History of the Western Reserve, Vol. II, Part 64

Author: Upton, Harriet Taylor; Cutler, Harry Gardner, 1856-
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago ; New York : The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 886

USA > Ohio > History of the Western Reserve, Vol. II > Part 64

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president of the Northwestern Cornell Alumni Association. In 1892 he was appointed a mem- ber of the board of school examiners of Ash- tabula county, and was active and influential in the introduction of the plan providing for the free transportation of pupils to school and the organization of an efficient corps of teach- ers. He is a life member of the Western Re- serve Historical Society of Cleveland, Ohio Society of Colonial Wars, New York Histor- ical Society, and New York Society of May- flower Descendants, and of many other clubs and associations. His political affiliations have always been with the Republican party. He served for years as a member of county and senatorial committees and as delegate to party conventions, and in 1896 was assistant to Colonel W. C. Haskell and Major C. W. F. Dick (now United States senator) in the cam- paign managed by the Republican national committee with headquarters in Chicago. Since becoming a resident of the metropolis, Mr. Fitch has long been chairman of the li- brary committee of the Ohio Society of New York and registrar of the New York Gene- alogical and Biographical Society. He is also author of "The Throope Family and the Scrope Tradition," and of numerous historical papers. As one of the representative citizens of New York who has become authoritative in matters of history, Mayor McClellan hon- ored him with appointment to membership on the Hudson-Fulton celebration commission.

On the 30th of June, 1897, Mr. Fitch mar- ried Miss Florence Hopper, daughter of George H. Hopper, of New York City, the wedding ceremony being performed at Elm- wood, the country residence of the Hopper family, near which Mr. Fitch now has a sum- mer home. He resides at 300 West Eighty- first street, New York. Three daughters have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Fitch, Alta Jane, Katherine Elizabeth and Dorothy Harriet Fitch, and one son, George Hopper Fitch. In concluding this memoir of the Fitch and Win- chester families, it should be added that a record of the Hopper family is also published in this work.

THE HOPPER FAMILY .- Mrs. Harriet A. Hopper, widow of the late George H. Hop- per, of the Standard Oil Company, is a public- spirited summer resident of Unionville, Lake county. Her husband was a remarkable man of varied successes and accomplishments. He was born at Shebbeare, in Devonshire, Eng-

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land, on the 21st of April, 1837, several mem- bers of the family emigrating to the United States and settling in Cleveland at the time of the Corn Law troubles in 1841, among whom was his father, John Hopper. The son re- ceived his education in Cleveland and Mon- treal, and developed marked talents of an in- ventive and mechanical nature. He served in the War of the Rebellion in an Indiana regi- ment and as a member of the One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Ohio Volunteers. Later he became widely known as a manufacturer and for many years was closely associated with John D. Rockefeller and his partner, Samuel J. Andrews, the latter of whom married his cousin. For a long time he was a contract- ing manufacturer for the Standard Oil Com- pany. but eventually sold his factories to that corporation and became a stockholder and an official in the larger concern. His wife's sis- ter Marie is the wife of James G. Newcomb, who at Mr. Hopper's decease succeeded him as head of the department he founded for that company.

A lover of country life, as a recreation, he established a famous stock farm at Union- ville, and became noted as a breeder of fine horses, one of the most valuable of which was "Bell Boy," burned in a California stable, after its owner had refused to sell him for $102,000. Mr. Hopper was a generous patron of art, music and the drama, and his beautiful coun- try home at Unionville, with its fine collection of paintings and other charming features, is still a striking evidence of his artistic and re- fined tastes. It was there that he passed his last days, dying February 15, 1898, and being buried by the side of his parents at Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland. After the transfer of his chief business interests to the east, Mr. Hopper's city home was in New York, where his honored widow continues to reside except in the summer months. On April 10, 1860, Mr. Hopper married, at Cleveland, Miss Har- riet Almeda Ganson, daughter of Joseph Free- man and Mary (Curtis) Ganson, born at New- bury, Ohio, December 14. 1840. Her ances- tors were Massachusetts pioneers, her great- grandfathers, Nathan Ganson and Daniel Cur- tis, being among the little band of brave men at Bunker Hill.

The family name was originally Howper, and the arms of the Devonshire branch, as recorded in 1620, are thus described: "Gy- ronny of eight, or and ermine, over all a tower triple towered, sable; crest, a demi-wolf hold-

ing a pine branch vert, fructed or." The will of Tristram Hopper, of Musbury, was proved November 27, 1545. In the seventeenth cen- tury note is made of Sir Edward Hopper, of Boveridge, who married Catherine, widow of Sir Hugh Wyndham, knight and justice of the court of common pleas under Charles II, and who died July 23. 1684. William Hop- per, who was born in 1775 and married Mary Harris, of Shebbeare, in that shire, was of a junior branch of the preceding family. Dur- ing the business depression and widespread suffering caused by the corn law agitation, several of his children, with Henry Harris, emigrated to America. The Harris family had also long been settled in Devonshire.

John Hopper, the eldest of the six children of William and Mary ( Harris) Hopper, was born in Shebbeare in 1808; married Lydia, daughter of James and Susan Ayrscott Grif- fin; sailed from England in June, 1841, and spent nine weeks aboard the "Lord Ramsey" before she sighted New York harbor. The family settled at Cleveland, where Mrs. Hop- per died March 16, 1851, leaving four chil- dren, as follows: (1) William Griffin Hopper, deceased, of Richmond, Ohio, president of the bank at Andover, Ohio; (2) George Henry Hopper, before mentioned; (3) John Edward Hopper, father of Dr. Archie Hopper, of Fair- field, Nebraska; and (4) Jennie, wife of the late Nelson Elliott Miner, of Madison, Lake county, and mother of Mrs. Francis Hearn, deceased, and Mrs. Ora Neville, of that place. John Hopper married for his second wife Mrs. Chloe Parker, daughter of Ezra Parker and widow of Emerson Parker, of Bainbridge, Ohio, who had died leaving five children, to whom Mr. Hopper was a just and devoted step-father. He was an able man, as well as a good one, and was widely known as an ear- nest and forceful speaker on political and re- ligious themes. In his early life he and his wife were lay preachers in the Wesleyan church in England, and in Cleveland he be- came a valued worker in the Whig, Abolition- ist and Republican causes. He was a stanch believer in the duty of exercising the right of franchise, and continued faithfully to cast his vote until he had reached the age of ninety- two. His death occurred at Madison, Sep- tember 17, 1902, in his ninety-fourth year, and he was buried by the mother of his children in Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland.

The other children of William and Mary (Harris) Hopper were: (1) Katherine (Mrs.

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Fay) ; (2) Hannah (Mrs. Cole), mother of Mrs. Samuel Andrews, Mrs. Furze, and James, Elijah and Silas Cole, of Cleveland ; (3) Rebecca (Mrs. Hooper) ; (4) Dorothy Harris Hopper, wife of Thomas Dedham, of Devonshire and Montreal, and mother of- Katherine, who married James Wood and had two daughters (Clare, Mrs. Chase Witzel, of Cleveland, and Ida, Mrs. George Bradford Boyd, of Sharon, Pennsylvania), and Mary, Mrs. Eager, who resides in Philadelphia and had one son and one daughter ; and (5) Will- iam.

Mr. and Mrs. George H. Hopper became the parents of three children: (1) Jennie Marie, born at Pulaski, Indiana, on the 4th of February, 1860, graduated from Miss Salis- bury's school at Cleveland, 1880; married Frederick M. Nicholas, a popular club man and accomplished musician ; has one child, Marjorie, and resides on Euclid avenue, Cleve- land, and at their magnificent Elizabethan sum- mer home, "Broadfields," in Unionville. (2) Charles Henry Hopper, born at Francis- ville, Indiana, February 1, 1862, received a liberal education at Brooks School, Cleveland, and Sheffield Scientific School of Yale Uni- versity. He is a member of Delta Psi. After marked success as an amateur he became a professional singer and actor, having created the role of the Duke in De Koven's "Fencing Master" and the title role in Townsend's "Chimmie Fadden." He is unmarried and re- sides at the Lambs' Club, New York, and "Roads End Lodge," Unionville. (3) Flor- ence Lynette Hopper, born in Cleveland, June 21, 1876, was married, June 30, 1897, to Win- chester Fitch, by Rev. Dr. William MI. Brown, now bishop of Arkansas. They have one son, George Hopper Fitch, and three daughters- Alta Jane, Katherine Elizabeth and Dorothy Harriet-and reside at 300 West Eighty-first street, New York, "Lyndsell Farm," in Union- ville, Ohio, and sometimes at their farm near New Canaan, Connecticut. Mrs. Fitch, who is a fine linguist and musician, completed her education in Paris, and as a dramatic soprano of more than amateur ability has distinguished herself in singing for social and charity func- tions.

Mrs. Hopper is deeply interested in all that tends to beautify the village of Unionville and its environs, and is a generous contributor to churches and institutions. Her charity is proverbial, her hospitality unbounded. At her cottage on Lake Erie she entertains large

house-parties during the summer and has erected a beautiful casino which serves as a club for the neighboring cottagers. Like their mother, each of her three children, whose country houses are near hers, shows a similar spirit, and through their influence the historical village, founded by Colonel Alexander Harper in 1798, has become one of the most delightful suburbs of Cleveland.

JOHN F. Dix .- One of the scientific, .sani- tary and practically successful dairy farmers of Westfield township, Medina county, John F. Dix was an educator of high reputation for a quarter of a century before he entered his present field of agriculture, and has been an active and valued participant in the township government since his early manhood. The dominant trait of his character is thorough- ness, or faithfulness, which produces the men of invaluable service in every advanced Ameri- can community. Mr. Dix is a native of Se- ville, Guilford township, this county, and was born January 24. 1850. His parents were John P. and Mary Jane ( Hay) Dix, the father being a native of New York, born in 1819, and the mother a native of the Green Mountain state. The latter came with her parents to Guilford township in 1832 and the family was considered in the early pioneer class. John P. Dix purchased an' "eighty" in Guilford town- ship at an early day and, after wrestling for a time with its dense timber, disposed of that tract and bought 100 acres in Westfield town- ship near Seville. This continued the family homestead and the paternal farm until 1883, when Mr. Dix became the owner of the farm near Chippewa Lake which he conducted until his death March 17, 1899, in his eightieth year. He was an active and prominent Abolitionist and assisted in the Underground Railroad. His wife had died in 1850, in her twenty-fourth year, the mother of three sons. The eldest, A. A. Dix, who is deceased, was a soldier of the · Civil war, a member of the Forty-second Ohio Volunteer Infantry, commanded by Colonel James A. Garfield. Charles H. Dix, the second born, is a resident of New York City, and John F. Dix is the youngest.

The latter received his primary education in the village of Seville, passing through a select school and completing a thorough preparation for teaching. He was an active figure in the educational field for a continuous quarter of a century, and from 1885 to 1891 served as school examiner of the county. Upon retiring

John ORthit

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from that profession Mr. Dix engaged in farm- ing and the dairy business on a portion of the original Chippewa Lake homestead of 100 acres. He has taken a particular pride in the development of his dairy farming, carefully se- lecting his milch cows both for their healthy and producing qualities. He is also a practical exponent of the modern theory that too much care cannot be exercised to ensure cleanliness and other sanitary conditions in the handling of dairy products. Buildings, apparatus and em- ployees are all included in these precautions. The general farm buildings are also models of convenience and cleanliness, and everything shows the marks of a skilful hand and a well regulated mind. The homestead residence is comfortable and tasteful in appearance and its interior arrangements conform to the best type of modern convenience ; one of the latter fea- tures consists of the lighting and heating of the house by acetylene gas, a method of quite re- cent date and one which has proved of great economy in heating. In 1872 Mr. Dix married Miss Sarah A. Loveless, of Seville, daughter of Thomas and Mary A. (Crabb) Loveless, and their home has always been the center of a refined social circle. Both are members of the First Methodist Episcopal church of Seville, of which Mr. Dix has long been a trustee. In public affairs, he is a Republican of many years firm standing and has served his township both as trustee and assessor. Such salient facts as the foregoing fully sustain any general remarks of a eulogistic nature which may also have ap- peared.

JUDGE HAMILTON B. WOODBURY .- With the death of Judge Hamilton B. Woodbury, June 19, 1895, the state of Ohio lost an able, popu- lar and upright judge and statesman, who had adorned its benches for nearly twenty years and been concerned in the revision and per- fection of the fundamental laws of the com- monwealth, as had his father nearly a quarter of a century before. In his relations to Jef- ferson, his home city, he held an attitude of warm fatherly interest, which originated in his service as mayor of the place in the early six- ties when he was still a young man, but a few years engaged in practice. His private and domestic life was founded on a kind, friendly nature, and an unselfish and pure affection, and his full-bearded, wholesome-looking face and bright, sympathetic brown eyes, were fitting physical manifestations of an intellectual, firm, yet loving and lovable character.

Judge Woodbury came of a family which gave to North America the first popular civil official, in the person of John Woodbury, who, on September 28, 1630, was elected constable of Salem, Massachusetts, by the governor and his eleven assistants. This Woodbury, who was variously and popularly known as the Pio- ner, the Old Planter, etc., migrated from Dor- setshire, England, and settled at Cape Ann in 1624, his farm lying across the bay from what is now Salem. He appears to have attained both prosperity and popularity, and a few years after settling, at Cape Ann was delegated by the settlers to return to England for a ship- load of supplies. Having accomplished this mission, as the first "American envoy," he again landed on Massachusetts shore, this time accompanied by his son Humphrey, a youth of twenty. The date of his landing at Nahum- keik was in June, 1628, and three years after- ward his younger brother William, with his family, settled at Salem. In fact, quite a col- ony formed around the Old Planter, who after- ward became Salem's constable, and also was a thoroughly qualified land surveyor. In 1636 he received a grant of 200 acres from the crown, and died five years thereafter, a well- to-do man of substantial and honorable parts. His brother William, referred to, also acquired considerable property, and died in 1677, at the age of eighty-eight years. It is from his large family of children that Hamilton B. was di- rectly descended. His grandfather was Wheeler Woodbury, a native of New Hamp- shire, who moved to Ohio in 1812, being a pioneer farmer of Ashtabula county. The grandmother (nee Maria Pease) was of a distinguished New Hampshire family, and cousin of General Israel Putnam. There were eight children in the family, Ebenezer B., the father of the judge, being the second son. He was born at Acworth, New Hampshire, Au- gust 5. 1805, and died in Jefferson, Ohio, on the 12th of August, 1870. In early manhood a successful distiller and merchant, and resid- ing for many years in Kelloggsville, rather late in life he studied law and was admitted to the Jefferson bar. Subsequently he formed a partnership with Judge Chaffee and the firm became one of the leading law firms in the county, continuing for some twenty years. Mr. Woodbury was elected to the constitutional convention of 1850, where he distinguished himself for his earnestness and practical effi- ciency. By his wife Sylvia he became the father of six children, as follows: Hamilton

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B., of this sketch; Almira, who became the wife of James A. Davidson, of Jefferson ; Ed- ward B .; Sylvia M., Mrs. F. W. McEntyre ; Delia, who died when twelve years of age; and Lucius K.

Judge Woodbury was born in Kelloggsville, Ashtabula county, on the 27th of November, 1831, and received his education in the com- mercial and high schools of his native county. At the age of seventeen he entered his father's office and began his law studies ; was admitted to the bar at Jefferson when twenty-one, and in 1857 became the junior member of the law firm of Chaffee, Woodbury & Woodbury. Upon the elevation of the senior partner to the bench, in February, 1862, the firm became Woodbury, Woodbury & Ruggles. In 1875 he was chosen judge of the court of common pleas, the duties of which he ably discharged until 1885, when he was elected to the bench of the Seventh judicial circuit, being re-elected in 1891 for the second term of six years. As a judge his decisions were rendered with clear- ness, force and impartiality, his courtesy and thorough knowledge as an attorney being gracefully carried to the more dignified func- tions of the bench. But it was as foreign to his nature at the bar as on the bench, to resort to any unworthy quibbles of the law. He was always fair and honorable, whether arguing a case as an attorney, or sitting upon it as a judge.

On October 24, 1854, Judge Woodbury was united in marriage at Jefferson, to Miss Mary E., daughter of Peter and Sallie (Wellington) Hervey, a native of New York and a lady of culture and strength of character. Besides the widow, the four children survive- Fred H .; Jennie, now the wife of Ralph Stone, a prominent farmer of the county ; Hamilton B., Jr., and Walter W. Woodbury.

DR. GERTRUDE S. KING, of Painesville, Lake county, is one of the successful homeopathic physicians of the Western Reserve. She is a native of Geneva, Ashtabula county, Ohio, and is the daughter of Captain A. E. and Diantha (Hart) Shepard. Her father's title was not a military one, but was conferred upon him by his fellow mariners in recognition of the fact that he became not only master of the vessel which he navigated, but at one time owned five vessels and three large steamers which plied the upper lakes. Her grandfather, Cap- tain Charles Shepard, was also a master lake mariner, and the two made the family name

a familiar and honored one in the great lakes. In 1882 the father abandoned the northwest- ern waters for the lands of Texas, buying a ranch near San Antonio, upon which he re- sided until his death, in 1909, at the age of seventy-one. His wife was the daughter of Elijah Hart, a native of Connecticut, who later became an Ohio farmer at Geneva, where she was born.

Gertrude Shepard was fourteen years of age when she went with her parents to the ranch near San Antonio and completed her educa- tion at the Ladies' Seminary of Austin. It was there, upon her father's extensive sheep ranch, that she was married, in 1886, to Josiah H. King, then captain of the Eighth Cavalry of the United States army. He was a native of Erie, Pennsylvania, and saw continuous service of many years' duration at various points in Texas and the west. The three years previous to his retirement in 1891 were spent at Fort Keogh, Montana.

Upon the retirement of her husband from the army, Mrs. King removed to Geneva, Ohio, and soon afterward was matriculated in the Homeopathic Medical College of Cleve- land, from which she graduated with the cus- tomary professional degree in 1902. That city was the field of the first four years of her practice, the intervening period to the present having been spent as a progressive member of her profession at Painesville. Her residence is the old Page homestead on South street (where she is conducting a private sani- tarium for women), one of the handsome houses of the city, to which the atmosphere of the early times still clings. Captain King and his wife became the parents of four children : Mary. Shepard and Alfred, who are alive, and Sarah, who died in 1907, at the age of twelve.

MARTIN ADAMS TUTTLE. - Painesville and Lake county have always been Republican strongholds in the Western Reserve, notwith- standing which, Martin A. Tuttle, for years a strong Democrat, is now serving his third term as city solicitor-a fact which consti- tutes a tribute to his professional and personal character. Previous to assuming the prac- tice of law in 1898, he had made a fine record as an educator, especially as an organizer of township schools, and the later portion of his career as a lawyer has been signalized by his stanch advocacy of local option. Mr. Tuttle enjoys the advantages both of pronounced in- dividual ability and of fine family connections

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as regards the founding of the Western Re- serve as the source of much of the strong and progressive character which has always at- tached to Ohio as a member of the Union. His earliest American ancestors were drawn from England and genealogically connected with the wife of Jonathan Edwards, of Mas- sachusetts, and Governor English, of Connect- icut. His great-grandfather, Joseph, brought his family from the old Bay State to Palmyra, Portage county, in 1807, his overland journey taking him through Painesville, which then contained little more than two frame houses and "The Little Red Tavern." The great- grandparents afterward returned to New York, where they died, but Joseph, the grand- father, when far advanced in years, located on a farm in Concord township, Lake county, re-established the family in the before named section of the Western Reserve, where he died in 1884, a man of comfortable means and an earnest, outspoken radical on the anti-slavery side of politics. His son, Grandison Newell Tuttle, was reared on his father's farm in Con- cord township, which was his birthplace March 20, 1837. After obtaining a preliminary edu- cation in the neighborhood district school and at Orwell Academy, he taught for a number of years and then commenced the study of law, graduating in 1862 from the Union Law Col- lege, Cleveland, and commencing practice at Willoughby, Lake county, where he resided until 1869, when he moved to Painesville to occupy the probate judgeship. He continued thus for two terms, and has made a note- worthy record as an independent politician, an advocate of Prohibition, and a Democrat of the Bryan school. (The details of his life and work will be found incorporated in a sep- arate biography, published elsewhere.)

Martin Adams Tuttle was born at Wil- loughby, Lake county, on the 12th of March, 1869, and is a son of Judge Grandison N. and Elizabeth A. (Wilder) Tuttle, who is de- scended from an old New England family, born at Vernon, New York, February 27, 1834. A few months after his birth, the family moved to Painesville, that the father might assume the duties of probate judge, and in the public schools of that city the boy was trained in the elementary branches. In 1888 he graduated from the local high school; com- pleted his course in Adelbert College of the Western Reserve University in 1892, and spent the succeeding year in studying law with his father. In the fall of 1893 Mr. Tuttle entered the sophomore class of the Western Reserve

Law School, and during that year not only con- tinued his law course, but carried on post- graduate studies at Adelbert College, in his- tory, economics and philosophy. In June, 1894, he was granted the degree of Master of Arts and also passed the state bar examination at Columbus and was admitted to practice in the courts of Ohio. In the summer of 1894 Mr. Tuttle accepted the position of superin- tendent of schools for Painesville township, and as the work occupied but a portion of his time, in the fall of 1895 he assumed the superintendency of the Willoughby township schools, carrying along the duties of his dual office until June, 1898. His work in the town- ship schools was largely along the lines of systematic organization, in which educational specialty Mr. Tuttle so proved his practical ability that largely through the result of his labors every township in the county adopted similar plans of reorganization. For several years he also served as member and secretary of the board of trustees of the Painesville Pub- lic Library, and was one of the incorporators and has been a continuous member of the board of trustees of the Painesville Hospital Association.

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History of the Western Reserve, Vol. II, Part 64

Author: Upton, Harriet Taylor; Cutler, Harry Gardner, 1856- Publication date: 1910 Publisher: Chicago ; New York : The Lewis Publishing Company Number of Pages: 886

Author: Upton, Harriet Taylor; Cutler, Harry Gardner, 1856-
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago ; New York : The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 886