USA > Ohio > Wayne County > History of Wayne county, Ohio, from the days of the pioneers and the first settlers to the present time > Part 30
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HORACE HOWARD.
Horace Howard was born in Swansey, New Hampshire, 1787, the family being of English descent. His father was a farmer, with whom Horace remained until he was twenty-one years of age, when he engaged in the carpentering business. In 1811 he mar- ried Lydia White, of Winchester, and removed to Wooster in the winter of 1818. On his arrival he visited the families of Calvin and Cyrus Baird, of Plain township, they being Eastern people. He purchased a quarter of land soon thereafter in what is now Ashland county, two miles east of Jeromeville, on the State road. He then returned to New Hampshire for his wife and the other two children, Harriet and Everett-Charles and Harvey, who had come out with him, having been left with Calvin Baird-bringing them hither in the spring of 1819.
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He remained on the farm a year, when he removed with his family to Wooster and engaged in the manufacture of patent water wheels, with Mr. Elisha Hale. About 1825 he purchased two lots, 120 feet frontage, now known as the residence of John Crall and Widow Seigenthaler, where, on the corner of the east lot, he built a one-story frame building 24x60, and here he conducted the manufacture of carding machines, and here the Hackett boys com- menced their apprenticeship with him.
In 1827 he removed to Norwalk, Ohio, and there engaged in hotel keeping. In 1830 he went to Cincinnati and became over- seer and manager of the cotton factory owned by Wm. Tift & Co. Whilst in that city, 1831, his wife died. By this marriage, in ad- dition to those named, was born Alfred and William Howard. In Cincinnati he remained several years, when he returned to Woos- ter, staying about a year and marrying Mrs. Abigail Weed, when Mr. Tift sent for him to return to the Queen City and once more assume control of his factory.
In 1838-39 he removed to Detroit, Mich., thence to Jackson, Canaan township, Wayne county, and thence to Wooster, taking charge of the "White Swan," a hotel situated upon the site of the old " Exchange," now Zimmerman's Exchange Block. He after- wards removed to Loudonville, and then to Wooster, taking charge of the " American House," in the spring of 1847, remaining there fifteen years, after which time he retired from active business, dying August 4, 1870, aged 82 years.
George (deceased) and Lewis Howard, of Wooster, were his sons by the second marriage.
Horace Howard was a natural genius and a first-class mechanic. He was a man of great decision and independence of character. He was dignified, courteous and social, fond of bright society and mirthful conversation. He possessed a wonderful memory, and was much inclined to poetical recitations. He could for hours and days quote from the Old and New Testaments, from Byron and Burns, and was familiar with the newspaper literature of the day.
JOSEPH CLINGAN.
Joseph Clingan, one of the pioneer printers of Wayne county, was born near Greensburg, Westmoreland county, Pa., February 29, 1789. At an early age he served an apprenticeship at the printing business, and in 1818 he journeyed to Wheeling, West
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Virginia, and established a newspaper, which not proving to be a successful or profitable enterprise, in the latter part of 1819 he removed to Wooster, Ohio.
On his arrival he took charge of a newspaper for Benjamin Bentley, called the Wooster Spectator, which he conducted for a year, when he returned to Pennsylvania. Mr. Bentley being a mer- chant and having no practical knowledge of the office, did not suc- ceed in the management of his publication, and after Mr. Clingan's departure wrote for him to come back and assume editorial super- vision of the Spectator, offering him a partnership interest in the profits of the same.
This arrangement being satisfactory and promising to be advan- tageous to Mr. Clingan, he again took charge of the paper, the subscription list soon being enlarged from three hundred to five hundred subscribers, payment usually being made in coon skins, hickory wood and corn meal, with occasionally a little "wild-cat" money. Some of the leading merchants would patronize the office to the amount of five dollars a year by way of advertising. Flushed with the importance and influence of his position, Mr. Bentley, against the expressed wish of his partner, inaugurated a series of personal attacks through the columns of his paper against some leading aspirants for political favor, prominent among whom was Mr. - , a candidate for the Ohio Senate. This nameless gen- tleman instituted an action against the publishers of the Spectator for libel, when a trial was had, resulting in a verdict of six and one- fourth cents damages. But the libelant was too plucky to submit to such an award, and, obtaining a second hearing, he obtained a judgment of six hundred dollars. This was a terrible blow to young Clingan's prospects, a very " slice of the day of judgment," and he was compelled "to step down and out," as all his surplus capital was absorbed in payment of his share of the "blood money," and in defraying the costs of suit and their lawyer, who was none else than Hon. Thomas Ewing.
In consequence of this prosecution he was obliged to dispose of his interest in the Wooster Spectator. About this time the Pres- idential difficulty between John Quincy Adams and General Jack- son was assuming political significance, when Mr. Clingan proposed establishing an organ in the interest of the Jackson party. In this project he was warmly seconded and encouraged, and, with some additional aid, in 1826 the Republican Advocate was established. This movement was entirely successful ; the Jackson party at the
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next election was overwhelmingly victorious, and the Republican Advocate became the leading oracle of the day.
He continued its publication until 1837, when failing health. obliged him to relinquish the editorial calling. He rented the office to Mr. Samuel Littell, and finally disposed of it to this gen- tleman. After having undergone a succession of changes, it was ultimately merged into the Wayne County Democrat, so deservedly popular under the editorial management of Hon. E. B. Eshelman.
In 1840, Mr. Clingan sought retirement in the country, and died in Knox county, Ohio, in 1873, at the advanced age of eighty- four years.
He was slender in build, always delicate, never weighing over one hundred and thirty pounds, straight as an arrow, and to the time of his death was quick and active. His life was exceedingly temperate and abstemious, he never using tobacco, either by chew- ing or smoking, and never indulging in spiritous liquors of any kind whatever. He was a man of fair abilities, a nervous, forcible writer, always expressing himself with great clearness, and employ- ing the fewest possible words to convey his meaning. He was an incessant reader, had an excellent library, and included among his volumes many valuable and precious publications. He had a thirst for old books, and reveled in the researches of antiquated authors. With the politics of his generation he was remarkably familiar, and took a prominent part in their discussion. He was a close student and reader of modern literature, prose and poetical, and was inti- mate with the best passages of the best authors. He was elected to the office of Recorder of Wayne county in 1833.
He was married in 1824, to Clarissa, daughter of John Law- rance, who resided near Wooster then, on what is now known as the "(Thomas farm."
E. G. Clingan, of Wooster, his son, makes frequent excursions to Parnassus, and we here introduce one of his poems, published in Bennett's Magazine some years ago :
BELL MCLAIN.
BY E. G. CLINGAN.
Ever with the rolling year, Summer comes ; then do I hear A voice again From memory dear- Bell McLain !
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Now my summers long have fled, But the hallowed joys they shed Will remain A lingering thread, Bell McLain !
Like the songs of summer birds, Sinless were your thoughts and words ; But again I hear from lips unstirred, Bell McLain !
Brief were your unclouded days, Kind and gentle all your ways; But in vain Is earthly praise, Bell McLain !
Life and beauty sometimes meet, And sever with the winding sheet ; But oh the pain When life was sweet, Bell McLain !
Some have thought it for the best Now that you will ever rest. Green the plain Above your breast, Bell McLain !
REMINISCENCES BY REV. M. E. STRIEBY.
My father, C. H. Strieby, came to Wooster, July 7, 1822. His trade was that of a clock maker, and I presume that many of his clocks are yet to be found among the Germans and others, in various parts of the county. He removed from Woos- ter to Mount Vernon, Ohio, in ,1847, thence, in 1856, to Syracuse, N. Y., and thence, in 1869, to Maple Wood, N. J., where he died June 28, 1872, aged 84. My mother still survives him, and resides in my family. She is now in her 8Ist year.
I was seven years old when we came to Wooster, where I enjoyed the school advantages of the place, and also spent a year or two as clerk in the stores of J. W. Schuckers, and of John Larwill. At the age of sixteen I determined to go to col- lege, and few things mark the progress of Wooster in educational advantages more than the fact, that then it had nothing of higher grade than the common school, and I went to Hudson College on the Western Reserve, while now near the place where we boys gathered hazelnuts, there stands a college that rivals the one at Hudson. A year or two after I went to Hudson an Academy was started in the Court House in Wooster, which I attended for a time, but afterwards I went to Oberlin College, where, in 1838, I graduated. After my graduation I studied the- ology, and in 1842 became the pastor of the Free Presbyterian church in Mount Vernon, Ohio. It afterwards became a Congregational church. In its early his-
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tory it was frequently mobbed on account of its anti-slavery sympathies, one of these mobs occurring soon after I went there.
In 1852 I left Mount Vernon and went to Syracuse, N. Y., where I organized the Plymouth Congregational church, and remained its pastor nearly twelve years. In 1864 I was appointed one of the Corresponding Secretaries of the American Misssonary Association, and that position I still occupy.
EZRA DEAN.
Concerning the life, incidents thereof, public services and death of Hon. Ezra Dean, we make the following extracts from the Iron- ton Semi-weekly Journal :
He was born in the town of Hillsdale, Columbia county, New York, April 9, 1795, and was descended from an ancient family which settled in Massachusetts in the year 1630, as shown by a register found among his papers. Among them is Silas Dean, who took an active part in the Revolution, who, in September, 1776, was chosen by the Continental Congress one of the embassadors, in connection with Dr. Frank- lin and Thomas Paine, to conduct the negotiations between the Confederate Colo- nies and France, which resulted in the treaty of alliance signed at Paris, February 6, 1778. Others of the family, less conspicuous, were doing duty in the ranks of the army of the Revolution.
It is said of Judge Dean that he attained to the maturity of manhood at an early age. When in his seventeenth year, on the 17th of April, 1814, he was ap- pointed, by the Secretary of War, an ensign in the Eleventh Regiment of United States Infantry, then doing duty against the English on the northern frontier.
The 20th of February, 1815, he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant by President Madison, to take rank from October 1, 1814, for meritorious conduct in the sortie of Fort Erie, the 17th of September, 1814. He was in the battles of Bridgewater and Chippewa. His regiment held the advance in the storming of Queenstown Hights, in September, 1814.
At the close of the war he was placed in command of a revenue cutter on Lake Champlain, before he had attained the age of twenty, in which capacity he ren- dered effective service against that ever-daring class engaged in smuggling. After about two years in guarding the trade of the northern frontier, he resigned that position, and was next assigned a place in the corps of Government engineers that ran the north-east boundary line between the State of Maine and New Brunswick. He was engaged in that service about one year. He then resolved to enter upon a more independent mode of life than that of public service under Government, when he went to Burlington, Vt., and was initiated a student of law with Governor D. P. Van Ness, under whose instructions he remained about two years, when he went to Plattsburg, N. Y., and completed his preparatory course of study. The Ist of October, 1823, he was admitted by the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State of New York, a member of the bar of that State.
In the year 1824, when Ohio was among the young and thinly peopled Western States, he emigrated to Wooster, and entered into the practice of law in Wayne and the surrounding counties. In 1825 he married Miss Eliza Nailor, who survives him.
* Since dead.
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HISTORY OF WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.
In the year 1832 he was chosen by the General Assembly to the President Judgeship of the Court of Common Pleas, his circuit being composed of the coun- ties of Wayne, Knox, Holmes, Richland, Medina and Lorain. He served in that capacity the full constitutional term of seven years.
In the campaign of 1840, Mr. Dean was elected to Congress from Ohio, and took his seat in that body on the 4th of March, 1841. He was re-elected in 1842. Such was the sense entertained of his merits as a public man, that he lacked but one vote of being the choice of his Democratic friends in the Legislature for United States Senator, when Benjamin Tappan was chosen. Upon his retirement from. Congress he resumed the practice of his profession in Wooster, and in the year 1852. took into partnership his son, and only child, Ezra V. Dean, whom he trained for the bar. This relation continued until 1865, when the son moved with his family to Ironton, Ohio, and engaged in an active practice there. The father could not endure a separation from his son and grandchildren. He at once resolved to set his affairs in order, and to spend the evening of his life with them, on the banks of the Ohio; he accordingly moved to Ironton, in the year 1867, where he made his home and found his grave.
Judge Dean possessed a healthy and upright intellect, stored with various. knowledge. Few men were better read in ancient and modern history, and es- pecially the history of England and his own country. His convictions were deep and settled in whatever he believed to be right, and he adhered to them with a firmness and uttered them with a boldness which neither the roar of the tumult could drown nor the clamor of opposition modify or subdue. It was the force of these convictions which sometimes gave him the appearance of dogmatism in con- versation ; yet lie was most tolerant of what he believed to be errors of opinion in others.
From the great diversity of life which he experienced in the vicissitudes of a soldier's camp, the deck of a revenue cutter, or tracing a boundary line between the possessions of his own country and those of Great Britain, the practice of the law and its administration among a pioneer people, to that of a legislator in the Fed- eral Congress, he had garnered up in the well-arranged storehouse of an unfailing memory a variety of knowledge, interwoven with the history of his country and of his adopted State, curious and interesting. Besides the diffusion of thought and sentiment which animated his discourse, it was enlivened by ingenious illustrations, pointed sentences, and always seasoned by a vein of good humor which, among all, the old and the young, the learned and the ignorant, recommended him to favor and attention.
In stature he was above the middle size, manly, athletic and well proportioned; his countenance was marked in visihle characteristics of deep thought and inflexi- ble resolution, yet bearing an air of serenity and satisfaction, the natural result of a vigorous intellect and conscious integrity.
. The habits of intellectual and physical activity which he had practiced through a long life, continued until within four days of his death.
On Sunday evening, the 21st of January, he complained of being unwell, and continued to decline until Thursday evening, the 25th of January, 1872, when all that was mortal of Ezra Dean perished without a struggle or a groan. He was fully conscious to the last, when he took affectionate leave of those most dear to him, and with filial confidence resigned his spirit to the common Father in full trust that those he had loved here would each in their appointed time re-unite with him in the future life.
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On receipt of the startling intelligence in Wooster of the death of Judge Ezra Dean, a meeting of the members of the bar of the city was called and a committee of three appointed to frame a memorial and draft resolutions expressive of their sorrow and suit- able to the character and memory of the deceased. At an ad- journed meeting of the bar of Wooster, at the office of Rex & Jones, on Saturday evening, March 9, 1872, Hon. John P. Jef- fries in the Chair, and Benj. Eason Secretary, the committee, ap- pointed at a former meeting for that purpose, composed of Hon. George Rex, Hon. Martin Welker and Hon. C. C. Parsons, Sr., pre- sented their report, which, on the first day of the ensuing term of the Court of Common Pleas, was ordered to be placed on record. Mr. Jeffries, after the presentation of the resolutions in Court, in- dulged in a brief but touching and eloquent speech, testifying his high esteem and reverence to the moral worth, intellect and ability of the deceased. John McSweeney, Esq., then pronounced an elo- quent eulogy, and other members of the bar spoke befitting words.
STEPHEN F. DAY, M. D.
Stephen F. Day, M. D., was a formidable man in the profes- sion of medicine, and wore the baton of a field marshal in the em- pire of physic. The annals of medical practice may supply a more illustrious name, but we doubt if, as a practitioner in his chosen sphere and field, he had either many equals or superiors. He entered the lists, not for the purpose of eliciting applause, starv- ing competitors, or of being a subaltern. His was a higher aim- that of acquiring a transcendent skill; of mastering the abstrusi- ties of the books; of penetrating the mysterious origins of dis- ease ; of exploring the ingeniously contrived, most complicated and most wonderfully constructed Temple of Life; of ennobling the ministry of pain, and exalting and glorifying his profession.
His pronounced motto was,
"To guard is better than to heal, The shield is nobler than the spear."
He despised that Goth and Vandal herd of mountebanks and quack professors-professional Assyrians, who swoop upon a com- munity, devastate human habitations, augment the total of human misery, and who, in the solemn flight from death, allow not a single straggler to get home.
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He ever insisted that infinite mischief was occasioned by this piebald army of dog killers, insect hunters, weed pickers, spider catchers, cockle-shell-mongers, and brass-faced, unlettered char- latans that too often infest communities and levy their pretentious and ruinous services upon unsuspecting and luckless victims. Like the British army in Cæsar's time, they slay in chariots and they slay on foot.
This most remarkable man was a native of Morris county, New Jersey, where he was born September 4, 1798. At the tender age of seven years he accompanied his father to Washington county, Pa., where his time was spent upon a farm, and where he remained until he was sixteen years of age. He now, with iron resolution, determined to make a forward movement in the interest of himself, and calling on the powers with which God and nature had endowed him, advanced to deliver battle to the world.
Home, its wedded light and shade, its opulence of boyish fan- ·cies, and all of its endearments, were forsaken, and, on horseback, attired in home-spun clothes, and with twenty-five cents in his pocket, he quitted the family mansion to blend in the great fretting sea of human life, where so many are stranded, and where too often a lone sail points to the voyagers beneath. Ample oppor- tunity was afforded him to exercise those faculties of industry and economy always so characteristic of him. As a basis of the con- templated professional life upon which he was about to enter, some judicious disciplinary preparation was essential, and how well he succeeded in this respect his subsequent and distinguished career quite clearly demonstrates. His elementary studies of medicine were with Dr. Leatherman, of Canonsburg, Pa., his course con- cluding with a diploma from the Medical College of Philadelphia. He immediately entered upon practice at Florence, Pa., equipped with the redoubtable pill, the nauseating jalap, the sav- age knife and the blades that shine, prepared to make or heal a scar.
In the spring of 1827 he came to Wooster, Wayne county, Ohio, the arena of a life of patient, laborious, exhaustive toil, and the theater of his subsequent professional exploits. Here he con- tinued in practice until 1861, when approaching bodily infirmities admonished him to surrender the field and fortress he had so long and valiantly maintained, and that competitors and antagonists had assaulted in vain. He was married in the year 1833, to Miss Eliza E. Straughan, of Salem, Columbiana county, Ohio. In March,
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1.863, he was attacked by paralysis, from the effects of which he never fully recovered, but was confined to his bed until the 25th of November, 1869, when a second attack suddenly precipitated him from time to eternity.
And thus closed the earthly career of one of our most estima- ble and conspicuous citizens, and to the period of his death the most capable, most skillful and accomplished physician and surgeon that ever settled in Wayne county. It is safe to assert that no practitioner ever located in our midst who held such a supreme monopoly of his profession, and who had bound to him, by the ties of friendship and confidence, the hearts and affections of so many people. His circuit of visitation was not confined to his own county, but extended far beyond its limits. In surgery especially did he excel, although he made a specialty of no particular branch of the profession. Was there a fracture to be replaced, a disloca- tion to be readjusted, an adventitious tumor to be incised, an ex- crescence to be slashed, or a limb to be amputated, Dr. Day was summoned and the work was done. By some it has been charged, and the belief entertained, that he was too violent in his opera- tions-that they were even cruel and barbarous. Not so. The work of the surgeon is his own work. All responsibility is with him, and all consequences. His dispensations to act emanate from himself. Once entrusted with the case, he must be his own mas- ter, and for the time recognize no superior. There must be no flinching or quailing; to falter is to fail. His position is a grave and decided one-the middle-ground of Life and Death. The heart may bleed in sympathy with the victim, but for the time it must be stone and steel; the eye may witness, but be blind; the ear hear, but, as the adder, must it be deaf. There must be no delicacy, no mauvaise honte when Life's fountains are being gashed. Be he a skillful operator and does his work well, the harder, deeper and faster he cuts the better. If he rushes through that he may know the end, no one is gladder than the sufferer. There can be no refinement when the edge of steel pierces the trembling flesh.
Call it cruelty, barbarism, or what you will, he is the true phy- sician, who by the quickest, best and most skillful process, rescues the greatest number of sufferers from the tents of death. He shall be crowned the Autocrat of his Art, and the incense of grateful and remembering hearts shall pervade the air that inspheres his mausoleum. No surgeon ever wielded a knife in whose breast
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throbbed a tenderer heart than in that of Dr. Stephen F. Day. There is abundant testimony to this fact by those yet living who have witnessed his operations and are competent judges. Even in the less difficult and complex operations his deep pity was aroused and he was moved to tears. Moreover, it must be remembered that in those days surgery was performed under embarrassing con- ditions, entirely or almost unknown to the operator of the present day. This is the era of anasthetics-of chloroform, of ether, of devilish gases and subtle fluids. Is there a leg to be taken off, a skull to be trepanned, a contusion to be manipulated, or what not, the anasthetic is called in, and the operation is performed without consciousness on the part of the patient, who may be out-dreaming John Bunyan, and happier than the soul of a Scandinavian hero in Valhallah.
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