USA > Ohio > The biographical cyclopaedia and portrait gallery with an historical sketch of the state of Ohio. Volume II > Part 55
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74
amination papers, and kept himself informed of their suc- cesses or failures in life." The Second Presbyterian Church, of Cincinnati, in which he was an elder, counted him among its liberal supporters, and regarded him as one of its best members. He married May 5th, 1857, Miss Caroline W. Lindsley, of Washington, D. C., and one son, William Reuben, is now living. He died at his home on Mount Auburn, August 2d, 1882.
COBB, AHIRA, Cleveland, shipbuilder and capitalist, was born at Tolland, Connecticut, October 12th, 1814, and died at Cleveland April 11th, 1882. He was the son of Jedu- than Cobb, Jr., a descendant of Dr. Samuel Cobb, a gentle- man of fine education, who settled in Tolland in 1743, and became one of the most prominent citizens of that town, and Harriett Griggs, daughter of Stephen Griggs, an ensign in the Continental army, who died at New Rochelle, New York, in 1776. Jeduthan Cobb left Tolland with his family in 1819, and migrated to Ohio, where he bought a farm in Huron County, upon which the family settled, and where he died in 1827. At the time of locating in their new home the country was a wilderness, almost unbroken, occupied by Indians and wild animals. Many were the hardships and privations to which they were subject. At the time of the death of the father there was an incumbrance on the farm of some three hun- dred dollars, and a tax of seven dollars. The tax was due and must be paid, yet there was no money to pay it. Young Ahira, the subject of our sketch, then a lad of thirteen, took upon himself to raise this necessary amount. He yoked his oxen, gathered a cartload of apples and peaches, and tramped away to Sandusky, a distance of twenty-five miles. The tax money was raised and three dollars beyond. The year fol- lowing the death of her husband Mrs. Cobb, with her family, returned to Tolland. There Ahira went to school to Alfred Newton, who afterwards, for twenty-five years, was pastor of a Presbyterian Church at Norwalk, Ohio. He spent his evenings in learning the tailoring trade in the establishment of Solomon Griggs and Luther Eaton. During this time he was the roommate of the eldest son of Luther Eaton, William W. Eaton, who after became a United States Senator. Young Cobb soon sickened of the tailoring business, and a year later returned to Ohio, where he entered the store of John Buckingham, of Norwalk, as clerk, holding this position for six years. In 1836 he formed a partnership with Mr. Buck- ingham and B. L. Hill, under the firm name of Cobb, Hill & Co., and opened a store at Birmingham, Erie County. Of this firm he was a member for twenty-three years. The town of Birmingham was incorporated by a company of New Yorkers. They had erected, at a cost of twenty-five thousand dollars, a flouring-mill, a hotel valued at five thousand dol- lars, a saw-mill, a forge, and a large number of private dwellings. In 1837, the company failed in the distressing panic of that year; and in 1844 Mr. Cobb was a successful bid- der for its property, thus becoming, at the age of thirty, the owner of nearly the entire town of Birmingham. At the same time he had large interests at Vermillion, a lake port seven miles distant, in connection with Captain Alva Bradley. At this port they built their first craft in 1841, the schooner South America. Each succeeding year they built and put in commission at least one vessel, until they became among the largest vessel owners in the Northwest. In 1852 Mr. Cobb exchanged his Birmingham mill and residence for the For- est City House, one of the leading hotels of Cleveland. He
€
50I
BIOGRAPHICAL CYCLOPÆDIA AND PORTRAIT GALLERY.
then removed with his family to Cleveland, built for himself an elegant residence on Euclid Avenue, entered as special partner the large boot and shoe firm of Crowell & Childs, and became interested in the erection of blast furnaces at Youngstown and Antwerp. In 1867 he bought out the interest of Mr. Armstrong in the wholesale drug firm of Strong & Arm- strong, a firm which was originally established in 1833. The new firm was Strong, Cobb & Co., Mr. Cobb being the special partner. In 1873 he deeded to his eldest son, Lester A. Cobb, the half of his interest in the firm. Later on, his younger son, Ralph L., became a partner. In 1874 he and Captain Bradley built a magnificent and substantial business block on- Superior Street, which is occupied by Strong, Cobb & Co. This firm is now the largest of its kind in the State, and one of the largest in the entire West, and among commercial men is most favorably known. Their sales aggregate nearly a million annually, and their trade extends through Ohio, In- diana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York. In all his undertakings Mr. Cobb was highly successful. He was mar- ried in 1839 to Miss Maria Briant, daughter of Jonathan Bri- ant, Esq., of Birmingham. They had nine children. Mr. Cobb was a man of sterling character, of the strictest integrity, liberal in his charities, and especially interested in the cause of education. In politics he was a republican, never neglect- ing his political duties and never seeking for political office. Mr. Cobb had for a long time suffered from trouble of the kidneys, which finally resulted in death, April 11th, 1882, after an illness of only ten days. He left a wife and family of eight children, composed of six daughters and two sons, to mourn his loss.
PUGH, JOHN M., attorney-at-law and ex-probate judge of Franklin County, Ohio, was born in Truro township, in Franklin county, November 7, 1823. He is the youngest son of David and Jane (Murphy) Pugh. David Pugh was born and brought up in Wales, and at the age of thirty-three years emigrated to the United States, landing at Baltimore, Mary . land, May 4th, 1801. He remained in Baltimore one year, and then (1802) he removed to what is now Radnor township, Delaware county, Ohio, being its first white settler. He gave his entire time to agriculture, and in 1814 settled on a farm in Truro township, where he died, October 24th, 1857, at the advanced age of eighty-eight years. His mother's family were natives of Pennsylvania, and of Irish genealogy. John M. Pugh was educated, after the manner of his time, in the com- mon schools, in Reynoldsburg high-school, and subsequently at Central College. He supported himself while attending these institutions of learning by teaching school during the winter season, and thus acquired a good literary education. His last school was taught at Kirkersville, Licking county, during the summer of 1848. September 4th of that year he began reading law in the office of Major Samuel Brush at Columbus, where he remained until 1851, when he was ad- mitted to the bar at the November term of the Supreme Court, and sworn in by Peter Hitchcock, the presiding judge of the court. In the spring of that year he had been elected to his first official position, that of clerk of Montgomery township, which included the city of Columbus, and, although the whig party had a majority at that time, in the city, of nearly six hundred, he was elected on the democratic ticket by a majority of one hundred and fifty-nine votes. This sur- prising result was a clear manifestation of his personal pop- ularity with all parties, a characteristic which he ever after
maintained. In 1853, when the contest in Franklin county between the two parties was very close, he was elected au- ditor of the county by the then unprecedented majority of 1,456. In 1855 he was re-elected to the same office. At the close of his second term he retired from public life in order to form a partnership in the practice of his profession with his old preceptor, Major Brush. Upon the withdrawal of his partner from active practice, he formed a second partnership with L. J. Critchfield. In 1863 he was nominated by his party to the office of probate judge of Franklin County, and triumphantly elected. Subsequently he was chosen five times successively to the same office, retiring at last in February, 1879, after fifteen years of consecutive service, being, in all probability, the longest continuous judgeship to be recorded for any man in Franklin county. He also served six years as a member of the State Board of Agriculture, two years of the time being its treasurer and one year its president. For nearly six years he was one of the commissioners of the State Reform School for boys, near Lancaster, Ohio, having been successively appointed to that position by Governors Allen, Hayes, and Bishop, being two years president of the board. For eleven years he was treasurer of the Franklin County Agricultural Society, and three years its president. Judge Pugh was married on Christmas day, in 1851, to Miss Martha F. Cook, by whom he has seven living children. This esti- mable lady, after a lingering illness of several months, passed away November 16th, 1881, deeply mourned by the family and a large circle of friends and acquaintances. Since his retire- ment from the bench, Judge Pugh gives his time again to practice, and is now in partnership with his son, John C. L. Pugh, and nephew, David F. Pugh. Judge Pugh's informa- tion is extensive and varied. In a long career of public serv- ice he has had the fullest confidence of the people, among whom he is universally held in high esteem as a man of un- sullied honor and integrity. Although a steadfast member of the democratic party, he never permits partisan consider- ations to stand in the way of personal friendships. He has been a noble husband, a good citizen, and an honest man.
GREEN, HON. JOHN KESLEY, capitalist, and pres- ident of the Blymyer Manufacturing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio, is descended from English ancestors on his father's side. They were of Quaker persuasion as to religious tenets. At an early day three brothers named Green, having emi- grated from England, settled in the colonies-one in Rhode Island, from whom General Nathaniel Greene descended ; one in Virginia; and one in New Jersey, from whom came the subject of this sketch. His father, Marmaduke Green, emigrated from Philadelphia in 1811, and settled in Milford, Clermont County, Ohio, where John K. was born December 17th, 1812. His mother's name was Mary Kesley. Her grandfather was a citizen of Worms, in the German States. In order to prevent his son (her father) from entering the German army he sent him to the American colonies in 1774. When the Revolution broke out he enlisted in the Conti- nental Army, in which he served five years. She was long a member of the Methodist Church, maintaining a consistent relationship, and acquiring a name that still survives her as a noble Christian woman, possessing great force of character, and doing good deeds until her death, in her eighty-second year. From this devout, thorough-going, high-minded mother, and from a father so descended, Mr. Green derived those characteristics which are so noticeable in him, and which
502
BIOGRAPHICAL CYCLOPÆDIA AND PORTRAIT GALLERY.
have led him on to the good name and fortune that he possesses to-day. He engaged himself, at fifteen years of age, to learn the trade of carpenter. His contract was for five years. At the end of three years he paid his employer one hundred dollars to be released from his obligations to him for the remaining two years. He took his first contract for building a house before he was twenty years of age. That house is still standing, on Harrison Street, in Cincinnati. He con- tinued in this business for eight years, during which time it steadily increased, and when, in 1838, he resolved to re- linquish it for the purpose of entering into the lumber busi- ness exclusively, he was building as extensively as any firm or company in that city. As a lumber dealer he began at the corner of Central Avenue and Hopkins Street. He con- tinued for thirty-five years in the same business at that point and other locations. For a while he was associated with N. . W. Thomas & Co., pork packers and commission merchants. His continued success in business resulted in accumulations which sought investment. As a consequence we find him operating as a capitalist in his later years. Having large interests in the Eagle Insurance Company of that city, he is one of its directors, and has been such for twenty years. The company of which he is president occupies a conspicu- ous place among the manufacturing industries of that great center of trade. Its works cover an entire square. This space is occupied by machine and boiler shops, foundry, blacksmith shops, offices, and warerooms. Its management requires enormous capital, and its trade extends from Asia to Australia, and from Canada to Brazil, and throughout all the States and Territories of the Union. Mr. Green served five years as director of the Hamilton County Infirmary ; eleven years as director of Longview Asylum ; was a delegate to the convention that nominated General Fremont for President ; was presidential elector for Ohio in the campaign of 1864, and voted directly for the re-election of President Lincoln ; was elected to the State Legislature in 1863-4, during the Brough campaign, and received over ten thousand Republi- can majority. In 1878 he was the Republican candidate for Congress in the First District of Ohio. Mr. Green married Miss Jane T. Stewart, November 4th, 1841. She was the eldest daughter of Benjamin Stewart, one of the pioneers of the Miami Valley. He came to Cincinnati in 1800. During the Burr-Blennerhassett conspiracy he was one of the soldiers who was posted on the Ohio River to intercept their expedi- tion, and was on duty for two nights as such. They have two children living -- Kessley S. Green, now in Iowa, manag- ing a large stock farm, and Anna Maria Cahill, living with them at their homestead. Mr. Green joined the Methodist Church at seventeen years of age, and he is now a member of St. Paul Church, in Cincinnati, to the erection of which he contributed liberally. His Church and charitable giving began in his early years. In 1834, when he had but three hundred dollars, he subscribed one-half of it to build Trinity Church, on Ninth Street, Cincinnati. But before he had it to pay he had made in his business more than twice that sum. He has given freely also to the endowment of the Ohio Wesleyan University, to the Wesleyan Female College, of Cincinnati, and in other ways has done good out of his ample store. Just as many others, Mr. Green attributes his success in life to the training of his mother, and the "line upon line, and precept upon precept," taught him under the sound of the gospel in the Church of his adoption in the days of his childhood. An incident should be related, giving an insight
into his positive character and the motives which impelled him to decide as to a course of action. In 1834 a Southerner came to Cincinnati, in search of a carpenter, to go to Missis- sippi, for the purpose of superintending the building of his mansion and plantation quarters. A well known citizen of that day immediately recommended Mr. Green to the planter, saying: "He is just the man for you, if you can get him." At an interview between the parties, the planter offered Mr. Green fifteen hundred dollars per annum, a horse, saddle and bridle, and a body servant as a consideration for his services as superintendent. At the time Mr. Green was not making more than one-third that amount, and the planter considered his offer equivalent to an acceptance. Mr. Green declined the offer. The planter was surprised, and upon pressing Mr. Green for his reasons therefor, he said: "All the capital 1 have is my brains and muscle, and I do not wish to go to a State where the use of them is regarded as degrading." He remained in Cincinnati, and that year made more at his trade than had been offered him by the slaveholder. The State has in Mr. Green one of its most estimable citizens, whose success in life may be traced to his inherent qualities as a man. He has lived a life divided between the city and the country. Much of his time has been given to the practi- cal study of horticulture and agriculture. Four years he served upon the State Board of Agriculture. He organized the Hamilton County Agricultural Society, and was its presi- dent for two years. As a recreation from his business cares in the city, he superintends his farm, known as Remington Heights, consisting of three hundred and fifty acres, in the vicinity of Montgomery, a village near Cincinnati. For twenty-three years his country residence was maintained upon a farm adjoining Carthage, and upon which now stands the Hamilton County Infirmary. He enjoys the confidence and respect of his fellow-citizens to a high degree ; and as a believer in the doctrines of the Christian religion has sought to live up to its requirements in all his relations to his fel- low-men.
HOLDEN, REUBEN ANDRUS, one of the leading merchants of Cincinnati, and, in a continuous sense, probably the oldest, was born August 9th, 1813, in New Ipswich, New Hampshire. By the death of his father he was left an orphan at three months of age. His mother, thus widowed, found herself dependent upon her own efforts for the support of herself and five children-Ira, Amos, Edward, Reuben, and a daughter, Ann. They lived upon a rented farm, and with the help of her older sons, she managed to provide food and raiment for her children, while she neglected not to impart that moral and religious training so peculiar to stern New England life. As a youth Mr. Holden worked upon the farm until his sixteenth year. During that time, in the love of nature, he held "communion with its visible forms," whether animate or inanimate; sometimes with the birds of the air and sometimes with the beasts of the field. A disposition to care tenderly for both, by training and petting them, developed into a characteristic which, in after years, designated him as a suitable person for positions which only the kind-hearted should fill. We refer to those pertaining to the management of charitable and reformatory institutions. A petted robin once, while sitting in its lowly nest, was wounded by accident, in the use of the scythe in the hands of a mower, and died. That incident is even now tenderly remembered as enlisting his profound sympathy, so much so
1
Western Biogl. Pub Cnt,
long truly R. A. Holder
5º3
BIOGRAPHICAL CYCLOPÆDIA AND PORTRAIT GALLERY.
as to then inspire a childish prayer that his poor pet robin might go to heaven .. He got his first ideas of barter and exchange in carrying butter, eggs, berries, etc., to the village store, and selling them for groceries and dry goods. By a law of that household only the oldest son could wear new clothes. When he grew too large for them, they descended to the next in age, until they came to Reuben, who was the fourth, well re-enforced at the knees and elsewhere. The ma- terial itself was home-made. Some of the recollections of his childhood vividly recalled, are : making molasses candy in winter and selling it for a cent a stick; playing soldier, in imitation of the old militia musters; the deep snows of the New England winters, when the people were sometimes com- pletely snow-bound, and had to open the roads by means of great plows drawn by oxen-both men and oxen being almost frozen by "the hard, dull bitterness of cold;" kin- dling their fires in the morning by making the old-fash- ioned flint-lock musket "flash in the pan ;" thanksgiving- days, with their accompanying festivities in that hospitable land; going to the theater in Boston at twelve years of age for the first, and last time, while visiting a brother there; and walking two and a half miles to church every Sunday. At sixteen years of age he went to Weymouth to school, and made fire and swept out the office of a lawyer to pay expenses, for six months; went from there to Mason village, New Hampshire, to live with Mr. Elliott, who kept a country store, and here he took his first lessons in mercantile life. Here they sold every thing, " from a penny's worth of snuff up to a silk dress." It was, while thus employed, sur- rounded by many of the allurements and temptations of life common to the times, that he became convinced of error and was converted to Christianity, uniting with the Baptist Church. This was in his eighteenth year. At nineteen he left his native State with sixty dollars of his hard earnings and went to Boston, Massachusetts, and from there started for Ohio, then the far West, arriving in Cincinnati about the middle of April, 1832. His brother Amos, some years his senior, had preceded him about two years, and was keep- ing a shoe store in Noble Row, on the east side of Main, near Front Street, the firm being Holden & Bicknell. There he engaged as clerk, and studied bookkeeping by double entry, under Mr. Bicknell. When Holden & Bicknell dis- solved partnership in 1834 he remained with his brother as bookkeeper and assistant in the store-sometimes making trips East to purchase stock. While getting a salary of six hundred dollars a year he married, at Oxford, Ohio, Miss Aurelia C. Wells, a daughter of Mr. Oliver Wells, who built the first type foundry in Cincinnati-the first west of the Allegheny Mountains. He began housekeeping in an hum- ble two-story brick dwelling-house, still standing on the west side of Vine Street, the second door above Front- being now a square below the present business house of R. A. Holden & Co. This was about 1838. He then formed a partnership with his brother Amos in the wholesale boot and shoe business, at No. 4 Main Street, the firm name being A. P. & R. A. Holden. He continued in that busi- ness two years, when he and Mr. S. T. Smith built a steam- boat called the Zephyr. It was started as a "temperance" and "Sunday-observing" boat; but public opinion did not sustain the enterprise. It was put in the general carrying business on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and the west- ern tributaries of the latter river. On one occasion he went up through the great Red River Raft as far as Fort Towson,
in the Choctaw nation. While there the river fell, and they were left for six weeks, until a rise took them off again. They had to go through canebrakes twenty-two miles on foot to the nearest post-office. At that time postage was twenty-five cents a letter. He saw much of the abhor- rent customs pertaining to the slave trade while thus em- ployed and traveling-the whipping-post, the auction-block, the manacles. He sold the Zephyr and took an interest in the Waverley, of which, for a while, he was captain. It plied the waters of the Upper Mississippi. He finally abandoned seeking his fortune upon the river and returned to his family in Cincinnati. Here he engaged once more with his brother in the boot and shoe business, at the old stand, No. 4 Main Street, and remained until 1846, when they quit that business and went into partnership with Mr. Hoffman in the grocery and produce line, on Main Street, opposite the old Court- house. The firm name was Holden & Hoffman. Here they made "feathers and ginseng" a specialty. About 1849-50 they began shipping ginseng to China. Their shipments were made in sailing vessels: From four to six months were consumed in making the trip, returns from which were not received for a year or more. In 1848 Mr. Hoffman retired. The firm name then became A. P. Holden & Co. In 1852 A. P. Holden died, and the business was then conducted by Mr. Holden alone for a few years, when Mr. C. E. Houghton was taken into partnership, the firm then being R. A. Holden & Co. In 1861 the firm moved to 67 Vine Street, between Pearl and Second Streets. Upon the retirement of Mr. Houghton, in 1865, Mr. Holden gave an interest in the business to two of his employés-Henry Wahking and Sam- uel Wells-an act which shows strongly the generous side of Mr. Holden's life, for the business was then very lucra- tive, and the partnerships given not only carried with them position but large financial profit. The present well known house of R. A. Holden & Co. consists of these same partners, and the business is still continued at No. 67 Vine Street. In 1832 Mr. Holden united with the old Baptist Church on Sixth Street, near Walnut. He aided materially in building the Ninth Street Baptist Church. He bought his present beau- tiful homestead in Mount Auburn, and removed there in 1853. He is one of the pioneers of that lovely suburb. It then consisted of but a few houses. Soon after removing there he assisted in organizing a Sunday-school, under a large tree in a grove. That was the beginning of a religious movement which resulted finally in building the present Mount Auburn Baptist Church, toward the erection and sup- port of which Mr. Holden gave, and continues to give, most liberally. While a teacher of a Bible-class in the old Sixth Street Church, he remembers having as a member thereof the Hon. Stanley Matthews, now one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. Holden was one of the founders of the Mount Auburn Young Ladies' In- stitute ; one of eight gentlemen who built it and established it on a financial footing, thereby securing to Cincinnati and the immediate vicinity one of its most desirable institutions of learning. He was a member of the jury in the celebrated suit instituted by the United States Government to fix the compensation to owners for property condemned as a site for the new Custom House in Cincinnati. The Superior Court of Cincinnati appointed Mr. Holden a director of the House of Refuge in 1863. He has served without interruption ever since, the court continuously reappointing him at the expiration of every three years. He has been president
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.