USA > Ohio > Wayne County > History of Wayne County, Ohio, Volume I > Part 59
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September 10, 1908, the Judge was married to Mary S. Campbell, of Indianapolis, daughter of E. A. Campbell, a prominent family of the cap- ital city.
A man with such popularity among his fellow citizens and with such pronounced ability could not long fail to attract the attention of political leaders, and he was selected as the candidate for probate judge by the Demo- crats in 1899, and in the following autumn he was triumphantly elected to that office, faithfully and ably discharging the duties of the same for a period
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of six years, his record having been most satisfactory to all concerned, irre- spective of party affiliations. Prior to his election as probate judge he served one term in 1897 as city solicitor of Wooster, declining renomination.
Judge Adair, by his persistent application, his genuine worth and the force of his native powers, has elevated himself to a prominent position at the Ohio bar, possessing a broad and comprehensive knowledge of jurispru- dence. He is a strong, energetic, practical business lawyer. . His zeal and fixedness of purpose and policy in the defense of his client evokes the careful and considerate attention of a jury, and when on the bench his decisions were fair, learned and impartial. His is a genial, cordial nature, with proper poise and dignity. In his private ways we see the ebb and flow of his social nature, interesting alike in both. Faithful as he has been, and is, to official and pro- fessional trusts, an advocate and champion of popular education, and in sympathy with the spirit of our free institutions, he is one of the representa- tive citizens of Wayne county and the great commonwealth of Ohio.
John S. Adair, brother of Judge Adair, went to New Mexico in 1897 and located at Clovis, where he is now practicing law. He married Caroline Goldsmith, of Painsville, Ohio, and to this union five children have been born : Mary Anderson, Ruth Smiley, Blanche M., John Patrick and Eddie.
Prof. Edward E. Adair, brother of the Judge, is superintendent of schools at Doylestown, this county. He married Nina Franks in December, 1891, and three children have been born to them: Lyman, Frances and Jeanette.
Jennie Adair, sister of the subject, graduated from the University of Wooster in 1899. . She took a post-graduate course here in 1901, since which time she has been teaching in various high schools and is now principal of schools at Clovis, New Mexico.
Mrs. Robert L. Adair's father is a retired Methodist minister, living at Indianapolis. For many years he was presiding elder in the Indiana confer- ence. Mrs. Adair is a graduate of Moore's Hill College, and she took a post- graduate course at Depauw University, after which she taught in various high schools until her marriage. Both she and Judge Adair are members of the Methodist Episcopal church, regular attendants and liberal supporters of the same.
SMITH ORR, M. D.
The subject of this sketch, who for many years was one of the representa- tive medical practitioners of Grant county, Oregon, is the only living repre- sentative of the Orr family for whom the town of Orrville was named, and
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is the only surviving child of the late Hon. William M. Orr. Doctor Orr was born in the eastern part of Wayne county, Ohio, on the 23d of November, 1849. He is the oldest of four children born to his parents, the others being : John, who was born July 20, 1851, and is now deceased; William S., who was born February 4, 1856, and is deceased; and Mrs. S. M. Brenneman, born January 8, 1858, and died January 5, 1909, leaving a husband and two daughters.
Dr. Smith Orr was reared in Wooster until he was fourteen years old, when he removed with his father to Orrville. He received his education in the public schools of Wooster and Orrville, supplementing this by attendance at the Western Reserve College, at Hudson, Ohio. Having then determined to make the practice of medicine his life work, the subject entered Rush Medical College, at Chicago, where he graduated in 1876, receiving the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He at once entered upon the active practice of his profession, locating first at Hardin, Lasalle county, Illinois, but subsequently removing to Canyon City, Oregon. He was a successful practitioner, com- manding a large and remunerative patronage, and stood high among the men of his calling. In 1892, on account of the death of his father, Doctor Orr returned to Orrville and has since devoted his time to looking after his extended landed interests. The Doctor was, while engaged in the practice, considered an unusually good diagnostician and kept in close touch with every advance made in the healing art. He took a post-graduate course at the New York Polyclinic and commanded the confidence of those whom he treated.
Doctor Orr has never married, and is living quietly and unostentatiously at Orrville. He possesses a good library and is a close reader and keen ob- server of men and events, keeping himself well informed on the current events of the day.
The subject's paternal grandfather, Smith Orr, for whom he was named. owned one of the first houses in Orrville. This house is still standing, having sheltered three generations of the family. Judge Smith Orr died on April 1, 1865.
JUDGE MARTIN L. SMYSER.
An enumeration of the representative citizens of Wayne county of the past generation who won recognition and success for themselves and at the same time conferred honor upon the community, would be decidedly incom- plete were there failure to make mention of the well remembered and highly
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revered gentleman whose name introduces this biographical compendium, the late Judge Martin L. Smyser, whose name was long a household word in northern Ohio, where he held worthy prestige in legal and political circles. He was always distinctively a man of affairs, wielding a wide influence among those with whom his lot was cast, ever having the affairs of his county at heart and doing what he could to aid in its development, for he believed that his native county of Wayne was one of the most attractive, progressive and prosperous of any in the Union and did not care to live outside her borders, and it has always been due to such men as Judge Smyser that she could justly claim a high order of citizenship and a spirit of enterprise which conserved consecutive development and marked advancement in its material upbuilding. The county has been, and is, signally favored in the class of men who have controlled its affairs in official capacity, and this is one of the connections in which Judge Smyser demands recognition, serving the locality faithfully and well in positions of distinct trust and responsibility. He achieved a brilliant record at the bar at an age when most men are merely starting on their life work, for from the beginning he was intensely methodical and unswervingly scientific in search and seizure of the true light and of the essential morality and inspiration of the legal foundations, and in sources of legal conception and thought, conscientious and intensely pure, having an exalted firmness with which he recognized the morality of the fixed principles of judicial systems, holding devoutly to the highly embel- lished record of equity, the invariable theorems of law, the sure, certain, invincible methods of practice; therefore, abundant success could not help crowning his efforts and placing him on the topmost rung of the legal and judicial ladder and winning for him the well merited laudation of his fellowmen.
Judge Martin L. Smyser was a scion of an ancestry of which anyone might well be proud and many of their sterling traits outcropped in him, giving him fortitude, directness, keenness of perception and probity of char- acter. He was born in Chester township, Wayne county, Ohio, April 3. 1851. the son of Mr. and Mrs. Emanuel Smyser, the father a native of York county, Pennsylvania, where he was reared and educated in the pioneer schools, but who followed the wake of the tide of emigration that set in heavily for the West in 1832. He located in Wayne county, Ohio, where he was able to foresee a vast development and great possibilities to the strong of heart and arm and here he cleared a small plot of ground, erected a primitive dwelling and formed the nucleus of a comfortable and happy home, enjoying the fruition that always rewards the honest tiller of the soil
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in a virgin country. The Smysers have thus figured quite prominently in both York county, Pennsylvania, and in Wayne county, Ohio, since the epoch which historians are pleased to designate as early times. One of the well remembered relatives of the Judge was Jacob Smyser, a native of York county, Pennsylvania, where he was born on June 27, 1810, there grew up and married Sarah Diehl, and came to Wayne county, Ohio, with the Judge's father in 1832, and here reared a family of seven children, and lived here on a farm for a half century or more, taking an active interest in whatever tended to develop the county. His father, also named Jacob Smyser, and also a native of York county, Pennsylvania, died in 1840. He was a farmer and of German ancestry, as the name implies. The elder Smysers were Lutherans and known as men of sterling principles, honest, unswerving in their rectitude of purpose and action, consequently the probity of character of Judge Martin L. Smyser may be accounted for.
Judge Smyser grew to maturity on his father's farm, where he assisted in the work of developing the same and thereby imbibed a deep love of nature, laying the foundation for a rugged manhood and learning many lessons of subsequent value in shaping his destinies. Life on the farm acted on him as on many of our great men who have come up from the maul and the axe, the plow and the reaper,-cultivating a reflective and perceptive faculty, the ability to see clearly and to weigh accurately all problems and things affecting daily life.
Judge Smyser received his primary education in the common schools; always a student and ambitious to succeed, he applied himself very assid- uously to his studies and made rapid progress. Early deciding to enter the legal profession, he began bending every effort in that direction. At an early age he entered Wittenburg College, Springfield, Ohio, where he made a bril- liant record for scholarship and from which institution he was graduated in 1870. Soon afterward he began the study of law in earnest in the office of Hon. L. R. Critchfield, one of the most distinguished practitioners of the local bar, and under his able guidance Judge Smyser made rapid strides. He passed the required legal examination at Columbus, Ohio, in April, 1872, and at once opened an office in Wooster and was successful from the first, soon climbing to a front rank among his colleagues at the Wayne county bar. Such a favorable impression did he make upon his fellow citizens that in the fall of 1872, when only twenty-one years of age, he was nominated by the Republican party for prosecuting attorney of Wayne county, and he made a most active, aggressive, vigorous and almost astonishing record as a campaigner for one of such tender years and achieved a triumphant elec-
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tion, and he discharged the duties of the office in a manner that soon con- vinced the most skeptical of his unquestioned ability. In 1873 he entered into professional relationship with Hon. A. S. McClure, which combination was one of unusual strength and which was long continued.
Judge Smyser was chosen as an alternate delegate to the Republican national convention in Chicago in 1884, and in 1888 he was sent as a regular delegate, and during that year he was elected to the fifty-first Congress from the twentieth district by a majority of two thousand, a criterion of his general high standing in this district, and he won the undivided approval of all his constituents while a member of that distinguished body, where he was active in the affairs pertaining to his district and where his counsel was often sought and heeded by his colleagues. On January 15, 1898, he was appointed to the bench of the circuit court by Gov. Asa S. Bushnell to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Judge Julius C. Pomerene, and he soon proved his preparedness and fitness in every respect for this high position, having by nature and training a judicial mind that was clear in analysis and fair in all decisions, and he, in this connection, widely extended his circle of personal, legal and political friends, and perhaps no lawyer in the judicial district over which he presided ever enjoyed a more profound popularity than he, which came as a result of his ability and his noble personality.
This splendid type of high citizenship, able lawyer, capable jurist, popular exponent of the people whose rights he sought to champion at all times, whether in private, public or legislative capacities, was called to a higher plane of action by the fate that awaits all mankind. his death being counted a distinct and irreparable loss to the section of the state in which he lived.
In 1881 Judge Smyser was united in marriage to Alice A. France, a native of Wayne county, of which her father had formerly been sheriff. She is a graduate of the Delaware Female College.
Judge Smyser was honored and esteemed by all who knew him for his life of honor, usefulness, unselfishness, genuine worth, integrity and public spirit ; for his high purpose and unconquerable will, vigorous mental powers, diligent study and devotion to duty-these being some of the means by which he made himself eminently useful. The good he has accomplished for his county and state cannot be adequately expressed, and for generations to come the commendable things he did will continue to influence and direct human thought and action in this section of the great Buckeye comnon- wealth.
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ADAIR FAMILY.
The family name which heads this article has long been identified with the history and progress of Wayne county and is one which has been dis- tinguished and renowned far beyond common. Of Irish ancestry for many generations, the first of the family under immediate consideration was Patrick Adair, born in 1797 in county Down, Ireland, where in his early manhood he became identified with the home rule insurrection headed by the lamented Emmet, and he found it necessary to leave the land of his fathers ; accordingly he came to America and settled in western Pennsylvania, where he soon after- ward married Mary Stuart. Of the five children born to them, only one lived to maturity, she being Mrs. Mary Wilson, of Burlington, Iowa, now deceased. His wife died in about 1815 and several years later he married Ann Anderson, and to them were born five children, Jane E., Eliza, James M., Thomas A. and Anderson.
In 1825 Mr. Adair removed to Wayne county, Ohio, and settled on a farm not far distant from Wooster. Here his second wife died, at the age of thirty-nine years, and Mr. Adair again married, his wife being Ann Mc- Cracken, who died in 1843, leaving no children. Mr. Adair in early life had not been the recipient of educational advantages, but possessed a keen and retentive memory and was considered a man of a high order of intelligence. He was industrious and provident and possessed those qualities of mind and heart which make men honored and beloved rather than conduce to prosper- ity in worldly affairs. He was a stanch Democrat of the Thomas Jefferson type, whose principles he strongly advocated. He served in the war of 1812, in the capacity of surgeon's mate, or assistant. In religious belief he was a life-long Presbyterian. He died in 1866, at the advanced age of eighty- nine years.
Anderson Adair, son of Patrick and Ann ( Anderson) Adair, was born in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, and soon thereafter the family re- moved to Ohio. As a boy he attended the district schools and as a young man he performed the ordinary duties of a farmer's life until he reached the age of twenty-five, when for one year he attended the academy at Wooster, and for several years following he was engaged in the work of teaching. At the age of twenty-seven years he married Henrietta McClure and to them were born five children, of whom two are living, Prof. Edward E., of Doylestown, Ohio, and John S., concerning whom more follows. Mrs. Adair died in 1861, and some time later Mr. Adair married Emeline, daughter of Rev. Elmer Yocum, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal church. She was a
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lady of accomplishments and intellectual attainment, a graduate of Baldwin University and later a teacher of much ability. To this union there came two children, Judge Robert L. and Jennie L.
Mr. Adair was widely and most favorably known throughout Wayne county and was honored by political preferment upon many occasions, faith- fully performing the duties and holding sacred the trust reposed in him. For some years he was one of the county commissioners of Wayne county, and in this capacity he had much to do with the management and conduct of im- portant business in connection with improvements, etc., undertaken in behalf of the populace. He was deeply interested in matters of education and was one of the organizers of the board of education of Wooster township. and was for nearly or .quite thirty years a member of it. For nearly seventy years he lived on the farm his father settled, where he created many improve- ments and where by hard labor and intelligent effort he acquired a compe- tency. He was ever active in all movements that had for their end the advancement and good of the community, state and nation. In politics he was like his father, a Democrat. He died in July, 1905.
John S. Adair, son of Anderson and Henrietta (McClure) Adair, was born May 26, 1859. Until he was fifteen years of age he attended school and lived the life of a youth upon the farm. At this age he became a student of Wooster University, where for six years he pursued the college course. During this period he continued with his father, devoting such time as could be spared from his studies to assisting with the farm work. In 1881 he entered the law firm of Wiley & McClaran, alternating his legal researches with teaching a series of schools in Clinton, Wayne, Plain and Wooster town- ships. In the spring of 1886 he went to Coronado, Kansas, engaging in land business and practice of law. In 1888 he returned to Wooster, and was ad- mitted to practice in Ohio courts, opening an office in Wooster, where he for a number of years conducted an extended and lucrative practice. In 1889 he was elected city solicitor of Wooster.
WILLIAM JAMES SEELYE.
It is generally considered by those in the habit of superficial thinking that the history of so-called great men only is worthy of preservation and that little merit exists among the masses to call forth the praises of the historian or the cheers and the appreciation of mankind. A greater mistake was never
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made. No man is great in all things. Many by a lucky stroke achieve last- ing fame who before that had no reputation beyond their own neighborhoods. It is not a history of the lucky stroke which benefits humanity most, but the long study and effort which made the lucky stroke possible. It is the prelim- inary work, the method, that serves as a guide for the success of others. Among those in Wayne county who have achieved success along steady lines of action is William James Seelye, one of Wooster's popular and progressive citizens, who, like many of the leading people here, is a product of the great Empire state, he having been born in Schenectady, New York, April 10, 1857. He is the scion of an excellent ancestry, highly honored and distinguished in various walks of life. His mother, Elizabeth Tilman James, was a native of Albany, cousin of the famous Prof. William James, of Harvard Univer- sity, and his father, Julius Hawley Seelye, was for many years pastor of the Dutch Reformed church of Schenectady. He was a man of unusual intelli- gence, being profoundly educated, and he was a leader in his community. In 1858 he was appointed professor of mental and moral science in Amherst College, at Amherst, Massachusetts, which position he held with much credit to himself and to the entire satisfaction of all concerned until 1876, when, owing to his eminent record there, he was made president of the institution and became one of the most popular and influential educators in the state.
William J. Seelye, of this review; spent his boyhood at home and grew to maturity in the midst of the most wholesome environment, one that made for culture, education and refinement. After a preparatory education, he en- tered Amherst College, from which he was graduated in 1879. After a year of post-graduate work at home and a year of study in Johns Hopkins Uni- versity, he spent two years abroad, seven months in Edinburgh University and a semester each in Halle and Leipzig. Thus well equipped for his life work, having decided to follow in the footsteps of his worthy father, he began his career as teacher, having returned home in 1883, in which year he was ap- pointed professor of Greek and German in Iowa College at Grinnell, Iowa. The year 1885 to 1886 he taught, as classical undermaster, in Lawrenceville Academy, New Jersey. In all these institutions he readily proved his fitness for the position held.
Professor Seelye was married in September, 1886, to Alice Clarke, a lady of culture and talent, the daughter of a well-established and prominent family at Iowa City, Iowa. He spent the year 1886 to 1887 with her as a member of the American Archaeological Institute at Athens, Greece. The fol- lowing two years Professor Seelye taught in connection with Amherst Col-
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lege and in 1889 he became professor of Greek in Parsons College, Fairfield, Iowa, where he remained two years. Since 1891 he has been professor of Greek in the University of Wooster.
The pleasant home of Professor and Mrs. Seelye has been blessed by the birth of three interesting children, named as follows: Laurens, born in 1889; Katharine, born in 1891, and Julius, born in 1899.
As a teacher, Professor Seelye has met with merited success and in his capacity of instructor of Greek especially his record presents a series of suc- cesses such as few attain. He pursues his chosen calling with all the interest of an enthusiast, is thoroughly in harmony with the spirit of the work and has a proper conception of the dignity of the profession to which his life and energies are so unselfishly devoted. A finished scholar, a polished gentleman and possessing the traits of character necessary to insure success, the services thus far rendered and the laurels gained bespeak for him a wider and more distinguished career of usefulness in years to come. Unlike so many of his calling who become narrow and pedantic, he is easily a man of the times, broad and liberal in his views and has the courage of his convictions on all the leading public questions and issues upon which men and parties divide. He also keeps in trend with modern thought along its various lines and is a man of scholarly and refined taste, while his familiarity with the more practical affairs of the day makes him feel at ease with all classes and conditions of people whom he meets.
WILLIAM NICHOLAS RIES.
Agriculture has been the true source of man's dominion on earth ever since the primal existence of labor, and it has been the pivotal industry that has controlled, for the most part, all the fields of action to which his intel- ligence and energy have been devoted. Among this sturdy element in Chip- pewa township, Wayne county, whose labors have profited alike themselves and the community in which they live is the gentleman whose name appears at the head of this biographical review, and in view of the consistent career lived by Mr. Ries since coming to this section of the country, it is particularly fitting that the following short record of his life and labors be incorporated in a book of this nature. Like many of the most thrifty citizens of this county, he came to us from the German empire, which has furnished so many of the progressive citizens of this country.
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William Nicholas Ries was born in Sauphereicher, Germany, March 22, 1846, the third son of Martin and Mary (Becker) Ries. William N. was brought to America by his parents when only eighteen months old. The family settled in Chippewa township, Wayne county, Ohio, in 1847. The father was a coal miner and he was known as a hard working, honest man.
William N. Ries, of this review, was educated in the country schools, and he engaged in coal mining for some time, later purchasing a small farm, having saved his earnings. He was married on March 29, 1866, to Barbara Frase, daughter of Squire Peter and Mary Frase, a highly respected family. To this union have been born Mrs. Ada Shank, of Doylestown, this county; Minnie, who lives at Johnson's Corners ; and Irvin, a well known and success- ful farmer.
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