USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland, (Vol. 3) > Part 21
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In 1872 Mr. Olmsted married Miss Ella Kelley, and they became the parents of one son and one daughter, the latter of whom is deceased.
ISAAC PORTER LAMSON was born in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, September 2, 1832, and for more than forty years he was numbered among the representative figures in manufacturing industry in the City of Cleveland, Ohio, he having been one of the honored and influential citizens of the Ohio metropolis at the time of his death.
Mr. Lamson was reared and educated in his native county, and at the age of eighteen years he entered upon an apprenticeship to the trade of bolt manufacturing. He followed his trade eighteen years and became superintendent of a factory in New England. In 1865 he became asso- ciated with his brother and S. W. Sessions in organizing the Lamson & Sessions Company, at Mount Carmel, Connecticut, and in 1869 the plant was removed to Cleveland, Ohio. In 1884 the business was incorporated, with Mr. Sessions as president of the company and Isaac P. Lamson as its superintendent. This corporation developed one of the large and important industrial enterprises of Cleveland, in the manufacturing of bolts and nuts, and Mr. Lamson continued his association with the business until his death.
Mr. Lamson showed earnest stewardship as a citizen and gave liberal support to charitable and benevolent agencies and objects. He served as president of the Jones Home, was a valued member of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, was a staunch republican, and he served one term as a member of the city council. He was a delegate to two national con- ventions of the republican party.
In 1856 Mr. Lamson married Miss Fannie L. Sessions, and she preceded him to eternal rest, her death having occurred in 1908. The one child of this union is Lillian, wife of John G. Jennings.
GEORGE H. WORTHINGTON was born in Toronto, Canada, February 13, 1850, and there he was reared and educated, his training having included a course in a commercial college. He was thereafter employed in a wholesale grocery establishment, and he next became associated with the business of his father, who was then engaged as a contractor in railroad construction in
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the State of New York. He assumed much of the management of this con- tract business and in the same made a splendid record before he was twenty-one years of age. Upon coming to Ohio he entered the employ of Worthington & Son, a firm composed of his father and an elder brother, and conducting a stone quarry at Brownhelm. He was admitted to the firm a year later, and after the death of his father, in 1873, he and his brother continued the business, which later was carried forward under the title of the Cleveland Stone Company. Mr. Worthington was one of the organizers of the Beeman Chemical Company, and since the same was merged into the great American Chicle Company he has been president of the latter corporation, the world's largest manufacturers of chewing-gum. Mr. Worthington is president of the Union National Bank of Cleveland ; the American Dynalite Company, of Cleveland; the Underwriters Land Company , of Missouri ; the Cleveland Stone Company, the Perry-Mathews- Buskirk Stone Company; and the Bedford Stone Railway Company, of Indiana. He is a director in a number of other important industrial and financial corporations, and is interested in zinc and lead mining in Missouri. He has gained for himself a place among the representative captains of industry in America, and is one of the loyal, progressive and liberal citizens of the Ohio metropolis. He has been honored with the office of commodore of the Cleveland Yacht Club, and is an enthusiastic yachtsman. He is identified with other leading clubs of Cleveland and also with the New York Yacht Club. In the Masonic fraternity he has received the thirty-second degree of the Scottish Rite. In 1878 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Worthington to Mrs. Hannah L. Weaver. Mr. Worthington is a son of the late John Worthington, who became a prominent railroad contractor and had other large business interests, he having erected the Union depot that long gave service to railroads entering Cleveland.
1 EBENEZER HENRY BOURNE was born at Wareham, Massachusetts, October 22, 1840, a scion of a distinguished New England colonial family, and he gained in his native state his youthful education, where his early business experience was in connection with a railroad company. In 1866 he came to Cleveland, and here he organized the Bourne, Damon & Knowles Manufacturing Company, for the manufacture of washers, nuts, etc. The business was incorporated in 1881 as a stock company, under the title of the Bourne & Knowles Manufacturing Company, and of this great industrial corporation Mr. Bourne became the president, as did he also of the Cleveland Spring Company, another important manufacturing concern. He was president of the Union National Bank at the time of his death.
Mr. Bourne became not only one of the prominent men of affairs in Cleveland, but also gained prestige as a liberal and public spirited citizen. He served as city treasurer, was a member of leading clubs and other local organizations of business and social order, he served as president of the National Association of Spring Manufacturers, his political allegiance was given to the republican party, and his religious faith was that of the Unitarian Church.
In 1861 Mr. Bourne wedded Miss Olivia H. Norris, of Hyannis, Massachusetts, and they became the parents of four children. After the death of his first wife he, in 1902, married Miss Lucy Oliver Thatcher, of
HEKuhlman.
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Yarmouth, Massachusetts, and she survived him, his death having occurred April 24, 1908.
WILLIAM EDWARD KUHLMAN passed his entire life in the City of Cleveland and here made for himself a record of successful achievement in connection with business affairs, the while his buoyant and generous nature gained to him a host of friends, he having ever retained lively interest in young folk and having delighted in association with them. His was the spirit of perpetual youth, and among those who sincerely mourned when his gracious life came to its close were the many young friends whom he had "won to him with hoops of steel," even as he had retained the high regard of all others with whom he had come in contact in the varied relations of his earnest and upright life.
Mr. Kuhlman was born in Cleveland on October 22, 1862, and here his death occurred February 7, 1923. He was a son of Frederick and Mary (Goetz) Kuhlman, his father having been born and reared in Germany, and having established his home in Cleveland in the year 1848, the Goetz family having been founded about two years later. Frederick Kuhlman, a skilled cabinet maker, here engaged in the work of his trade, and was a pioneer in establishing a business of this order in Cleveland. He eventually admitted to partnership his son Gustav, and the firm first had headquarters at the corner of St. Clair Avenue, back of his house, running through Oregon Avenue, where the partnership alliance continued a few years. Gustav Kuhlman, an elder brother of the subject of this memoir, finally retired from the firm and became the founder of what is today one of the extensive and important industrial enterprises of the Cleveland metropolitan district, that of the G. Kuhlman Car Company, a corporation that is engaged in the building of street cars on an extensive scale, its cars being in service in many of the leading cities of the Union.
William E. Kuhlman applied himself with characteristic diligence and appreciation to his studies while attending the public schools of Cleveland, and as a youth he served a practical apprenticeship to the cabinet maker's trade, largely under the able supervision of his father. He acquired ex- ceptional technical skill, and this was enhanced by his artistic talent, with the result that he was called upon to prepare the interior wood finishings in many of the finest houses in Cleveland, where are to be found admirable specimens of his handiwork. He finally engaged in business in an independent way, on East Fifty-seventh Street, near Euclid Avenue, and he built up a substantial and representative business, to which he continued to give his supervision until impaired health led him to sell the same, in 1919. Thereafter he lived virtually retired until his death. The in- fluences and associations of his ideal home gave him his maximum satis- faction and pleasure, and his genial and optimistic attributes made him specially worthy of recognition as the generous host of his attractive and hospitable home, where he delighted to entertain his friends of his own, as well as older and younger generations. In this home, at 7319 Dellen- baugh Avenue, his widow still resides, and no children survived him. Mr. Kuhlman was an earnest and zealous communicant of St. Francis Catholic Church, as is also Mrs. Kuhlman.
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February 17, 1886, recorded the marriage of Mr. Kuhlman to Miss Anna L. Schoonard, daughter of John and Elizabeth (Warfel) Schoonard, her father having been reared and educated in Holland and having es- tablished his residence in Cleveland about the year 1851 and living here the remainder of his life, dying July 31, 1923, at the age of eighty-six years, having long survived his wife, who died in 1906, aged sixty-six years. They were both members of the Catholic Church. Mrs. Kuhlman is sustained and comforted by the gracious memories that attach to her home, and by the loyal affection of her wide circle of friends in her native city.
LEANDER McBRIDE, influential in business affairs of broad scope and importance, known for his generous support of charitable and philanthropic work and service, and loyal and liberal as a citizen, was a prominent figure in the City of Cleveland for many years prior to his death, April 20, 1909.
Mr. McBride was born at Lowellville, Ohio, December 18, 1837, a son of Samuel H. and Phoebe (Harris) McBride. After attending West- minster College at Wilmington, Ohio, in which he was graduated at the age of twenty years, Mr. McBride, in 1857, established his residence in Cleveland. Here he found employment in the mercantile establishment of Morgan, Root & Company, and four years later he was admitted to the firm. The business was incorporated in 1894, as the Root & McBride Company, and Mr. McBride became president of the company, which huilt up a very substantial and prosperous business-one of the largest of its kind in Ohio. Mr. McBride likewise became president of the Cleveland Hardware Company, was a director of the Cleveland Telephone Company, was one of the organizers and original directors of the Union National Bank, and was vice president of this institution at the time of his death. He held membership in leading clubs of his home city, for a time held membership in the Cleveland Grays, was a staunch republican, and he served as a member of the first board of alderman of Cleveland. Lakeside Hospital was established largely through his efforts, and he was a trustee of the same, as was he also of the Jones Home and of Calvary Presbyterian Church. His support of charities, benevolencies and philanthropies was ever earnest and liberal, and he lived a righteous and useful life that was guided by the highest of ideals and principles.
In 1863 Mr. McBride wedded Miss Harriet E. Wright, likewise a native of Ohio, and they long were honored figures in the representative social life of the Ohio metropolis.
JAMES BARNETT, banker merchant and gallant soldier and officer in the Civil war, was long an honored and influential citizen of Cleveland, and at the time of his death was a director of the First National Bank; president of the George Worthington Company, one of the most important hardware concerns of Ohio; vice president of the Society for Savings ; president of the Garfield National Memorial Association ; besides having been identified with many other important financial and business corpor- ations. He was for a term of years president of the First National Bank, was formerly a director of the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, and was for a number of years a director of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad. He was consistently termed "the grand old man of
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Cleveland," and this title betokened alike his distinction and his high place in popular esteem.
Gen. James Barnett was born at Cherry Valley, New York, June 20, 1821, and in 1825 his parents established their home in Cleveland, where his father, Melancthon Barnett, who here became a prominent business man, served as a member of the city council and held the office of treasurer of Cuyahoga County, the maiden name of his wife having been Mary Clark. General Barnett was reared and educated in Cleveland, and as a youth he found employment in the hardware establishment of George Worthington. He was eventually admitted to partnership in the business and upon its incorporation, under the title of George Worthington Com- pany, he became president of the company.
As a young man General Barnett was a member in turn of the Cleve- land Grays and the Cleveland Light Artillery, of which latter he was commissioned colonel in 1859. With this command he entered the Union service at the inception of the Civil war, and by the regiment were fired the first artillery shots of the Union forces in the war. He was commis- sioned by Governor Dennison to raise a regiment of light artillery, and of this he was commissioned colonel September 3, 1861. The command became a part of the army of the Ohio, and took part in the battle of Shiloh, the siege of Corinth. General Barnett won consecutive advancement and was finally made chief of artillery in the Army of the Cumberland, besides serv- ing as chief of ordnance. He took part in the battles of Stone's River and Murfreesboro, the engagements of the Chattanooga campaign, and received special commendation, from General Rosecrans, for gallantry and efficiency. He later was assigned to command of the reserve artillery, Army of the Cumberland, and was thus engaged until mustered out, October 20, 1864. He then became a volunteer aide-de-camp to Gen. George H. Thomas, and participated in the battle of Nashville, March 13, 1865, he was brevetted brigadier-general.
General Barnett served as police commissioner, as a director and trustee of the Soldiers & Sailors Orphans Home at Xenia, as a director of the Cleveland Asylum for the Insane and as a member of the city council. He as a delegate to the republican national convention of 1880 and also that of 1900. In 1881 he was made a member of the board of managers of the National Homes for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, and he served until April, 1884. He was affiliated with the Grand Army of the Republic and the Loyal Legion. For many years he was president of the Cleveland Associated Charities and also the Cleveland Humane Society, besides which he was one of the original trustees of the Case Library, a member of the Western Reserve Historical Society, a member of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, to which a portrait of him was presented in 1907, with reference to him as the "first citizen of Cleveland."
In 1845 General Barnett married Miss Maria H. Underhill, and they became the parents of five daughters, three of whom survived him.
HENRY W. KITCHEN, M. D., whose death occurred September 30, 1907, gained place as one of the distinguished physicians and surgeons of Cleveland, was prominent also in local financial circles, and was a citizen who commanded uniform popular confidence and esteem.
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Doctor Kitchen was born in Stark County, Ohio, July 8, 1843, was reared on the home farm and received the advantages of the local schools. In October, 1861, at the age of eighteen years, he enlisted in Company I, Nineteenth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and at the battle of Chicamauga he was wounded and taken prisoner, in September, 1863. He was paroled November 30, 1864, and in January, 1865, he received his honorable discharge. After the war he taught school, attended Oberlin College and the University of Michigan, and in 1870 he was graduated in what is now the medical department of Ohio Wesleyan University, in which institution he thereafter held for twenty years the professorship of anatomy. He became one of the prominent medical practitioners and educators of Ohio, served as president of the Cleveland Board of Health and surgeon of the Cleveland Grays, and in 1882 he was elected clerk of the Court of Common Pleas, an office which he retained two terms. He was made president of the State Banking & Trust Company of Cleveland at the time of its organization, and was for many years active in its management. He served as chairman of the republican committee of Cleveland, was a thirty- second degree Mason, was a member of the Cleveland Chamber of Com- merce and the Union and Colonial clubs, was identified with various professional associations, and was affiliated with the Grand Army of the Republic.
In 1875 Doctor Kitchen married Miss Grace Kingsley, of Cleveland, who survived him, as did also their two sons.
JAMES W. CONGER was long numbered among the substantial citizens and representative business men of Cleveland, and here was president and treasurer of the Auld & Conger Company, manufacturers of and dealers in roofing, slates, grates, mantels and tiles. He continued to be identified with business and civic affairs in Cleveland until the time of his death.
Mr. Conger was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, August 6, 1845, and was seven years of age when he was taken into the home of his maternal grandfather, Archibald Auld, a farmer in Morrow County, Ohio, the father of Mr. Conger having died about one year previously. When the Civil war came, Mr. Conger, at the age of sixteen years, enlisted in 1861, as a member of Company B, Forty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and he continued in active service until the close of the war, with honorable discharge in July, 1865.
After the war Mr. Conger completed a course in a business college at Columbus, Ohio, and in 1867 he was associated in establishing the first steam brick manufactory in the capital city. In 1870 he there formed a partnership with his cousin David Auld, in the general contracting busi- ness, the firm having erected many important buildings and finally having turned attention to une roofing business, in connection with brick manu- facturing at Steubenville. In 1873 the business was removed to Cleveland, and here was developed an industrial and commercial enterprise of great scope, the concern having slate quarries in Pennsylvania and also quarries in Vermont, with precedence as one of the largest of slate-roofing producers in the country. Mr. Conger became also a director of the American Sea Green Slate Company, vice president and treasurer of the Bangor Building Company, and president and treasurer of the Aulcon Building Company
Uviginia D. Green
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He was a trustee of the Cleveland Medical College, was a member of the local chamber of commerce and also the Builders Exchange, was one of the organizers of the Colonial Club, was affiliated with the Masonic fraternity and the Grand Army of the Republic, and was a member of the Presby- terian Church. He was a presidential elector on the Mckinley-Roosevelt ticket, was a stalwart republican, but never sought political office.
In 1869 Mr. Conger wedded Miss Anna M. Higgins, and they became the parents of two sons and one daughter.
MRS. VIRGINIA DARLINGTON GREEN, member of the Cleveland Board of Education and one of Cleveland's most influential woman citizens, was born at Zanesville, Ohio, daughter of the late James and Margaret Eliza- beth (Bowman) Darlington.
The Darlington family is of English stock, the name being derived from the borough of that name in the County of Durham, England, though the first recorded Darlington was John Darlington (1282), who was Arch- bishop of Dublin. The American immigrants of the family were John and Abraham Darlington, sons of Job and Mary Darlington of Darn Hall, about thirty-six miles from Liverpool, England. These brothers came over early in the eighteenth century, one settling in Pennsylvania and the other in Virginia. Mrs. Green is descended from the Virginia settler, John Darlington. Her great-grandfather, Rees Darlington, was born in Vir- ginia and spent his life in that state. His son, Meredith, was born in Frederick County, Virginia, where he married Mary Dostor, and their children were Joseph, Harvey, Evelina and James. Meredith Darlington died in Virginia, and several years later his widow, son James, and the widow's brother came to Ohio and settled in Zanesville.
James Darlington was given as good an education as the times afforded, and at an early age became a coal producer, operating mines of his own in different parts of Southeastern Ohio. At a later date he became owner of and operated a line of steamboats on the Muskingum River between Zanesville and Marietta, occasionally going up the Ohio River to Pitts- burgh. During the Civil war the Federal Government pressed all his boats into war service, mainly on the rivers of the South, the Government permitting him to go with the boats and oversee their management and safety. In that capacity he saw and participated in many of the movements and maneuvers of the navy during the war. At the close of the war his boats were returned to him and he again operated his line between Zanes- ville and Marietta for a number of years, finally retiring from that business. He died in 1886. His widow survived until 1903. She was the daughter of John and Susanna (Border) Bowman, both of whom were of German ancestry. John Bowman was a banker and a successful dealer in real estate of Zanesville, accumulating for his day a fortune.
Mrs. Green was educated at Putnam Female Seminary at Putnam, across the river from Zanesville, but now a part of that city. She graduated with distinction, and soon afterward, accompanied by several of her class- mates, their principal being in charge of the party, went abroad and spent three years in travel and study, principally in the cities of London, Berlin, Paris and Vienna. All this post-graduate work rounded out in brilliant
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form her previous liberal education, fitting her for the career of culture and social progress that has been her destiny.
In 1876, two years after completing her education abroad, she was married to the late Arnold Green, who at that time was serving as clerk of the Ohio State Supreme Court, and had already distinguished himself in the public affairs of Ohio. Arnold Green was born on a farm near Adolphustown, Ontario, Canada, October 16, 1845. His father, John Cameron Green, had been an officer in the English army. Arnold Green's maternal grandfather was Edward Mallory, a stanch patriot of Canada and England, and a member of the United Empire Loyalists, who at the time of the American Revolution emigrated from Connecticut to Canada.
Arnold Green was given an unusually good education in Canada, and coming to Cleveland in 1867, when a young man, took up the study of law in the office of William Heisley, who served for several terms as city solicitor of Cleveland. Passing the required examination, he was ad- mitted to the bar, and from the start showed an unusual interest in all worthy public affairs. In 1874 the democratic party brought him forward as a candidate for the office of clerk of the Supreme Court, and he was elected and served with efficiency for the term of two years. About that time he was appointed a member of the State Board of Examiners for admission to the bar. On leaving his office as clerk of the Supreme Court he resumed his private practice in Cleveland, and devoted more than thirty years to his profession. On November 7, 1906, while trying a case in court, he suffered a stroke of paralysis, and from that time was practically an invalid until his death on June 16, 1909. His ability, as an attorney and his strong personality made him one of the leading lawyers of the Cleveland bar. He served many years as a vestryman of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Protestant Episcopal, and later became a member of Holy Trinity Cathedral, attending to all of its legal affairs without charge. He was a member of the Bar Association, of the Colonial Club, of the Cleve- land Yacht Club and of the Cleveland Whist Club.
Since her marriage Mrs. Green has accepted numerous and important responsibilities in the social and civic affairs of her home city. As the field of service closest to the home, she has made the object of her special study and attention the schools and educational problems in general. In 1912 she was elected a member of the Cleveland Board of Education, and has served it continuously for thirteen years. Some of the distinctive points of her service and influence during that time included her championship of the proposition that the Board of Education ask the voters to authorize a bond issue of $100,000 for school playgrounds, thus committing the board to the present policy of school playgrounds. The school board issue carried, defeating one asked for at the same election by the city. Furthering the aims of the Grade Teachers' Club, the object of which was to increase grade teachers' salaries, and the outcome of which organization is the present Teachers' Federation, was her next object, and while she has been on the school board the teachers' pay in Cleveland has been increased from an average of $850 to $1,500 for the school year. She was mainly instru- mental in 1916 in getting through the Legislature the Bohm bill, granting boards of education throughout the state power to levy a tax of two-tenths of a mill for the use of schoolhouses as community centers. Her official
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