USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume II > Part 17
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appointed second lieutenant on the staff of General Melanc- thon S. Wade, commanding Camp Dennison. In January, 1862, he was appointed first lieutenant in the 22d Ohio In- fantry, and joined this regiment at St. Louis. In July, 1862, he was promoted to captain, and served as such till the close of the Rebellion, in the Army of the Tennessee. Among the battles in which he participated were those of Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth, and Vicksburg. Subsequent to the fall of Vicksburg Captain Richards was provost-marshal and military mayor of Memphis. At the close of the war Mr. Richards resumed the practice of the law, at Memphis, Tennessee, where he remained actively and successfully engaged in his profession till 1871. In that year he returned to Cincinnati, and formed a partnership in the law with Mr. William Stanton, which continued till 1872, when Mr. Rich- ards was appointed Assistant United States District Attorney, under W. M. Bateman. He ably filled this position till 1877, when, by President Grant, he was appointed successor to Mr. Bateman. He has filled this responsible position ever since, having been reappointed in 1881 by President Hayes. Mr. Richards is a man of recognized ability, and ranks among the ablest members of the Hamilton County bar. Probably there is no lawyer of Cincinnati who is a closer student or has read more extensively in law than he. His arguments are clear, scholarly, and forcible, which gain additional strength and influence with court and jury by his well known character as a man. He is a man of the purest mold, and though plain and unpretentious, an adornment to his profession. For ten years he has conducted the legal interests of the United States for Southern Ohio with ability and zeal, and has ren- dered the greatest satisfaction to the several administrations and to those whose interests were involved. Mr. Richards has always been a zealous and consistent member of the Republican party, to which he has given, for years, valuable support. Into all campaigns he has thrown the full force of his character as a citizen and speaker, and is an influential member of the leading Republican club of Cincinnati. His religious opinions are such as are held by the Episcopalian Church, with which he united in 1857, and for several years he has been a member of the Standing Committee for the Diocese of Southern Ohio. Mr. Richards was mar- ried April 11th, 1865, to Miss Hattie Learned, daughter of P. P. and Virginia S. Learned, of Memphis, Tennessee. Mr. Learned was a business man of that place for many years, though now a citizen of Cincinnati. Six children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Richards, five of whom are still living- Hattie L., born in 1866, died in 1872; Channing, born in 1870; Paschal, born in 1872; Brayton, born in 1874; James, born in 1876; and Bessie, born in 1878.
CLARK, JOHN, pioneer, was born in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, February 29th, 1800. About the year 1805 his parents, Samuel Clark and Sarah Forsythe, settled near Co- lumbus, Ohio. In 1829 he married Eliza Downey, a native of Virginia. In 1831 he located in Portsmouth, where for over twenty years he was engaged in merchandising. In the early part of his life he spent several years on the frontier as government agent among the Chickasaw and Choctaw In- dians. He also made several trips from Columbus, Ohio, to New Orleans, on flat-boats, via the Scioto, Ohio, and Missis- sippi rivers. He was a cousin of the lamented General Custer. In 1852 Mr. Clark, with others from Portsmouth, went to California, and during one winter in the mountains
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his party was completely snowed under, and they eked out a miserable and precarious existence by tunneling through the snow and cutting subsistence from their dead mules. The hardships and exposures during that winter were fearful; but John Clark was of an iron constitution, and came out of the siege as sound as a dollar. Mr. Clark belonged to a race of men now almost extinct. He has told a gentleman that he was a youthful companion of the late Hon. Thomas Ewing when he worked at the Salt Works, and had often held the pine knots for a light at night while Ewing received instruc- tions from Mr. Clark's father. He was fond of reading, and a man of extensive information. He was also considered to be one of the most honorable business men of his commu- nity, and gathered around him a host of friends. He died of old age, in his eighty-first year, on October 29th, 1880. His only child is wife of P. C. Kinney, just noticed.
SCHUMACHER, FERDINAND, manufacturer, son of F. C. Schumacher, who was a prominent commission mer- chant, was born in Celle, Germany, March 30th, 1822. Upon completing his education in the high school of his native town, he was apprenticed, at the age of fifteen, with a Mr. H. F. Balk, of Harburg, a little town opposite Hamburg, serv- ing five years without compensation, to learn the grocery trade. Returning home in 1842, he clerked two years in his father's house, and subsequently served as a shipping clerk in the extensive sugar refining house of Egestorf & Hurtzig, Hanover. Dissolving his connection with this house in March, 1850, he came to the United States, settling, with his brother Otto, on a forty-six acre farm in Euclid, east of Cleveland, Ohio. In 1851 he married Miss Hermine Schumacher, a cousin, by whom he has two sons-Louis, thirty years of age, who takes an active part in the management of his father's business, and Adolph, aged nineteen years, who is a student of Buchtel College. After two years of farming and general business experience, he established a small so-called "green grocery," at Akron, Ohio, his entire capital at that time amounting to one hundred and forty dollars. He prospered, and in 1857 rented water power on the Ohio Canal, in the northwestern part of Akron, and put in the necessary machinery for in- augurating a branch of manufacture which grew steadily in importance. In his native country, while learning the grocery business, he had obtained his first ideas as to the proper method of making palatable preparations for human food out of the grain of the oat, and now he undertook to intro- duce the manufacture of good oatmeal into his adopted country, substituting machinery driven by power for the hand-mill he had been accustomed to see at his employer's in Germany. Success followed, and in another year appar- atus for pearling barley was added to the Greman Mills, as they were appropriately christened; while the next year additional capacity was given to the mill itself, by increasing the water power. The trade still grew, and by 1863 had assumed such proportions that it was necessary to erect a mill especially for pearling barley. The large brick Empire Mill was built at the railroad depot. In 1867 he purchased the Cascade Mill, one of the best furnished and -largest flouring mills of that day, situated on the power just above the German Mills, and made many important improvements therein. In 1872 the old German Mills was destroyed by fire. The building of the present German Mills, at the depot, was immediately begun, and completed early in the spring of 1873. In 1875 and 1876 the effective power of
the Cascade was largely increased by lowering the tail-race thereof so as to connect it with the power of the old German Mill, thus increasing the head and fall to thirty-eight feet. An iron overshot wheel, thirty-five feet in diameter, with ten feet steel buckets, was built, the old gearing and machinery of the Cascade Mills removed, the number of burrs increased to eleven, and machinery put in for the purpose of manufac- turing farina and high grades of flour by gradual reduction on French burrs. In 1875 he also made additions to the Empire Mills, adding machinery for the still more extensive manufacture of pearl barley, including a two hundred and fifty horse-power double Fitchburg engine. In 1879 a grain elevator, with a capacity of one hundred and thirty thousand bushels, was built, between the Empire and German Mills ; and in 1881 another, in Greentown, Ohio, with a capacity of thirty thousand bushels-both needed to furnish a sufficient amount of storage for his mills. In 1881 a one hundred and fifty horse-power engine was added to the power of the Cascade; and in 1882 the building of another mill; the "German Mills, B" was commenced, and was finished so as to be in running-order by September of the year 1883. This mill proper is eight stories high, with a frontage on Summit Street of one hundred and forty-five feet by ninety feet on Mill Street, besides a boiler-house five stories high, fifty feet by ninety. It will be propelled by a four hundred and twenty- five horse-power Raynolds Corliss double engine, built by E. P. Allis & Co., of Milwaukee. Steam will be furnished by four Babcock & Wilcox tube boilers, one hundred and twenty- two horse-power each. The combined frontage of the Empire Mills, elevator, engine and boiler-houses, and German Mills A and B, is four hundred and eighty-four feet. The capacity of the old and new mills, running day and night, will be seven hundred and fifty barrels of oatmeal and avena, one hundred barrels cracked and rolled wheat, fifty barrels farina, three hundred and fifty barrels flour, two hundred and fifty barrels cornmeal, two hundred and fifty barrels (roller mills or new process) rye-flour, and one hundred and fifty barrels pearl barley, making an aggregate of nineteen hundred barrels of wholesome food for human beings, be- sides some ten car-loads daily of feed. The business of the house, he represents, will run up this year to two million dollars, extending to every part of our country, as well as England and Germany. His investment in his four mills exceeds five hundred thousand dollars. The secret of this success is simple but very significant. It was his determina- tion to excel, never considering his machinery good enough until the highest attainable quality was turned out. Thus it came to pass that he substantially controls his branch of business, and manufactures a greater variety of goods in this line than any other house in the United States, while he literally revolutionized the trade in oatmeal. When he began all the oatmeal used in this country was imported from Can- ada and Europe, every attempt at making good American oatmeal having failed. His unequaled success at length led the market, and at present the importations of this valuable food are trifling in amount. Socially, he is a quick-witted, in- telligent, and genial companion, and in his domestic relat- ions is very happy, his home-life affording rare pleasure to those who have been permitted to witness its purity and cheerfulness. In business matters, he is sagacious, prompt, diligent, and thorough-a distinguishing characteristic being his practical opposition to the credit system. The subject of temperance has a peculiar interest for him, and he is strong
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and unwavering in his faith in legal prohibition, sparing neither means nor labor in its behalf. Thus he is not only a practical reformer in the line of his business, but he carries his principles to total abstinence of all alcoholic stimulants as beverages, and all narcotics. He believes that simple, orderly, cleanly ways of living will do much to promote health, morality, and happiness, and has shaped his business and life in accordance with this belief. This belief and his devo- tion to it has given him success in his business, which he uses freely in behalf of every charity and good work. He received the unanimous nomination of the Prohibitionists, in conven- tion assembled, at Columbus, June 14th, 1883, as chief magis- trate of the State, which was accepted in the following char- acteristic manner:
" AKRON, O., June 16th, 1883.
"JAY ODELL, ESQ., Chairman Executive Committee, Cleveland O .:
" Dear Sir,-I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your favor, 15th inst., advising me of the unanimous nomination, as standard-bearer in this fall's contest, to rep- resent the people's cause against a handful of rich and in- fluential men who have a money interest in the beer and liquor traffic, and boldly undertake to dictate terms to our town, State, and national legislators. I cheerfully accept this honorable distinction, hoping that the time is near at hand when, in thunder-tones, the people shall protest against this oligarchy, prohibiting, for tippling purposes, all that can intoxicate. Thus they may decide for themselves what the policy of leading parties shall be, rather than leave it to politicians, with whom party success is of greater importance than the true interest of our people.
"Very respectfully yours, "FERDINAND SCHUMACHER."
His name stands as much for temperance, prohibition, charity, and the good of society as for his unsurpassed table: goods. He is the zealous friend of schools, Churches, improve- ment, progress, and whatsoever benefits society. Though a German, he is American in his ideas and character, combin- ing in his life the stability of Germany with the push and progress of America.
TOWNSEND, AMOS, M. C., Cleveland, member of the large mercantile house of Edwards, Townsend & Co., was born near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, in the year 1831. His father was Aaron Townsend, a farmer, of the Townsend family of Philadelphia, and his mother a daughter of Captain Jacob Cox, a soldier under Washington, in the Revolutionary war. After receiving a good education, he, at the age of fifteen, entered a store near Pittsburg, and began the profession of a merchant. There he remained four years, when he removed to Mansfield, Ohio, and formed a partnership with N. B. Hogg, under the firm name of A. Townsend & Co., for the transaction of a general mercantile business. This firm con- tinued five years, during which time he held his first office. At the outbreak of the trouble in Kansas, the Lower House of Con- gress appointed a committee to investigate and report the con- dition of affairs, and Hon. John Sherman secured for him the appointment as marshal of the committee, and he went to Kansas with it in that capacity. This position was a delicate and dangerous one, but was filled in such a manner as to gain the respect of both parties. In 1858 Mr. Townsend re- moved to Cleveland, and entered the wholesale grocery firm of Gordon, McMillan & Co., where he remained until 1861, when such had been his success that he was admitted as junior partner in the firm of Edwards, Iddings & Co. The following year Mr. Iddings died, and the firm became Ed-
wards, Townsend & Co. This firm now ranks among the largest and most favorably known in the West. In the spring of 1864 he was elected member of the City Council, on the Republican ticket, and was re-elected four consecutive terms, serving continuously for ten years, seven of which he was President of the Council. In 1873 he served as member of the State Constitutional Convention. In October, 1876, he was elected to the Forty-fifth Congress. He was then placed on several important committees, and the introduction and. successful passage of the "Letter-carrier Bill" was largely due to his efforts. In 1878 he was re-elected to Congress, and again in 1880. He was a member of the Committee on Commerce, and Chairman of the Committee on Railroads and Canals. He was the means of securing the passage of several important bills, and of important appropriations from Congress in behalf of his district, notably an appropriation for the breakwater at Cleveland harbor, and the improve- ments in the United States buildings in Cleveland, and the general efficient public service in the federal offices in his district. Among the more important bills and reports pre- sented by Mr. Townsend may be mentioned the following : In the Forty-sixth Congress a very able, complete, and ex- haustive report adverse to the bridging of the Detroit River. This was among the most important measures before that session of Congress, for the shipping interests of the entire Northwest were involved, and would have been most seriously crippled had the bill in favor of the railway companies allow- ing them to bridge that great water highway passed the House. To Mr. Townsend, for his successful efforts in that matter, every vessel-owner on the lakes is indebted. He presented a bill from the Committee on Commerce on the "Life-saving Service," which was favorably received, and passed. The fol- lowing bills and reports were also presented : One on " Revenue Marine Service ;" one on " Inter-State Commerce," as affect- ing and regulating the carrying trade between the States, particularly as regards railroads ; one known as the " Steam- boat Bill," governing steamboats, as to their condition, fitness for service, sea-worthiness, life-saving apparatus, etc .; a bill on a general law governing the bridging of the Ohio River, which was passed; an adverse report in the matter of the build- ing of the Hennepin Canal, to which he was most strongly opposed, and to the defeat of which measure he largely contributed; another on "Inter-State Commerce and Mer- chant Marine ;" and many others of importance. In addition to this labor, he made several able speeches on the "tariff." These reports and speeches were always intelligent and to the point, prepared with considerable care and labor, and with a thorough knowledge of the subject matter in hand; they were received with high favor by the most able men in Congress, and were given a large circulation. There are probably hundreds of ex-soldiers in the city of Cleveland who are indebted to his personal efforts in securing the pen- sions they enjoy. In the fall of 1882 he was urgently re- quested to allow his name to be used as a candidate for re-election. This, however, in a very able letter, he most respectfully declined. His career in Congress was one of honor and usefulness, from which he retires with well earned laurels. A man of strong convictions and clear foresight, he has never gone into chimerical vagaries. The various meas- ures he introduced were sound, practical, and beneficial, and presented in such form by him as to insure their success. He is a man of education, thorough business tact, of good personal appearance, fine physique, polished manners, and
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gentlemanly bearing. He is a member of the Union Club, of Cleveland, a director in the Mercantile Insurance Com- pany, of that city, and one of the directors of the Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railway Company.
WILLIAMSON, JUDGE SAMUEL E., of Cleve- land, solicitor of the New York, Chicago, and St. Louis Rail- road, the son of Samuel Williamson, banker, and Mary E. (Tisdale) Williamson, was born in Cleveland April 19th, 1844. He attended the public schools until he was sixteen, when he entered Western Reserve College, where he was graduated in 1864. On leaving college he studied law with his father for a short period. He then spent one year in Harvard Law Col- lege, and was admitted to the bar in September, 1866. In partnership with his father in Cleveland, he commenced the practice of his profession in February, 1867. In February, 1870, he formed a partnership with T. K. Bolton, and later with J. E. Ingersoll, which continued until November, 1880, when he was elected Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. In September, 1882, he resigned his seat on the bench to enter upon his duties as counsel of the railroad. He was married, June 4th, 1878, to Mary Peabody Marsh, sister of Prof. O. C. Marsh, of Yale College, who died May Ist, 1881, leaving twin daughters. In politics the Judge is a Republican, in religion a Presbyterian, being a member of the First Presby- terian Church. He is one of the trustees of the Western Re- serve University, and also a trustee of the Cleveland Law School, a new organization. The judge, though compara- tively young in years, is a man of ripe judgment and deep legal study, and is a man honored and esteemed by the judiciary of his native city. His attainments are many, and his character beyond reproach.
HILL, WILLIAM D., of Defiance, was born in Nel- son County, Virginia, October Ist, 1833. His parents, Ed- mund M. and Elizabeth Hill, were natives of that State, and in 1849 they migrated to Ohio and settled on a farm near Jamestown, Greene County, Ohio. He comes of a pa- triotic stock, as his great grand-parents on both sides were soldiers in the Revolutionary War, and both his grandfathers were in the war of 1812. He is the eldest of a family of eleven children, and had principal charge of his father's farm, remaining upon it until he was of age. In 1853 he purchased a scholarship in Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, while it was under the presidency of Horace Mann, and entered as a pupil. To support himself while there he sawed wood, made fences, tilled gardens, and cooked his own food. During the winters he taught school; and by this means he was enabled to spend three years in college. He did not finish the college course, but left before graduation. Meanwhile, he had turned his attention to politics, making his first public speech in 1852 in behalf of the Democratic party. He canvassed Greene County in 1854, and was active in op- posing the Know-nothing movement. To obtain the means to subscribe for the Cincinnati Enquirer he sawed wood at nights, for he was too independent to read a borrowed paper. He studied law with the late James M. Hunt, of Springfield, and in 1858 made an unsuccessful venture in the newspaper line, editing for a time the Qhio Press, which journal suc- ceeded the Democratic Expositor. He not only lost all his earnings, but became involved in debt. In 1860 he was ad- mitted to the -bar at the spring term of the District Court in Springfield. The law-partnership of Hill and Snyder was
formed in 1861, and soon obtained a good share of the legal business of the county. The same year he was elected mayor of Springfield over James L. Torbert, the Republican candi- date. This election was the more grateful to him, inasmuch as his opponent was a popular and favorite political leader, and the city was strongly opposed to the general principles and polity of the party to which Mr. Hill belonged. In June, 1863, he removed to Defiance, and the next year, during the Congressional canvass between General J. M. Ashley and General Americus V. Rice, the latter being confined at home by illness, he took his place on the "stump," and made speeches at many prominent points throughout the district. His labors as an exponent of Democratic principles were so highly appreciated, that the next year his party nominated him as their candidate for Representative in the Ohio Legisla- ture from that district, and he was elected against great odds by a majority of over two hundred votes. In 1867 he was re-elected ; and his merits as a public speaker being gen- erally acknowledged by his party, he made, by invitation of the Democratic State Central Committee, in 1869, speeches in Licking, Muskingum, Coshocton, Tuscarawas, and other counties, greatly to the advantage of his party, and to the extension of his own reputation as an able and successful debater. He rendered effective aid in the gubernatorial con- tests of 1871 and 1873, in which latter year he had the pleas- ure of seeing his friend, William Allen, elected Governor. In 1875 he was appointed by the Governor, without solicitation on his part, and against powerful influence exerted in behalf of numerous applicants, Superintendent of Insurance for the State. He held this office three years, refusing to become an applicant for a second term, and retired with the genuine respect of all parties as a capable and honest officer. On the 4th of July, 1878, he was nominated for Congress in the Sixth District and elected, serving one term. In June, 1882, he was nominated in the Sixth District as a candi- date for Congress by a convention of the Democratic party, and, at the election in October, was chosen representative by a handsome majority over Colonel J. H. Brigham, a popular and influential man, especially so among the farmers of that agricultural district, being master of the Ohio State Grange. In that election, Mr. Hill had a majority of seven hundred and fifty-four, running five hundred votes ahead of his ticket, and more than a hundred ahead in his own county. The year previous the Republican majority was nine hundred and eighteen. Mr. Hill was married June 3d, 1862, to Augusta B., daughter of Thomas C. and Anna D. March. She was born June 14th, 1839. Her parents were prominent members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Her father was a native of Maine, and her mother of Cam- den, South Carolina. She was one of the young girls who strewed flowers for Lafayette to walk upon when he passed through that place on his last visit to America in 1824. She always had a lively recollection of that incident, and recalled with pleasure the marquis's expression of gratitude for the honor showed to him on that occasion. Mr. March emi- grated to Alabama at the age of nineteen, and engaged in mercantile life. About three years before the late civil war, anticipating trouble between the two sections of the country, he closed his business, in which he had accumulated wealth, and came to the North. To Mr. and Mrs. Hill have been born four children : Alice L., April 5th, 1863 ; Anna E., No- vember 8th, 1866; Mary V., June 3d, 1870; and Mattie T., October 8th, 1873. In personal appearance Mr. Hill is about
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