A standard history of Fulton County, Ohio, an authentic narrative of the past, with an extended survey of modern developments in the progress of town and county, Vol. II, Part 36

Author: Reighard, Frank H., 1867-
Publication date: 1920
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 628


USA > Ohio > Fulton County > A standard history of Fulton County, Ohio, an authentic narrative of the past, with an extended survey of modern developments in the progress of town and county, Vol. II > Part 36


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Following his marriage William B. Pontious rented land in different sections for twenty years, and then he bought fifty acres in section 7, York Township, on which there was standing an old log house and several outbuildings as the sole improvements. Since purchasing the place Mr. Pontious has made some very valuable improvements, having at present a modern residence, barn and other structures; his fields are well fenced and his land thoroughly drained. He has always been a general farmer, stockraiser and dairy- man, and is carrying on these industries with marked success.


Having attended the little cross roads schoolhouse during his childhood and youth, Mr. Pontious has felt that the children of the present generation ought to be given better advantages than were accorded those of his day, and has supported measures looking to


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the improvement of the public schools in his county. He has been very active in the Evangelical Church in his neighborhood, serving it as a member of the choir and as superintendent of the Sunday school at different times. From the time he cast his first vote Mr. Pontious has been a republican, and is still a strong supporter of its principles and proud of its history. Both he and Mrs. Pontious are very highly respected and looked up to in their neighborhood, and their influence has always been cast in favor of those measures whichi have had for their object the general betterment of the moral standard and advancement of the people.


AMOS HARMON. The late Amos Harmon is commemorated in the Fulton County History by Mrs. Lucelia Tedrow Harmon of Delta. Mr. Harmon was born September 2, 1850, in Holmes county, and he died June 21, 1901, at the family homestead in Pike Town- ship. He was a son of Samuel and Catharine Harmon, natives of Holmes county. However, they became early settlers in Pike Town- ship, Fulton county.


Samuel Harmon died, and Catharine Harmon was afterward married to David Fve, and they moved to Toledo. Amos Harmon married May 6, 1876, Lucelia Tedrow, of York Township. She was born January 22, 1854, daughter of John and Mary (Coffman) Tedrow. They were also from Holmes county, and were early set- tlers in Fulton county.


Mr. and Mrs. Harmon took up their residence on the Harmon farm in Pike Township, and in time they became owners of part of it. They remained there as long as he lived, and in 1907 Mrs. Har- mon purchased an acre of ground on the north edge of Delta. Orla Clarence, the oldest child, died in infancy. Marion Le Roy, of Delta, married Flossie Donald. Their two sons are Donald and James. Alta is the wife of Charles Mack. She has an adopted daughter, Margie Lucile. Arthur Daniel Harmon had his mili- tary training at Camp Taylor. He lives with his mother in Delta.


While his life was comparatively brief as measured by his span of years, the late Amos Harmon accomplished most of those things that are properly found in a career of greater length. He lived in- dustriously and honorably, by hard effort earned a competence, and provided well for his family, so that his children and descendants and his many friends can hold his memory in high esteem.


JOHN A. WILKINS, M. D., well-regarded physician of Delta, Ohio, who for more than forty-five years has been in successful pro- fessional practice in that section of Fulton county, has a life record which is well worthy of good place in this edition of Fulton County History. He holds the baccalaureate degree of Denison University, and the medical degree of Starling Medical College; he enlisted as private, very soon after the outbreak of Civil war in 1861, was in many battles, was injured, and finally, in September, 1865, was discharged with the rank of staff colonel; he has been surgeon- general of the Grand Army of the Republic; he has been a state senator ; and his place among his professional confreres is clearely in- dicated by his election to the office of president of the Ohio State Medical Society, and also the Northwestern Ohio Medical Society.


Dr. John A. Wilkins was born in Licking county, Ohio, on May 1, 1844, the son of Archibald and Mary (Robinson) Wilkins, and is of Scottish origin, in the paternal line, and of Irish antecedents, in the maternal line, his father having been born in Scotland, and


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his mother in Ireland. Archibald Wilkins and Mary Robinson inarried in Ireland, and soon afterwards came to America, being of record in Licking county, Ohio, in about, 1840. Archibald Wil- kins was a weaver when he lived in Scotland, but after having emi- grated he took up the customary occupations of the pioneer, clearing much land, and eventually owning a well improved and rich agri- cultural property in Licking county, Ohio, where he died in 1864. His wife, however, lived a widowhood of more than forty years, at- taining the remarkable age of one hundred and seven years, and, more remarkable still, retaining her faculties comparatively lucid and unimpaired until the last years of her life. Mary (Robinson) Wilkins was born on September 29, 1799, and died in 1906, at Remington, Indiana.


John A. Wilkins, son of Archibald and Mary (Robinson) Wil- kins, was educated in the public schools of Licking county, Ohio, and eventually entered Denison University, Granville, of Licking county. He was only sixteen years old when the Civil war began, and he immediately cast all else aside, enlisting as a private in Company B, of the Seventeenth Regiment of Ohio Volunteer In- fantry, on April 24, 1861, re-enlisting on December 6, 1861, in Company H, of the Seventy-eighth Ohio Volunteer Infantry. One interesting incident of his early military experience was when he was detailed, as a sergeant, to arrest several men who had failed to answer the call to military service. He promptly effected their ar- rest, and apparently so expeditiously executed his orders that he was cited in company orders and given a written testimonial by his cap- tain. Young Wilkins saw much of the major fighting with his regi- ment, and was a member of the staffs of Generals Woods and Oster- haus, during the four years of the war; he served under General Woods in Tennessee in 1862 and 1863; was under General Oster- haus in Arkansas in the winter of 1862; and ultimately took part in General Sherman's southern campaign. Among the major battles in which he participated were: the battle of Shiloh, or as it is some- times called, of Pittsburg Landing, in Tennessee, April 6-7, 1862, when the Union Army under Generals Sherman and Prentiss had to withstand the sudden attack of almost twice their number of Confederate forces under General Johnston, the two days of battle resulting in the discomfiture and retreat of the Confederate Army, but at a loss to the Union forces of more than twelve thousand men, out of 45,000 engaged; in the fighting before Fort Donelson, on the Tennessee River, where Grant's now famous reply to the be- sieged Confederate general, who offered to capitulate on terms: "No terms other than unconditional surrender can be accepted. I pro- pose to move immediately upon your works" eventually caused Gen. U. S. Grant to be called "Unconditional Surrender Grant"; the cap- ture of Arkansas Post, January 11, 1863; the siege of Corinth, Mis- sissippi, and the subsequent attempt of the Confederates to capture the place on October 3, 1863; the six weeks' siege of Vicksburg, which was terminated by a complete surrender of the Confederate garrison on the same day that crowned the equally memorable and hard- fought three days' battle of Gettysburg; battle of Chickamauga, September 19-20, 1863, when the Army of the Cumberland, under General Rosecrans, sustained such losses, almost sixteen thousand out of 45,000 engaged, that General Rosecrans was relieved and General Grant placed in command; and several other less important engagements. Wilkins passed through all the fighting without se-


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rious hurt, excepting once, when his horse was shot under him, in a skirmish near Kenesaw, and in falling badly crushed his left leg. At that time, he held the rank of first sergeant, and was on staff duty, but when he was eventually discharged, in September, 1865, he had attained the rank of staff coloncl. The war record of Doctor Wilkins was therefore notable and noteworthy.


His father had died a year or so prior to his discharge from the military forces, so that as soon as he was released from service, Colonel Wilkins returned home, and, with what moncy he had, clearcd the mortgage that still remained on his mother's farm, in Licking county, Ohio. Leaving her thus released from worry, he took employment with the Pan Handle Railroad Company, resolv- ing to work thus so long as was necessary to give him the money wherewith to complete his education, and take a course in medicine. He was evidently a man of much steadiness of purpose, and his record shows that he graduated from Denison University in 1867, and from Starling Medical College, Columbus, Ohio, in 1873. What his financial struggles were between 1865 and 1873, when he had reached the full consummation of his aim and had graduated as a Doctor of Medicine, only he knows to the full, but it may be inferred that at many times during the period he was so circumstanced that only by the exercise of strong determination could he continue to pursue his studies. However he reached the day when he had gained the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and had the right to practice that profession. Soon afterwards, he came to Delta, Fulton county, Ohio, and there set up in practice; and there he has since continued to practice, the long period of such service to the people of Fulton county bringing him enviable professional repute. Among pro- fessional inen, he is widely known throughout the state, and has been honored by them by election to the presidency of the Ohio State Medical Society. He has also held like capacity in the North- western Ohio Medical Society.


He has been prominently identified with the functioning of the Grand Army of the Republic, and has held high office in that or- ganization of veterans, having been elected surgeon-general, at Chi- cago, on August 30, 1900, and re-elected at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1901.


Throughout his life he has been a staunch democrat, and at one time, before his professional practice became so extensive as to re- quire almost his whole time, he took a leading part in political movements in his county. For two terms he sat in the state senate, having been elected state senator in 1879. As such, he served in the senate for two years under Governor Bushnell, and a like period under Governor Nash.


Fraternally, Doctor Wilkins belongs to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and to Masonic bodies. He has been an Odd Fellow since 1864, has been through all the chairs of the branch with which he is affiliated, and he belongs to the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, of Delta, to a Toledo commandry, and has been a member of the local consistory of Masons since 1882. At one time he was coroner of Fulton county.


In May, 1873, Doctor Wilkins married Ruth Rebecca Shull, a native of Licking county, Ohio, and a posthumous child, her father having been killed before her birth. Doctor and Mrs. Wilkins have therefore almost reached the year in which they may celebrate their golden wedding. They have two children: Archie M., who has


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his medical degree, and is in practice with his father in Delta, Ohio; George B., who is in Toledo, Ohio.


ARCHIBALD M. WILKINS, M. D., a graduate in medicine of the Toledo Medical College, 1898, and a graduate also of special courses at the New York Post Graduate Medical College and Hospital, the largest post-graduate medical school in the world, has been in gen- eral practice in Delta, Fulton county, Ohio, since 1905, and has had several other professional associations of consequence during his active medical career. He has served as an army surgeon during three campaigns-Spanish-American, 1898-99, the Philippine, 1901- 5, and the French campaign, 1917-19, ten months of hard service in France gaining him promotion to the military rank of major. He has been medical examiner in Fulton county; for the Industrial Commission of the State of Ohio; and was elected coroner of the county. So that the last two decades of his life have been well filled.


He is a native of Delta, Fulton county, born in that place on June 29, 1874, the son of Dr. John A. Wilkins, a prominent physi- cian of Delta, and a Civil war veteran of worthy record. His life work has been the subject of a special article written for this edi- tion of Fulton County History, and further reference is therefore not here necessary. Major Archibald M. Wilkins grew to manhood in Delta, attended the elementary and high schools of the place, and, having resolved to also take up the same profession as that his father followed, eventually became a student at the Toledo Medical College, from which in 1898 he was graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. After graduation he was in private practice with his father in Delta for a while, and served an interneship in a United States Army hospital, in 1901 going to the Philippines as a contract surgeon of the United States Army. Upon his return he applied himself to special post-graduate research in some branches of medical science, going for the purpose to what is probably the best post-graduate school in the country, the New York Post-Gradaute School and Hospital, the pioneer post-graduate medical school in the world, and the largest, its faculty and corps of assistant and adjunct professors and instructors consisting of more than three hundred of the most eminent medical specialists in the country. Eventually, in 1905, Doctor Wilkins settled to steady general practice in his home town, Delta, gradually becoming properly established in exten- sive practice throughout the section of the county, and as time went on forming various outside professional connections. He served as medical examiner for Fulton county on the Industrial Commis- sion for the State of Ohio in 1913, and in 1914 was elected coroner of Fulton county, being re-elected in 1916. His medical service in the United States Army during the Philippine campaign, following the Spanish-American war, developed in him an interest in mili- tary matters, and in 1911 he accepted a commission as first lieu- tenant in the Medical Reserve Corps of the United States Army, and in June, 1917, following the declaration of a state of war with Ger- many, he was called to active service. In November following he was promoted to the grade of captain, and between that date and February 17, 1919, when he was promoted major, he saw very in- teresting and strenuous service on the French front. He received honorable discharge in March, 1919, and soon afterward returned to Delta and resumed his private practice. On January 20, 1920, he was commissioned major of the Medical Reserve Corps, United States Army.


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Politically Doctor Wilkins is a democrat. He is a Mason and belongs to other fraternal organizations, including the Knights of Pythias, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and the Mod- ern Woodmen of America.


He was married on October 23, 1900, to Bertha E. Morris, and they have had three children, although only one is now living. Robert Archibald, who was born on October 30, 1907.


ROBERT BLAINE, who for more than twenty years was a resident of Delta, Fulton county, Ohio, and to whom death came in that town on January 19, 1918, came of a family which is placed among the pioneer families of Amboy Township, Fulton county, and which has a notable record of national service during the Civil war, Robert Blaine and his four brothers all having served in the Union Army. Robert Blaine himself also should be classed among the pioneers of the county, for during his active lifetime, which with the exception of his years of war service was spent almost wholly in Fulton county, he cleared a large acreage of wild land, converting the unproduc- tive wilderness into tillable agricultural land. It is by such pioneer- ing efforts as that of Robert Blaine that Fulton county became the productive agricultural district it is; and it was by such whole- hearted personal service as that of Robert Blaine and his four brothers that the cause of the Union and of the southern slave ulti- mately triumphed in the severe and prolonged Civil war.


Robert Blaine was born in Amboy Township, Fulton county, Ohio, August 7, 1837, the son of Charles and Rachel (Bertholf) Blaine. The Blaine family was in colonial days resident in New York state, and Charles Blaine and his wife were both born in that state, although it appears that soon after marriage they settled on wild land in Amboy Township, Fulton county, Ohio, in which township all their children were born, including the five sons whose patriotic war service brought to the family such an enviable record. Charles and Rachel (Bertholf) Blaine were the parents of nine chil- dren, five sons and four daughters, five of whom are still living. The surviving children are: Charles, who lives in Amboy Township; James, now of Wichita, Kansas; Marion, of Toledo, Ohio; Elmina, who married William Driscoll, of Amboy Township; and Emily, who married Thomas Stedman, of Amboy Township, and lives in the old Blaine homestead in that township.


Robert Blaine, born and reared in Amboy Township, attended the district school nearest to his father's farm, although the school term in those days was short, the vacation extending through prac- tically the whole of the growing season, during which Robert as a boy did much agricultural work. When he finally left school he took good part with his brothers in the work of the home farm, which was for the most part timber land. He married when he was twenty-one years old, and after taking this step he also began to farm independently, but the farm to which he took his wife was at that time all wild timber land, with just sufficient cleared space to permit of the erection of a log cabin. The early married life of Robert Blaine and his wife was passed under the rigorous conditions of the pioneer. But he was a sturdy pioneer, and during the next few years cleared quite a satisfactory acreage of his farm. He had been married four years when a momentous question came to them for decision. They decided, and the outcome was the enlistment of the husband as a soldier in the Union Army for the term of the Civil war. Some of his brothers had already gone into the service,


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and all had decided to enlist. Robert enlisted in the spring of 1863, in Company I of the Forty-seventh Ohio Volunteer Infantry, which became a part of the Army of the Cumberland, and as such took part in the southern campaign of General Sherman, including Sher- man's famous march through Georgia to the sea. Robert Blaine served until after the termination of hostilities in 1865, and having received honorable discharge he returned soon afterward to his na- tive county and township and again took up the task of clearing his eighty acre farm. This eventually he accomplished, with forty acres additional, so that lie ultimately possessed a fine tract of till- able soil, upon which he and his family lived until 1894, when he had reached a state of material wealth to enable him to retire from agricultural work. He rented his farm to another, and went with his wife into Delta, building a fine home in the village, and there residing in comfortable circumstances until his death, January 19, 1918. The expressions of sympathy. his widow received at that time clearly indicated the respect in which her husband was held in the village of Delta, and in their native township. Mr. Blaine lived a worthy, helpful and unselfish life. He took good part in the public responsibilities of the township, serving for twelve years as justice of the peace, two years as assessor, and at one time was township trustee and a member of the School Board. Politically Mr. Blaine was a republican, and at one time was a factor of some consequence in political movements in Amboy Township. He belonged to the Delta Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, and was an active Mason, belonging to the Delta Blue Lodge and Chapter. Religiously he was a Methodist, a member of the local churches and an active church worker in his younger days. In fact, when he lived in Am- boy Township he always served as steward of his church.


Robert Blaine married on July 4, 1859, Laura M. Robb, who had been born in Medina, Ohio, but had lived in Amboy Township for about four years with her parents before she and Robert Blaine married. Her parents were Nathaniel and Calista (Parent) Robb, the former a native of New Hampshire and her mother of Ithaca, New York. Her parents had married in New York state, but had early come into Medina county, Ohio, of which county they are among the pioneers, and in 1855 moved into Amboy Township of Fulton county, where they lived for the remainder of their lives. Robert and Laura M. (Robb) Blaine lived a praiseworthy married life to within eighteen months of fifty years. Mrs. Blaine still lives in Delta, where she has many sincere friends. She is in compara- tively good health, is comfortably circumstanced, and has the solici- tude of many true friends. She owns sixty acres of her late hus- band's farm in Amboy Township, which property is in the hands of a reliable tenant. Robert and Laura M. (Robb) Blaine were the parents of two children: Viola, who is the widow of William Carter, who for the greater part of his life was a resident in Delta, where his widow still lives, near her mother; and Ella, who married Frank Penny, of Metamora, Fulton county.


GEORGE WASHINGTON CUPP, whose death occurred September 18, 1919, at his home in Delta, had an experience as varied as comes to most men who were born as long ago as February 4, 1835, he having lived many years before the time of greatest material develop- ment and through the thickest of the changes in modern civiliza- tion. He was a son of Philip and Elizabeth (Messmore) Cupp, the father an Ohio man and the mother a West Virginia woman.


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Mr. Cupp lived fifteen years in the first half of the nineteenth cen- tury. In his time he lived at different places in Ohio.


While the Cupp family first settled in Fairfield they soon moved to Wood county in 1840, where Philip Cupp bought forty acres in timber and cleared it. In his young manhood G. W. Cupp became a substitute Civil war soldier in Company F, Sixty-fourth Ohio Vol- unteer Infantry, and in the fall of 1863 he went on a foraging ex- pedition through Kentucky. While on a march from Hillsboro, Tennessee, his regiment was sent to Bowling Green, Kentucky, on account of the condition of the roads, and July 8, 1864, his time of service expired and he was discharged from the army. He had been nine months in the service.


Mr. Cupp returned to his little farm in Wood county, but after one year as a farmer he engaged in a grocery business for two years in Jerry City. He then sold his land and business and came to Swan Creek in Fulton county. He bought sixty acres of cleared land and lived on it twelve years before he came to Delta. Aside from one year in Wauseon, Mr. Cupp continued his home in Delta.


On September 4, 1859, Mr. Cupp married Hannah Baird. She. is a daughter of Ira and Rebecca Baird and lived in Wood county. Their children are as follows: Willametta Clara, who died at the age of thirteen years; Rebecca Viola; Willis Irving, who lives at Prairie Depot, Wood county, Ohio; Ulysses S. lives in Wood county; Ora died at the age of four years; and Lydia died in Bowling Green, Ohio, in 1919.


Mrs. Hannah (Baird) Cupp died October 2, 1874, and Mr. Cupp married Elizabeth Wimer, of Wood county. She was a daughter of Moses Wimer. They had two children: Bert, of Sygnet, Wood county, and Harrict, who died at the age of twenty-one years. Mrs. Elizabeth (Wimer) Cupp died October 15, 1895, and Mr. Cupp married Mrs. Leah Tefft, a widow with four sons and three daughters. When Mrs. Leah (Tefft) Cupp died Mr. Cupp married Mrs. Sarah Alice Clark, a widow with three children. With his own children and the step-children Mr. Cupp was the head of a large family in Fulton county. He is survived by Mrs. Cupp and five of his children.


His school days dated back to primitive conditons-the log school house with greased paper windows. He voted with the republican party. He was a member of the Church of God, and of McQuillan Post, Grand Army of the Republic, No. 171 in Delta. He served as post-commander, and was among the oldest members.


STEPHEN EDGAR HINKLE. While the immediate ancestry of Stephen Edgar Hinkle of Royalton came from York state, they were early settlers in Fulton county. Mr. Hinkle was born in Royalton April 10, 1853, a son of Ephraim and Susan (Houghton) Hinkle, the father from Cayuga and the mother from Rensselaer county, New York. The grandparents, John and Mercy (Reed) Hinkle, had come early to Fulton county. Stephen and Hulda (Smith) Houghton, in the maternal ancestry, had removed from New York to the site of Toledo, and lived there many years before there was a city.




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