A history of Adams County, Ohio, from its earliest settlement to the present time, including character sketches of the prominent persons identified with the first century of the country's growth, Part 68

Author: Evans, Nelson Wiley, 1842-1913; Stivers, Emmons Buchanan
Publication date: 1900
Publisher: West Union, O., E.B. Stivers
Number of Pages: 1101

USA > Ohio > Adams County > A history of Adams County, Ohio, from its earliest settlement to the present time, including character sketches of the prominent persons identified with the first century of the country's growth > Part 68

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

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Captain Hannah was twice married. His first wife was Martha Moore, by whom he was the father of eleven children. Of these children, none are surviving, but their descendants are numerous in Adams County. Joseph and David M. Hannah, of Hill's Fork, and Aaron Moore, of Winchester, are grandsons of Captain Hannah. In this family in each generation, there has been a William and a John.

One of Captain Hannah's sons, Aaron Hannah, was born in 1803. He was a man generous to a fault, dispensing his means with great magnanimity. He married Mary Ann Aerl, by whom he was the father of ten children. Of these children, five are surviving. William Patterson Hannah, residing at Boulder, Col .; Isaac Aerl Hannah, at Seaman, Ohio; Mrs. Rebecca E. Kepperling, at Detroit, Mich .; Dudley A. Kepperling, a prominent business man, Chicago, Ill., and Miss Edna Inez Kepperling, Principal of Custer School, Detroit, Mich., are grandchildren of Aaron Hannah.

Aaron Hannah died December 11, 1890, and is buried at Mt. Leigh, Adams County, Ohio. His father, Captain William Hannah, died Sep- tember 10, 1849, and is buried at Kirker's cemetery, where several of his children are buried.

Thomas Holmes.

His father, James Holmes, was born in 1790, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He was married to Nancy Shaw, une 28, 1791. He came to the Northwest Territory in 1800 and located in Adams County as a farmer. He died in 1833. He had fourteen children, all of whom grew to maturity, and all of whom married and had families except one son, Silas, who died a young man. His son, William, lived on the hill west of West Union and died there many years ago, leaving two sons, William and Nathan, and a daughter. James Holmes' daughter, Nancy. married Salathiel Coryell and she was the mother of Judge James L. Coryell.

Thomas was the eldest son and child and was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, August 7, 1792. He was set to learn the cabinet- maker's trade as a boy and youth, and did learn it, but never followed it, having taken up farming and followed that all his life. He went into the War of 1812. On his way home, his party was waylaid and ambushed by a party of Indians at a spring where they had stopped to drink, and his Uncle Shaw and another of the party were killed. The Indians es- caped after the first fire. He celebrated his safe return from the war by marrying Margaret McClanahan, December 23, 1813. She was born April 8, 1795. There were ten children of this marriage, as follows : James, born December 31, 1814, married Morella McGovney, November 5, 1840, died December 31, 1885. Eliza, born November 17, 1816, mar- ried James McGovney, February 20, 1840, died July 29, 1897. Nancy, born October 27, 1818, married Richard W. Ramsey, 1838. John Holmes, born November 30, 1820, married July 22, 1846, to Elizabeth Treber, died December 29, 1895. Rebecca, born October 15, 1822, married John McGovney, 1843, died February 25, 1879. Sarah, born November 28, 1824, married Crockett McGovney, December 20, 1849. She is the only one of Thomas Holmes' children surviving. She is now a widow resid- ing at Manchester. Caroline, born December 14. 1826, married Andrew Alexander, October 12. 1848, died August 18, 1897. Margaret, born March 14, 1830, married James Clark, March, 1850, died in August. 1889.

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Harriet, born August 2, 1832, died at the age of seven years. Thomas F. Holmes, born April 28, 1835, married Margaret Compton, 1857, died October 10, 1886.

Thomas Holmes, the subject of our sketch, died October 25, 1866, on the premises just west of West Union, built by Rev. John P. Van Dyke, and now occupied by the Stewart family. His wife survived him until January 22, 1879. He lived an honorable, upright life. He was just in all his dealings. He was strongly attached to the Baptist Church and brought all his children up in that faith.

He was respected by all who knew him, and his death, like his life, was peace. The best commentary on his life are his children and grand- children surviving him, all of whom are honorable men and women, striv- ing to do the best for themselves and those dependent on them. While his life was uneventful, it was a record of every duty well done and a family well trained in their duties toward God, toward their neighbors and toward their country.

John Hood.

The Hood family is among the oldest families in Adams County, hav- ing come to the county when it was yet a dense forest and when the present county seat consisted of not more than a dozen houses. John Hood, the pioneer of this family, was born in Ireland in the year of 1769, of Scotch parentage. After coming to the United States, he located at Connellsville, Pa. Here in October. 1801, he married Hannah Page, daughter of Joseph and Ann Page, who was born in Monmouth County, New Jersey, November 24, 1779. In 1806, John Hood, with his family, moved from Connellsville, Pa., to Adams County, landing at Manchester, May 5, having floated down the Ohio River in a flat-boat, then the only method of river navigation. At Manchester a misfortune befell them in the loss of their daughter, Hannah, who was a little more than a year old, leaving them with their eldest child, James. They located at West Union, where Mr. Hood engaged in the mercantile business. At this time he bought his goods in Philadelphia and they were hauled across the moun- tains in wagons. He built a two-story stone house on the corner now oc- cupied by the drug store and dwelling of C. W. Sutterfield, where he lived and carried on his business. Four more children were born here, Maria, Joseph, Angeline and John Page, all of whom are now dead. Angeline became the wife of Andrew McClaren, of Brush Creek, Ohio; John Hood died in West Union, April 17, 1814, and was buried in Manchester. His wife died in West Union, November 19, 1863, at which place she was buried.

James Hood.

Perhaps no one has been more intimately associated with the history and the people of Adams County than James Hood. He was born at Connellsville, Pennsylvania, December 27, 1802, and moved with his parents to Adams County, Ohio, in the spring of 1806. Ever since that time, with the exception of about fifteen months in Clermont County, Ohio, two years in Indiana and one year in Kansas, Mr. Hood resided in West Union. He learned the tanner's trade with Mr. Peter Schultz, and worked a number of years at that business in the yards now occupied by Jacob Plummer's flour mills. He then went to Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio, where he worked nearly two years, at the end of which

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time he turned over the business to Jesse Grant, father of ex-President Ulysses S. Grant. In 1826, Mr. Hood opened up a general store in West Union, in which business he continued until his retirement from active business life in 1868.

In 1831, James Hood was elected County Treasurer, defeating David Bradford, who had acted as Treasurer for more than thirty years. It was the boast of Mr. Hood that he was the first man to defeat David Bradford for Treasurer. He served for ten years and was succeeded by his son-in-law, Andrew Smalley. Mr. Hood was elected Treasurer as an Andrew Jackson Democrat, but fell out with the President because he vetoed the bill to make a national road of the Maysville and Zanesville turnpike. Had the bill become a law, it might have made a different town of West Union. He collected the taxes and kept the Treasurer's office in his store. His campaign expenses were, on an average, one dollar a year for printer's fees.

In 1857, Mr. Hood built the flour mills now owned by Mr. Pflaum- mer. He also built the house on Main Street, opposite the courthouse, for a family residence, which is now occupied by William Wamsley, and the large building just west of it, for his store rooms, now owned by G. N. Crawford. By careful attention to business, Mr. Hood accumulated a large sum of money, and was known as one of the wealthy men of the county.

James Hood was twice married. His first wife was Mary Ellison, daughter of Robert and Rebecca Ellison, to whom he was married De- cember 2, 1828. She died May 9, 1838. The result of this union was John and Rebecca Ann, twins, Isabella Burgess, James and Hannah.

On January 9, 1840, Mr. Hood married Isabella Ellison, sister of his first wife, to whom were born the following children: Mary, Sarah, Caro- line, Minerva and Samuel. She died January 8, 1862, and Mr. Hood never remarried.

When a young man, working at the tanner's trade, Mr. Hood, while wrestling with a young man, dislocated his ankle, which made him a cripple all the rest of his life. Politically, he was a Whig. an Abolition- ist and a Republican. He was a member of the Presbyterian Church, of which he was the main pillar. His purse was always open when money was needed for the support of the church. He was a close Bible student and a writer of great strength. His writings were mostly of a religious nature and were printed in the West Union Scion and read with great appreciation by its readers. Mr. Hood was a modest man and all his writings were anonymous under the cognomen, "Ahiezer." If he had had the opportunity, he would have made his mark as a poet, as he pos- sessed the faculty of rhyming to an uncommon degree and often used it against his enemies to their no small discomfiture.

Mr. Hood had a common school education and was quite efficient in mathematics. For several years he served as one of the County School Examiners of Adams County. He was the first man to introduce the sale of patent medicines in Adams County, from which fact he derived the title of Doctor. Mr. Hood departed this life January 9, 1890, and was laid to rest in the large vault he had erected for this purpose in his private cemetery in West Union, Ohio. It may truly be said of him that he lived in another age and with other people, for in his biography he says: "I

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can look back to the time when West Union, Adams County, and even the State of Ohio, was a dense forest. I can recollect the stately oaks, tall poplars, lofty walnuts and sugar trees and the thick undergrowth of paw- paws that covered the ground over which West Union is now built. At that time, we could hear the wolves howling around our cabins at night and see droves of deer passing through our town by day."

John P. Hood.

John Page Hood, the youngest child of John and Hannah Hood, was born at West Union, Adams County, Ohio, December 6, 1813. His father dying when he was less than one year old, it became necessary for him to look out for himself as soon as possible. When about ten years old, he became connected with the Village Register, edited by Ralph M. Voorhees, where he learned the printing trade. He afterwards learned the cabinet making trade, at which he worked for several years. Later he clerked in the store of his brother, James. Then he engaged in the mercantile business for himself. He was postmaster of West Union dur- ing Lincoln's administration, 1861 to 1865. A few years after the close of the Civil War, he sold his store and was employed as book-keeper of the West Union woolen factory, which was then in a flourishing condi- tion. He was cashier of the bank of G. B. Grimes & Company, when death overtook him. After a short illness, he died from heart failure, October 8, 1879, aged sixty-six years, leaving a widow and nine children, all of whom except the youngest were grown to manhood and woman- hood, and all are still living.

On December 5, 1837, John P. Hood was married to Sarah Jane Mc- Farland, at the home of Rev. Dyer Burgess in West Union, Ohio, where, being a relative of Mrs. Burgess, she had been making her home for several years for the purpose of receiving the best educational advantages of the times. She was the eldest daughter of Duncan and Nancy McFarland, whose maiden name was Nancy J. Forsythe. Duncan McFarland, when eighteen years old, came from Ireland to this country with his uncle, Andrew Ellison of the Stone House, and settled in Meigs Township. The issue of the union of John P. Hood and Sarah J. McFarland was eleven chil- dren. Martha, the eldest, died at the age of thirteen years; Angeline married Andrew Kohler; Nancy J. married William H. Wright; Ellen married George N. Crawford; Anna E. married Dr. J. W. Bunn and Sarah B. married John M. Willson. There were five boys, John A., William, Albert C., and Oscar F. All except two of the children taught school. In Mrs. Hood's young days, the teachers of the county were mostly from the New England States, and it was her ambition to make teachers of her daughters.

In politics, Mr. Hood in his younger days, was a Whig. At the organization of the Republican party, he became a member of it, and so remained until his death. He was an active member of the United Pres- byterian Church, in which he held the most important offices.

John P. Hood received a good education for the times in which he lived. He was a man of more than ordinary intelligence, possessing strong force of character and much native ability, and was known far and wide for his upright dealings and honesty. He was a kind husband and an indulgent father and found more pleasure in his home than any-

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where else. Born of Puritan stock and trained under the rigid discipline of the advocates of this doctrine, he became very methodical in all his manners and customs, and had the complete confidence of his fellow men.

Rev. Greenberry R. Jones

was born April 7, 1784, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. His father, John Jones, emigrated from Maryland in 1768, and settled near Browns- ville, Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Our subject was brought up in the Church of England, but had never given any serious attention to religion until he listened to the preaching of Rev. Robert Wooster, who preached near Uniontown. There young Jones became a convert to Methodism. He had received a good education, and as a youth, he evinced a great deal of sensibility, and had a very equable disposition. He was the favor- ite of the family of children to which he belonged. He married Miss Rebecca Connell, daughter of Zachariah Connell.

He was licensed as a local preacher in the Methodist Church in 1810, and preached in the vicinity of his home until 1815, when he removed to Adams County, Ohio, and settled near West Union. He was admitted as a travelling minister in 1818, and removed to Hillsboro. He preached on the Salt Creek Circuit for two years. For two years after that, he was appointed on the Scioto Circuit. After four years' service as an itin- erant minister, he was made a Presiding Elder. He had a strong, lively, and discriminating judgment. He came to the quarterly meetings with everything to learn and nothing to impart. He possessed a strong mind, and was bold and enterprising. He never stopped to calculate conse- quences.

From the Scioto County Circuit, he went to the White Oak Circuit two years as a minister. In 1828, he was made a Presiding Elder in the Miami District for four years. Cincinnati was in his district. He was accessible to and agreeable in the social circle. He was always ardent and decided in his work. His conversation was plain and to the point. He uttered his thoughts with simplicity and great correctness.

In 1832 he was appointed an itinerant on the Hamilton Circuit, and moved to Hamilton, in that circuit. Here he lost his wife, and was mar- ried in 1833 to Mrs. Ross, of Hamilton, Ohio. He disposed of all his property in Adams County, and moved to Bethel, Clermont County, where he became superannuated. However, a vacancy occurred in the West Union Circuit, and he filled it. In 1839 his health was despaired of, and he was sick for a long time. He recovered. and accepted service on the New Richmond Circuit, then at Batavia, and afterwards at White Oak.

He was a good penman, and several times was Secretary of the Ohio Conference. As a business man, he was safe and reliable. He was twice a delegate to the General Conference. He attended the Annual Conference at Marietta, in September, 1834, and while there was attacked with a colic, with which he frequently suffered. He was ill six days and died September 20, 1844, and was buried at Marietta. His death illustrated the faith in which he had lived.

Major Joseph L. Finley.

There is an old brown head-stone in the center of the little village cemetery at West Union, which recites-"Joseph L. Finley was born February 20, 1753, and died May 23, 1839." Most of the people of West

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Union and of those who have visited the cemetery or passed by have ob- served the stone, but do not know the story of him who reposes beneath, but we propose now to tell it so that hereafter so long as this History is preserved, the head-stone will suggest its own history.

Major Joseph L. Finley was born on the date already given, near Greensburg, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. He was a graduate of Princeton College in the class of 1775. He entered the Revolutionary War on the first day of April, 1776, as a Second Lieutenant in Captain Moorehead's Company, of Miles' Pennsylvania Rifle Regiment, organized under a resolution of Congress on July 15, 1776. He was made a Captain on the twentieth day of October, 1777, and his regiment was designated as the 13th Pennsylvania. He was transferred to the 8th Pennsylvania, July 1, 1778, and was made a Major July 20, 1780. He served until No- vember, 1783, more than two years after the surrender of Cornwallis, and he was seven years and seven months in service in defense of his country. He was in the battle of Long Island on the twenty-seventh of August, 1776, and that of White Plains, the September following. He was at the battle of Brandywine in September, 1777; at Germantown, in October of the same year, and he was in the battle of Monmouth on that memorable hot Sunday, June 28, 1778. After that, he was sent with Gen. Broad- head to the western part of Pennsylvania in his expedition against the Indians. He subsequently saw much hard fighting. He lost his left eye in the service and was otherwise much disabled.

He emigrated to Adams County in 1815 and settled, first on Gift Ridge, and afterwards moved to the foot of the hill west of West Union, and died there. His wife was a daughter of Rev. Samuel Blair, a noted Presbyterian minister in the early part of the history of that church in this country. She was a woman of much beauty of person and nobility of character, and their daughters were likewise well educated and hand- some. She was an aunt of Francis P. Blair, the famous editor of the Globe, of Washington, D. C. She was a sprightly woman, full of energy, and while small, was considered very handsome. She had the blackest of black eyes ; she wrote poetry for the newspapers, and wrote several touch- ing tributes to the memory of deceased friends. She has been particularly described to me and if I were to choose one of her descendants who re- sembled her as a young woman, I would choose Mrs. Dudley B. Hutch- ins, of Portsmouth, Ohio, her great-granddaughter.

Major Finley and his wife were both members of the Presbyterian Church of West Union. He was a man of small stature, and in his old age his hair was silvery white. When he and his wife attended church at West Union, during the sermon he always sat on the pulpit steps, as he was somewhat deaf.

He had three daughters and two sons. His daughter, Hannah Fin- ley, was the second wife of Col. John Lodwick, and the mother of a numer- ous family. Among her sons were Captain John N., Joseph, Pressley and Lyle Lodwick, and among her daughters were Mrs. Nancy McCabe, Mrs. Eli Kinney and Mrs. J. Scott Peebles. She died in 1827, twelve years before her father.

Another daughter, Mary Finley, married John Patterson, once United States Marshal of Ohio, and the father of Mrs. Benjamin F. Coates, of Portsmouth, Ohio. She was the mother of seven children.

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She was married in 1818 and died in 1831. The Hon. Joseph P. Smith, late Secretary of the American Bureau of Republics, was her grandson.

Margaret Finley married John Chipps and died young. She left a son, John Chipps, who died before his manhood and is buried in the. West Union cemetery.

James Finley married a Rothwell. He died young and left several children. His wife contracted a second marriage with Samuel Clark, formerly a well known farmer south of West Union on the old Man- chester Road.

John Finley, another son, married down South. No further account of him is known. A daughter of Mr. James Finley, Mrs. John Kincaid, resides at Hamersville, in Brown County, and another daughter resides in Dayton, Ohio.

Major Finley is described in an edition of the "Ohio Statesmen" of May 28, 1838, as one of the truest of patriots and best of men.

Rev. John Graham, D. D.

The ashes of this eminent servant of God repose in the village cem- etery south of West Union on a hilltop which overlooks a wide expanse of plain in Liberty Township to the southwest, the rough hills of Jeffer- son Township to the east and the Kentucky hills to the southeast. To the north lies the village overshadowed by the Willson home to the north- east. No lovelier spot in the world for the respose of God's chosen ones and their ashes are all about him.

The generation now living in West Union do not know the story of the life represented on the modest stone, which reads as follows:

Rev. John Graham, D. D., died July 15th, 1849, In the 60th year of his age.

But to those who read this history and remember it, that stone shall hereafter speak and tell the noble life it represents.

John Graham was born in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, in 1798. His parents were Scotch-Irish. He was educated at the Philadelphia Academy under Doctors Wylie and Gray. He studied theology in the U. P. Theological Seminary in New York City, and one of his instructors in the seminary was the Rev. John K. Mason, D. D. His training in the languages was most complete. He read Latin, Greek and Hebrew as readily as English. He was licensed to preach in the United Presbyterian Church in 1819 and ordained August 30, 1820. From August 20, 1820, until October 8, 1829, he was pastor of the Washington and Cross Roads Churches in Washington County, Pennsylvania, and at the same time he was Professor of Languages in Washington College.

In 1821, he made a trip to Ohio and, among other places, preached at Greenfield, Ohio. Here he met Miss Sarah Bonner and fell in love with her. The next year he returned and married her. She survived him until January 15, 1866, when in her sixty-sixth year, she was called away.

Rev. Graham was called to the churches of Sycamore and Hopkins- ville, in Warren County, in 1830, and remained there until 1834. While

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there, Jeremiah Morrow, a former Governor of Ohio, was one of his elders. Mrs. Ellen J. Gowdy, his eldest daughter, who furnished many of the facts for this sketch, speaks of the many pleasant hours she and her brothers and sisters spent in the comfortable and cheerful home of the Governor. Mrs. Gowdy's parents, when the children were at the Governor's, would sometimes seek to curb their festivities, but he always insisted on their being permitted to enjoy themselves.

From 1834 to 1837, the Rev. Graham was in charge of the Green- field and Fall Creek Churches and lived in Greenfield, Ohio. From 1837 to 1841, he resided in Chillicothe, Ohio, and was in charge of a boys' academy there.

In 1840, he accepted a call to the churches of West Union and West Fork, in Adams County. Here he made his home in the dwelling now occupied by Salathiel Sparks. It was an attractive place on the hill north of the village and adjoining his church. His family circle here was un- broken until 1845 when his son John, aged nine, died. They called their home "Pleasant Hill," and it was an ideal home, as all their former neigh- bors and friends remember.

The home of the Rev. Graham, with his two sons grown to manhood. and three daughters, attractive young women, and all fond of society, was one of the places where the young people of West Union of that day met most frequently and enjoyed each other's society. Henry Graham, a son, was at that time studying for the ministry, and his brother, David Gra- ham, was a law student. His eldest daughter, Ellen J., afterwards mar- ried Rev. Gowdy of the same church, and now has a son a minister. But the home of the Rev. Graham had other visitors than the young people of the village. It was a station on the Underground Railroad and Black Joe Logan was one of the conductors. Rev. Graham kept horses and carriages and they were ever at the disposal of Joe Logan to carry fugi- tives further north. The writer remembers on one occasion when the horses of the Rev. Graham were taken out of his stable and turned loose and his carriage thrown over the cliff near his home by negro hunters, because they knew to what uses the horses and carriages had often been put.

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A history of Adams County, Ohio, from its earliest settlement to the present time, including character sketches of the prominent persons identified with the first century of the country's growth, Part 68

Author: Evans, Nelson Wiley, 1842-1913; Stivers, Emmons Buchanan Publication date: 1900 Publisher: West Union, O., E.B. Stivers Number of Pages: 1101

Author: Evans, Nelson Wiley, 1842-1913; Stivers, Emmons Buchanan
Publication date: 1900
Publisher: West Union, O., E.B. Stivers
Number of Pages: 1101