A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut, Part 16

Author: Avery, Elroy McKendree, 1844-1935; Lewis Publishing Company
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Chicago, New York The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 904

USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut > Part 16

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In 1904 Mr. McMichael married Miss Bess Mains, of Fort Wayne, Indiana. There are no children.

The MeMichael family came to America in 1779, just a century before Stanley MeMi- chael's birth. They settled in Philadelphia and from that city the name has spread to all parts of the country. The great-grandfather of Stanley L. McMichael was a United Em- pire Loyalist who removed to Waterford, On- tario, in 1812 and established that branch of the family in Canada. Mr. McMichael's mother at present resides in Hamilton, On- tario. Mr. Stanley McMichael became a natur- alized citizen of the United States over a dozen years ago and since coming to Cleve- land has taken an interest in many public movements relative to the upbuilding of the city.

What has made him perhaps better known than any other one thing is in the nature of a hobby. It is the collecting of pictures of early Cleveland. For over ten years the collection has been steadily growing until it is by long odds the most complete of its kind in existence, many of the pictures being orig- inals which cannot be duplicated. Mr. Mc- Michael has lectured hundreds of times on "Cleveland, Old and New," and similar sub- jects before almost every organization of any importance in Cleveland. The pictures are being compiled for the purpose of issuing a "Pictorial History of Cleveland" when the time seems to be appropriate.

COL. EDWARD W. S. NEFF, whose home was at Cleveland for a number of ycars, where his son Clifford A. Neff is a prominent mem- her of the bar, was a Union officer in the Civil war and for many years was a success- ful manufacturer and a pioneer in developing the ice-making machinery.

Colonel Neff died at El Paso, Texas, De- cember 21, 1910, at the age of sixty-eight

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

years. He came of an old and prominent Philadelphia and Cincinnati family. The Neff's located at Philadelphia in 1727, and Colonel Neff was of the sixth generation of the family in this country. The Neffs were closely related with the Wayne family, in- eluding the great Gen. Anthony Wayne of Revolutionary and Indian war fame, and also James W. Wayne, who at one time was a justice of the United States Supreme Court. Colonel Neff's father, William Neff, was very prominent in business affairs at Cincinnati and at one time was president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad and had extensive inter- ests as a pork packer, cotton merchant and in other lines.

Colonel Neff was a Union soldier from 1862 until the close of the war, and was a member of the staff of General George Thomas. After the war he located at Savannah, Georgia, and engaged in business as a cotton broker. He also lived at Cincinnati and at Cleveland, and for thirteen years was a manufacturer of ice machines in that city and continued active in the same line of industry at El Paso. He came to Cleveland from Georgia about 1880, and moved to El Paso, Texas, in 1894. Colonel Neff attained the thirty-third and supreme honorary degree of Scottish Rite Masonry and was made a life member of the order a short time before his death. An escort of Masons accompanied the family from Texas to Cincin- nati, where Colonel Neff was laid to rest.

At Port Huron, Michigan, in 1866, Colonel Neff married Miss Estelle J. Fechet. She died at El Paso, Texas, February 13, 1913. Her father was A. G. Fechet D'Alary, who on account of his pronounced republicanism was expelled from France during the era of the restoration of the Bourbons, and escaping from prison immigrated to the United States. Here he dropped his territorial name, D'Alary, and called himself simply A. G. Fechet. He located in a French settlement on the St. Clair River in Michigan, studied medicine, and be- came a successful physician and died at Port Huron, Michigan. Colonel and Mrs. Neff had three children: Mrs. F. C. Searles, of El Paso: E. E. Neff, a business man of El Paso; and Clifford A., a Cleveland attorney, men- tioned helow.

CLIFFORD ALFRED NEFF is a member of the law firm White, Johnson, Cannon & Neff in the Williamson Building. The leading part- ners of this firm and the other lawyers prac- ticing with them constitute the personnel of

a firm at once one of the largest and most important in the Ohio bar.

Mr. Neff has been identified with Cleveland as a lawyer for a quarter of a century. He was born in Savannah, Georgia, May 5, 1868, son of the late Col. Edward W. S. and Estelle J. (Fechet) Neff. His parents spent many years in Cleveland, and the father was a manu- facturer of ice-making machinery and had attained the thirty-third degree in Scottish Rite Masonry. Both parents died at El Paso, Texas, and were laid to rest in the family lot in the cemetery in Cincinnati. Their three children were: Clifford A .; Mrs. F. C. Searle, of El Paso, Texas ; and E. E. Neff, of El Paso.

Clifford A. Neff was educated in private schools in the South and also under private instruction in Cleveland. He entered Kenyon College at Gambier, where he was graduated with the class of 1888. He began the study of law with the old law firm of Sherman, Hoyt & Dustin at Cleveland, the present firm being Hoyt, Dustin, Kelly, McKuhan & An- drews. Mr. Neff was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1890 and since that year has been stead- ily rising to prominence in the Cleveland bar. In 1908 he became associated with the firm of White, Johnson & Cannon and has been one of the partners since 1913. The chief business of the firm is corporation practice and in that field Mr. Neff's abilities have their widest scope.

In 1898 Mr. Neff organized the first board of Deputy State Board of Elections in Cuya- hoga County and was its secretary until about 1903, when the present law was adopted. In politics he is a republican, and for two years, 1900-02 was a member of the Supreme Court committee on admission to the bar, many of the young attorneys of Ohio admitted at that time coming before him personally to present their qualifications.

Mr. Neff is a member of the Cleveland Athletic Club, Shaker Heights .Country Club, University Club, Nisi Prius Club, Columbus Athletic Club of Columbus, Ohio, and is a member of the Cleveland, the Ohio State, and the American Bar associations. He belongs to the Civic League and is an active member and formerly a vestryman of the Church of the Incarnation, Protestant Episcopal. Mr. Neff is a well known of fisherman and has gath- ered about him a remarkable collection of fishing tackle and accessories, but when credited with having the largest collection he emphasizes the fact that it is only the largest collection of useful tackle, and tried

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

and trusted usefulness is the standard by which every implement or device is admitted or denied entrance into his fishing arcana.

On September 5, 1894, at Mount Vernon, Ohio, Mr. Neff married Miss Katherine M. Young, daughter of H. M. and Elizabeth (Shaw) Young. Her parents are now deceased. Her father was an old time and successful merchant at Mount Vernon, where Mrs. Neff was born and educated. She also attended the Harcourt Place School at Gambier, Ohio. She is prominent socially and very active in Red Cross work.

FRANK HAZEN EWING, who has long en- joyed an enviable place of prominence in the Cleveland bar, is a member of one of Ohio's oldest and most substantial families.

His birth occurred at Alliance in this state November 5, 1868. He is a son of William H. and Margaret Catherine (McDonald) Ewing. The old seat of the family in Ohio is near New Lisbon. An ancestor of Mr. Ewing was James Ewing, who because of his activity in the Irish rebellion of 1798 had a price set upon his head and to escape the persecution and prosecution of the English Government he fled from County Donegal and found a home in America. He participated as a fighting soldier in the War of 1812 and for his services was given a land grant. This grant he located a mile south of New Lisbon, Ohio. A great-uncle of Frank H. Ewing is now living near this old homestead at New Lisbon.

The grandfather, William E. Ewing, was a first cousin of that famous Thomas Ewing who in his time enjoyed an undoubted su- premacy in the Ohio bar, and was also one of the most prominent statesmen produced by Ohio in the first half of the nineteenth cen- tury. Thomas Ewing was a member of the United States Senate from 1831 to 1837. was secretary of the treasury, was the first in- cumbent of the office of the cabinet position secretary of the interior, and was a leading whig and afterwards equally notable for his leadership in the republican party. It will be recalled that Thomas Ewing adopted the fatherless William Tecumseh Sherman, who later married one of Ewing's daughters. Grandfather William E. Ewing married a descendant of the Hephner family. One of her sisters married Andrew Poe, who was a leading Indian fighter and killed Big Foot at the junction of Ohio River and Yellow Creek.

Much of this pioneer history is found in Howe's Ohio Annals.

Grandfather William E. Ewing and six of his sons were soldiers in the Civil war. The grandfather served in the quartermas- ter's department at Nashville, Tennessee. Among his sons who were soldiers were Rob- ert Ewing of the Twenty-fourth Ohio Volun- teer Infantry, who was killed at Stone River; Anson, a member of the Eleventh Ohio In- fantry; and Andrew, first a member of the Nineteenth Regiment and later transferred to the Seventy-sixth Ohio Infantry and was on the march with Sherman to the sea. Mr. Frank H. Ewing is descended from military ancestors on both sides. His maternal grand- father, Joseph McDonald, with three sons also fought in the Civil war and both the Ewings and McDonalds were Civil war demo- crats.

William H. Ewing was born at New Lisbon, Ohio, and in the Civil war served as a private in Company H of the One Hundred and Nine- ty-fifth Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He en- listed twice, both times when under age. The first time his father took him out of the army. He then ran away from home and went to Alliance, where he succeeded in getting into the army. He was a blacksmith by trade, afterwards a railroad man and finally en- gaged in the real estate business at Alliance, where he died in 1892. His wife, Margaret Catherine MeDonald, came with her people from near the Town of New Florence in West- moreland County, Pennsylvania, and the Mc- Donalds settled at Alliance in 1856, being one of the early families there. She died at Alli- ance in May, 1900. There were three chil- dren : Frank Hazen, Dorotha M., now Mrs. O. Bert Myers, of Alliance, and William Ed- gar, who died at Alliance at the age of fifteen. All were born at Alliance.

Frank Hazen Ewing graduated from the Alliance High School in 1887, was a student in Mount Union College from 1888 to the summer of 1890, and then took up work in the county offices of Stark County, being in the county treasurer's office four years as deputy and two years as deputy county audi- tor. He was president of the board of elec- tions of the City of Canton and Stark County from 1896 to 1901.

In June, 1901, Mr. Ewing received his law degree from Western Reserve University and in December of the same year began practice at Cleveland. His first office was in the Cuy-

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

ahoga Building, on the third floor, and for two years he was associated with Mr. Pierce Metzger, later a county commissioner of Cuy- ahoga County, under the firm name of Ewing and Metzger. From that building Mr. Ewing moved to the Schofield Building, being in partnership relations with Samuel D. Dodge and James L. Vaughan but is now alone in practice, occupying a suite of offices on the third floor of the Schofield Building. Mr. Ewing enjoys a large general practice and has been admitted to practice in the Federal Courts and is also registered on the roster of attorneys entitled to practice before the United States Patent Office at Washington.

Mr. Ewing is member of Lookout Camp No. 466, Sons of Veterans at Cleveland, and was formerly captain of Mcclellan Camp No. 91, Sons of Veterans at Alliance. He is af- filiated with Biglow Lodge No. 243, Free and Accepted Masons; Webb Chapter No. 14, Royal Arch Masons; Al Sirat Grotto No. 17; is a life member of Cleveland Lodge No. 63, Loyal Order of Moose; member of the Knights and Ladies of Honor; Fraternal Aid Union and the Cleveland Commercial Trav- elers Association. He also belongs to the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity at Ohio, Sigma Chapter in Mount Union College, two of whose distinguished members were Presi- dent McKinley and Philander K. Knox.

January 4, 1894, at Alliance, Mr. Ewing married Miss Martha Hoiles, daughter of Emanuel and Martha (Swearengen) Hoiles. Her father for many years conducted a book and stationery store at Alliance but for the past twenty years has been in the grocery business at Chicago. Her mother died at Alliance in 1869, when Mrs. Ewing was born.

Mrs. Ewing was educated in the public school of Alliance and in Mount Union College, and . is an active member of the Presbyterian Church. They have one son, Frank Harvey, born at Cleveland April 29, 1905. The Ewing home is at 2096 East Eighty-ninth Street.

HON. JAMES LAWRENCE. It is a difficult task for the biographer, in the brief summary review to which he is confined, to sketch the full activities of the life of a man who has strongly impressed his personality upon a community. An active career, characterized by constant advancement, presents an inter- esting study, but to enumerate the various and varied steps by which his subject rose to the high position which he occupied would constitute a record which would far transcend

the limits necessarily assigned to a work of this nature. The writer, therefore, is called upon to restrict himself to noting only the salient points of direct bearing. The late Hon. James Lawrence's career was a long and brilliant one. One of the most brilliant mem- bers of the Cleveland bench and bar, many honors came to him and still greater ones were awaiting him when he was called to the great beyond July 4, 1914.

Judge James Lawrence was born January 15, 1851, at Washington, Guernsey County, Ohio, a son of Hon. William Lawrence, and was of Scotch-Irish descent. His great-grand- father came to this country toward the close of the Revolutionary war and settled in Mary- land, in which state, at Havre de Grace, his grandfather was born. The family moved to Washington County, Pennsylvania, and about the year 1810 came to Ohio, where the judge's father was born. His mother, Mar- garet E. (Ramsey) Lawrence, was of Scotch descent, her ancestors coming to this country at an earlier date than those on the paternal side and settling in Pennsylvania. The greater part of her earlier life was passed in Virginia with relatives. William Lawrence was a merchant during his younger years, but always took a great interest in public matters, was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1851, once a member of the Ohio House of Representatives, three times a member of the Ohio State Senate, and a member of the National Congress from 1857 to 1859, during President Buchanan's ad- ministration. Of the children of William and Margaret E. Lawrence, only one now survives : Albert Lawrence, a prominent Cleveland attorney with offices in the Society for Savings Building.

The early education of Judge James Law- rence was secured in the public schools, fol- lowing which he attended an academy and then entered Kenyon College, in the sopho- more class of 1868, and took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1871. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1873, and came to Cleve- land in the following year, where during thirty years of active life and practice he filled four law partnerships outside the time when public pursuits occupied his attention. He was first associated with William M. Ray- nolds, was later with the late George H. Fos- ter, and subsequently was a member of the firms of Lawrence & Estep and Lawrence, Russell & Eichelberger, being with the lat- ter combination up to the time when he

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

started the duties of his second term as a member of the Common Pleas Bench, Jan- uary 1, 1911. Few Cleveland men have had so brilliant a career. As a young lawyer, in 1883 he was elected attorney general of Ohio, with Governor George Hoadley heading the ticket; from April, 1887, to April, 1889, he served as president of the Cleveland Board of Aldermen; during the administration of for- mer Mayor Blee, from April, 1893, to April, 1895, he was law director of the City of Cleveland, and it was in this latter capacity that he started the famous Lake Front liti- gation against the Pennsylvania and other railroads, which case, involving the title to millions of dollars worth of Lake Front made land, was fought part way through the United States Court, then all the way through the states courts of Ohio, to a successful termi- nation in the Ohio 'Supreme Court. After re- tiring as director of Law Judge Lawrence continued the Lake Front fight for the city as special counsel. He was retained as coun- sel by Mayor Tom L. Johnson, who was for years a close personal and political friend. In 1902 Judge Lawrence was elected to the Common Pleas Bench of Cuyahoga County, and served thereon until 1909. He was again elected in 1910, leading the judicial ticket. During his term as judge perhaps the most noted suits which were tried before him were the low-fare street railway cases in the early years of the traction war. He was an excep- tionally fine and scholarly character, and any lawyer trying a case before him felt that absolute justice had been given. Just before his death he had been urged by Mayor (now Secretary of War) Newton D. Baker and the democratic committee to make the race for the office of judge of the Court of Appeals, and became the unopposed candidate for the democratic nomination at the primaries. Also he was appointed by Governor Cox as a mem- ber of the special committee to revise and sim- plify judicial procedure, the report of which committee would have been given to the next Legislature. For fifteen years Judge Law- rence was professor of law at the Western Reserve University, but severed his connec- tion with that institution in 1911. In the latter part of June, 1914, with Mrs. Law- rence, he went to Brookside, West Virginia, a summer resort in the Allegheny Moun- tains, about ten miles from Oakland, Mary- land, to spend the summer, and there his death suddenly occurred early in the morn- ing of July 4.

Judge Lawrence was a member of the Cleveland Bar Association, of which he was president in 1909 and 1910, and of the Ohio State Bar Association. He belonged to the Lodge, Chapter and Commandery of Masonry, and while at college became a charter mem- ber of the revived chapter of Theta Delta Chi and also joined the legal fraternity of Phi Alpha Delta. In his judicial position Judge Lawrence stood as an eminent representative of the Ohio bench, and while because of his broad humanitarianism and charity he may have been inclined towards mercy rather than severity, believing that the highest purpose of the law is to reclaim rather than to con- demn, his decisions indicated, strong men- tality, careful analysis and thorough knowl- edge of the law and an unbiased judgment. Individuality, personal feelings, prejudices, peculiarities of dispositions were with him lost in the dignity, impartiality and equity of the office in which property, right and liberty must look for protection. Possessing superior qualifications, he justly merited the high honor which was conferred upon him by his elevation to the bench, and in his death his state lost one of its ablest and most use- ful citizens.

Judge Lawrence was married in May, 1888, to Miss Jennie Gardner Porter, of Cleveland, and their three children are: Harriet, Keith and Margaret R. Harriet married Clifford B. Longley, a member of the Detroit bar, Sep- tember, 1916. Keith Lawrence is a graduate of Hobart College, 1913, and of Western Re- serve Law School, 1916, and was admitted to the bar of Ohio in the latter year. He is asso- ciated with the law firm of Smith, Griswold, Green & Hadden, Marshall Building, Cleve- land.

CHARLES L. FISH from 1845 was a practic- ing lawyer at Cleveland, a period of fifty-five years, and at the time of his death, March 26, 1903, enjoyed the distinction of being Cleve- land's oldest attorney. His hig work was accomplished as a lawyer and he was never a seeker for political honors. At one time in his career he was regarded as withont a peer in maritime law.

Mr. Fish was born at Madison, New York, September 8, 1818, and was in his eighty-fifth year when he passed away at his home at the corner of Prospect and Cheshire streets in Cleveland. He spent the first fourteen years of his life on his father's farm. The old home in New York State was close to the Erie

CLEVELAND AND ITS ENVIRONS

Canal. Mr. Fish was probably the last sur- vivor of Cleveland citizens who had any defi- nite recollection of the building of that great waterway, which was opened to traffic in 1825. As a small boy he frequently explored the excavation before the water was turned in.

In 1832, at the age of fourteen, Mr. Fish left his old home and started for the West. He traveled the entire distance in a sleigh and at that time there was not a single rail- road in the West and very few miles in the East. Arriving at Auburn in Geauga Coun- ty, he worked on a farm ten years. During that time he largely educated himself by utilizing every spare moment to read and study, and secured a liberal education with little help from schools or higher institutions. It is said that he often walked all the way to Cleveland for the purpose of buying books. At that time what is now Western Reserve University was the leading academic institu- tion at Hudson, Ohio. It was twenty miles from his home, and he walked back and forth every week from Anburn in order to attend classes, and kept up this work until he was graduated.

Mr. Fish lived in Cleveland from 1842. On coming to the city he taught in what was then Cleveland's high school, an old acad- emy occupying the site where later fire engine house No. 1 stood. He taught in the day and occupied his evenings in the study of law in the office of General Dodge at the corner of Bank and St. Clair streets.

Mr. Fish was admitted to the bar in 1845, and at once opened a law office on the south side of Superior Street near South Water Street. Inf 1865 he removed his office to the Johnson Block on South Water Street and kept his office headquarters there until he re- tired from practice about three years before his death.

As a maritime and corporation lawyer he was one of the best in Cleveland forty or fifty years ago, and his services were in great de- mand for many important cases of litigation. During the '60s and '70s Cleveland recog- nized him as its foremost marine attorney. One of the best known of his cases occurred in 1878, at the time of the construction of the Lake Shore Bridge across Sandusky Bay. He won his suit against almost overwhelming odds. He enjoyed close associations and friendship with his leading contemporaries in the law and in the civic life of the city. He was one of Cleveland's old timers, and he was keenly interested in every phase of the growth

of the city which he had witnessed develop from practically a village.

The only offices he ever held came as honor to him very early in his career as a lawyer. In 1846 he was elected township elerk, and in 1847 was elected a justice of the peace for a term of three years. He was an active member of various organizations, including the Cleveland Bar Association.

In 1843, the year after he came to Cleve- land, he married Miss Susan M. Stewart, of a prominent old Cleveland family. After their marriage they first lived on the Public Square, where the store of May Company was later established, and their next home was on Huron Street, where the Empire Theater stands. In 1899 Mr. Fish moved to the cor- ner of Prospect and Cheshire streets, where his wife died in 1901 and where he spent his last days.

Mr. Fish had only one son, Charles W. This son married at Cleveland Angust 1, 1878, Cornelia Pattison. Their only child, Julia C., is a graduate of Miss Andrews School for Girls.

PERRY LYNES HOBBS, PH. D., was a dis- tinguished Cleveland scientist and one of the pioneers of the new profession by which prac- tical application of chemistry to industry and commerce was rendered an indispensable factor in modern life. In this field he ranks as one of the foremost, not only in America, but in the world. He did much to vitalize and raise the standards of the new profession, which has been evolved as a feature of the specializa- tion which has been going on with increasing rapidity in modern economic affairs.

Doctor Hobbs was born on Huntington Street in Cleveland September 10, 1861, a son of Caleb Secum and Ada Antoinette (Lynes) Hobbs. Concerning his father and the paternal ancestry a more detailed account is given elsewhere in this publication. Doctor Hobbs was about nine years of age when his father died. On both sides his people came from New England and had immigrated out of England during the seventeenth century. In the maternal line his great-grandfather, David Lynes, was a soldier in the war of the Revolution and afterwards took part in the Anthony Wayne campaign against the Indians through the Northwest in what is now Olio. In the War of 1812 he served as a sergeant. Doctor Hobbs' maternal grandfather was "Lawyer" Sturges Lynes, who came to Ohio in 1830 and located in that old New England

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A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut, Part 16

Author: Avery, Elroy McKendree, 1844-1935; Lewis Publishing Company Publication date: 1918 Publisher: Chicago, New York The Lewis Publishing Company Number of Pages: 904

Author: Avery, Elroy McKendree, 1844-1935; Lewis Publishing Company
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Chicago, New York The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 904