USA > Ohio > Greene County > History of Greene County, Ohio: its people, industries and institutions, Volume II > Part 26
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vacancy in the representation from his ward and in 1915 was elected to suc- ceed himself in that office, holding that position until his resignation on April I, 1917, to accept the position of clerk to the deputy state supervisor of elec- tions for this county, which latter position he resigned upon entering upon his duties as city auditor.
On October 16, 1906, at Xenia, Roy C. Hayward was united in mar- riage to Harriet P. Conklin, daughter of H. H. Conklin and wife, who are the parents of five children, Mrs. Hayward having a brother, Clyde Conklin, and three sisters, Cora, Laura and Hannah. Mr. and Mrs. Hayward are members of Trinity Methodist Episcopal church. To them four children have been born, Jane, Cora (deceased) and Dora, twins, and Mary. Mr. Hayward is a Royal Arch Mason, affiliated with Xenia Lodge No. 49, Free and Accepted Masons; with the local chapter, No. 36, Royal Arch Masons, and with the local council, Royal. and Select Masters.
HOWARD APPLEGATE.
Howard Applegate, former sheriff of Greene county and for years en- gaged in the mercantile business at Yellow Springs, was born in the vicinity of that village and has lived there and in that neighborhood all his life, with the exception of the period spent in the official service of the county. He is the youngest of the nine children, three sons and six daughters, born to his parents. Elias and Ann M. (DeHart) Applegate, both of whom were born in the vicinity of the city of New Brunswick, New Jersey, the former in 1805 and the latter, in 1811, who were married in 1831. Three years later, in 1834, with their baby boy, William, they drove through in a covered wagon with their small household belongings to Ohio and settled in the woods just west of where the village of Yellow Springs came to be established, where and in the vicinity of which place they spent the remainder of their lives.
Upon effecting his settlement in this county, Elias Applegate cleared a small plot of ground on the land he had secured and in that clearing erected a log cabin, which was the family home until in due time a better house could be erected. Elias Applegate lived to be eighty years of age and his widow lived to the extraordinary age of ninety-five years and six months. As noted above, Elias Applegate and wife had one child when they drove through to this county, their first-born, William. Eight others were born in Greene county, Catherine, Sarah E., Mary, Julia, Johnson, Margaret A., Hannah M. and Howard, all of whom lived to maturity save Johnson, who died in in- fancy, and all these who lived married and had comfortable homes of their own. Five members of this family are still living, those besides Howard, the youngest, being Mrs. S. E. Kinney, now past eighty years of age and hale
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and hearty; Mrs. Mary Olentine, seventy-seven ; Mrs. Margret Sizer and Mrs. Hannah M. Bailey, and all of these save Mrs. Olentine live in Yellow Springs.
Howard Applegate was reared on the farm, as a boy receiving a very practical training in the way of farming, but later became employed as a clerk in a general store at Yellow Springs and thus was turned toward commercial pursuits, which he has followed the most of his life. From 1906 to 1910 he served as sheriff of Greene county and upon his retirement from the sheriff's office became engaged in the hardware business at Yellow Springs.
WILLIAM WALLACE CARR.
William Wallace Carr, founder of Carr's Nurseries at Yellow Springs, now operated under the firm name of M. L. Carr's Sons, was born at Carr's Mills (now Bookwalter), in the neighboring county of Fayette and has lived in Yellow Springs since 1857. He was born on June 5, 1843, a son of William and Sophronia (Thomas) Carr, the latter of whom was the young- est daughter of the Rev. Joseph Thomas, formerly and for years affectionately known throughout Ohio as "the White Pilgrim," a loving title he recevied because he usually dressed in white both winter and summer, in emulation, as he believed, of the apostolic examples.
The Rev. Joseph Thomas was a man of large influence throughout this section of Ohio in his day and generation and left a memory for good deeds that persists to this day and is an imperishable part of the annals of Ohio. He is described as having been about six feet in height, of dark complexion, straight, athletic and ruggedly healthy. Sophronia Thomas was twice mar- ried and by her first husband, William Baker, had one child, a daughter, Mary, who became the wife of J. H. Little, of Yellow Springs. By her mar- riage to William Carr she was the mother of two sons, the subject of 1 biographical sketch having a brother, Thadeus P. Carr, who was born on February II, 1850, was graduated in 1871 from Antioch College and on November 5, 1873, was united in marriage to Elizabeth B. Botsford, of Yellow Springs. During the active years of his life he was a piano tuner, making his residence in Yellow Springs, from which point he traveled far and wide following his vocation. To him and his wife were born three children, Hugh, Henrietta B. and William B. (deceased). William Carr also was born in the neighboring county of Fayette and was one of the con- siderable number of children born to his parents and all of whom grew to maturity and reared families of their own, the Carr connection through- out this part of Ohio thus being a numerous one in this generation. The parents of these children were Virginians who had come over here and had settled in Fayette county in the early days of the settlement of the present
It. I. Cars
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Bookwalter neighborhood, long known as Carrs' Mills. William Carr was a farmer and landowner and proprietor of a saw and grist mill, which gave the name of Carrs Mill to the settlement in which he lived. In 1857 he moved to Yellow Springs in order to give his children the benefit of better educa- tional facilities and there he spent his last days, living to a ripe old age, his death occurring in 1901, he then being eighty-four years of age. His wife died in 1889. In addition to his milling operations William Carr was an expert machinist and was an inventor of more than local note, he having devised numerous improvements to threshing-machine rigs and to general milling machinery.
When he moved with his parents from Carrs Mills to Yellow Springs, William Wallace Carr was thirteen years of age. He entered the prepara- tory department of Antioch College when fourteen years of age and later undertook the full college course, from which he was graduated in 1869 with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, a year of this latter course having been under the instruction of Horace Mann. Mr. Carr then took a post- graduate course and in 1870 received his Master degree. He had meantime been teaching school and upon leaving college resumed teaching and at the same time continued his interest in the nursery business, having been engaged in the sale of fruit trees during vacation periods, and in the fall of 1870 organized at Yellow Springs what later became well known in nursery markets as Carr's Nurseries, one of the largest and most compactly organized nursery tracts in the country. Of that concern Mr. Carr has been the head and the general manager ever since, a period of forty-seven years, the business now being carried on under the firm name of M. L. Carr's Sons, the organization making a specialty of the culture of little evergreens, which are sold by the hundreds of thousands to the nursery trade generally over the country. When Carr's Nurseries were established the market was reached by a per- sonally organized selling agency. agents being sent out to solicit trade, but for years so well established has the business become that the trade now comes to the nurseries without solicitation, sales being made direct to nurseries wholesale. Mr. Carr has for many years been recognized as an expert in his line and the fame of his nurseries has been no small factor in "putting Yellow Springs on the map." . Politically, Mr. Carr is an independent Repub- lican and has filled numerous offices, mayor, justice of the peace, council- man for more than twenty years, and school director.
In September, 1869, William Carr was united in marriage to Mary Ladley, who was born at Sidney, Ohio, daughter of DeRostus and Catherine Ladley, and who died on March 22, 1901. To that union were born five children, namely: Edwin O., of Yellow Springs, who married Alice Derby and has three children, Dorothy, Helen and Donald; George W., of Jack-
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sonville, Florida, who married Mayme Shumate and has two children, Leon- ard and Marian; Charles L., of Yellow Springs, who married Edna Garri- son and has three children, Mary G., Jean and Anna; Catherine, who married George Harris, now living at McRae, Georgia, and has two children, Louise and Ladley, and Alice G., who was graduated as a nurse from Johns Hop- kins University at Baltimore and is now (1918) engaged in active Red Cross work in France, a nurse behind the battle lines.
JACOB J. LAMPERT.
Jacob J. Lampert, veteran florist at Xenia and proprietor of a green- house there, has been a resident of that city since 1875. He was born at Avondale, a suburb of Cincinnati, September 14, 1852, a son of Jacob J. and Mary (Jacobs) Lampert, both of whom were of European birth, the former a native of the grand duchy of Baden and the latter of the then French province of Alsace-Lorraine, who came to the United States in 1847 and met and were married in Cincinnati, where they made their home for some years before moving to the nearby Avondale.
The elder Jacob J. Lampert had served for three years as a soldier in his native Baden and when the Mexican War broke out, shortly after his arrival in Cincinnati in 1847, he offered his services as a recruiting officer and the same were accepted, he carrying on a recruiting station at the corner of Front street and Broadway, Cincinnati. By trade he was a butcher and after his marriage he opened a butcher shop in Cincinnati, but his health presently failing he decided to get out and close to nature, so he moved to the suburb of Avondale and there took up gardening, eventually developing a green- house business, and was there thus engaged until his death in 1890, he then being eighty-seven years of age. His wife died at the home of one of her daughters in the Walnut Hills section of Cincinnati at the age of seventy- eight years. They were members of the Catholic church and their children were reared in that faith. There were eight of these children, of whom the subject of this sketch was the second in order of birth, the others being the following: John, who grew up to the florist business and was for twenty years the florist at the state Soldiers' Home at Sandusky and was the land- scape gardener who laid out the grounds of that institution; Joseph, who died in 1902, who was for many years a gardener at Avondale; George, who is the superintendent of the Walnut Hills barns of the Cincinnati Street Rail- way Company; Frank, who died during the days of his youth; Leda, wife of Leopold Reger, of Miamisburg, this state, and Louise, who is living in the Walnut Hills section of Cincinnati and who has been married twice, her first husband having been Frank Bentz and her second, Peter Kammer.
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Reared at Avondale, the junior Jacob J. Lampert received his schooling in the Catholic parochial schools of Cincinnati and until he was twenty-three years of age he assisted his father in the latter's greenhouses at Avondale. He then, in 1875, started out "on his own hook" and coming up this way arrived at Xenia with two dollars and fifty cents in his pockets. For two years thereafter he was employed by Erastus Bonner as a farmer and florist and at the end of that time married and he and his wife presently decided to start a greenhouse on their own account. In 1883 they bought the green- houses of H. S. Mathewman at Xenia and have ever since been conducting ... the same, in that time having made large extensions, the plant now requiring more than eleven thousand square feet of glass. In 1888 the Lamperts erected a dwelling house adjoining their greenhouses and have ever since resided there. Mr. Lampert is a Democrat.
In 1877 Jacob J. Lampert was united in marriage to Catherine Hornick, who was born on Second street in the city of Xenia, daughter of John Hor- nick and wife, the former of whom was a merchant in that city, and to this union have been born six children, namely: John, a mechanical engineer, who is still living at home with his parents; William B., now a resident of Los Angeles, California, who married Mildred Heild and has one child, a son, William; Edward, who is operating a greenhouse at the entrance to the Hill cemetery at Dayton and who married Nellie Hamma and has one child, a daughter, Martha ; George A., of the Lampert Floral Company, who, in asso- ciation with his brother Henry some time ago organized a corporation and are operating a greenhouse on North Detroit street in Xenia; Harry, who is engaged in business with his brother George, as noted above, and Helen, of Cincinnati. Miss Helen Lampert early developed a voice of rare range and sweetness of tone and upon completing her schooling at .Notre Dame College, Cincinnati, turned her attention to the further cultivation of her voice and ..... for some time has been singing in opera. The Lamperts are members of the Catholic church.
LEIGH A. TAYLOR.
Leigh A. Taylor, clerk in the postoffice at Xenia, was born at Iberia, in Morrow county, this state, September 10, 1872, son of James W. and Mary Jane (Anderson) Taylor, the latter of whom, a native of Pennsylvania, died on December 8, 1886. James Taylor was born at New Athens, in Harrison county, this state, September 28, 1828, and died at the home of Leigh A. Taylor at Xenia, on March 1, 1912.
" Reared in Guernsey county, this state, Leigh . A. Taylor received his early schooling in the common schools of that county and supplemented the same
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by a course at Muskingum College, which institution he attended during the years 1899-1901. Upon leaving college he became engaged in farming in Greene county, on a farm six miles east of Xenia, and was thus engaged for nine years, at the end of which time he became employed in the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company at Xenia. For eighteen months Mr. Taylor continued this service and he then, in 1905, was appointed clerk in the post- office at Xenia, a position he ever since has occupied. Mr. Taylor is a mem- ber of the United Presbyterian church and, fraternally, is affiliated with the Modern Woodmen of America.
ALFRED ZINEY SMITH.
Alfred Ziney Smith, superintendent of the plant of the Hagar Straw- board Company at Cedarville, a member of the common council of the city of Cedarville, member of the school board and former president of the local board of health, was born at Waterloo, New York, July 14, 1850, son of Sidney and Flora (Wilson) Smith, both of whom were born in that same state.
Sidney Smith was superintendent of an extensive dye-works establish- ment at Waterloo and died at his home at that place at the age of forty-seven years, leaving his widow with four small sons. Mr. Smith kept the family together, presently moving to a farm in Wayne county, New York, where she remained until after the Civil War, when she moved with her sons to Illinois and established her home on a farm of three hundred and fifty acres south of the town of Marseilles, in LaSalle county. She died in Marseilles in 1897, she then being eighty-four years of age. Her sons, of whom the subject of this sketch is the youngest, are all still living, Leonard, a paint contractor, making his home at Joliet, Illinois; Louis, formerly a miner at Leadville, Colorado, now living in New York state, and Charles continues to make his home at Marseilles, Illinois, where he is the proprietor of a barber shop.
Alfred Z. Smith was but little more than two years of age when his father died and he was about four when his mother moved onto a farm in her home state, in the neighborhood of which he received his early schooling. After the family moved to Illinois he continued work on the farm until he was eighteen years of age, when, in the spring of 1871, he began work- ing in a paper-mill at Marseilles and was thus employed in the plant of- the Brown & Norton Paper Company, for five years, at the end of which time, in 1876, he went to Milan, Illinois, and was there engaged for three years working in another paper-mill. He then entered the employ of the American Paper Company and was for five years stationed at Quincy, being transferred
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ALFRED Z. SMITIL.
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thence to Circleville, Ohio, where he installed the machinery for the paper- mill there and was made superintendent of the plant, a position he held until 1893, when he was offered the position of superintendent of the mill of the Columbia Straw Paper Company at Xenia and moved to that city, remaining thus engaged there for three years, or until 1897, when he entered upon the duties of his present position as superintendent of the plant of the Hagar Strawboard Company at Cedarville and has ever since been thus engaged. Mr. Smith is a Republican and is a member of the common council of his home town. He served for several years as a member of the local school board, for some time president of the same, and also has served as president of the local board of health.
On June 2, 1874, while living in Illinois, Alfred Z. Smith was united in marriage to Kate Herlihy, who was born in southern Illinois, daughter of Daniel and Margaret (McCarty) Herlihy, both of whom were born in Ireland, and to this union two children have been born, a son and a daughter, Sidney Daniel and Louisa, the latter of whom is living at home with her parents. Sidney D. Smith, who was trained in the art of paper-making by his father, is now assistant superintendent of the plant of the Hagar Straw- board Company at Cedarville. He married Hetta Crouse and makes his home at Cedarville.
CHARLES KINSEY.
Charles Kinsey, owner of the old Hammell place, in Xenia township, two and a half miles northeast of Xenia, was born at Cincinnati in January, 1879, son of George and Martha Jane (Humphreys) Kinsey, both of whom also were born in Ohio, the former in Hamilton county, and the latter at Newark.
George Kinsey is a son of William Kinsey and wife, who came from Berks county, Pennsylvania, to Ohio and settled in Hamilton county and has been a resident of Cincinnati since he was ten' years of age, for years having been engaged there as district agent for the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company. He and his wife have seven children, those besides the subject of this sketch, the third in order of birth, being as follows: Boyden, who is engaged with his father in business at Cincinnati; Edna, wife of Louis M. Webb, also of Cincinnati; Martha, who is at home with her parents; Robert S., who is connected with the American Key Can Company at Chicago, where he makes his home; John H., who is at home, and Imogen, wife of George E. Dimock, Jr., of New Haven, Connecticut.
Reared at Cincinnati, Charles Kinsey followed the completion of his studies in the high school there by a course in the Ohio State University (15) .
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and for a year after leaving college was engaged in the offices of Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati. He then became engaged with his brother Boyden in the steel business in Cincinnati and was thus connected until in October, 1910, when he made a prospecting and pleasure trip to Idaho and through the West. Upon his return he began to look about for a place on which to engage in farming and stock raising, and with this end in view came up into Greene county and bought the old Hammell farm of one hundred and thirty-one acres two and a half miles northeast of Xenia, in Xenia township, rural mail route No. 3 out of Xenia, and has since been engaged in farming and stock raising there. He has gone in somewhat extensively to the breeding of pure-bred Percheron horses and among his holdings in that line are the stallion "Berrien 40210" and the thoroughbred mares, "Glen Wild's Bessie" and "Belle of the Miami," also a couple of thoroughbred stallion colts, "Dick" and "Donald," foaled in 1917. Mr. Kinsey also feeds a couple of car loads of cattle for the market each year and keeps up a herd of about sixty pure-bred Duroc-Jersey hogs. He also has a flock of Shrop- shire sheep. Mr .. Kinsey uses a tractor in the cultivation of his farm.
On October 15, 1912, Charles Kinsey was united in marriage to Marion Sherwood, of Berrien county, Michigan, daughter of R. H. Sherwood, a farmer of that county, and to this union three children have been born, Robert S., Virginia and Charles, Jr. Mrs. Kinsey is a member of the Con- gregational church.
FRANK H. ROUTZONG.
Frank H. Routzong, proprietor of the old Routzong homestead, orig- inally a part of the holdings of Matthew Quinn, a settler of 1803, and known as "Shady Bower," in Xenia township, was born on that farm and has lived there all his life. He was born on December 3, 1876, son and only child of Mathias and Martha (Harner) Routzong, both members of old and influential families in this county, Mathias Routzong having been born on that same farm, where he spent all his life, one of the well-to-do farmers of that part of the county.
Mathias Routzong was born in February, 1842, son of Adam and Sarah (Koegler) Routzong, who settled on that farm in 1837. Adam Rout- zong was born in Frederick county, Maryland, December 4, 1806, and was eighteen years of age when he came with his father, Henry Routzong, to Ohio in 1824, the family locating in the Fairfield neighborhood in this county. Henry Routzong's wife had died in Maryland some years before he came with his three sons to this county. On that pioneer farm in the vicinity of Fairfield Adam Routzong lived until after his marriage. In
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1837, he bought "Shady Bower," the Matthew Quinn farm of one hundred and fifty-nine acres, the southwest quarter of section 5, township 3, range 7, on the Xenia and Fairfield pike in Xenia township, paying for the same three thousand dollars. Matthew Quinn had settled there in 1803 with his family, members of the considerable colony of Scotch Seceders that had come up from Kentucky in order to get away from slavery conditions, and he is buried on the farm which he developed, the Routzongs having ever carefully guarded against agricultural intrusion the little plot of ground sur- rounding his grave. The barn that Matthew Quinn built on that place is still standing and is being preserved by Mr. Routzong as one of the oldest architectural relics in Greene county. Adam Routzong added to his hold- ings there until he became the owner of two hundred and fifty-four acres there. In 1861 he bought another farm of one hundred and eighty-three acres in Xenia township and in 1872 retired from farm labors and moved to Xenia, but in 1886 returned to the farm which he had last purchased and there he died on June 16, 1887, and was buried in the Byron cemetery. Politically, Adam Routzong was a Republican, and by religious persuasion was a Lutheran. Adam Routzong was twice married. By his first wife, Sarah Koegler, he was the father of two sons, Henry, who became a mer- chant at Yellow Springs and there spent his last days, and Mathias, father of the subject of this sketch. The second wife of Adam Routzong was Constance Comfort Cromwell, who was born near Clear Springs, in Wash- ington county, Maryland, and who survived him. To that union also were born two sons, Joseph Cromwell Routzong, who for years occupied the farm his father had last bought in Xenia township and who is now living retired in Xenia, and John R., who died at the age of eleven years.
Reared on the farm on which he was born, Mathias Routzong received his schooling in the local schools and from boyhood was an assistant in the labors of developing and improving the home place, the management of which he took over after his marriage and of which he later became the owner, afterward adding to his acreage there until he was the owner of three hundred and thirty-four acres, the farm now owned by his son Frank. In 1882 he erected a nine-room house on the place and among the other im- provements he made was a large dairy barn. Politically, he was a Republi- can, as was his father, but was not an aspirant for political office. His last days were spent on the place on which he was born, his death occurring there in September, 1892, and his widow still survives him. She also was born in this county, Martha Harner, daughter of Daniel and Sarah Harner, of Beavercreek township, and a member of one of the old families in Greene county, further mention of which is made elsewhere in this volume. To the union of Mathias and Martha (Harner) Routzong was born one
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