizen already mentioned, was a son of Samuel and Charlotte, and was born in Bristol, New York, April 9, 1829. On January 14, 1851, he married Juliaett Wiley, who was born in Erie County, Pennsylvania, September 5, 1830. Her father, Joseph B. Wiley, who was born at Schenectady, New York, June 22, 1800, and died in Erie County, Pennsylvania, in 1837, was married in 1821 to Anna Shaw, who was born in Massachusetts in April, 1801, and died at North Ridgeville, Ohio, December 28, 1867. This Anna Shaw was a daughter of Abraham Shaw, who was born in 1770 and died at North Ridgeville, Ohio, in April, 1861. Samuel H. Shaw on coming to Lorain County in 1851 located on a small farm in Ridgeville Town- ship, and in time cleared up and improved an excellent farmstead. He also filled the offices of trustee and school director, and his name and influence have long been closely identified with that community. He and his wife had the following children: Zimri A .; Arthur B .; Diana B., who married Lafayette C. Phillips; Dora D., who died at the age of two years; Oscar H .; Alfaretta, who married Morris K. Bills, and Lola M.
Zimri A. Shaw, father of the present county treasurer of Lorain County, was born at North Ridgeville, May 2, 1852, and is now living retired, after more than forty-five years of constant service with the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company. He resigned his position in 1914. As a boy of fifteen he had entered the employ of the railway company as an assistant at Shawville Station, then known as Ridgeville Station. He learned telegraphy, became night operator, re- signed to complete his education at Oberlin Academy, and then became agent at Shawville, a position which he held continuously until recently. Zimri A. Shaw was married March 9, 1875, to Lizzie Lucinda Ramsdell. Their older son is Archer H. Shaw, who graduated from the Elyria High School in 1893, from Oberlin College in 1897, and has since been identified with the editorial staff of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Archer
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H. Shaw married Clara Annis Terrell, daughter of Orson J. Terrell of Ridgeville Township. Mrs. Z. A. Shaw, who is also still living, was born in New York State October 6, 1856, and is descended from Abednego Ramsdell, who was killed as a soldier in the Revolutionary war. In the next generation was Moses Ramsdell, who was born in Rhode Island in 1761, and died in New York State May 16, 1834, and married Nancy Lapham, who was born June 16, 1770, and died April 3, 1844. In the next generation was Abner L. Ramsdell, who was born in New York State February 10, 1805, and died there September 8, 1872. He mar- ried Lucinda Healey, who was born January 25, 1807, and died May 19, 1886. A son of Abner L. was Olney Ramsdell, father of Mrs. Z. A. Shaw. He was born in New York February 10, 1829, and was married at East Cleveland, Ohio, April 8, 1853, to Mary Jayred, who was born in New Jersey May 19, 1833, and the relationship of the Jayred family is traced back for several generations in New Jersey.
CHAPMAN FAMILY. One of the primary objects of such a publication as the Standard History of Lorain County is to give permanent record to the activities and personalities of the leading old families. There are few that can claim establishment at an earlier date in this section of Northern Ohio than the Chapman family. While nearly a century has passed since the first of that name came into the then wilderness of Eaton Township, for nearly two centuries prior to that time the succes- sive generations have been identified with the old colony and State of Connecticut and it will be appropriate to begin this record with the establishment of the Chapman family on the American shores early in the seventeenth century. The Chapmans are not only among the oldest of New England stock but as the following paragraphs will show many of them have been prominent as leaders in church, legislators, magis- trates, in business and the professions, as patriots and soldiers, and with careers of dignified and useful service in whatever station of the world they have held.
The record begins with Robert Chapman, who according to family tradition came from Hull, England, to Boston in 1635. So far as authentic records go he completely dissevered himself from his home and family in England when he crossed the ocean, and nothing definite can be stated concerning the English ancestry. After arriving at Boston he sailed in company with Lyon Gardiner for Saybrook, Connecticut, being one of the company of twenty men sent over from England by Sir Richard Saltonstall for the express purpose of taking possession of a large tract of land and making settlement near the mouth of the Con- necticut River under a patent of Lord Say and Seal. The traditional date of his birth is placed in 1616, so that at this time Robert Chapman was about eighteen years old. After the Indian tribes along the Con- necticut River had been sufficiently subdued the company undertook the next task, clearing the forest and establishing a permanent community. For about ten years after leaving England Robert Chapman kept a journal, and many items from this have been preserved. It is on the authority of the colony records that the remarkable length of the service given not only by him but by each of his three sons as legislators is established. He was elected forty-three times to represent his com- munity in the law making body of Connecticut, while his eldest son served twenty-two sessions, the second son eighteen sessions, and the third son twenty-four sessions. As his name appears as a sentinel in the Pequot Indian war of 1637, Robert Chapman also did military service at that time and perhaps on other occasions as required. The records of Saybrook prove him one of the very large land holders in that town and in the Town of East Haddam. At the time of his death he left to
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each of his three sons 1,500 acres. This vast estate had come to him as one of the legatees of Uficas, an Indian chief. Robert's homestead, on a tract of land in the Oyster River quarter, about two miles west of Saybrook Fort, has descended in the line of the youngest son of each successive generation, never having been bought or sold outside the family, until in 1854 it was occupied by George H. Chapman, Esq., youngest in the fifth generation from Robert. A son of Puritan parents, Robert Chapman received from them their religious zeal, and all his life was a man of exemplary piety. Only a short time before his death he wrote an address to his children, all of who were members of the church, in which he exhorted them to a devoted life and to abide by the covenant into which they had entered with God and his church. In the office of the Connecticut secretary of state are on file several letters written to Robert Chapman.
Robert Chapman died October 13, 1687, at the age of seventy-one. He was married April 29, 1642, to Ann Bliss. That union produced seven children : John, Robert Jr., Anna, Hannah, Nathaniel, Mary and Sarah.
Robert Chapman, Jr., second son of the first settler, was born in September, 1646, at Saybrook, and was an extensive agriculturist, own- ing at the time of his death not less than 2,000 acres. The town records show him to have been a man of large influence in civic affairs. For many years he was clerk of Oyster River Quarter, as well as commissioner and surveyor for the Town of Saybrook. From 1692 to 1711 he was a member of the Legislature, as already recorded. An even more interest- ing fact is that he was a member of the assembly that drafted the Say- brook platform in 1708, a work that has preserved the purity of the Congregational churches of Connecticut for more than two centuries. Robert Jr.'s first marriage was to Sarah Griswold of Norwich, Con- necticut, on July 27, 1671. She became the mother of nine children, and died April 7, 1692. On October 29, 1694, he married Mrs. Mary Sheather, and by that union had four children. Those of the first marriage were named Samuel, Robert, Sarah, Francis, Dorcas, Steven, the next, a son, dying in infancy, then a second named Sarah and the last being also a son who died in infancy. By the second marriage the children were Benjamin, Steven, Mehitabel and Abigail. Robert Chapman, Jr., died suddenly while in the Hartford courtroom in November, 1711. He was laid away in the old burial ground at Hartford, in the rear of the Center Church, and on his tombstone, which can now be found about a rod north of the monument on which are inscribed the names of the first settlers of Hartford, is this inscription: "Here lyeth the body of Robert Chapman who departed this life November ye 10th, 1711, aged 65 years."
Capt. Samuel Chapman, eldest son of Robert Jr., was born Septem- ber 12, 1672. On December 6, 1693, he married Margaret Griswold, a daughter of Capt. Samuel Griswold of Norwich. By her he had ten children. Mrs. Chapman died December 21, 1750. Captain Samuel was prominent both in civic and military affairs. His home was in what is now the Town of Westbrook, and he was one of the original fourteen persons who were banded into a church organization at that place June 29, 1726. The date of his death is not known. His children were: Sarah, Margaret, Samuel, Martha, Temperance, Jedediah, Mehitabel, Caleb, Lucy and Aaron.
Jedediah, second son of Captain Samuel, was born at Westbrook, October 9, 1703. He married Miss Hester Kirkland June 5, 1723, and there were eight children. Jedediah was well known in Westbrook as a soldier, citizen and churchman, served as a major in the infantry, was by profession a lawyer, and held the possession of deacon in the Vol. II-8
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church from 1732 until his death which occurred at Westbrook, Febru- ary 10, 1764, in his sixty-first year. The names of his children were Hester, Temperance, Jedediah, Ann, Reuben, Charity, Chloe and Tabitha.
Jedediah (second) eldest son of Major Jedediah, was born at West- brook, December 15, 1726, and was married to Miss Mary Grinnell in 1755. From 1771 until his death on February 29, 1816, a period of forty-four years, he also served the church of Westbrook as deacon. He was for twenty years a justice of the peace. The Chapmans lived to great age, and this Jedediah was ninety at the time of his death. His children were Dan, Jedediah, Constant, Hester, Lucilla, Mary, Ann and Aaron.
Constant, son of Deacon Jedediah Chapman, was born at Westbrook, Connecticut, December 27, 1760, and on January 27, 1785, married Miss Jemima Kelsey of Killingworth, Connecticut. They had nine children. The Chapman descendants get their eligibility to membership in the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution through Constant Chap- man, who at the early age of sixteen entered the Revolutionary army and for six years was under the immediate command of Washington. For a time he was one of that general's body guard. He was in the battle on Long Island, at Germantown, Princeton and Trenton, experienced all the rigors of the winter at Valley Forge, and participated in that great triumph of American arms in the final surrender of Corn- wallis at Yorktown. Further interest attaches to his career for the fact that he was the first in this branch to follow the sea as a calling. He was a sailor for many years, and rose to the position of commander of a merchant vessel trading on the coast of South America, also across the ocean to Lisbon and other foreign ports. In 1793, during the friction between the youthful Republic of America and the French government, which almost precipitated a war between the two countries, the vessel of which he was captain was captured by the French off Porto Rico, was scuttled and sunk, while he and his crew were carried prisoners to the French Island of Guadaloupe. After four months he was liberated. On retiring from the sea he chose a residence in the interior, and his last days were spent at Brimfield in Portage County, Ohio, where he died in 1850 at the age of ninety. His children were Lydia K., Thurot F., John K., Anna M., Chloe P., Mary C., Joseph G., Jemima T. and Henry C. It is noticeable that the children of Constant all had middle names, a practice which was not followed in the earlier generations.
The history of the Chapman family in Northern Ohio begins with Thurot F. Chapman, eldest son of the Revolutionary soldier Constant. Thurot was born at Old Killingworth, Connecticut, December 7, 1789. He was twice married. November 17, 1810, he married Lydia Andress, who became the mother of one child. October 16, 1833, he married Elizabeth Furray, and there were three children of that union. The military record of the family is continued through Thurot F. Chapman, who in the War of 1812 enlisted in Colonel Van Rensselaer's Regiment of New York Militia, crossed the Niagara River into Canada, and participated in the battle of Queenstown Heights, where he was taken prisoner and afterwards paroled. Like his father, he also followed the sea for a time, being engaged in the coasting trade, and for a number of years operated vessels engaged in codfishing off the Banks of New- foundland and the Straits of Belle Isle. A character sketch of Thurot F. Chapman shows him to be a man of sterling integrity, of most generous impulses, so that the poor and oppressed were never turned from his door without practical help, and during the early half of the last century, while living in Northern Ohio, his home proved a refuge to many a poor slave who was following the underground railroad route to freedom in Canada. He kept these fugitives, fed and sheltered them, and carried them over his section of the underground railroad to the
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next station. For several years Thurot F. Chapman lived at Smithville, Chenango County, New York, but in 1817 emigrated to the wilderness of the Ohio Western Reserve, and the greater part of his life thereafter was spent in Lorain County. As a pioneer few individuals did a more important work in clearing away the primeval wilderness which was the primary obstacle to cultivation and the real establishment of civilization in this country. For a number of years he carried on this work both by his own labor and by superintendence of others, and is said to have cleared up and fenced nearly 300 acres of land. Thurot F. Chapman died in Lorain County, December 16, 1860, at the age of seventy-one. He made his Christianity a practical force in everyday life, was one of the early members of the Congregational school in Lorain County and was one of the strongest forces working for morality and clean living in the early days. The children of Thurot F. Chapman were: Alonzo A., whose name is taken up in the following paragraphs: Emily A., wife of Lucius R. Fields of Oberlin; Degrass S., who enlisted during the Civil war in Company K of the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry, was wounded at the battle of Antietam and died six days later in the field hospital at the age of twenty-four; and Harlan P., of whom a separate sketch appears. The mother of the last three children was born in New Durham, Greene County, New York, March 9, 1804, and lost her life as the result of an accident at Oberlin, June 12, 1876.
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