USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > Memorial record of the county of Cuyahoga and city of Cleveland, Ohio, Pt.1 > Part 21
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RS Hubbard-
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ports are models in all financial centers of this country and Europe, for eleverness, conciseness and absolute truthfulness.
The files and records of the anditor's office are full of valuable and interesting data con- piled by Mr. Leland, which in reality are no less than a cyclopedia of information relating to the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway.
In April, 1859, Mr. Leland married, in Mil- waukee, Wisconsin, Helen Lonise Hatch. Their children are: William, born in 1864, who is in his father's office; and Stella, born in 1868.
R SCHUYLER HUBBARD, M. D .-- Prominent among Cuyahoga county's representative citizens is Dr. R. S. Hub- bard, who is the leading physician of Bedford and is the Treasurer elect of the connty.
Dr. Hubbard was born at Guy's Mills, Craw- ford county, Pennsylvania, September 29, 1853, and is the son of the Honorable George A. Hubbard, of Berea, Ohio. At the age of thir- teen years Dr. Hubbard entered Baldwin Uni- versity at Berea and continued there three or four years. At the age of eigliteeu he began studying medicine, and in 1876 graduated in the medical department of Wooster University. The following year he commenced practicing at Northfield, Summit county, Ohio, and remained there until the autumn of 1887, when he re- moved to Bedford.
The Doctor has always been a close student in his profession, taking an active interest in the progress and advancement of all that per- tains to it. He is a member of the Ohio State Medical Society, of the Northeastern Ohio Medical Society and is one of the Censors of the medical department of Wooster University. Hle is ranked among the successful and pro- gressive members of the medical fraternity in Cuyahoga county.
For years he has also taken an active part in polities. While a citizen of Sunnit conuty he
served as chairman of the Republican connty committee, and since his residence in Cuyahoga county he has been prominent in the affairs of his party. But not until 1893 did he ever aspire to office. In the summer of that year he be- came a candidate for the nomination, at the hands of the Republican party, for County Treasurer, and after a vigorous canvass was suc- cessful. Ilis election by over 8,000 majority at the ensning election demonstrated the wis- dom of his party in choosing him as a candi- date. The Doctor will take his office in Sep- tember, 1894.
Dr. Hubbard is a member of the Masonic, Royal Arcanum, K. of P., Foresters and Elks fraternities.
On November 15, 1881, he married Miss Helen Palmer, who was born at Northfield, Ohio, the daughter of William L. and Amelia Whitney Palmer. Her father was born at old Windsor, Hartford county, Connecticut, and came to Ohio in 1832, settling in Smnmit county, where he followed farming until 1892, wlien, upon the death of his wife, he came to Bedford, and now resides with his daughter. Dr. Hubbard and wife have three children, namely: Attrissa, born October 31, 1882; Helen, born November 7, 1888; and Hilda, May 7, 1891.
Dr. Hubbard's family have their church " home " in the Methodist Episcopal Church of Bedford.
R EV. HENRY CHRISTIAN SCHWAN, President of the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States, was born in Horneburg, Hanover, Germany, April 5, 1819. IIis parents were Rev. George Henry Christian and Char- lotte Friederike (Wyneken) Schwan, natives also of Germany, who passed their entire lives in their fatherland. Rev. G. II. C. Schwan was a well known minister in the Evangelical Lu- therun Church, in which he labored for many
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years. For fifty years he was a conspieuons figure among the ministers of his church, and died after a long and useful life.
The gentleman whose name heads this sketch is the eldest of his parents' nine children, of whom only four are now living, namely: Edwin, who participated in the civil war as a private in the Confederate army. At the time of the outbreak of the war he was in New Orleans, and like many others was pressed into the army service of the Confederate States, was taken prisoner in the Peninsula campaign, and was there seen by his brother, Theodore, who was then a Union soldier. IIe eame to Cleveland, where he died .. Theodore enlisted as a private, and was promoted for bravery several times, be- ing at the close of the war Brevet Major, and he is now an Assistant Adjutant General. In this eapacity he was attached to the United States legation and sent to Berlin under Presi- dent Cleveland's first administration. IIe now resides in Omaha, Nebraska. Upon his return from Berlin he was given the opportunity of becoming the military attache of the legation in either London or Vienna, both of which honors he declined because of failing health occasioned by army service. Matilda and Henrietta are married, and are still residents of Germany: they are the only ones of the dangh- ters living. Wilhelm was a brave soldier in the Franco-Prussian war, and was killed upon the battlefield of Spielern when about twenty- two years of age.
The subject of this sketch received his early edneation in Stade, Hanover, Germany, and afterward attended the Universities of Göttingen and Jena, in both which institutions he pursned a theologieal course, completing the same in 1842. He was then ordained minister, and in 1843 went to Brazil, South America, with the Krull family. In that country he took charge of a small church on a large coffee plantation, the members being principally German, Swiss and American coffee plantors. He remained in that country until 1850, when he came to the United States and spent one year at Now Biele-
feld (now Black-jack), near St. Louis, and since then has been a resident of Cleveland.
His first charge here was the Zion Church. In 1876 he was successful in building for this congregation a large and excellent church edi- fico, the building previously used as a church being abandoned. He was the first Lutheran minister in Cleveland to remain a considerable time, Rev. Schmidt preceding him but a short time. When Mr. Schwan came here there was but a very small congregation of Lutherans in Cleveland, and the first church has become the mother of ten others, which have been estab- lished in different parts of the city. He was the first pastor in this city to put up a Christ- mas tree in his church,-a practice then con- demned, but sinee generally followed by all churches.
His pastorate was interrupted for a time in 1860, upon his election to the presideney of the Middle District of the Synod, and since 1878 he has had no regular appointment, his work being as President of the Synod to visit thirteen districts in the Synod, in the United States and Canada; bnt to the work devolved upon him in this position he did not give his exelusive time and attention till 1881, at which time his labors as president of the Synod had so increased that he was compelled to abandon his pastorato.
As general President of this Synod many duties devolve upon him, as visiting all the dis- tricts, churches, orphan asylnms, hospitals, institutions of learning, ete. In Ohio, as well as in Cleveland, he is one of the pioneer minis- ters in his church. He lived to see the fiftieth year of his pastorate in October, 1893, when, in the Music Hall in Cleveland, honors were showered upon him before an audience of 5,000. Shortly after that celebration he was made Doetor of Divinity by the faculty of the Theo- logical Seminary of the Norwegian Synod. Although he passed through many trials, he has been a connecting link binding the past to the present. His career has been a useful one, and therefore a successful one. His hardships, both early and later, have served only to broaden his
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mind and enlarge his views, and better equip him for the very responsible and important work in which he has been engaged. Ripe in scholarship, genial in spirit, liberal in his views, he is held in deep affection and great deference.
While in Brazil he met a native of the coun- try who became his wife. Her name is Emma, and she was the daughter of Dr. Blum, a phy- sician there. Mr. Schwan has had twelve chil- dren, four of whom are deceased. The living children are: Rev. Paul Schwan, for the past seventeen years pastor of St. Paul's Church, Evangelical Lutheran, of Cleveland, establishing for himself a high character and reputation as a minister; L. M., for many years past the vice- president of the Lake Erie & Western Railway and located in New York, an attorney by pro- fession; Ernst Christian, also an attorney, resid- ing in Cleveland; Rev. Charles Schwan, a minis- ter of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Wis- consin; George HL., another Cleveland attorney, a partner of his brother E. C .; Frederick H., a notary public in this city; Joanna, the wife of Rev. J. A. Schmidt, of Elyria, Ohio; and Emma, the wife of George Gustav Kuechle, a prominent jeweler of Milwaukee.
C OLONEL ROYAL TAYLOR .- To have attained to the extreme fullness of years, represented by four-score and twelve, and to have had one's ken broadened to a compre- hension of all that has been accomplished within the flight of so many days, is of itself sufficient to render consonant a detailed consideration of such a life in a work of this order, but in the case at hand, there are more pertinent, more distinguishing elements,-those of usefulness, of high honor, of marked intellectuality, of broad charity, -which lift high in reverence the subjective personality of one who stood as one of nature's nobleman, " four square to every wind that blows."
It must ever be held as a matter of regret when an aged historical veteran is gathered to his fathers, that to later generations had not
been given a more intimate knowledge of his . personality, a more lively comprehension of the events and circumstances which formed a com- ponent part of his life, that the lips should be silenced whose power it was to have told of in- eidents that had marked bearing on the thought and action of these days long passed, that there be denied a familiarity with the ambitions and struggles of his youth and with the subsequent trials of the more crucial days,-those of his maturer years.
While no shadows darken any period of the long, honorable and eventful life of the subject of this memoir, the incidents of general public interest, which he was wont to relate in social intercourse are mainly cherished in the memory of his family and later associates, his early con- temporaries having long since departed, his inodest reserve having disinclined him to com- init to writing matter relevant to his personal history, though he was often importuned for such contributions. For more than half a cen- tury Royal Taylor was one of the mnost enter- prising and best known business men of Ohio, but to the younger men of the present genera- tion, his early history and experiences were but dimly known, while his personality was recog- mized as that of a venerable gentleman of genial spirit, and one of the last of the famous pioneers of the Western Reserve, with whose development he had been most intimately and conspicuously identified.
The family name of Taylor has long been familiar in English history, but from which branch or locality sprang the first American ancestor, there is no definite means of ascer- tainment at the present time. It is sufficient in this connection to state that it is known with absolute certainty, from liistorical data, that the great-grandfather of our subject, Samuel Tay- lor, in the reign of Charles II., and the year of the burning of London, 1666, came to America and settled in Hadley, Massachusetts. There is, however, fair presumptive evidence that this branch of the family is in direct line of descent from the martyr, Rowland Taylor, an English
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' clergyman who was `chaplain to Archbishop Craumer, and who was burned at the stake in Hadleigh, county Suffolk, England, in 1555.
Samuel Taylor, son of the above named Samuel Taylor, was born at Hadley, in 1713, and there lived until 1752, when he removed into the mountain forest of Pontoosnek, now the beautiful city of Pittsfield. That this per- son, the grandfather of our subject, was a man of prominence and an eminent factor in the pioneer enterprises of that day is evident from a reference to the records of the Great and General Court of 1753, which shows that he was at the head of a syndicate of seven citizens, who, by a special act, secured an incorporation undor the title of the " Proprietors of the Set- tling Lots in the Township of Pontoosnek." This was the Indian name of the place, and the same was retained until 1761, when the town was incorporated by the name of Pittsfield, in honor of the celebrated statesman, William Pitt.
Samnel Taylor, the third of the name, and father of our subject, was born in Pittsfield in 1764, and with his father's family removed to Middlefield in 1770, and there Royal Taylor was born, September 1, 1800. Here also, in 1804, his venerable grandfather, the pioneer of Pontoosnek, died at the age of ninety-one years. Three years later tho father, Samuel Taylor (third), departed from Middlefield, of which he had been an early pioneer, and came with his family, inelding his little six-year-old son, Royal, and set up a new pioneer altar in the maple forests of Aurora, Portage county, Ohio, whero he lived six years, and where he died in March, 1813. Ohio at that time was a vast wilderness, and the Western Reserve had more Indians than white men.
Thus bereft of his father at the early age of twelve years, Royal Taylor, rightly named as the inheritor of the pioneer spirit and euterpriso of a truly royal line of ancestors, -- the American royalty of manhood and citizenship, -the fourth of his line, takes up his axe, the emblem nud insignia of the pioneer, and valiantly carries on
the struggle of life in the forests of the Re- serve, bearing without protest the heavy burden imposed npou his youthful shoulders, and look- ing fate manfully in the face. Under such cir- emmstanees and necessities began the pioneer life of the boy, Royal Taylor, whose first labor was in the sugar camp of a friendly neighbor, and whose sweet reward was his weight (seventy pounds) of tho palatable maple sugar. Ile worked in the first brick-yard of the town, the brick of which were used in the construction of the old Presbyterian church of Anrora. For his services in this connection, he received $15 a month, which money he invested in the pur- chaso of sixty acres of land in Solon, in 1816, for $300. Lands having depreciated in the market during the ensuing three years, he sold lris place in 1820 for $200. He chopped wood and cleared land, and for several years, in many like ways, carned money for the support of his mother and her family. Yet all this hardy, out-door life not ouly evidenced a placid and cheerful mind, bnt was a healthful, physical discipline, for he grew up a tall and handsomo young man, with great powers of endurance,- a splendid specimen of pioucer manliood,- equal to any emergency, and fit for any place in eivie or public life. Fortunately for him, as for many other pioneer yonth, good schooltoachers followed the emigrating families to the West- ern Reserve, graduates of the colleges and academies of New England. Thus he secured a good common-school education by attendance during winters; and as he never undertook any- thing in a half-hearted or careless manner, he ultimately qualified himself for a teacher, and pursued that calling for a number of years with eminent popularity and success. In the meantime he learned tho printer's trade, and . was engaged in type-setting for a time, at New Lisbon, Ohio. He continned his studies as op- portunity afforded, under the direction of private tutors, and finally determined to adopt the legal profession. With this end in view ho devoted two years to technical study, first in the office of Jonathan Sloane, and later in that of Van
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R. Humphrey. Subsequent business enter- prises, however, dissuaded him from completing his course of legal studies and coming to the bar.
In 1822 he went to Kentucky as a school teacher, and while there parsned the study of the higher branches of mathematics and the Latin language, likewise finding time to meet the advanees of the wee elf who is supposed to regulate affairs of the heart, he became eu- gaged to a young lady, Miss Rebecca Saunders, to whom he was married in 1824. The follow- ing year they came to Ohio and lived at different intervals in Aurora, Russell and Twinsburg. At this last place, in 1836, his wife died, leaving hint with five young children. In 1837 he married, at Twinsburg, Miss Sarah A. Richard- son, daughter of Captain Daniel Richardson, of Connecticut, her birthplace having been the romantic and historical town of Barkhamstead, as it was also that of her consin, John Brown, of Ossawotamie fame. She bore to him four sons and three daughters, was a devoted wife and mother, and his true companion during nearly thirty years of the most eventful period of his life. Her death occurred in 1865. The following year he married Mrs. Annetta Hatch, of Ravenna, formerly of Vermont, who has but recently passed away.
The decade subsequent to 1825 was a period of great commercial enterprise, in the early prime of the life and spirit of Mr. Taylor, be- ing no less than, in connection with his brother Samnel, and with Harvey Baldwin, of Aurora, that of opening up the export trade in the ex- tensive cheese product of Northern Ohio with the Southern States, through the medium of boats and barges on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This enterprise, while successful by reason of their intelligent and discriminating management, he resigned after the financial dis- turbances of 1837, and assumed charge of sev- eral bankrupt mercantile establishments. IIis legal training here stood him in good stead, and so marked was his success in settling and adjust- ing such matters that his services wore in con- stant demand, and eventually carried him to \
Chagrin Falls, at the instance of his life-long friend, Albon C. Gardner, one of the best known and most successful of the early mer- chants of northern Ohio. He became engaged as factor for the sale of lands held by the heirs of General Henry Champion, one of the origi- mal purchasers of the 3,000,000 acres of land in Ohio known as the Connecticut Western Reserve. In 1858 he acted as agent for Yale College in adjusting an important litigation with the heirs of Henry L. Ellsworth, in which capacity he secured to the college land of great valne, which ho subsequently sold for the insti- tution. These agencies, together with others for private capitalists in the East, placed in his eare upward of half a million acres of the best land in Ohio and other States, and necessitated much travel; in the prosecution of the business he visited every western State east of the Rocky mountains. In fact, it was the principal bnsi- ness, aside from public duties, of his long, active and honorable career, he having but a short time before his death, in 1892, sent his last letter concerning the business, in reply to which he received a kindly note of commenda- tion for his faithful work.
Among the numerous civil duties from time to time exacted of Mr. Taylor by his townsmen, he served as commissioner for Portage county, and also as State Commissioner of the Blind Asylum. From 1842 to 1868 he resided in Cuyahoga county, the better to accommodate his business as land agent, and also to act as agent for the Cleveland & Mahoning Railway, of which he had been an early and efficient pro- moter. In the early divisions of political parties, he was a Whig. In 1848 he aided in the organization of the Free Soil party, attend- ing, as a delegate, the first county convention in Cleveland, and being also a delegate to the first State convention of the party in Ohio (the first held in any State) at Columbus, in June, 1848. This earnest and sturdy organization being, in 1856, merged into the Republican party, he was arrayed in support of the latter through peace and war to the end of his days.
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In 1861, over the disintegrated Union was spread the pall of a fratricidal war, and this ever memorable conflict was to our subject a strongly marked dividing line between his ae- tive business life and his patriotic devotion and military services rendered his State and country during, and long subsequent to, that period of ordeal and gloom. During the antmmn of 1862 large numbers of sick and wonnded Ohio sol- diers were discharged from the army, thon in Kentucky. In their helpless condition they proved easy prey to the hordes of self-styled claim agents of Louisville, who bought their pay vouchers for a mere pittance. These facts becoming known to Governor David Tod, he deputized Mr. Taylor to go to the scene and in- vestigate the matter. His subsequent report gave unmistakable evidence that great injustice was being done, and the Governor then ap- pointed Mr. Taylor military agent, with rank of Colonel, on his staff, and instructed him to take such vigorous action as he deemed best ealcu- lated to remedy the evil. Colonel Taylor went immediately to Lonisville, and with the aid of officers of the department secured such order as to render the efforts of the nefarions gang abor- tional. Thereafter the interests of Ohio soldiers were carefully guarded by Colonel Taylor, who had opened an office in Lonisville, and who effectnally warded off all unjust and careless treatment. The next year he was ordered to Nashville, Tennessee, where performed a like service until the spring of 1864, when, on orders from Governor Brough, he removed his head- quarters to Chattanooga, where he remained rendering noble service during the eventful At- lanta campaign, culminating in Sherman's triumphant march to the sea.
Early in 1865 he was appointed Commissioner of the Burcan of Military Claims in Ohio, and went to Columbus, where he remained in the dis- charge of the incidental duties for two years and ten months, after which, at his snggestien, the office was discontinued hy an act of the Legislature, the nnsettled business being given into the hands of the Adjutant-General of the
State. At the close of this last public service incident to the war, he made Cleveland his resi- dence. During the time he held this office he collected and distributed to the widows and orphans of soldiers over $2,000,000, and how well and nobly ho performed this service, is attested by the records of the department, the books showing his accounts to have been kept to the accuracy of a cent, thns ever to stand as a memorial and witness, not only of his personal integrity, but also of his marked business and executive ability.
In 1868 Colonel Taylor removed to Ravenna, in which familiar place the remainder of his days was passed. Here for twenty-four years, and nntil his last illness, he was devoted to his books and business. In 1875, being then in his seventy-fifth year, he traveled through upper and lower Canada, and subsequently went on a business trip to England, making a tonr of that country and Ireland. He was a thorough temperance man, and a regular attendant of the Presbyterian Church, though not maintaining a membership in the same. The personal ae- complishments of Colonel Taylor were far superior to those of the average business man of his day. He was a constant and careful reader, and that intellectual resource and conso- lation abided with him even unto extreme age, his mental- faculties remaining practically un- impaired until the last. He had traveled ex- tensively, and his faculty of observation was phenomenal and never-failing; he never lost his lively interest in the affairs of the world, and, a true patriarch, his mind held a vast fund of knowledge, derived from the study and varied experiences of a long and eventful career. At- tractive in person, courteons and gentle in his bearing, he stood as one of the most noble speci- mens of the trne gentleman of the old regime, honored and beloved by all who came within the sphere of his individuality. Ilis manuscript, even down to the end of his life, was as plain, free and legible as that of the most expert ae- countant, and his style of correspondence ovinces literary taste and a most retentive memory.
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To this honored pioneer, whose name must ever be held in veneration, death came aftor an illness which had confined him to his bed for seven months. During that time he suffered much physical pain, but his mind did not release. its grasp upon time and place until was drawn the last fleeting breath, bringing rest to the tired spirit which had calinly waited for the hour of dissolution. He died November 20, 1892, having then but recently completed his ninety-second year. The beanty and grandenr, the lesson and incentive of such a life can never fade, and the page which does no more than bear the impress of his name should be touched with reverent hand, and with a feeling of grati- tnde that such a life has been lived.
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