USA > Ohio > Wayne County > Commemorative biographical record of Wayne County, Ohio, containing biographical sketches of prominent and representative citizens, and of many of the early settled families > Part 32
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In professional life we may speak of him in the language of eulogy employed by him on the death of Prof. Delamater, who occu- pied a chair in the medical college with Dr. Firestone:
Ile was no ordinary man. Indeed he was a great man, in possession of learning withont ped- antry, and skill without ostentation. He never was known to harbor hatred or ill-will, had a pleasant smile of approbation and a word of encouragement and hope for every man in the faithful discharge of his duty. He was eminent as a physician, and his lectures were clear, forcible and logical. In conversation he was agreeable, instructive and illu- minating, imparting pleasure and intelligence to all around him. The mementoes of his example are a rich boon to posterity, and, while benevo- lence, philanthropy, social order and religion sur- vive, the virtues of this great and good man will shine in all the majesty of light.
He was not a specialist in any branch of the profession, but in all of its apartments vindicated his title to pre-eminent distinction. In surgery he particularly excelled, and to be an expert in that domain is to approximate the mastery of the profession, as in its several branches are compassed all the other depart- ments of the healing art. In the sick room he seemed to ongender and radiate health, as if he were the possessor of a superabundance of it. Ho was pervaded, if wo may feebly reach out after a receding idea, with the mys terious odie force of the healer, which is above science and beyond experience aud behind theory, and which we call magnetism, or vital. ity, or tact, or inspiration, according to our assimilating power in its presence, or on reverence for its mission.
As a politician he had no full defined or cherished aspirations. He was a member of the Ohio Constitutional Convention of 1850. 51 which assembled at the State Capitol, May 6, 1850, and of which Hon. William Medill was president, W. H. Gill, secretary, and J. V. Smith, reporter. It was composed of 115
WAYNE COUNTY.
officers and delegates, in which there were eight physicians besides himself. In his representative capacity it will be observed that Dr. Firestone aided by his vote and voice in advancing measures which, by legislation, were crystalized into the salutary laws of the State, and under which its citizens have been happy and prosperous for nearly forty years. It was, indeed, no paliry honor to occupy a seat in such a deliberative assembly, pre- sided over by a subsequent governor of the State, and which was composed of the Ran- neys, Groesbecks, Nashes, Kennous. Stan- berrys, Kirkwoods, and Peter Hitchcock, " the father of the Ohio bar, " some of whom became supreme judges of the State, govern- ors, authors in the law, United States Sena- tors and cabinet ministers. During his mem- bership of the convention he participated act- ively in the discussion of questions before it for deliberation. He was a champion of the right of petition, the purity of the ballot, economy in the administration of the affairs of the State, advocating biennial sessions of the Legislature, and antagonizing the increase of salaries of public officials. He signalized his opposition to corporations in a speech, of June 11, which brought him to prominence, and fixed his status before the convention as an extemporaneous debater and orator. He exhibited an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of public affairs and great readi- ness and resources in disputation. A Den- verat, and yet Republican in habits and prin- ciples, depending for the maintenance of his dignity upou the esteem of others, and not upon his own assumption, his manners at. once conciliated the good will of the eouven- tion. When he was elected to this position he was a young man of thirty two summers, the age of Lord Clive when he established the British power in India, and of Hannibal, when at Cannay, hedealt an almost annihilat-
ing blow at the Roman republic. He re- signed his seat before the labors of the con- vention terminated, on account of a pressure of professional work demanding his exclusivo time, when Elzy Wilson, of Ashland County, was chosen his successor.
He kept thoroughly enlightened upon all the issues and matters of political interest before the public, and was a Democrat in his political affiliations. He was one of the best campaign orators in the Democratie organiza- tion in Ohio, and in several State and national conflicts he entered the arena with the avowed Titans of his party. In open assault he could lash his political enemies with a whip of scorpions, or punish them over a prostrate hero, as Marc Antony did Brutus over the dead body of Caesar. He was once a candidate for Congress, and came within a few votes of obtaining the nomina- tion, when Hon. H. H. Johnson was chosen and elected from this distriet.
As a patriot his allegiance to his country is inmutably written upon the record. When the first gun flung its iron challenge at Fort Sumter, as a true American, Dr. Firestone felt the insult. He realized that war was upon us, and with Dr. Holmes believed that "war is the surgery of crime," and that the disease of the nation was not functional but organic, and demanded the knife and not. opiates and lotions. It must not be that the most beneficent of all governments must fall by the basest of all conspiracies. Better, il' it must. that all should be pushed into that ocean whose astonished wases first felt the Mayflower's kiss and keel. There was no middle ground then; the conditions were for or against the Union. To be a neutralist. was to have pointed against you " the stony finger of Dante's awful Muse." Dr. Fire. stone at once declared for the Union, in prompt, eloquent, and ummistaken tones.
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On July 4, 1861, ten weeks after the red lights of war were kindled, he addressed his fellow citizens of Wooster and Wayne Counties, in a thrilling, patriotic and impas- sioned speech, from which we make a brief extract :
Shall the dawn of some future 4th of July find your watch-towers abandoned, your altars overthrown, your banners forsaken, your smil- ing land devastated by a storm of ruin, your peaceful hamlets resounding with the maiden's shriek, your fertile hills and sunny plains scathed by havoc and death, trodden by foreign hirelings, and desolated by internal strife? Look through the world and show me a clime so proudly matured in the days of her youth. Shall the freedom won by the mightiest of nations in the days of her feebleness be lost in the hour of her might? Shall we permit the bright foliage and buds of promise to be stripped from the Tree of Liberty-its blooming beauty in the rich spring of unclouded glory, and the banner of Washington desolated and trampled in the dust! Perish the thought forever!
That glorious banner that has waved in triumph amid the clash of arms and the din of battle, that has inspired the heart of heroes with deeds of noble daring, and been the antidote to danger at the head of charging squadrons, as they rushed with fearless tread to the field of death, must not be descerated. That honored ensign, now the heir- loom of the sons of freedom, consecrated through all coming time as a sacred memento of the dead, that has been baptized in blood, sanctified by the pure light of heaven, and wedded in undying mem- ory with immortal names, illustrious deeds and ennobling recollections of all that trite patriots deemed worthy of life or death, can never be des- cerated by foreign for, nor crushed beneath the heartless tread of a traitor's foot. Its sublime mis- sion, its exalted destiny, is far higher and holier than this, The whirlwinds of war, of pestilence and devastation, may swoop the green earth, spreading destruction and death; proud monuments of grandeur may crumble into dust; but the glorious scintillations of living light and Inster , streaming from the star lit flag, like the countless lights in the constellation of heaven, are destined to shine on and on, illumining our hillsides and valleys, lighting the halls of genins and learning, penetrating the imperious sacketoth of bigotry,
the veil of fanaticism, dissipating corruption, and challenging dissolution or decay.
Let us, the heirs of hallowed birthrights, again renew our pledges here this day, that we will be faithful in the discharge of the duties entrusted to ns. Let us vow that, these stately columns of American liberty, erected by our fathers, shall not be broken by the rash aets of their inconsiderate and ungrateful sons; but that they shall still tower in unparalleled grandenr, raising their heads upward, high above the loftiest summits of the world. Nor shall moss nor ivy outstrip the bilder's hand, till a free, prosperous and patriotic people arise in their omnipotent might, and, amid the shoutings and acclamations of millions, lay the corner-stone of glory and renown.
In 1861 he was chosen Chairman of the Wayne County Military Committee, which was empowered to appoint auxiliaries in the various townships to solicit donations, in cash and articles of food and wearing apparel, for the soldiers. It was authorized, also, to urge and encourage volunteering and report the names of those who desired to enlist in the military service. In this sphere of duty he was active and energetic, and beyond the fulfillment of these functions, he supplied appointments throughout the county and made the most intense and forvid war speeches. At the banquets and romions of the old soldiers he was frequently present, and invariably extended encouragement to such occasions. His Decoration addresses were models of earnest, burning patriotic national devotion. Surely, if eloquence is lodged in the Imman soul, it should be aroused on that day. so prolific ot gallant doods and the memories of immortal heroes. The historian. Alison, relates that the states- men of Athens, when they wished to aronse that fickle people to any great or heroic action, reminded them of the national glory of their ancestors and pointed to the Acropo- lis crowned with the monuments of their valor: and that the Swiss peasants, for live hundred years after the establishment of their
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independence, assembled on the fields of Morgarten and Laupen, and spread garlands over the graves of the fallen warriors, and prayed for the souls of those who had died for their country's freedom.
In 1882, as president of the Decoration ceremonies at the cemetery he said :
It is sorrow's day, and yet our mourning is mingled with some share of gladness in the reflec- - tion that those whom we mourn were the brave, honorable and manly, and fell with their armor on in the faithful discharge of their duty. They sleep, but their deeds remain bright. They have fallen, but left a well-earned fame that will survive, unimpaired, the revolution of time. They com- mingle no more with companions they loved, enjoy no longer the pleasures and sweets of home, yet it is pleasing to know they left an midivided country, a Union preserved, a ting honored, and the consti- tution, as given by the fathers, respected. Among the fallen we recognize those who, as patriots, were fearless and devoted ; as gentlemen, polished and graceful ; as citizens, liberal and generons ; as hus- bands, kind and affectionate ; as lathers, tender and instructive; as Christians, consistent and pious, and as men, honest and brave. Flowers will be ! strewn on the sod beneath which slumbers the sol- dier in gray as well as the soldier in blue. This is in accordance with the promptings of the human heart, and would seem to be Nature's plan. The light of the sun, treasures of the clouds, pearls of the star lit night, evening's zephyr and the fragrance of the flowers are distributed to all, and afford ns lessons of wisdom, not alone on this occasion, but in every day life. As on Horeb, when the tempest, the flame and the earthquake had passed away, : there came a still small voice
That spake of peace, it spake of love, It spake as angels speak above, So here, this still small voice is pleading the cause of man, and that equal rights, under the law of love, sustained by the love of law, shall be the order throughout the federation of the world. When these things shall have been accomplished in spirit and in truth, we may walk about our political Zion, and go around about her, tell the towers thereof, mark well ber bulwarks, consider her palaces.
In the domain of imagination and literary efort, genius had promised him her voice
and the key to her sacred haunts, but in the rush and hurry of life he did not often court her smiles or seek her bower or wait the nat- ntral flowering of her thought. His muse was ready and sat near the Pierian waters. But, perhaps, the silence of the lover when he clasps his maiden is better than the pas- sionate murmur of the song which celebrates her charms. He had the temper which ani- mates the imaginative student and man. His intellect was dextrous, and, while he occa- sionally wrote genuine poetry, he indulged in rhyme like an apt craftsman who in differ- ent directions seeks to test his skill. His poems sort of grew and builded themselves. One of his best poetic ranges is represented in his Decoration poem of 1582, which was pub- lished and widely circulated by the press. It was contemplated at one time to make it the national song of the Grand Army of the Ro- public. It is here subjoined:
Aik :- " Oh, Wrap the Flag Around Me, Boys!" "Ti's sorrow's day, the noisy din Of labor hushed to rest, Ench face portrays the heart within With grief so deeply pressed. We mourn the loss of those we loved. The nolde and the brave -- Our hearts in sadness deeply moved We weep beside the grave.
CHORUS.
Then strew sweet flowers upon the spot Where lie the true and brave Who dared to face the foeman's shot. Our country's flag to save.
In battle's din their shonts were heard Upon the bloody field; From one to one they passed the word " The gray-coat loe nmist yield!" But O, alas! with heaving breast They met their dreadful doom, And now they sleep in peaceful rest Within the quiet tomb.
CHORY's: Then strew, che
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Let evergreens be lightly thrown Upon their last abode,- Fit emblems that the soul lives on, To praise its maker, God. Lot soldiers sleep until the day The trump shall bid them rise; The victory sure, the battle won, Their home is in the skies.
ChoRus: Then strew, etc.
He possessed, in a high degree, all the re- quisites for a successful and popular plat- form lecturer, and in 1560, the Boston Literary Burean requested permission to make appointments for him for the ensning season, which was declined. His intellectual equipments would have served him grandly in such a field. He was familiar with the best thoughts of the best thinkers and writers, and believed that a book was the best anodyne for either suffering or solitude. There is always a pleasure in sympathetic propinquity to the utterances of a great author. Reading his book is but opening his grave, pressing your ear to his coffin and whispering through his dust, to his finer spiritual hearing. We do not see him, yet, through ombattlements of earth and sky and space we know and hear him. We must converse with the dead in the unsealed testa- ment of their thoughts and live among the unreal. Gibbon assorted that he would not exchange his enjoyment of books for the riches of the Indies. Montesquien affirmed there was no annoyance or vexation he could not . fly from in his library. Lessing said that, if the alternatives were offered him by the Creator, to acquire knowledge immediate- ly by intuition, or in his usual way, by laborions study, he would choose the latter, for study is itself a felicity. His readings were extensive and varied. He studied Rembrandt to learn how to enjoy the strng- gles of light and darkness; Wagner to appre-
ciate certain musical effects; Dickens to give a whirl to his sentimentality: Mark Twain to flavor his humor: Emerson to kindle new light within; Edwards to catch glances of the spiritual world, and Chalmers and Hodge that he might touch the chain that led on to the hiding places of the soul. His public addresses. lectures and magazine publica- tions if collected would make several volumes. At the dedication of Areadome Hall, Docem- ber 18, 1557 (destroyed by fire March 23, 1874). he responded to the toast: "Onr orator-whether at driving out a fever with jalap, or a fit of the blues with a joke, tuning up a bass fiddle or a broken consti- intion, he is always equal to the emergency, and like a irne flint (as his Dutch name indicates), strikes fire every time the steel touches him." In this hall, January 12, 1858, he delivered one of his most scholarly and scientific lectures on the completion of the laying of the Atlantic cable, entitled " The Marriage of the Old and New World." The parties were living on the two sides of an ocean, and were married by extending their hands across it, and the telegraphie cable was the wedding tie. The lecture was thoroughly scientific, and its treatment of electricity, the method of its generation by friction and chemical action, and the ma- chinery constructed to develop and intensify the subtle agency, the galvanic battery, and the researches of Le Sage in 1771. to the triumphs of Morso in ISU, was Incid, elaborate and instructive. Among all of his publie platform performances none were more popular or evinced a profounder thought, or a keener analysis of propositions and subject matter, or gave him a wider reputation, than his disquisition upon the Reciprocal Inthu- ence of Mind and Body. He had in contem- plation and partially completed for publica. tion, a work on Anatomy, Physiology and
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Hygiene, to be used as a text book in col- leges and schools.
He became & Fier Maron, at Hani-ville Lodge, Medina County, Ohio, in 1848, and was worshipful master of Ebenezer Lodge, Wooster. for eleven years. He was grand seribe of the Grand Chapter in 1860-61, and high priest of Wooster Chapter for fifteen years, and hold the office until his death. In 1862 he was grand king of the Grand Chap- ter of Royal Arch Masons. He was a mem- ber of Massillon Connnandery, No. 4, Knights Templar, for a member of years. At the lay- ing of the corner stone of Wooster City Court House, October 9, 1878, which was con- dneted with high ceremony by the Ancient order, he delivered the address. It was a masterly effort, opulent in its reprodnetions of the traditions and antiquities of the Ancient order, and, withal, diffused with the soundest patriotism and the keenest intelli- gence upon the legal science and the masims of jurisprudence.
He was a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows; the Independent Order of Red Men; of the Knights of Pyth. ias, Rising Star Lodge, and holding its highest office, that of Chancellor of the State; of the Royal Arcanum, and was supervising medical examiner of Ohio for six years, aud died maintaining that position. Dr. Joel Seaverns, medical examiner-in-chief, Rox- bury Mass .. in a letter referring to his death, wrote:
The Doctor was active, earnest and faithful in his duties as supervising examiner, and thoroughly careful and serapulous in seeing that instructions were complied with. His correspondence with me had always been brief but to the point, and I had learned to regard his opinions as conservative and valuable. It will be hard. I think, for us to select a successor as well qualified and as faithful as he had been.
He permanently settled in Wooster in 1856,
where he lived and which was his home until November 9, 1955. He was above the medium height, weighing over 200 pounds, with full projecting brows and sharp ponetrat- ing eyes. The expression of his countenance, in rest, was grave, but its serious cast was often relieved by a peculiarly pleasant smile, indicative of the geniality of his disposition. His face was plaiuly illustrative of the buoy- ancy and vivacity of his mind. He did not think the best way to become old was to let the heart grow gray. To the writer he said a few months before he died: " Yes, I am ap- proaching seventy; the fight is on. I am over the hill top and hurrying down the slope to the river." As he passed en the thought of the poem he so much loved flashed upon me, and I quote its first stanza:
Not yet, my soul, these friendly fields desert. Where thou with grass, and rivers and the breeze, And the bright face of day, thy dalliance had; Where to thine ear first sang th' enraptured birds; Where love and thon that lasting hargain made. The ship rides trimmed, and from the eternal shore, Thon hearest airy voices; but not yet, Depart my soul, not yet awhile depart.
The consciousness seemed upon him then that there were but a few remaining bars of rest between the strains of his remaining life. On matters of religion and the ultimate ex- istence, he gave the evidence of his utmost belief and faith in Christianity, a Savior, a Resurrection and a God of Redemption; and this was emphatically coulirmed for many years, hy his visible union with the church. Many of his reflections, reverently indulged, on matters pertaining to the soul, its infinito possibilities and eternal destiny, are remem. bered, and many were unexpressed, which neither takes from nor adds to the abysmal depth of the mystery which surrounds ns all.
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WLINE COUNTY.
Who made the heart 'tis He alone Deenledly can try us; He knows each chord, its various tone, Each string, its various bias;
and it is within the sphere of the Christian gentleman to believe that he had suffered the inner martyrdom and preparation for death.
D L. KIEFFER, ESQ., is the second child and eldest son of Adam Kief- for, and was born May 12, 1529, in Greene Township, Wayne Co., Ohio. His infancy was one of marked peculiarity, there being, perhaps, no one born in the ! county under a more hopeless condition than he. At his birth his weight was not quite one and a half pounds, and he scarcely filled a quart measure. He was came a noted master of the profession, pronounced devoid of vitality, but, to sat- isfy her curiosity, an old lady in attend- ! ance pressed the point of a needle into his forehead, and he made a sudden jerk with his arms, which was the first sign of life made visible. It is said of Fohi, the founder of the Empire of China, that at the moment of his birth he stood ereet and then walked across the room; but not so with 'Squire Kieffer; it took over two years before he was able to walk. When about six years old he began to grow rapidly, and when his sixteenth year was finished his height was six feet, two inches, in his stockings: his matured height is
six feet, four and one half inches, and his average weight about 200 pounds. He is a man of extraordinary talent, from youth showing an ardent desire for mental im- provement; but, under strict parental re- straiut, the greater part of his minority passed away without education. After- ward he attended the academy at Canaan under Prof. Notestein, select school in Seville under Prof. Foster, and college at Edinburgh under Prof. Hill. His design in life was to be a man of letters, but feeling unable to endure the constant bit- ter opposition of all his inmediato rela- tives, among whom he wished to live in peace, he took up the art of building. After acquiring a thorough knowledge of architecture and civil engineering, he be- which he followed for about thirty years; and much is due him for the discovering, inventing and adding new and useful features to the art. D. L. Kieffer is the first one of the numerous descendants of his great-grandfather, Michael Kieffer, who saw and appreciated the propriety of education. He felt That a kind Providence had given him his talents and bade him to improve them. Stimulated under theso impulsions, in the fallof 1816 he embarked for the " Canaan School." He was the first one to engage (as it was then looked upon ) in the degenerating enterprise. It was thought that sloth and corruption
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prompted him to resort to this perversion of principle. Suspicion marked him as a rascal of the lowest grade. But, how- ever, rectitude has won him, and he is a man of freedom from any moral obliquity. He believes in helping to bear the burdens of one another. This he cannot refuse, and with a heart overtlowing with merci- ful kindness, he helped and endorsed, even for his bitterest enemies, until they reduced him to poverty, and now utterly despise him for being in want. For ten years, during the winter season, he fol- lowed school-teaching in Milton, Greene, Wayne and Canaan Townships, in Wayne County, Ohio. In the summer of 1854 he was married to Miss Rebecca Spang- ler, a native of Wayne Township, and a daughter of Peter Spangler, Sr. Her grandfather's name was Yost, that of her great-grandfather was Peter, and that of the father of her great-grandfather was Casper, the latter of whom cmmar from Palatinato, upon the Rhine, and. with a crew of 109, sailed on the ship . William and Sarah." under captainey of William Will. They landed in Philadelphia Sep- 21, 1727, and on the same day attended a meeting of what was called " The Board of the Provincial Conneil," at the old court-house in Philadelphia, and took the oath of allegianee as a colony in the province of Pennsylvania, then subject to the crown of Great Britain, to the maj-
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