USA > Ohio > Richland County > A centennial biographical history of Richland county, Ohio > Part 59
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No event of special importance occurred to vary the routine of farm life for Samuel Wilson during his boyhood and youth. He pursued his education in the common schools, but his opportunities in that direction were limited and after attaining his majority he gained more knowledge than he had during his attendance at the schools of his neighborhood. Reading, experience and observation have made him a well-informed man and he keeps in touch with the questions and issues of the day. As a companion and helpmate on life's journey he chose Mary E. Hannah, a native of Holmes county, Ohio, and a daughter of Robert and Christine (Hannah) Hannah. Her father was a carpenter and cabinetmaker and died in Holmes county. Ten children have been born in the family of Mr. and Mrs. Wil- son, namely : Robert, deceased; Janett M., the wife of Isaac Mowers, who operates a sawmill in Monroe township; Martha E., Emrie and Anna J.,
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all now deceased; Clyde; Ida B., Sarah M., George and Mary E., all at home.
After his marriage Mr. Wilson located upon a farm where he has since resided, and in 1892 he became the owner of a tract of one hundred and forty-three acres. This is a valuable place, the rich land being highly cul- tivated and bringing a golden tribute in return for the care and labor of the owner. From early boyhood he has been connected with agricultural pursuits and his thorough understanding of the business has enabled him to follow methods that have resulted in bringing to him creditable and grat- ifying success. In 1900 Mr. Wilson was called upon to mourn the loss of his wife, who died on the 23d of March. She was an active member of the Lutheran church, an earnest Christian woman, a loving and devoted wife and mother. Mr. Wilson is also a consistent member of the same church and has filled many of its offices. For nine years he served as a deacon, for four years was a trustee and is now an elder of the church. He is a member of the board of trustees of Mount Zion cemetery, one of the best equipped burying-grounds in the county. Socially he is connected with Mohawk Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, and in politics he is an earnest Republican, who faithfully gives his support to the measures of the party. He is a wide-awake, progressive man, widely known in Rich- land county, and is highly esteemed for his devotion to the public good and his fidelity to duty in all life's relations.
JOHN SHERMAN.
Hon. John Sherman, one of the most eminent statesmen of America, was a resident of Mansfield. He was born at Lancaster, Ohio, May 10, 1823. His father, Charles Robert Sherman, was a man of great legal abil- ity, who, in 1823, was elected by the legislature to the supreme court of the state, and after serving a little over six years died suddenly, of cholera, while attending court at Lebanon, June 24, 1829, leaving a widow and eleven children, of whom John was the eighth.
After that event the subject of this sketch went to Mount Vernon, this state, to live with his cousin John, a son of his father's brother. It is stated that at this time he was rather a wild and reckless boy, with more decided tendencies to belligerency than his celebrated military brother, the renowned General William Tecumseh Sherman. Though but fourteen years of age, in 1837, he obtained a position as a rodsman on the government works on the Muskingum river, but was removed after two years' service
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because he was a Whig. He then came to Mansfield to live with his brother, Charles, studied law in his office and was admitted to the bar May 11, 1844.
He was one of the delegates to the Whig national convention at Phil- adelphia in 1848, of which he and Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, were respectively secretary and assistant secretary. In 1854 he was elected to congress as an anti-Nebraska Republican from the thirteenth district, defeat- ing William D. Lindsley for re-election. He was appointed by the speaker of the house, Nathaniel P. Banks, one of a committee of three to investigate and report on the border ruffian troubles in Kansas. This committee visited the territory and took testimony, under great difficulties. The members received rough treatment, and at least on one occasion their lives were saved only by the intervention of United States troops.
Mr. Sherman was elected to the thirty-fifth congress in 1856, defeating Herman J. Brumback, and to the thirty-sixth in 1858, defeating S. J. Patrick. In 1859 he was the Republican candidate for speaker in the national house of representatives and came within two votes of an election. In 1860 he was again elected to congress, defeating Barnabas Burns ; but, on the resigna- tion of Salmon P. Chase to take a position in the cabinet of President Lin- coln, Mr. Sherman was elected to the United States senate, taking his seat March 23, 1861, Samuel T. Worcester becoming his successor in the house.
Mr. Sherman was soon a recognized national authority on finance and scrutinized all government expenditures closely. The custom of making con- tracts in advance of appropriations then prevailing was denounced by him as illegal. In 1861, during the recess of congress, he joined the Ohio volunteer troops then in Philadelphia and was appointed aide de camp to General Robert Patterson, remaining until the meeting of congress in extra session in July. At the close of this session he returned to Ohio and raised and equipped what was then, and throughout the war, known as the Sherman brigade of vol- unteer soldiers. He intended to resign his seat in the United States senate and enter the army with these troops, but upon informing President Lin- coln and Secretary Chase of this fact they objected so strenuously that he abandoned the idea, remained in congress and aided in the prosecution of the war in helping to sustain and defend the President's war measures.
In 1866 he was elected to the senate for the second time, and in 1872 for a third time. In 1867 he introduced a refunding act, which was adopted in 1870, but without the resumption clause. From that time for- ward until 1896 he was the most conspicuous figure in the financial affairs of the nation. He was appointed secretary of the treasury by President Hayes in 1877, and as such officer, on January 1, 1879, had the pleasure of
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witnessing the crowning triumph of his fiscal policy, despite the dismal fore- bodings of other acknowledged financiers, in the successful resumption of specie payment of national obligations.
In ISSo he was the most prominent candidate for the presidency of the United States, but James A. Garfield's speech so captivated the convention when naming Mr. Sherman that he himself became the nominee of the party. In 1881 Mr. Sherman was again returned to the senate, to take the place of Mr. Garfield. In 1885 he was elected president pro tem. of the senate, and by virtue of that office became acting vice-president of the United States. In 1886 he was chosen for the fifth term in the senate. In 1884, and again in 1888, he was an active aspirant for the presidency of the nation and was the leading candidate in the latter year until the nomination of Benjamin Harrison. In 1892 he was again elected United States senator for the term of six years from March 4, 1893, but resigned March 4, 1897, to accept the office of secretary of state in President McKinley's cabinet. In a few months, however, he showed signs of intellectual failure, and dur- ing the year 1898 he resigned and lived in retirement, with intervals of travel, until October 21, 1900, when he passed away in Washington, D. C.
MANSFIELD SCHOOLS.
There are 3,385 pupils enrolled in the public schools of Mansfield, 1,625 boys and 1,720 girls. These figures do not include the children in the kinder- gartens. The estimated value of school property is estimated at $325,000: There are 89 teachers employed. The average cost of tuition per pupil below the high school on average daily attendance is $11.51 ; on total enrollment, $9.50. Average cost of tuition per pupil on average daily attendance in high school, $28.10; on enrollment, $24.78.
Total annual amount of salaries paid to teaching force, including super- intendent, $41.315; cost of maintenance of buildings and payment of bonds. about $20,000.
The first graduating class was in 1862, and consisted of four girls. The total number of graduates to the present time (1900) is 606,-452 girls and 154 boys. The largest class numbered 42. There are nine school build- ings, and 73 schools and kindergartens. In the foregoing the parochial schools, four in number,-in charge of the Sisters of St. Francis,-are not included.
In addition to the advantages of graded schools in acquiring an educa- tion, there is the public library, free for all, with Miss Mercer and her assist-
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ants ever ready obligingly to serve the public. Another important auxiliary in the educational line is the Mansfield museum, under the control of the school board and in charge of E. Wilkinson, where pupils can further and more fully study the animals, birds, reptiles, insects, etc., of which their studies treat; and there, too, is the gymnasium at the Y. M. C. A. building, where the boys of to-day can exercise in order to develop muscle and nerve, instead of sawing wood, as their fathers did in the old time before them.
The first schoolhouse in Mansfield was paid for by subscription and cost two hundred dollars. The man who would then have predicted that Mansfield in 1900 would have had in round numbers a school enumeration of over three thousand would have been putting himself liable to be placed on trial "de lunatico inquirendo," and to have had a trustee appointed to manage his business affairs.
In no other way has the growth of this city been better shown than in the progress of her schools, in the increased number of her pupils and in the addition of school buildings. The village of the past quietly and hope- fully plodded along, and, without the misfortune of a boom, passed through the transition stages that intervened between the past and the present, until we now have a city whose healthful growth will continue and increase, and our population reach fifty thousand, the number the league aims to secure ere Mansfield celebrates its centennial.
The American school is a product of early planting. In the pioneer times, when a few families settled near each other, it was not long until a school was started. Even in that early day the settlers believed that edu- cation was the bulwark of liberty. Subscription schools were taught long before schoolhouses were built or public money could be obtained for educa- tional purposes.
The present school system was organized under the law of 1852, soon after its passage, and the late J. H. Cook, A. L. Grimes and Isaac Gass were the members of the first school board in Mansfield. Alexander Bart- lett was appointed the principal of the high schools and superintendent of instruction. He was succeeded by H. Merrell. Dr. William C. Catlin became the superintendent in 1855 and his successors have been J. H. Reed, Henry M. Parker, John Simpson, J. W. Knott and E. D. Lyon. In 1859 the enroll- ment of pupils was nine hundred and twenty-five. Among the men who as boys attended the public schools of Mansfield, the Days and Woods have become distinguished in the army and navy and Frank G. Carpenter in the field of literature. In the newspaper line, Peter Trumpler and Henry G. McKnight have won success in other states. Many others might be men-
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tioned who have been successful in life at home and abroad. And there are those who had not the advantage of the graded system, but who, as country lads, had to attend the often-sneered-at "deestrict" school, and among that number was Judge Geddes, who served fifteen years on the bench, eight years in congress and as a lawyer was the peer of the best men of his time. Judge Geddes received his early education in Monroe township, as did also Congressman Kerr, Judge Douglass and Judge Wolfe at a later period. And there is John P. Altgeld, a Richland county boy, who went west and became a judge of the court at Chicago, and later the governor of the great state of Illinois.
Many of America's greatest statesmen, most brilliant lawyers, profound thinkers and popular orators have been reared on farms. While some were self-taught, others worked their ways from the country school to academies and colleges, where they learned the beauties of poetic imagery from the Iliad and the ÆEneid, the strong declamatory invective from Cicero's orations against Catiline, and the spirit and the genius of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations from the standard classical authors.
In the development of schools, in the growth of systems of teaching, two " ideas have hitherto prevailed in reference to education, one side claiming it should be a crowding process, or, at best, a nourishing one. Under this system the pupil is made to amass particulars "ad infinitum." The second lays stress upon the word "discipline,"-that man is a muscle generally, and that the mind grows by gymnastic training. But whether teaching should be merely, a training of the sensuous element of the mind, a presentation of thought through the senses, or whether it should seize the whole matter formally on abstractedly and discipline the mind by developing the muscles and by study- ing things not valuable in themselves; whether we should have the object lesson or the discipline system, it is not the purpose of this article to discuss or consider, but to infer that in the public schools of Mansfield there is that judicious blending of the twain that best promotes and enhances the edu- cation of the pupils of to-day.
JOHN W. WAGNER.
John W. Wagner was born in the attractive little village of Canal Fulton, Stark county, Ohio, on the 21st of January, 1836, being the son of Henry and Mary (Cox) Wagner, both of whom were natives of Pennsylvania, whence they emigrated to Ohio, becoming identified with the early settle- ment of Stark county, the paternal ancestry being of stanch German and
John, awagner
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Irish origin and the maternal Irish. Henry Wagner was a potter by trade, but directed his efforts in other directions upon coming to Ohio. He pri- marily located at New Lisbon, Columbiana county, where he entered the employ of the Mckinleys, ancestors of President Mckinley. He was thus employed in a furnace and also maintained a boarding house. After a time he removed to Canal Fulton, where he became the general manager of the successful enterprise conducted by John Robinson, in the way of general merchandising and the forwarding and commission business. His death oc- curred in the year 1868. He was a man of spotless integrity of character and his life was one of devotion to duty and of consecutive and faithful industry.
The boyhood days of our subject were passed in the little hamlet where he was born, his educational privileges being such as were afforded in the common schools of that section and period. At the early age of four- teen years he assumed the individual responsibilities of life by securing employment as a driver on the canal. The sturdy boy who thus trudged his way along the tow-path of that primitive, though then important, "artery of commerce," found that his ambition was more alert than that of the de- jected beast which he urged forward with its unwieldy burden, and he was ready to grasp the first opportunity for advancement. At the age of seven- teen he secured a position as salesman in the hardware store conducted by his father's employer, and he continued to be thus occupied until 1862, when he was enabled to buy the stock and good will of the business. He carried the enterprise successfully forward until the fall of 1870, when he disposed of the business to W. G. Myers and removed to Canton, Ohio.
He was determined to make his operations consecutive and progressive, and throughout his entire business career he has never hesitated to broaden his sphere of endeavor as rapidly as circumstances and duly conservative judgment would justify. Upon locating in Canton, Mr. Wagner engaged in the manufacture of plows, associating himself with the firm of Bucher & Gibbs, and continued to be concerned in this line of industry until 1873, when he associated himself with. E. J. Forney, under the firm name of Wagner & Forney, and effected the purchase of the hardware stock of John Reed. of Mansfield, which city then became his home. In 1882 Mr. Wagner pur- chased his partner's interest in the enterprise, which had by that time greatly expanded. He continued the business individually until 1891, when he ad- mitted his son Clayton to partnership, whereupon the firm name of Wagner & Son was adopted. The further expansion of the enterprise rendered ex- pedient the organization of a stock company, and the year 1896 witnessed the incorporation of the Wagner Hardware Company, whose official corps 36
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is as follows: John W. Wagner, president; James E. Shires, secretary ; Clayton Wagner, vice-president and manager; A. C. Ackerman, treas- urer. The building used for the accommodation of the company is one of the finest business structures in the city, the stock carried being exceptionally large and comprehensive, while the reputation of the concern is such that it holds unmistakable prestige among the important commercial industries of the city of Mansfield.
Thoroughly progressive and public-spirited, Mr. Wagner has naturally extended his interests in other directions. In 1884, soon after the organiza- tion of the Mansfield Mutual Fire Insurance Company, he was chosen as its president, and has since served in that capacity. The company is known as one of the most solid and effectively managed in the state. Mr. Wagner is also director of the Citizens' National Bank of Mansfield and of the Hum- phryes Manufacturing Company. He is the owner of two excellent farms,- one being located in Richland county and the other in Stark county.
The marriage of Mr. Wagner was solemnized in the year 1861, when he was united to Miss Melinda Cook, a daughter of Rev. Samuel Cook, who was a clergyman of the United Brethren church and a resident of Stark county. Mr. and Mrs. Wagner are the parents of three childen, namely : Clayton, who is associated with his father in business, as already noted ; Edith, the wife of Rufus A. Tracy, of Mansfield; and Mary E., who is still with her parents.
JOHN CHAPMAN.
A monument to the memory of John Chapman-who was commonly called Johnny Appleseed-was unveiled at the Sherman-Heineman Park, Mansfield, Ohio, November 8, 1900. It was the gift of the Hon. M. B. Bushnell. The ceremonies of the occasion were held under the auspices of the Richland County Historical Society, and the historical address was made by its secretary, A. J. Baughman.
"Johnny" was the pioneer nurseryman of Richland county, and his real name was John Chapman,-not Jonathan, as some have claimed. The muniments of his estate show that his name was John. He had a half- brother named Jonathan, who was a deaf-mute. "Johnny" was born at Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1775, and came west in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Little was known of his early life, but there were tra- ditions among the pioneers of Ohio of a romance in which a woman scorned the young man's love. He began his apple mission in Pennsylvania in 1802 or 1803, but soon transferred his field to Ohio. He made frequent visits to
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the Keystone state for apple seeds, and on his return selected favorable spots for his pioneer nurseries. He sought fertile soil and sheltered places. and often made clearings to give his tender shoots protection from wind and blizzard. As one section of the state became supplied with trees he moved to another. The early settlers were too busy in wrestling a livelihood from nature and in fighting Indians to engage in the slow process of raising apple- trees from seed, and Chapman, full of faith in the virtue of the fruit, took upon himself the duty of supplying the need. Usually a man of few words, be became eloquent when speaking of apples, and his fine flow of language gave the impression that he had been well educated.
Living upon the bounty of field and forest, eating fruits and nuts like the beasts and birds, never harming an animal for fur or food, Johnny Apple- seed led a life of supreme simplicity. Sometimes he replenished his scanty wardrobe by bartering young trees for old clothes or cast-off boots. More often he gave freely of his trees, and thus started many a pioneer orchard. He carried on this work in Ohio for twenty years or more. For the greater part of this time he made his home in Richland county, and then he followed the star of empire westward to continue his mission in the newer field of Indiana, where he died in 1845.
For his tramps in the woods he carried a saucepan on his head and cooked such vegetable foods as he could find. Living much in the forests, he became an adept in woodcraft and wandered at will. He never carried a weapon and was never molested, even the wild animals appearing to under- stand that he was their friend. The Indians respected him, and regarded him as a great "medicine man."
"Johnny" regarded all animals as God's creatures, and he would suffer himself rather than harm one of the least of them. One chilly night in the woods he built a fire to warm himself, but when he saw the insects attracted to his blaze fall into the flames he extinguished the fire rather than have the death of a bug on his conscience! On another occasion he crawled into a log to sleep, but finding it already occupied by a squirrel and her little ones he was worried by the chattering of the frightened mother and backed out to sleep in the snow !
"Appleseed Johnny" was a hero, too. During the war of 1812 Mans- field was frightened by rumors of a hostile attack. The nearest soldiers were at Mount Vernon, thirty miles away, where Captain Douglass had a troop. When a call was made for a volunteer to carry a message to Mount Vernon "Johnny" stepped forward and said "I'll go." He was bareheaded, barefooted and unarmed. The journey had to be made at night over a new
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road that was but little better than a trail and through a country swarm- ing with bloodthirsty Indians. The unarmed apostle of apples sped through the woods like a runner and came back in the morning with a squad of soldiers. It was an incident worthy of a poem, but has been almost for- gotten.
The death of this strange missionary was in keeping with his life work. The latter years of his life were spent near Fort Wayne, where, although seventy years old, he continued to grow and scatter apple trees. He learned that some cattle had broken down the brushwood fence of a nursery he had planted. It was winter and the nursery was twenty miles away, but the brave old crusader started out on foot to save his beloved trees. He worked for hours in cold and snow, repairing the fence, and started to walk back home, but became ill and sought refuge in the cabin of a Mr. Worth, who had lived in Richland county when a boy, and, when he learned his caller was "Johnny Appleseed" gave him a friendly welcome. In the morning it was discovered that pneumonia had developed. during the night. The physician who was called stated that "Johnny" was beyond medical aid, and inquired particularly about his religious belief, remarking that he had never seen a dying man so perfectly calm, for upon his wan face there was an expres- sion of happiness, and upon his pale lips there was a smile of joy, as though he was communing with loved ones who had come to meet and comfort him in his dying moments.
John Chapman was buried in David Archer's graveyard, two and one- half miles north of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the monument now erected at his grave is well deserved. The monument erected to his memory is a fitting memorial to the man in whom there dwelt a comprehensive love that reaches downward to the lowest form of life, and upward to the Divine.
"Johnny Appleseed" believed in the doctrine taught bv Emanuel Sweden- borg and took pleasure in distributing Swedenborgian tracts among the set- tlers. He led a blameless Christian life, and at the age of seventy-two years he passed into death as beautifully as the apple-seeds of his planting had grown into treees, had budded into blossoms and ripened into fruit.
W. H. ALBACH.
WV. Harrison Albach was born in Morrow county, Ohio, February 10, 1840. His early life was passed on a farm in Perry township, Morrow county. In addition to the district school of the neighborhood he also attended the public schools at Chesterville, Fredericktown and Mount Gilead.
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