USA > Ohio > Seneca County > History of Seneca County, from the close of the revolutionary war to July, 1880 > Part 27
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Mary is now, and for a long time has been, the happy wife of Mr. Jonas Neikirk, of Republic.
Next west of Mr. Kridler, lived Jacob Huss, the saddler, and next west to him, David Bishop. William D. Searles bought out Bishop, and started a tin-shop at that place.
Guy Stevens carried on the mercantile business close by, and south of Ebert's. He afterwards took, as a partner, Daniel Dildine, Esq., the present venerable justice of the peace, of Tiffin. They also started the first foundry in the county. It was located at the end of Monroe street, close by the river, and occupied the north end of the lot where Esq. Dildine now resides.
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In 1837, a man by the name of Louis Bredoon, a hotel keeper in Mccutchenville, had a short cannon cast at this foundry to be used at the coming Fourth of July celebration. He came after it with a wagon on the 24th day of June, and all hands concluded to try it first. They put the piece on the running gear of a wagon and loaded it very strong. It exploded, and played havoc all around. A piece of the iron struck Mr. Burdoon on the forehead and crushed in the skull from his left eye brow up to the hair. He was picked up unconscious, and carried to Goodin's hotel, then kept by Michael Hendel, where he soon after died. Dildine had several ribs broken; one Watson had a leg broken; other men were injured more or less. The wagon and the front door of the foundry were demolished, and pieces of the cannon were found great distances away. There has been no cannon foundry in Tiffin since. We buy all our guns of Krupp.
William H. Kessler carried on the tailoring trade in Fort Ball, and Moses D. Cadwallader and Jefferson Freese were rivals in Tiffin. Mr. Freese married a young lady that Dr. Fisher raised and brought with him here from Maryland. She was very pretty, and highly esteemed. Dr. Boyer lived in a stone house that stood where Emick's boot store is. This and the mill house were the only stone houses in Tiffin. Both are gone. One of Dr. Boyer's daughters married Lloyd Norris, who became the owner of the Van Meter section, and lived there. He had means they said, but very little polish. He was the father of the detective, John T. Norris. Another daughter of Dr. Boyer, Elizabeth, married Dr. James Fisher, one of Tiffin's early practitioners. Both were very polite and accomplished people. The Doctor is still living somewhere in Missouri. Our Richard Boyer, the broker, is the young- est of the sons, and Frances Hannah was the youngest daughter. She became the wife of John J. Steiner, one of the early lawyers of Tiffin. Both are now dead.
It is impossible to remember all the old settlers here, and the names of those that occur are only jotted down. Many of those on the Fort Ball side have already been named. There, also, lived Gen. H. C. Brish, Valentine and George Knupp, Andrew Love, William Johnson, George Ragan, Curtis Sisty, Levi Davis and Nicholas Leibe. Mr. Sting, the father of C. H. Sting, also built and carried on a little brewery, on Sandusky street. Leibe, Coonrad and Baugher married three sisters. Of these six, Mrs. Coonrad, alone, is living. They were the daughters of a widow lady, Mrs. Staub, and sisters of the once popular John Staub and Dr. Staub.
Among the early settlers of Tiffin were a few families from Germany,
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EARLY GERMAN SETTLERS.
and being so few, are easily described. The first one of these the writer can call to mind is that of Mr. Andrew Albrecht, from Baden. He was a stone mason and brick layer by trade; had a wife and several children when he came here. His father-in-law, Christopher Zeis, lived with him. Mr. Zeis was with Napoleon the First in the Spanish campaign, and was fond of telling his exploits. With this family, also, came John Snyder and Christopher Snyder, shoemakers by trade, and who were nephews by a sister of the old soldier. John married Barbara Albert, step-daughter of a Mr. Hohmann, and carried on a shoe-shop in Tiffin until he died. He was decidedly the best boot maker Tiffin then had. These people came here in the fall of 1832. In August, of 1833, the Lang and Seewald families arrived here; also, the Vollmers, Julius Fellnagel, Joseph Ranker, Valentine and Louis Taumpler, Jacob Ernst, Henry Brass, the Blasius family, Francis Gilbert, Andrew Bloom, and a family by the name of Meyers, who lived in a two-story frame house where Ulrich's drug store now stands, and where Meyers tried the experiment of a brewery on a small scale. These institutions then required but small capital.
Two brothers from Marion, by the name of Kolb, built another brewery, up on the hill, near the crossing of Sandusky and Market. John and Francis Souder, Jacob Ernst, Adam Schickel, the musician, Frederick Hoffman, the Faulhaver family, and many others, then, also. made Tiffin their home.
Henry Lang, (whose baptismal name was George Ludwig Henry,) was the oldest son of Wilhelm, and Louisa Christina, daughter of a rope manufacturer by the name of Matzenburg, in Kochendorf, a small village near the city of Heilbroun, in North Wurtemburg. His father was an officer in the Forest Department, and was transferred to a sta- tion west of the Rhine in the Palatinate, the western province of Bavaria. Grandfather was born in 1739, and died at his new station in 1789, when but fifty years old. This was at Neu-Hemsbach, in the Canton of Winweiler. At the death of his father, Henry was but 19 years old, and the only help his widowed mother had; but young as he was, the forest authorities took notice of him, and appointed him the successor of his father in office. His deportment towards the people and the government, changeable as both were during the turmoil following the French Revolution, and scenes incident to the war, was such that he was retained in his place. Faithful and diligent in the discharge of every duty, he became beloved by all except wood thieves andpoachers. His small salary supported him, his widowed mother, and an invalid step-brother on his father's side-Uncle Christian.
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We Americans understand a "forester" to be a man that lives in the woods. The word is understood otherwise in Europe. There it means an officer of the "forest department;" one who superintends and takes care of the king's forest, and prosecutes offenders against the forest laws, etc.
On the 25th day of January, 1801, father was married to Catharine, the daughter of the school teacher Schuetz, in Vorder-Weidenthal, an old Alsacian family. This union was blessed with nine children-seven daughters and two sons. Two of the girls died in childhood. Louisa, the oldest daughter, married Philip Seewald, the jeweler, in Septem- ber, 1828. Elizabeth, the second daughter, married John Gross, a cabinet-maker, 'in March, 1831; the other girls were all married here. Philipina was married to Valentine Seewald, in Tiffin, September, 1833. soon after we arrived here. Henrietta married Mr. J. M. Zahm, late county treasurer, May 2, 1836, and Hannah married Michael Schoch, who died here within a few months after their marriage. Hannah some time after married Mr. Edward Swander, well known in Seneca county as an intelligent and successful farmer. Mrs. Zahm is the only living daughter. Both sons, the Rev. Henry Lang in Fremont, and the writer, yet remain.
The very fact that father held his office from his nineteenth to his sixty-fourth year, when he resigned it to come to the United States, proves how much he was appreciated as a man and an officer, being in the possession of his office some forty three years.
We came by wagon across France. There were no steamboats on the Rhine, and no railroads on the Continent. . We left Havre de Grace, at the mouth of the Seine, on the 24th day of April, 1833, and after combatting many a storm on the ocean, landed at Baltimore on the 27th day of the following June. The family was on the way from April 3d to August 18th, when we reached Tiffin, after making a journey, by water and by land, of over 4000 miles. The name of the old three- masted sailing vessel which brought us over was "Jefferson," and she belonged to Boston.
The few of the early settlers yet living remember father Lang in his dark green, broadcloth dress, bearing the style and color of his former office, and a cloth cap of the same color on his head. He was five feet ten inches high, very straight, with soldier-like bearing, had large blue eyes, an aquiline nose, a mild countenance, and was calm and self- possessed. He was never known to swear, or express a word in anger. He had a masterly control of his passions and appetites. He was not only moral, but a devoted christian. He never left his home in the
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FATHER AND MOTHER.
morning without saying his prayer, and his evening prayers were full of warmth, and rich in poetic thought. He never used tobacco in any way; was never seen under the influence of wine; never played at any games: never used an unkind word towards mother or any of us chil- dren: and when he whipped us sometimes, we thought it could not be possible, for he was not angry at all.
Mother was the very embodiment of christian graces and tender love. It was she who caused our emigration to America, being influ- enced to that end largely on my account, for I was then just about old enough to be drafted into the army in time of need, and she wanted to secure me against the draft. Even when we did go, I was compelled to remain behind, because I was then seventeen years old. They bound me out to a relative of father's by the name of Wittich, who was a chair and spinning wheel manufacturer, as an apprentice, where I was to stay until the draft of my class. This satisfied the authorities. The contract was written on stamped paper, with a crown in the seal, (I have liked crowns and stamped paper ever since-but to no great extent.) The rest of the family started, and I went to my boss, where I was soon initiated into the arts and mysteries of splitting out sticks for the turning lathe. On the morning of the tenth day I was found missing: about one week afterwards I waited at the city of Metz for our folks to come. Let me add this: I walked from home to Havre de Grace, and from Baltimore to Tiffin. Father died here in August, 1838, in his sixty-ninth year, and mother died in June, 1849, in her seventieth year.
Reader, will you be kind enough to excuse this reference to my own family ? It is hard to resist speaking of things and events that lie so near to one's heart. Let us proceed.
Mr. Fellnagel kept a tavern in the frame building where Mr. Jacob Boyer now lives, corner of Sandusky and Market streets. Andrew Bloom was a traveling tailor. He came here and got married, and is in the tailoring business still. He is familiarly known as Esq. Bloom.
Joseph Gibson was a shoemaker by trade. He was born in Frederick county, Maryland, in November, 1811, and married there Elizabeth Ott, on the 13th day of September. 1831; he located. here in 1832, where his family have lived ever since. He died in July, 1857, two years after his return from California.
My old, esteemed friend, the Hon. Henry Cronise, was also a native of Frederick county, Maryland, a county that contributed more largely to the settlement of Seneca county, and supplied it with more means, muscle, and brains, than any other county in the world. He was born there on the 15th day of May 1789. His youthful days were spent in
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Norfolk, Virginia. Upon his return to Maryland he engaged in the mercantile business, which occupation he pursued as long as he was in active life. In 1816 he was married at Fredericktown, Maryland, to Susanna Fundenburg, a young lady well known for her beauty and sweet- ness of disposition, which made her attractive and lovable through the whole of her life, and especially in her latter days, binding to her, with the closest ties of affection, children, grand-children and a host of friends. With all her personal attractions and her warm nature, mother Cronise preferred her home above all the allurements of society, where she would have been a queen in any circle.
In 1826 Mr. Cronise came to Ohio in company with several other gentlemen, and being very much pleased with Seneca county, located several sections in different parts of it, and purchased a house for his home, which remained such for nearly thirty years, during which time it was a sort of open house for neighbors and friends at home, and dis- tinguished strangers from abroad.
After his purchase he returned to Maryland, and in the following year sent out a number of wagons loaded with dry goods ; himself and family, then consisting of a wife and five children, followed in a short time, coming across the country in carriages and on horseback, and being four weeks on the road. On reaching Tiffin, the family moved into the house thus provided; it was located opposite Naylor's hard- ware store. Four other children were born here, making nine in all.
In 1840 Mr. Cronise established the Van Burenite, and operated it as its editor against the election of General Harrison, with great force. Mr. Cronise was elected to the legislature twice: once as a member of the House, and in 1846 as a member of the Senate.
He died on the 14th day of February, 1867. Mother Cronise sur- vived her husband some years, and died in August, 1875. Thus passed away two of Tiffin's most distinguished pioneers, who had made and left their mark on the town. Mr. Cronise was a decided and firm Democrat, and as such, a leader in the county from the time he came here until he died. He was a shrewd and safe political counselor, and possessed of great political sagacity and influence. He was a stout, muscular man, square shouldered, well built, and of clear German type. He had dark brown hair, dark, hazel eyes, small, clenched lips, a fine forchead, strong lower jaw, nose ordinary, nervous-bilious tempera- ment, which often causes the possessor trouble when unaccompanied by refinement and an iron will. It is apt to lead to impulsiveness. A high strung nature like this generally acts before it thinks, but it troubled father Cronise only at times of high political excitement. In
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HENRY CRONISE-PHILIP SEEWALD.
his private life it was scarcely ever observable. He was much beloved by the Democrats, and hated in the same ratio by the Whigs. He had no charity for a political enemy; he knew he was right, and that was enough.
The Democrats in the county never had such leaders as Cronise, Seney and Goodin, either before or since their day. Firm, sagacious, earnest, active, untiring, unselfish-they sought the success of the party above personal ambition.
Aside from politics, Mr. Cronise was very kind, gentlemanly and courteous. He was like a father to the new comer and stranger, and especially to the Germans, whose language he spoke. His intercourse with others was very strongly marked by the peculiar genteel, polite, hospitable, yet dignified demeanor that marked the Maryland and Vir- ginia gentleman of that day. Marquis Y Graff, Joseph Graff, Jacob Souder, the Pittengers, Dr. Boyer, the Holtz's, Dr. Kuhn, and others came under that rule, if rule it was. These are all dead except Mrs. John Pittenger and Judge Benjamin Pittenger, who are still living.
The writer always found in father Cronise a true friend, and records these lines with mixed feelings of pleasure and sadness, as a token of the high esteem in which his memory is cherished. Of pleasure, because of the opportunity to register my testimony to a tried friend ; of sadness, because those of us who enjoyed the company and counsel of Henry Cronise are getting less very rapidly, and are already but few in number.
PHILIP SEEWALD
Was born on the 26th day of September, 1799, in Sippersfeld, in the Bavarian Palatinate, Germany. He was the oldest son of Ludwig and Sophia Seewald. His father was a man who resembled Henry Clay of Kentucky very much. Both gentlemen happened to be in Tffiin on a visit at the same time, and it was a common remark how much they resembled each other. The mother of Philip was a Correll, and descended from a long line of school teachers in this village. Louis (Ludwig) Seewald was a wagon maker by trade, and Philip worked in the shop of his father as soon as he was old enough, and learned the trade. He was a natural genius, and when he was drafted into the Bavarian army he applied all his leisure hours to the study of the watch and the natural sciences. When he returned from the army he was a good watch maker, and very handy at any curious workmanship in iron. He married the oldest daughter of Henry Lang, above named, and a few years thereafter emigrated, with his family, to the United
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States and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he opened a jewelry shop. When the Lang family came, in 1833, they stopped at Pittsburgh until Seewald and his family united with them, and then both families came to Tiffin together, where they arrived. on the 18th day of August, 1833.
The early settlers will remember the jewelry store of Seewald, in the large, hewed log house, on south Washington street, in Tiffin. The front end was devoted to jewelry, and the back part to gun- smithing. Here he lived until about 1843, when he bought from John Goodin the lot where the Rust block now is, and where he lived the rest of his days.
He never made the English language a study, and spoke it very brokenly; but he built up a good trade with his skill and general repu- tation for honesty. By close application to his books he became well versed in general history and the popular sciences of the day. He was naturally a thinker and investigator; he took nothing for granted, and discarded everything that lacked a cause. He was firm in his judgment, and able to defend any position he took. His mind natur- ally lead him to the bottom of things. While he never obtruded his conclusions on anybody, he was strong in the defense of them when once formed.
His wife died on the 8th day of February, 1843. Three of their children were born in Germany, and the rest of them in this country. They had eight in all, of whom three sons and two daughters are still living. Louis Seewald, the jeweler, is the oldest son; William lives in New Mexico, and Philip, the youngest, in Hudson, Michigan. The boys were all jewelers. The oldest daughter is Mrs. Oster, and the youngest Mrs. Spindler, both residing in Tiffin.
Mr. Seewald was married again to Elizabeth Staib. This union was blessed with but one child, Sophia, who was married in the spring of this year to a Mr. Roll, of Cleveland, where they reside.
Philip Seewald was a short, robust, compactly built man, very strong and muscular. He had a very large head, that became bald early; well proportioned; large, fleshy nose; deep-set blue eyes; strong, manly features. His head was so large that he could find no hat large enough in the stores, and had to send his measure to Cincinnati. He was about five feet six inches high, and weighed, when in his best days, near 200 pounds. As years began to make him restless, he left his business in the hands of his son Louis, and made up a lot of instruments with which he built tower clocks. The clock in the tower of the court house is one of them.
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PHILIP SEEWALD.
Thus he spent the afternoon and evening of his life, ever busy, reading or making something useful or ingenious. He was widely known as the principal watchmaker in Tiffin, and as a man of strict, unflinching integrity, highly esteemed by everybody. He died on the 30th day of October, 1878, aged seventy-nine years, one month and four days.
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CHAPTER XVII.
ADDITIONS TO TIFFIN-THE FERRY-THE BRIDGES-THE TOLL BRIDGE-THE FREE BRIDGE-THE BURNING OF THE FREE BRIDGE-THE CHOLERA- FREDERICK HOFFMAN-LITTLE CHARLOTTE -JOHNNY DALRYMPLE-THE RAILROADS-FIRST TRAIN TO TIFFIN-HEIDELBERG COLLEGE-REV. E. V. GERHART. D. D .- REV. J. H. GOOD, D. D .- REV. GEO. W. WILLARD, D. D.
FT WOULD require a book by itself to give a full description of the I numerous additions that were made to Tiffin and to Fort Ball, and finally to Tiffin proper as a city of the second class, from time to time. The reader must be content with a mere reference to the same. At the commencement of this work, fear for want of material to write a book was upperntost in the mind of the writer, but now, and as he is about commencing this chapter, he is troubled to know what best to leave out, to prevent the book from becoming too bulky.
The desire to write personal sketches of many more of the old pioneers is very strong, and should be indulged would space only per- mit. Being conscious of the fact, that in the great stream of time generations after generations appear upon the stage of action, and are swept away in their order into the vast ocean of the past; and of this other fact, that we are forgotten by the few that ever knew us, to love or to hate us, about as fast as we go-I am strongly reminded of what my dear old friend, Frederick Fieser, Esq., the able and illustrious editor of the Westbote, in Columbus, once said to me, speaking on the subject of ambition, viz: that about all you can say of man is "he was born, took a wife, and died."
Yet, as this narrative progresses notices will be taken of a character here and there, that shall be deemed proper in its place.
The following are the additions made to Tiffin, front the time of the first platting, viz: New Fort Ball; Hedges' northern and southern additions to Tiffin : Norris and Gist's addition, June 15, 1832 ; Raw- son's addition, May 30, 1833; Sneath and Graff's, January 29, 1834: Keller and Gist's, same date; Jennings', November 13, 1834; Williams', April 22, 1835; Waggoner's, January 13, 1836; Sheldon's, September 11, 1838; Hedges' second addition, July 26, 1851 : Davis', May 16,
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1854; Springdale, May, 1854; Deuzer's. November 13, 1855; Allbright's March, 1856; Seney's, December, 1856; Avery, Butler & Cecil's, July 27. 1857; Heilman's, July 14, 1858; Hedges' second southern, February 26, 1859; Sub-division of lots 1 and 2 in block D; Bunn's W. pt; lot 2: block S; Noble's; Noble's second; Frost's; Schouhart's; Hunter's sub- division of out-lots Nos. 6 and 7 ; Jacob Heilman's; Scheiber's; Brew- er's: Mrs. Walker's: Mrs. Walker's second; Goodsell's; Mrs. Hunter's; Tomb's; Gross'; Souder's sub-division; Stoner's; Mrs. Allen's; Bunn's second; J. T. Huss' ; Davis Estate's ; Gray's; Lewis'; McCollum & Snyder's: Mechanicsburgh; Weirick's; Blair's; Remmele's; Fishbaugh's; Gibson's: Gwinn's: Shawhan's; Hall's; Cottage Park; Bartell's; Hud- dle's: Schubert's: Kaull & Glenn's; Houck's; Myers'; Ph. Wentz's: G. D. Loomis'; J. Bour's: Hayward's: Huber's; Fishbaugh's second; W. C. Hedges'; Zeigler's; Louisa Smith's; Harter & Sloman's: John Heilman's sub-division: Maria P. Kuhn's; J. Heilman's; Sullivan's sub- division : Noble's re-sub-division. There were some seventy-two in all. The lots were re-numbered in March, 1854.
These additions and the several annexations the city council has made from time to time, with very questionable propriety, but under the severe law of the state that gives landed proprietors, in the territory to be annexed, no voice in the measure, have extended the limits of the city to embrace all of section 19, all of section 30 (except about one hundred and forty acres), about one hundred and forty acres in section 29, more than one-half of section 20, and about one hundred and sixty acres of section 18, in Clinton township-about 1760 acres in all.
In the fall of 1833 Mr. Hedges contracted with Reuben Williams, one of the leading carpenters at that time, to build a wooden bridge across the river on Washington street. Some of the work was done that fall, but during the following spring and summer the work progressed very slowly. It was finally completed far enough to have a few plank laid over it lengthwise, for the accommodation of foot passengers. During the spring and summer of 1834, another foot bridge was constructed a little distance further down the river, by boring holes into slabs and putting long sticks into them to raise the slabs above the water. Both of these conveniences together nearly ruined Mr. Hoagland's ferry.
A big freshet, in the fall of 1834, brought immense quantities of drift down the river-whole trees, straw stacks, fence rails, saw logs, etc.,- and made a lodgement at the bents of the bridge. Several men ven- tured to get on the top of the drift pile with their axes, and commenced chopping the long trees into pieces, in order to start them on their way. They made considerable headway; but when they saw large
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pieces of the Tymochtee bridge approaching, they got away just in time to save their lives. When these pieces of the Tymochtee bridge struck the gathered drift the whole mass went together, taking the new bridge along.
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