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 80
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In 1865, Rev. Wamsley attended the Annual Council of Christian Union at Edenton, Ohio, where his venerable appearance and his high preaching ability at once advanced him to the front ranks of those early workers in the cause of liberty and fraternity.
Returning home he organized a local church with nine charter mem- bers, and became their pastor, serving them faithfully for many years. Many local churches were organized by him in the years that followed his identification with the Christian Union cause. He died February 18, 1887.
William Wamsley, the father of Rev. Wm. Wamsley, now residing in Wamsleyville, was born in 1804, and died October 12, 1868. He was married to Elizabeth Bolton in 1825. Of this union eight children were born, five sons and three daughters.
Rev. William Wamsley, the subject proper of this sketch, was born August 3, 1843, on the old Wamsley homestead at the mouth of Scioto Turkey Creek. When he was six years of age, his own dear mother de- parted this life. Deprived thus early of a mother's love and care, the resolution was formed in his young mind to accomplish something for him- self, to build a town that should bear his name, and surround himself with friends and neighbors in whom his heart delighted. As the years went by Young Wamsley attended school some little, but the most of the time was engaged in financial ventures which in every instance proved success- ful, drawing the attention of the people to his giant struggles. At the age of twenty, he had achieved his fortune, and in 1864 began to put in execution the dream of his young life, to build a town. Before this,
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however, he had purchased the home farm containing 210 acres. He laid off the streets of his village through this beautiful farm and began the building of a large mill, blacksmith shop, storerooms and dwelling houses.
This town grew in size and importance and was called by the people "Bill's town." About this time young Wamsley concluded that he needed a helpmate to share his joys and sorrows, and on the twenty-third day of May, 1867, he was joined in wedlock to Sarah W. Wamsley. One child was born to bless this union, a son, Milton Bina, now grown to manhood, married, and with wife and children resides in Wamsleyville, aiding his father in his busy life of toil and ventures.
So prodigous were the efforts of Rev. Wamsley that the attention of the leading men of the county was directed to this rising town, the only one in Jefferson Township. So great was the excitement over his achieve- ments, that Hon. John T. Wilson and Col. Cockerill came to visit Wm. Wamsley and to talk over the situation. After an excellent dinner they visited the steam mill, the shops and stores, had a review of the two hundred men then in the employ of William Wamsley, and expressed their pleasure and interest with all they saw. When about to depart, Mr. Wil- son asked Wamsley if they could aid him in any way, and was told that a postoffice was the pressing need of the town. Mr. Wilson then and there promised that an office should be established, and Col. Cockerill declared its name should be Wamsley. The mail route established was from West Union through Wamsley and on to Mineral Springs with mail twice each week. Now, however, it is twice each day. Other visitors came to see and find out all about this wonderful little town. Among the number were bankers R. H. Ellison, Crocket McGovney, and John A. Murry, who at once opened a bank account with young Wamsley which was a benefit and profit to all parties.
Finding that it would be impossible to transport the manufactured articles of this busy town without better roads, Hon T. J. Mullen, of West Union, was called upon and drew up a petition for a free turnpike from Rome, on the Ohio River, to Mineral Springs. Young Wamsley was the promoter of this enterprise, aided by Mr. Salisbury, of Mineral Springs : A. J. Jones, of Wamsley ; Dr. D. H. Woods, George A. Lafferty. of Rome, and others. The struggle was made, and the road granted under the Two Mile Law. Eventually, other roads were opened to the town.
On the evening of November 28, 1879, the fire demon visited this enterprising town and the large mill, the lumber yard, stores, and all the property in touch with it, were entirely destroyed, entailing a loss of some twenty thousand dollars from the hard earnings of William Wamsley. But this disaster did not daunt the courage of Young Wamsley. In a few hours the ashes were cleared away and work began in the building of a larger and better mill. Five years afterward, fire again destroyed nearly the entire town, burning every house, store and barn upon the east side of Main Street, entailing a loss of sixty thousand dollars, ten thousand of which fell to the lot of William Wamsley. But again the courage of this tireless worker rose above the ruin of all huis hopes, and he determined that the town should be rebuilt, and at once began work upon his own home, which had perished in the flames, and the town arose, phoenix-like, from the ashes of its own destruction.
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The third time fire broke out, and on the sixth of February, 1892, the great and famous mill was consumed, bringing a loss of twelve thou- sand dollars upon the aching head of its owner. But still over these losses this man moves onward; his mill is in process of erection, and backed up by the fertile acres of his valley farm, he still stands erect, his hair streaked with gray, but his mind and heart young as ever full of vigor and courage to battle on. It is proper to mention that the town of Wamsleyville was laid out, surveyed and plotted, January 15, 1874, and put on record January 30, same year. There has been added to the town a beautiful Fair Park owned and controlled by Rev. Wamsley, whose management of the Wamsleyville Fair is a noted event in the history of the county. This ground furnishes a pleasant and convenient place for celebrations, Sunday School gatherings, as well as other purposes for which it can be used.
Rev. Wamsley's home life is an ideal one. Between himself and wife love reigns supreme, and peace and plenty crown their board.
Big-hearted, big-bodied and generous, his home door stands open night and day to all comers and his table filled with the food that delights the eye and pleases the palate.
Himself and wife are earnestly religious and devout members of the Christian Union in whose ranks he has been an efficient minister for many years.
His only son, with his interesting family, live near the happy father and mother and the words "grandpa" and "grandma" from childish lips gladden the heart and home of this happy pair.
The Burbage Family.
In the year 1555, John Burbage was the Bailiff and, ex officio, Chief Magistrate of Stratford-upon-Avon, the birth-place of William Shakes- peare. Subsequently, this office was held by Francis Burbage, and later on by John Shakespeare, the father of the great poet.
The record of this Court has shown that, during John Burbage's term of office, he presided over a trial in which John Shakespeare was sued for a sum of money. These facts appear in William Shakespeare's biography as published in George L. Duyckinck's edition of his works, by Porter & Coates, Philadelphia, Pa.
The next point of interest is the intimate association of Shakespeare with James Burbage and his son, Richard, in the dramatic profession, in London. Under the title "Shakespeare," in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, it is stated that James Burbage had been a fellow townsman of Shakespeare; and a transcript of a letter written by Lord Southampton, introducing and commending William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage, was found among Lord Elsmere's papers filed while he was Lord Chancellor, in which it is said that Shakespeare and Richard Burbage were from the same county " and almost the same town."
That the advent of the two Burbages in London preceded that of Shakespeare by some years, is the concurrent testimony of all writers on the subject. James Burbage had been an actor in a company of players organized by the Earl of Leicester, sometimes called Burbage's players, which gave performances in London and elsewhere, long before the erection of any building in England, specially designed for such a purpose.
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To James Burbage belongs the distinction of having erected in London, in 1575, the original Black Friars Theater, the first theater built in England.
In an article in Scribner's Magazine for May, 1891, Alexander Car- gill says: "This place (the Curtain Theater) and "The Theater' as Burbage's place was distinctively known, were the only two theaters in the city proper, when young Shakespeare first arrived in London." From the facts already stated, Shakespeare's connection with the Burbages, in London, is quite natural, on the assumption that he went there to enter the dramatic profession. Accordingly, the writer of the article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Dr. Baynes, referring to Shakespeare's early career in London, says: "But from his first coming up (to London), it seems clear that he was more identified with the Earl of Leicester's players of whom he was more identified with the Earl of Leicester's players of of whom his energetic fellow townsman, James Burbage, was the head, than any other group of actors."
It is further stated by the same writer, on documentary evidence, that the Burbages originally introduced Shakespeare to the Blackfriars Company and gave him an interest as part proprietor in the Blackfriar's property. Knight, in his biography of Shakespeare, says there is no reason to doubt that Shakespeare first went to London accompanied by Richard Burbage, who, at the time of his death, owned the Blackfriar's Theater, and an interest in several others. He had become the greatest tragedian of his time, was the first actor to perform the part of Hamlet in the great play of that name, as well as the part of the Moor in Othello. He is often spoken of as the "Garrick of the Elizabethan Stage," and Lord Southampton calls him "Our English Roscius," one who fitteth the action to the word and the word to the action most admirably. Some writers contend that Shakespeare wrote the part of Hamlet expressly for Richard Burbage, and the write, in Scribner's Magazine, says: "There can be no question that it was by the histrionic excellence of Burbage that Shakespeare was influenced and encouraged in the writing of more than one of his great plays." Thus it appears that the Burbages were efficient in pre- paring and cultivating the field from which Shakespeare was to reap an immortal fame which, in its turn, has served to perpetuate their names in history.
It now remains to indicate, briefly, the lines along which the genealogy of the Burbage family in Adams County may be traced back to the London Burbages should any one have opportunity and an inclination to do so. It is well known that the English colony established at Jamestown, Vir- ginia, in 1607, was the result of a commercial enterprise undertaken by a company organized in London.
In a large work recently published by Alexander Brown entitled "The Genesis of the United States," he shows from records in England that Richard Burbage was a member of this company. He died in London in 1618, leaving a son, William. The land records of Virginia show that. in 1636, a William Burbage and also Captain Thomas Burbage resided in the colony at Jamestown. From 1636 to 1638, the authorities at James- town granted patents to Thomas Burbage for several tracts of land in Vir- ginia, among which was a tract of 1,250 acres located in Accomac County, Virginia, adjoining Worcester County, Maryland. The Record of Wills
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in Worcester County shows that Burbage died there as far back as 1726. In this record the names of both Thomas and William Burbage recur in successive generations. This fact, together with the close proximity of the locality to the land owned by Thomas Burbage in the adjoining county of Accomac, creates a strong presumption of relationship between the Maryland and Virginia Burbages, especially when considered in con- nection with the well known historical fact that many of the Jamestown people emigrated to the eastern shore of Maryland soon after Jamestown was settled.
Thomas Burbage's death is accounted for in Henning's Virginia Statutes, Volume I, page 405, wherein the order of the Court is shown directing a division of his lands so that his widow could choose her dower. In this order, William Burbage is to have the remainder as heir at law, but in some of the records he is mentioned as "head right" in con- nection with these lands. But in none of the records at Jamestown, thus far discovered, is any evidence found indicating that William Burbage died in that vicinity. This strengthens the presumption that he crossed the bay, settled on the land in Accomac County, and thus became the head of the various branches of the Burbage family in Maryland. Their presence there can be accounted for in no other way from the present state of facts. It is to be regretted that opportunity to confirm this view of the matter by examination of the records of Accomac County has not been had.
Thomas Burbage, who died in Worcester County, Maryland, in 1722, aged ninety-six years, was the ancestor of the Adams County Burbages. One of his sons, the Rev. Edward Burbage, who also died in Worcester County, Maryland, in 1812, was the father of Levin Duncan Burbage who settled near the present site of Bradysville; of Thomas Burbage, near Bentonville; of Dolly Burbage (Mrs. Smashea), of West Union; of Elizabeth Burbage, full brothers and sisters, and of Joel Burbage, a half brother, who lived near Decatur, together with his three sisters, Ann, Sarah, Rhoda, ( Mrs. Schultz) and Mary. They emigrated together, via Pittsburg and the Ohio River, and landed at Manchester in the Spring of 1816. Two years later, Levin D. Burbage went to Maryland and back, traveling alone on horseback, through what was then almost a continuous wilderness.
All of these people were devout Christians and members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as was their father before them, and his sincerity was evinced in his refusal to accep: from his father a proffered gift of some slaves, on the ground that slavery was contrary to the spirit of Christianity. This brings the history of the Burbage family down to a time within the memory of its oldest surviving members, and of these we have space for only a brief sketch of the career of one, who having represented the county in a public capacity, should be mentioned along with others sustaining similiar relations to the public. We refer to Cap- tain William D. Burbage, who was the youngest of the nine children born to Levin Duncan Burbage and his wife, Sarah H. Cropper, daughter of John Cropper.
Captain Burbage was born on his father's farm near Bradyville, December 31, 1835.
The father having died in 1840, and the mother in 1841, the boy was left in the care of Edward, his only brother and guardian, who resided
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at the parental homestead until 1846, when he moved to a farm which he had purchased, located about two miles from West Union on Beasley's Fork. At that time much of the land in this neighborhood was covered by primeval forests and the business of farming consisted largely of work in the woods, especially during the time when the planting, cultivating or harvesting of crops did not require attention. In such a community. physical labor is respectable and young men and boys have no fear that hard work will degrade them in the general estimate of individual worth. Thus stimulated by environment and blessed with health and strength, young Burbage grew to be an efficient "farm hand," a fact of much impor- tance in his first efforts to acquire an education.
Naturally, educational facilities in the country were quite limited- the usual annual term in the public schools consisting of three months. Yet the boy who could be spared to attend the entire term was exception- ally favored. During one of these years the subject of this sketch was in school but seventeen days, and up to the year 1853, he had scarcely contem- plated the possibility of ever acquiring more than the mere rudiments of learning.
But about this time, Wm. M. Scott came into the neighborhood and engaged to teach for a term of three months in the Ellison school house, as it was called, and to this fact, more than any other, Captain Burbage attributes a change in his career which has resulted in his becoming a student for life.
Scott was an excellent teacher and possessed the rare faculty of in- spiring in his pupils a feeling of self-reliance whereby almost any one may largely educate himself.
This idea of self-culture took practical form in 1860, when Scott, Burbage and Robert S. Cruzan-all teachers at the time-rented a double log cabin on Moore's Run and started what they called "Trinity Institute." In this they were soon joined by other teachers, and several students who had not yet engaged in teaching.
The plan was for each teacher to conduct recitations in those studies in which he was farther advanced than the others, while they served in like manner in respect to such studies as they were severally best fitted to conduct, as determined by experience and mutual agreement, until the curriculum of an ordinary college course should be mastered.
What the ultimate development of this enterprise might have been. had not the war of 1861 broken it up, can never be known; but it was the unanimous judgment of all-teachers and pupils alike, that they had never made more rapid progress-even in studies none of them had previously pursued, than they made in that school during its life of two summers.
Captain Burbage was the principal teacher of the public schools in Winchester in 1861, and finished his career as an educator by completing a term as Superintendent of the Public Schools of Manchester in 1869, in the room, in which ten years before, he had ceased to attend the public schools as a student. In 1862, he entered the Army as Second Lieutenant of Company E, 91st O. V. I., in which he served till the close of the war, receiving promotions, meanwhile, to the rank of First Lieutenant and Captain, in succession, according to the rule of seniority. During the summer of 1866, a vacancy was created in the lower House of the Ohio Legislature by the death of the lamented Col. H. L. Phillips, and Capt.
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Burbage was elected to fill the vacancy, having as a competitor for the place, his old friend and comrade in the army, Mr. F. D. Bayless, who was the Democratic candidate. Captain Burbage regards his efforts to secure the enactment of the law under which the public turnpikes of Adams County were established, as the most important of his services in the Legislature ..
.He was elected Mayor of Manchester soon after returning from Columbus, and while serving in this capacity, was very much puzzled on one occasion as to how he ought to decide a question of law argued before him by the distinguished attorney E. P. Evans, father of one of the two editors of this history.
Experience in the Legislature and the Mayor's office intensified a long felt desire on the part of the Captain, to know more about the laws and institutions of our country.
Accordingly, after moving his family to Kansas, where his father- in-law, the late George Pettit then resided, and after looking over the West for a while to discover ways and means to support his family and pursue his studies, he finally received, in September, 1869, an appointment in the Treasury Department in Washington where he has remained for thirty years, graduating, meanwhile, in the Law Department of Columbian Uni- versity, and employing his leisure time thereafter in the study of scientific and philosophical literature touching the great problems of individual and social life, with a view to contributing, in some small degree at least, to the well-being of mankind.
The Caden Family.
The Caden family, so far as is known, originated in Penig, Saxony, Germany. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, there lived there three brothers by the name of Caden of noble lineage. Two of them were military men, one of whom served in the Russian army and the other in the Austrian army. The grandfather of William Caden, who resides at Buena Vista, died when his father was but three years old. His grand- father was a forge owner. In those days there were no rolling mills, consequently all iron was necessarily forged under the hammer for all mercantile purposes. Carl W. Caden continued in that business until his wife died in 1848. In 1850, he emigrated to America with a family of six children, one daughter and five sons. He had suffered from a throat disease and emigrated, hoping to be benefited by making the trip across the ocean. The family staid a while in New York City, and from there went to Philadelphia, where he remained a month under a physician's treatment. From there he went to Pittsburg and was thoroughly cured of his throat trouble. He then took his family to Wheeling, West Virginia, where he was unsuccessful in obtaining employment. From Wheeling, he went to Parkersburg, where he bought a farm of one hundred and fifty acres in Wood County, forty miles from Parkersburg. Unfortunately for him, he was not acquainted with the title, and it proved worthless and he lost his farm and all he had invested in it. In 1853, he moved to Greenup County, Kentucky, at one of the iron furnaces, where he remained until 1857, when he rented George Bruce's stone saw mill on the waters of Kinnikinick. He continued that until 1860, when he removed to Buena Vista, where he continued in the sawed stone business, obtaining stone in both Adams and Scioto Counties, but principally in Adams County. In
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1885, the firm of W. L. Caden & Bros. was the successor to Carl W. Caden. In 1875, the Buena Vista Freestone Company was organized by William L. Caden, Adolph Caden, Gustav Caden and Gustav A. Klein. A daughter of Carl Caden died in Tell City, Indiana, in 1881. He died in 1885, as did his son, Gustav. Adolph died in 1897 and Lewis in 1899. William re- sides at Buena Vista and another brother iives at Evansville, Indiana, engaged in the quarrying and mill business.
The Ellis Family.
Nathan, Jeremiah, Samuel, Hezekiah, James and Jesse, all sons of James Ellis and Mary Veatch, his wife, came to this section from the neighborhood of Brownsville on the Monongahela River, some sixty miles above Pittsburg, in 1795. Mr. and Mrs. James Ellis came from Wales early in the eighteenth century and settled first in Maryland, where after spending a few years, they emigrated to Western Pennsylvania. where Mr. Ellis died some time after the Revolutionary. War. There is nothing to show that there were any daughters in the family.
Religiously, the Ellises were Quakers of the strictest sect and were identified with the Colonists in the French and Indian Wars, and later on in the Revolutionary struggle, several of the name holding commissions in the Continental army. In the Spring of 1795, Captain Nathan Ellis and his five brothers embarked on boats at Brownsville and floated on down past Pittsburg into the Ohio, looking for homes in the mighty forests and fertile lands of the then almost unknown Northwest Territory. The Ohio was the great highway over which came much of the tide of emigration which have peopled this section of the Union, a mighty stream hemmed in by a continent of gloomy shade and wierd solitude, rolling its unbroken length for a thousand miles, a beautiful stretch of restless, heaving water which realized to the voyager the "ocean river of Homeric song."
Landing at Limestone, the Ellis brothers were so charmed with the romantic beauty of the region and the productiveness of the soil, that they determined at once to go no further. At that time, with the exception of a few isolated settlements at Marietta, Manchester, Gallipolis, and Cincin- nati, there were but few settlers on the north bank of the river, while upon the south side of the country, it was swarming with emigrants seeking out and appropriating the richest lands and most eligible town sites. Like the Jordan of old, the Ohio was the great boundary line. It stayed the in- cursions of the Indians, and north of its immediate banks the wave of immigration had not rolled. The very day, April 27, 1795, that Nathan Ellis landed at Limestone, five hundred red men were encamped right across the river. Finding that the most valuable lands were taken up, the Ellis brothers determined to push on into the Northwest Territory. Nathan Ellis built the first home in what is known as Aberdeen, and twenty-one years after, laid out the town, naming it for the old University town of Aberdeen, Scotland, in honor of one of his fellow townsmen who was a native of the place.
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