USA > Ohio > Montgomery County > Dayton > History of the city of Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio, Volume II > Part 99
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Not only because of his business success has Mr. Smith become widely known throughout the community, but also by reason of the active interest which he has always taken in all community matters. A stalwart republican in his political al-
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legiance, he gives hearty support to that party and does all in his power to ex- tend its influence. He was township clerk for several years and for two years filled the position of United States assistant assessor. His interests are those of a public-spirited citizen and progressive business man and he occupies a very prominent place among the citizens of both the township and county in which he resides.
GEORGE MURRAY YOUNG.
George Murray Young was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, April 1, 1802, and was of Scotch-Irish descent and parentage, his father, Dr. Hugh Murray Young, who was born in 1742 and died in 1815, having been an early Irish emigrant to America, whose participation in the Emmett rebellion caused him to leave Ire- land and seek a refuge in the New World. George Murray Young obtained his education at Exeter and Poughkeepsie Academies. He was fond of study, but, be- ing thrown upon his own resources at an early age by the death of his father, he left school and learned the printer's trade, becoming both a practical printer and publisher before reaching his majority.
While residing at Lyme, New Hampshire, in the year 1826 he married Sibel Green, a daughter of Benjamin Green of that place, and a grandaughter of Colonel Ebenezer Green, a Revolutionary soldier, whose grave may still be seen in the old Lyme burying ground. Colonel Green had married a daughter of Benjamin Grant, also of Lyme, New Hampshire, who was the great-great-grandfather of Alice and Phoebe Carey and whose parents were also the ancestors of General U. S. Grant.
In 1835 Mr. and Mrs. Young came west with their children and located at Newark, Ohio, where for ten years Mr. Young was extensively engaged in mer- cantile pursuits, being the owner, among other business properties, of a line of boats on the Miami & Erie canal. In the year 1840, having attained prominence in his new home, he became the whig candidate of Licking county for the state senate, and despite that county's usual strong democratic majority, ran far ahead of his ticket and came within forty votes of an election.
In 1845 Mr. Young removed to Cincinnati, where he conducted a large produce and commission business until 1851, when he took up his residence at Dayton, Montgomery county. After coming to Dayton, he retired from mercantile pursuits and served for some years as a justice of the peace, after which, in the year 1854, he was elected mayor of the city and subsequently reelected in 1855. Some years later he was appointed United States commissioner, an office which he filled with credit and ability until his death. His wife died at Dayton in the year 1865.
Mr. Young was pronounced in his opinions and was an earnest friend and supporter of all moral and religious movements, being especially prominent in his labors for the cause of temperance. While residing at Cincinnati, he was grand worthy patriarch of the Sons of Temperance, when that society numbered thirty thousand in Ohio, and he was one of the editors of its official paper, The Organ and Messenger.
He was, from early manhood, a prominent member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, by which organization he was elected to many prominent and re-
GEORGE M. YOUNG
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sponsible offices, and in whose charitable and beneficial work he at all times took a warm and active interest. In politics he was first a whig and later a republican, and he was always a bitter and outspoken opponent of negro slavery.
While he resided in New Hampshire and for years after coming to Ohio he was prominently identified with the Congregational church, and when, subse- quently, about the year 1869, the local church of that denomination at Dayton passed out of existence he was one of its deacons, and being especially appointed for that purpose, closed its financial affairs and disposed of its property. He, thereafter, at once allied himself with the Third Street Presbyterian church at Day- ton, of which he continued a leading meniber until his death.
Mr. Young's natural abilities were of a high order. He early made up for his lack of collegiate education by wide and diligent reading, and he was well in- formed in politics, history and general literature, having at the same time a mind well stored with that diversified practical information which comes from daily intercourse with men and extensive business experience.
. While he was never admitted to the bar, he had published law books in his younger years, had read law attentively and had acted to such an extent as notary public, conveyancer, master commissioner and receiver and in other ways closely related to the law and the courts, that his legal knowledge and ability were well recognized and highly respected.
He was a great admirer of the Puritan race and character and was himself the possessor of many pronounced traits which gave marked evidence of his New England birth and education. While naturally modest and retiring in manner, he had the full courage of his strong convictions, and, when aroused, he was outspoken in their advocacy and fearless and uncompromising in their defense. Faultless in honor, fearless in conduct and stainless in reputation, he passed away at Dayton, Ohio, August 30, 1878, having always enjoyed in whatever community he lived the unqualified confidence and respect of all with whom he was associated.
EDMOND STAFFORD YOUNG.
Edmond Stafford Young, for many years a leading and distinguished member of the Dayton bar, was the eldest son of George Murray Young, (a sketch of whose life precedes) and of Sibel Green, his wife, and was born at Lyme, Graf- ton county, New Hampshire, February 27, 1827. At the early age of eight he came west with his parents, who had removed from New Hampshire to become residents of Newark, Licking county, Ohio.
While a resident of Newark Mr. Young attended Granville College, (now Denison University ) near that city, where he completed his sophomore year in ยท 1845, but his parents having removed to Cincinnati, he subsequently entered Far- mers' (now Belmont) College at College Hill, from which he was graduated in 1847. This institution, though comparatively small in size, has had among its alumni not a few men of distinguished ability and reputation, and among them Mr. Young was associated as a schoolmate with President Benjamin Harrison, Murat
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Halstead and John W. Herron, of Cincinnati, and Hon. L. B. Gunckel and Judge Henderson Elliot, of Dayton.
Soon after leaving college he began the study of law in the office of Hon. William J. Mckinney of Dayton, and subsequently was graduated at the Cin- cinnati Law School in the year 1853, after which he served for a term as head deputy in the office of the clerk of the courts of Montgomery county, Ohio, an ex- perience which he always considered of great value to him as a lawyer. After en- tering the practice of the law he became associated successively with George W. Brown, Hon. David A. Houk and Oscar M. Gottschall, his relation with the latter continuing from 1866 to 1879. In the spring of 1878 Mr. Young's eldest son, George R. Young, was admitted to the firm, which, under the name of Young, Gottschall & Young, continued for a year, at the end of which period Mr. Gott- schall retired. Mr. Young and his son subsequently remained together in the prac- tice under the name of Young & Young until his death in the year 1888.
In September, 1856, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Mr. Young married Sarah B. Dechert, a daughter of Elijah Dechert, a leading lawyer of Reading, Pennsyl- vania, who was a son of Captain Peter Dechert, a soldier in the Revolutionary war. Mrs. Young's mother, Mary Porter Dechert, was a daughter of Judge Robert Porter, also of Reading, Pennsylvania, who sat for more than twenty years on the bench in that city and who was descended from Robert Porter, a native of Ire- land, who emigrated to Londonderry, New Hampshire, and afterward removed to Montgomery county, Philadelphia, where he resided until his death. His most prominent and successful son, Mrs. Young's great-great-grandfather, was General Andrew Porter, who was a prominent Revolutionary officer and a close personal friend and associate of Washington. After the close of the war he was commis- sioned major-general of militia of Pennsylvania, and he was subsequently tendered the position of secretary of war by President Madison, but declined the honor. His son, Judge Robert Porter, while still a mere youth but eleven years of age, served with his father in the army and having been commissioned lieutenant of artillery was probably the youngest soldier and officer in the colonial service. Both General Andrew Porter and his son, Judge Robert Porter, were members of the Order of the Cincinnati, an honor which has passed to their descendants and a de- tailed sketch of their lives is published in the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. IV, No. 3, published by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Mrs. Young is now one of the oldest members of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
When the Civil war broke out Edmond Stafford Young firmly espoused the Union cause and became a stanch supporter of President Lincoln's administration. On October 16, 1861, a military committee was appointed by the governor of Ohio, to which was given charge and control of all recruiting and organization and of military matters generally in Montgomery county. Mr. Young served as chairman of this committee, and he was thus closely identified with the organization and en- listment of practically all the regiments raised in Dayton and its vicinity. In the fall of 1861 he was one of the "Squirrel Hunters" so called, who rallied to the de- fense of Cincinnati when that city was threatened by the Confederates under General Kirby Smith, and later he was appointed by Governor Brough commis- sioner of the draft for Montgomery county and made the largest draft in the state.
EDMOND S. YOUNG
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Throughout the period of mob violence and strife, which for years ran riot in Dayton, as a hot-bed of what was then known as "copper-headism," and which at one time brought that city under martial law, Mr. Young was always a con- spicuous and commanding figure, and his voice, influence and example were al- ways exerted to the full in the cause of loyalty and union.
After the close of the war, while devoting most of his time to the work of his profession, his interest in public affairs still continued unabated. He took a deep interest in the public schools and served efficiently on the board of education and he was a member of Dayton's first non-partisan police board, appointed in 1873, by which the present metropolitan police system was inaugurated. He was also one of the founders of the Dayton Bar Association, now known as the Day- ton Law Library Association, by which Dayton's excellent Law Library (now in point of completeness the fourth in the state) has been collected, and he served for years on its board of trustees.
During the course of his practice his name was frequently suggested for judi- cial honors, among others, a place on the supreme bench of the state, but he always personally discouraged such movements, preferring to remain at the bar and in the active practice of his profession. He was a member of the Ohio State Bar As- sociation, in which he frequently took a leading part and also of the American Bar Association. He died suddenly October 14, 1888, while still in full practice and at the zenith of his powers, leaving surviving him his widow and two sons, George R. and William H. Young, all of whom still survive, and a daughter, Mary, a young woman of most lovable personal traits and marked intellectuality, who died August 13, 1895.
Of Mr. Young, a contemporary biographer has well said: "He was a man of striking physical appearance and of marked mental characteristics. He was born to be a lawyer. His breadth of intellect, his strong determined will, his sound impartial judgment, his remarkable reasoning powers, his gift of nice and correct discrimination, made up a mental organization distinctively legal; while at the same time his large and well proportioned head, with its high expansive forehead, set firmly on his broad square shoulders, gave him a personal appearance in keep- ing with his mental characteristics. He was a strong and pure type of that class of American lawyers, who, eschewing outside schemes for the promotion of wealth and personal aggrandizement, devote to their profession the full measure of their powers and seek happiness in the conscientious discharge of their professional, domestic and civic duties."
GEORGE R. YOUNG.
In the history of the legal profession in Montgomery county the name of Young has now figured prominently for nearly sixty years, for during that period, the father, Edmond Stafford Young and the sons, George R. and William H. Young, have successively and continuously been leading members of the Dayton bar. And, in the course of time, it has come to pass that the firm name "Young
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& Young," under which the brothers are still associated and which has now existed for over thirty years, has become the oldest in use among Dayton lawyers.
George R. Young, one of Dayton's native sons, was born in that city, October 2, 1857. He obtained his education in the Dayton public schools, having gradu- ated from the Central high school (now the Steele high school) in 1875 as valedic- torian of his class and having received a gold medal for scholarship. For a time he then studied under private tutors, but soon took up the study of the law in the office of his father Edmond Stafford Young, a sketch of whose life precedes.
He was admitted to the bar in April, 1878, and was probably at the time the youngest attorney in Ohio, having been admitted some months before reaching his majority. Mr. Young has made the practice of law his life work, and without any of those digressions which result from office holding or lengthy vacations, he has pursued it steadily ever since his admission with a diligence and ability which have both merited and achieved success.
Mr. Young is recognized as a sound lawyer and a forcible and convincing speaker, either before the court or jury, and his unusual command of pure and correct English always secures and retains for him close attention and careful con- sideration. His firm has always enjoyed a large and representative clientage, hav- ing been retained in many of the leading cases tried in the courts of Montgomery and adjoining counties. For the last ten years the brothers have been located in their own building, the Young Building, where their handsome suite of offices is widely celebrated for its commodious size and the unusual perfection of its arrange- ment and equipment.
Mr. Young was president of his local bar association when little more than thirty years of age, and he has been for years a member of both the Ohio State and American Bar Associations. Ever since his father's death, in 1888, he has been a trustee of the Dayton Law Library Association, having succeeded his father in that position, and during that period he has been either its treasurer or vice- president.
Mr. Young is popular, not only in his profession but among a large circle of friends in his native city, where he enjoys the respect and esteem of the entire com- munity. He is a charter member of the Dayton Club, was the first president of the High School Alumni Association and one of the founders and supporters of the Dayton Literary Union, which flourished for many years in Dayton. He has always been interested in literature and the diffusion of useful knowledge and is now the president of the Dayton Astronomical Society, formed to promote the study of astronomy and kindred sciences.
In politics Mr. Young has always been a republican, but never a politician in the sense of seeking office as a reward for party fealty. While absent in the east in 1881, without his solicitation or knowledge, his party nominated him for prose- cuting attorney of Montgomery county. Remaining on the ticket with reluctance, notwithstanding a customary democratic majority of more than a thousand he was beaten by only a few hundred votes. In 1885 he was again nominated for office, this time for city solicitor of Dayton. The city was then reliably democratic, and though he ran far ahead of his ticket he was again defeated by a small majority. Since then he has neither held nor sought political office, confining his attention entirely to his professional duties.
GEORGE R. YOUNG
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In the fall of 1894, upon the elevation of Judge John A. Schauck from the cir- cuit to the supreme bench, Mr. Young, without solicitation on his part, was prom- inently mentioned as his successor. A petition to Governor Mckinley for his ap- pointment was circulated and signed by practically every member of the Mont- gomery County Bar, but owing to lack of time, in case of success, to close up his private practice, Mr. Young withdrew his name from consideration. Having been more recently asked to be a candidate for nomination for a supreme court judge- ship and promised the united support of his county delegation, he declined to enter the contest, preferring the independence of private life.
Neither George R. Young nor his brother William H. Young have ever mar- ried; but since their father's decease, together with their mother, Mrs. Sarah D. Young, who at the advanced age of eighty-four years is still well preserved both mentally and physically, they have maintained their family homestead in the city, which they have greatly enlarged and beautified, and where, as well as at their country home "Willowbrook," near Dayton, they have dispensed a ready and agree- able hospitality.
WILLIAM H. YOUNG.
William H. Young, who for more than a quarter of a century has been active in the practice of law at Dayton, is the second son of Edmond Stafford and Sarah (Dechert) Young, and was born in his home city, March 2, 1860. Upon his fa- ther's death in 1888 he became a member of the well known law firm of Young & Young, in which he has ever since been, and still is, associated with his brother George R. Young. His education was obtained in the Dayton public schools, and upon leaving the high school he studied law in the office of his father and brother, being subsequently admitted to the bar in the year 1884 at Columbus, Ohio, after passing the examination prescribed by the rules of the supreme court. For many years after his admission he took a keen interest in politics, serving shortly after attaining his majority as president of the Blaine and Logan "First Voters," and during this period he made many campaign speeches, some of which made so strong an impression that they are still frequently recalled and gained for him a wide reputation as a ready, eloquent and convincing speaker. At a later period he was often urged to become a candidate for the legislature or for congress, but, although possessing much personal magnetism and enjoying great popularity and being in all respects admirably fitted for public life, like his father and brother, he has con- tinuously declined to enter politics.
When he was only about ten years of age Mr. Young suffered from a very ma- lignant attack of scarlet fever, from which hip disease and other complications ensued, confining him to his bed for nearly four years, resulting in permanent lameness and causing a decided limp in his walk, but this disadvantage, which would have proved a serious handicap to many, has in his case, served only to add to his already marked personality, without detracting in any appreciable degree from his energy, his activity or his usefulness. In Dayton, his native city, he has long been a conspicuous and familiar figure, and his genial manners, unfailing
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good humor and buoyancy of spirits, together with his strong and unique per- sonality, in many respects bearing marked resemblance to his father's, have been such that it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that he has been known to al- most every man, woman and child in the city. He has also a large circle of ac- quaintance throughout the state, not only among members of the legal profes- sion, but including those who for the past twenty years have been prominent in political and official circles.
His personal characteristics are such that he is a good mixer and makes friends easily, and when once seen by any one he is rarely forgotten. He has, at various times, taken a leading part in public movements at Dayton, for the promotion of charitable objects and moral and civic reforms ; and the removal from office, a few years ago, of an objectionable chief of police, who had obtained a strong and ap- parently impregnable foothold, was almost wholly due to his seasonable initiative and courageous, able and untiring efforts. His goodness of heart and sympathy with his kind are well known and constantly remarked upon, not only as exemplified by his devotion to his mother and brother, and to his sister, now deceased, but also by a broad philanthropy extending to persons in all walks of life which has earned for him the deserved gratitude of many who have been assisted by his timely advice and personal aid in hours of sorrow. sickness and adversity.
At the bar he has always borne a reputation as a strong jury advocate, and in this field, affording as it does, opportunity for the display of his attractive individ- uality, his sound common sense and great knowledge of human nature, his efforts have been attended by marked success. He is strong in his likes and dislikes and outspoken in his opinions, but while he is slow to forgive an injury or wrong, he never forgets a friend. While he gives close attention to professional matters, be- ing an excellent judge of land values and experienced in matters of general busi- ness, he devotes a part of his time to the management of his own and his brother's real-estate holdings, and to their other private interests.
Being unmarried, Mr. Young lives at home with his mother and brother in the family homestead, where his father formerly resided, spending part of the year at their country home near Dayton, whose beauty and popularity are largely due to his excellent taste and to his thoughtful care and attention.
ALBERT BENNER.
Albert Benner, a successful farmer of Miami township, Montgomery county, owns seventy-six acres of fine land on the Springboro pike about three miles from Miamisburg. He was born on the old Benner homestead, October 15, 1868, and is the son of Valentine and Carolina (Goudy) Benner. He received his early train- ing in the seventh district school of Miami township, but like his brothers worked on the farm during his entire school period, under the guidance of his father. The lessons thus early learned have stood him in good stead in later years, and the habits of industry and thrift inculcated have not been dispelled with the passage of time.
WILLIAM H. YOUNG
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On the 16th of September, 1888, was celebrated the marriage of Mr. Benner and Miss Elizabeth Gebhart, a daughter of David and Frances (Roof) Gebhart. The former was the son of Elias and Elizabeth (Gebhart) Gebhart, who came to this county from Pennsylvania and were the first branch of the family to settle here. David Gebhart was born and reared in this county and attained to a posi- tion of prominence among the farmers here. He had learned the carpenter's trade, but forsook it for the more congenial work of agriculture. He was the father of eight children : Elizabeth ; Arlina ; Mary ; Maggie; Clinton ; Cora, deceased ; Gro- ver, also deceased ; and Roy. Mr. and Mrs. Benner have five children, all of whom are living ; Edna, who finished her education at the local schools and is studying at the Miami Valley Hospital ; Ethel, who is also through school and lives at home, as do the three youngest, Olive, Forest and Robert. The family belong to the Lutheran church and are well known among the congregation for the active part they have always taken in all church affairs.
Mr. Benner enjoys fraternal relations with the Miamisburg lodge of the Knights of Pythias, No. 44.
He is a man of considerable public spirit, and has served the people of his township well during the two terms he held the position of school director. The many qualities that make for success in the difficult life of farming, the capacity for hard work and perseverance, are his birthright. Of them and of his time he has made the best use, and while winning a competence for himself he has ever retained the good will of his friends and neighbors.
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