USA > Ohio > Shelby County > History of Shelby County, Ohio, and representative citizens > Part 44
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When the war was drawing to a close the army to which he belonged came north to Columbus and were transferred in box cars to Washington where they arrived dirty and ragged, as they had drawn no clothing nor had not received a dollar for six months and were lucky if they got enough water to drink, much less to wash in. Their dilapidated appearance provoked sneer- ing remarks from some of the brass buttoned parvenues at Washington. Their commander hearing them responded through a newspaper that they were no feathered soldiers but had come east to help the feather-bed army around Washington. In a few days they boarded vessels on the Potomac, went down the river to the ocean, around Cape Hatteras, to Fort Fisher at the mouth of Cape Fear river and then to Fort Anderson. They celebrated Washingon's birthday in 1865, by taking Wilmington, North Carolina, and after` ten days made a forced march of 100 miles to Kinston where the rebels delivered 8,000 men who had been prisoners at Andersonville and Salisbury and were living skeletons. Many were demented and would voraciously. devour any eatable handed thetn in their insatiate hunger. Mr. Ailes was ordered to detail ten men from his regiments to act as nurses, among whoni was Fred Doody and John H. Kessler, of this county, who were unable to make the forced marches. Of these all died but two of swamp fever. The army marched to Goldsboro and to Raleigh to meet Sherman's army coming from Savannah through the Carolinas. Soon the news came that Lee had surrendered and the joyful news was carried along the lines with huzzas and tossing of caps in the air. A part was retained for a while as an army of occupation so he did not take part in the grand review at Washington.
After resting for a season and burnishing his education which had got a trifle powder burnt in the years of patriotic conflict, he entered again the school room and taught in Montra and vicinity for ten years more, or fifteen years in all. Among his early pupils was Miss Jane Elliott, then twelve years old, an attractive and amiable girl, whose charms in Hezekiah's eyes had grown so irresistible as to occasion heart trouble in his bosom and again she became his pupil from which she graduated, her diploma being a marriage certificate of lifeling duration. This remarkable event happened October II, 1866, but did not interfere with his pedagogical avocation. In 1867 Milton E. of Washington, D. C., appeared in their household and was succeeded by Eva, now Mrs. John H. Taft, and Ada, now Mrs. Hugh Wilson, both of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Eugene, of late years of Nome, Alaska, but part of the time in Washington; Lulu, Olive, Chesley and Adrian of this city. Of their ten children two died while young.
On October 28, 1875, Mr. Ailes moved his family to Sidney to the house
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now owned and occupied by Mr. George Moeller in West street. The monu- mental building was then in process of construction.
The children were all educated in the public school here and received graduating diplomas, with the exception of Adrian, who has graduating symp- toms, as he is a member of the senior class and is probably cudgeling his brains for ideas in the oratorical display to come off the first of June.
A little over twenty years ago Milton, through General LeFevre, then congressman; received an appointment in Washington and became a messenger boy for General Sewall and Charles Chesley, government officials. He performed his duties with such fidelity and despatch that Mr. Chesley. who was an eminent lawyer, advised him to utilize his spare hours in studying law, a thing he had determined upon, and offered to be his preceptor. This proposition was accepted and he finally graduated with Bachelor of Arts honors and subsequently with Master of Arts distinction. His promotion was rapid and at length culminated in being appointed assistant secretary of the treasury under Lyman Gage, and two years under Secretary Shaw, a position which Milton resigned to accept the vice-presidency of the Riggs national bank, of Washington, a position he now holds. Eugene went to Washington, studied chemistry, became an expert assayer and for several years has been employed at Nome, Alaska, by a banking firm that makes a business of buying gold from the miners. Lest it be thought that the subject of this sketch is lost in the family shuffle, a return to the considering of Hezekiah will be made.
Since Mr. Ailes came to Sidney he has been elected three times as mayor of this city, became deputy county auditor under Orlando O. Mathers and sub- sequently served two terms as auditor and was the first county official to occupy the new courthouse. After his terms he again became deputy county auditor under Knox Cummins, now of Washington, thus serving for fifteen years in the courthouse. He is now president of the sinking fund trustees, was appointed by Judge Hughes a member of the board of monumental trustees to succeed the late Andrew J. Robertson and was for six years a member of the board of education. Before coming to Sidney he was clerk of Jackson township for four terms. Hezekiah now has an office of justice of the peace which keeps him out of mischief in his serene and happy age. Few can look back upon a busier and more blissful domestic and public life replete with honors and with a family of children who reflect radiance upon the name.
When Mr. Ailes returned from the war the time of his pre-soldier certifi- cate had expired and a new one had to be procured. He came to Sidney to brighten up under Ben McFarland, one of the county examiners. Examina- tion day and the democratic county convention came off the same day. The candidates for nomination to the state legislature were Jason McVay and Gen. Ben LeFevre, McFarland, though a republican, was very anxious to have the General nominated as he was his particular friend and asked Heze- kiah whom he favored. The reply was,' "the General, for we were boys together." Hearing this McFarland said, "I know your qualifications for
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teacher and I want you to put in the day working for the General and when the polls close come and get your certificate." Since this sketch was written Mr. Ailes has died.
PHILIP SMITH. If the oldest inhabitant in Sidney, or any number of them were asked to name the man who is entitled to the premium card for remaining in the manufacturing business the longest time without a break in the chain, the unanimous answer would be, Philip Smith. This hustling, bustling, pushing bundle of incarnate hope who lined every cloud with silver and whose elasticity put him erect upon his feet after each reverse was never before in so prosperous condition as now, and it would take a stiff adverse wind to shake him. Showers of discouragements that would have disheart- ened most men he shed as easily as the proverbial duck's back does water, and financial straits, dull times and lack of orders merely made him blow his nose a little louder, which, in his case was a trump of defiance while he spit on his hands to get a better hold, and he invariably did get a better hold and hung on.
Philip was born September 7, 1838, near Harrisburg, Pa., where he spent his boyhood and was for a time servant boy for Judge Heaster at the capitol. When in his teens his parents moved to Connersville, Ind., where they stayed two years and then moved to Dayton for two or three years and where he finished the molders trade at the foundry of Thompson, McGregor and Callahan.
In 1859 the family came to Sidney and commenced in a small way the manufacture of stoves and in due time farm bells, kettles, lard presses, etc. across the canal when their factory burned. They rebuilt on . Main avenue when there were but few houses on the north side of the canal. Hollow ware was also added and the first iron scrapers made in Sidney were fashioned in their shop.
While in Dayton he became acquainted with Miss Anna Silzell and she so lingered in his memory and had such a hold on his heart that he felt that if she did not come to Sidney he would have to go to Dayton. He did go and returned with her as Mrs. Philip Smith in the early sixties and of this union ten children were born, seven of whom are living. Mrs. Smith died in the eighties and on Thanksgiving day in 1885, he married Mrs. Mary M. French, of Champaign county.
Looking over his business career, with its so many ups and downs, pinched financially most of the time requiring all his wits and his indomitable energy to pull through he reminds one of the man who rolled down a hill with his arms around a log and when he got to the bottom cheerfully remarked that the log did not get any the best of him for he was on top half of the time.
His last venture, the formation of the incorporation of the Philip Smith Company. of which he is president and which was launched on the sea of mar- velous prosperity throughout the country was the best he ever made and put him, figuratively speaking, on easy street with an income far more than ample for life's necessities or luxuries, as he is now uppermost on the log which has quit rolling and his many bruises are permanently healed without leaving so much as a scar. Sidney has no character that has weathered so
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many vicissitudes as he. A few years ago he and Mrs. Smith took a pleasur- able outing through the far west to the Pacific, a most enjoyable trip, the only one of the kind in his busy career. In politics he has always been a democrat, but did not work at it to hurt much, as he had not time, though he did serve a term or two on the city council.
Mrs. Smith, his second wife, being a pronounced Baptist, and Philip, not having serious, religious convictions nor church going habits, accompanied her to the house of worship, became interested and joined the Baptist church and ever since has been a pillar of strength in the congregation. Such, in brief, is a sketch of the pioneer living manufacturer of Sidney who is now enjoying the fruits of a most industrious life among the scenes of his labor.
NATHAN MOORE. Sometime during the twenty-four hours of Jan- uary 30, 1823, Nathan Moore, in faint, yet unmistakable tones announced that he had come from the mysterious realm of the unknown to stay in the household of his parents, board and lodge with them without the formality of a previous contract.
Curious as it may seem the expectant was made welcome. His food for a year or more had been prepared and like manna was fresh every morning and warm and ready at all hours.
After some family consultation the good old Biblical name of Nathan was settled upon by which to designate him and he was so registered on the blank leaves between the Old and New testament. This was the custom in those days when the bible comprised about all there was of the family library and which was perused much more than now. Though the account was not inspired, there was nothing apocryphal about it, for that he had appeared was as true as anything between the sacred lids and no one, not even higher criticism, has questioned its authenticity or attempted to give it a theoretical or twisted meaning.
The bibles in those days were big affairs, probably so that the birth page should be ample to record the names, as it was a pioneer custom to endeavor to fill a page, a pocket edition would not serve the purpose. It seemed to be a christian duty to multiply and replenish the earth and there was no shirking of that supposed duty, but that the command meant just what it said.
The advent of Nathan was made in Springfield township, Portage county. now a part of Summit county, in the northeastern part of the state then known as New Connecticut, as the inhabitants of the Nutmeg state spiced the region. Here the sturdy little Buckeye took root and flourished in the native soil for nine years but was uprooted by his parents when they moved to Wood county, and transplanted him there. But the removal probably stunted him some, as the animate Buckeye never grew to a lofty height but it was com- pensated for by muscles and a frame of iron actuated and directed by a brain of pluck and energy that has characterized him for four score and five years and which has not abated in intensity.
Such capital was necessary in those pioneer days when the rigor of mother
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nature had to be subdued. None were born with a gold spoon in their mouth.
Mr. Moore, senior, entered a section of land on which the thriving city of Bowling Green now stands. Transportation was not very direct in any way unless a person footed it or rode on horseback for there were no through lines nor even sides ones. The Ohio canal to Cleveland was in operation for which place they embarked. Lake Erie was there and had been from time immemorial but no regular lines of navigation were in vogue, but they found a sailing smack for Detroit, procured passage and landed there. After a few days delay they took another sailing boat for Perrysburg, the head of naviga- tion, on the Maumee. It was a brisk little place but Toledo had not been thought of outside of Spain. It did not have even a Blade nor a Bee.
Bowling Green being on an undulating sand ridge was selected because it was above high water mark and had a surplus of gnarled scrubby oaks, stubborn to a provoking degree. The outlying prairie, now the garden spot of Ohio, was inhabited by frogs, turtles and such amphibious brutes and was a paradise for. mosquitos. The citizens were Indians principally and the Moore family was about the first white people that settled in that section. Neither schoolhouses nor churches dotted the landscape on this outlying post of civilization. There were no idle hands, so Satan did not have to find them employment.
The facilities for book education were few and slim, but Nature's volume lay open and Nathan took delight in reading it, for he found that the very trees had a language and that there were sermons in stones and running brooks. Having a taste for arboreal culture and as trees take kindly and cheerfully respond to intelligent cultivation and are ready to surprise any one with results when they work in accord with the unwritten law which govern them, for the same development is possible in inanimate nature as there is in animal life, including man, he turned his attention to the cultiva- tion of trees, fruit and ornamental and has made nursery business his life work with marked success and is at present, at the ripe age of four score and five years, engaged in raising ornamental trees and shrubs to beautify the lawns and parks of Toledo of which his son, Milton L. is superintendent, and has been for years. Few men in the state are better authority, if as good in the nursery line, as he, with his seventy years of experience with his eyes wide open.
A-volume of fiction is dull if there is not a thread of love romance running through it and the actual life of a person who has had no heart throbbing with the tender sentiment is barren of flowers, even though they did not fructify into any thing serious. The environments around Bowling Green, at that early day, were by no means crowded with the softer sex, with the exception of Indian maidens, but Mr. St. John moved into that vicinity with his family with a daughter, Julia, who awakened the tender sentiment in the breast of Nathan and his thoughts were divided between arboreal study and Julia. He was very much in the condition of Adam in the Garden of Eden, it was Eve or nothing. He wanted something to round out his life and so on December
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25, 1846, Miss Julia E. St. John, became Mrs. Nathan Moore, and it may be well to casually state right here that if Nathan had had a thousand females from which to make a selection the chances are he would not have got so com- panionable a help-meet as Julia who walked by his side and adorned his home for almost sixty years, but who left him for permanent rest in Graceland September 25, 1904, her seventy-eighth birthday. She was accustomed in her youth to the privations as well as the sweets of pioneer life and was unmur- muring in their early struggles as she was in the ease and comfort of her clos- ing days.
Eight children, evenly divided, four boys and four girls, were born to gladden their household, Mrs. J. D. Geyer. wife of Dr. Geyer, of Sidney; Mrs. Frank Fruchey, of Marion, Ind .; Ida, who died in Sidney many years ago, little Carrie who died when two years old, Ezra in the nursery business at Toledo; Milton L., superintendent of all the parks in Toledo; Albert, chief teller in the Northern National Bank, and Charles on the free mail delivery force in the same city. All inherited the sturdy industry of their parents and are true to those high moral principles which make valuable cit- izens, and the world better for their having lived in it. It was and is a family flock with no black sheep in it, as none possessed moral obliquites to pain a parent's heart or cloud their lives with dismal apprehension.
In the early fifties, having become acquainted with Philip Rauth, father of Mrs. Mary Wagner and Mrs. John E. Bush, and who was engaged in the nursery business in Sidney, he was induced to move to this town in 1855 as the Big Four railway was in process of construction and the Cincinnati, Ham- ilton and Dayton railway was pushing its way northward from Cincinnati to Toledo which had sprung into existence and was sapping the life out of Per- rysburg and had already given promise of becoming a great commercial city, the emporium of northwestern O. and one of the chain of beautiful cities on the great lakes.
Sidney being at the intersection of these trunk lines of railway, would afford good shipping facilities when finished and this fact, made plain by Mr. Rauth, was an additional incentive to Mr. Moore to pitch his tent in Sidney.
He, with J. C. Coe, bought what was known for years as the nursery farm across the river of John Mills, agent for the Big Four that owned it.
The late George Hemm became a partner and subsequently Mr. Coe sold his interest to William McCullough and the profitable business was continued for many years. Mr. Moore is the only surviving member of the firm. The children of the Moore family were all educated here and the writer of this article had for a time Ezra and Albert for diligent pupils, and hence has a warm spot for them, especially in his heart, and is gratified to know of their marked success and sterling worth.
Nineteen years ago Mr. Moore sold out his business here and moved with his family to Toledo with the exception of Mrs. Geyer and Mrs. Frank Fru- chey, and resumed the nursery business in which he is still engaged. Mr. Moore has been a life long republican, not offensive as a partisan, for that is contrary to his nature, but so strong in his political conviction as not to
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admit of variableness or shadow of turning. While here he was with Mrs. Moore, a member of the Presbyterian church in this city, and will die in the faith. Such, in brief, is a sketch of his busy life and few can look back over an interval of a career, now verging on a century with fewer misgivings.
MORRIS HONNELL .- Eighty-four years ago, December 3. 1908, Morris Honnell, the third in a family of twelve children enlivened his parents household in Greene county, Pa., where his boyhood was spent until about nine years of age when Mr. and Mrs. Honnell turned towards Ohio with their hopeful in a large wagon, the only means of transportation known in. those times between the two states. The progress was not swift but sure and the vehicle not as ease inviting as a Pullman palace car nor did it run nights. It had a commissary department for man and beast. The leisurely gait gave ample time to take in and enjoy the rugged scenery on the way. In fact it often became monotonous rendering a more rapid transit desirable. But that was in the days when heroic patience characterized people and no one was in a hurry as now, consequently nervous diseases were not as fash- ionable as at present. In due time they reached the pan handle of Virginia, crossed it to Wheeling and half forded and half ferried the Belle Riviere into the Buckeye state and finally brought up in Dingmansburg on the east side of the Miami where they remained for three years.
One night when Morris was nine years old Morris' eyes flew open and was amazed and frightened to see meteors falling like snow flakes, making it as light as day. He aroused the household and Mr. Honnell alarmed the neighborhood. The celestial fire works of meteoric dust was the most awe inspiring panorama he ever beheld and the end of the world was thought to be at hand. Those who had clean robes donned them so as to be as present- able as possible when their wings should be pinned on to meet the angels in the upper air. The woods in the vicinity were all lighted up. The wonder- ful pageant lasted from 2 o'clock in the morning until daylight and extended all over the United States, the Caribbean islands and Mexico.
The meteors seemed to start from the zenith like sky rockets or Roman candles and shoot in all directions athwart the arch of the sky in all directions to the horizon. While the luminous dust and fire balls with a train of white or blue light descended in a shower they seemed to fall at some distance from the observer and the illusion was as perfect as the ostensible ends of a rain- bow.
In the South the superstitious negroes threw themselves upon the ground and rolled in mental agony crying to God for mercy, deeming the judgment day at hand. No meteoric stones were found in this vicinity though they were hunted for. The astounding phenomena has never been accounted for even by the most astute astronomers and scientists. It is said that the shower continued for eight hours but was not noticed by ordinary persons after the sun arose. In any event nothing like this was ever observed before or since of which there is any record.
The Honnell family farmed the old Fielding place for three years and
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then moved to the north part of Sidney where they lived for three years more when Mr. Honnell bought 100 acres lying on the Russell pike a mile north- west of Sidney.
In due time a round dozen children made their appearance in the follow- ing order : Archibald, Maria, Morris, Eli, William, Jesse, Henry, Catherine, Cynthia, Thomas, Martha and Francis. Mr. Honnell did not clamor for the markets of the world as his home demand was about equal to his supply until the older ones left the parents' nest and partook of the provender from some other table.
Morris did farm work until 1848 when he broke out into the wide, wide world having been hired to take four horses overland to Vermont for Almon Hitchcock who had bought them in this county. This trip was made on horseback at a rate of thirty miles a day, riding one and leading three. It took the biggest part of a month to reach his destination but he delivered the goods all right and after remaining a few days so that he could occupy a chair without sitting straddle he took a packet at Whitehall on the Champlain canal for Albany, and then one on the Erie canal to Buffalo. Here he engaged passage on Lake Erie for Sandusky, then came to Bellefontaine by rail and completed his trip to Sidney on foot as the Big Four railway was an after consideration.
In 1850 he was seized with the California fever which literally took him off to the Golden state, leaving Sidney for St. Jo, Mo., March 26, in com- pany with the late N. R. Wyman, Harvey Guthrie and some others from this city.
At St. Jo an outfit of ox teams, wagons and provisions were procured and daily, for several months, they pursued the sun in its course.
The oveland Californians of 1850 had to undergo trials far worse than the forty miners experienced unless they were in the advance of the immense army of adventurers as the grass along the trail was consumed faster than it grew so that the oxen had to subsist frequently by browsing on the brush. He immediately went to placer mining with fair success, then was employed for a time at seven dollars a day to superintend a gang of miners, and sub- sequently he ran a saw mill. He remained in the Golden state for four years then returned to this county by the oceans to New York and bought 160 acres in Washington township which he still owns though at one time he had over 200 acres.
He did not farm it long until he realized that a wife was a commodity that a bachelor needed to make a desirable home, and at this dire juncture Miss Martha MacDonough, of Lebanon visited a neighbor in Washington township. He looked upon her visit as a providential event as in his eye she filled the bill, and as his advances were looked upon with favor by her they were married in Lebanon, May 15, 1855, when his successful career com- menced and a happy married life set in and continued until about four years ago. when she was laid to rest in Graceland, leaving two daughters, the only children that were born to them, Emma, now Mrs. I. N. Woodcox, of Piqua, and Olive, his affectionate stay in his declining years and the light of his beau-
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