LORING AMES
Page 194

It is the privilege of few to experience the varied scenes that have made up the life of Loring Ames. The disadvantages of his youth made him energetic, and a close thinker. Of vigorous frame and active investigating turn of mind, his varied experiences were treasured for future profit. He was born in Berkshire county, Mass., Sept. 13, 1806, and is this centennial year at the allotted period of three score years and ten. When one year old, his parents removed to Bradford county, Pennsylvania. Books were then less plenty than now, and newspapers rare, but from slips and fragments of the latter, his letters were learned, and his education began. It was a great annoyance to his older sisters to inform him of the names of the letters he found on bits of newspaper, for he must know them all. At the age of seven, he began school, walking one and a half miles to learn to read. In 1818, he removed to St. Clair county, Illinois Territory, where he resided until 1823, during which period Illinois was admitted as a State of the Union. Desperate efforts were made to incorporate slavery in the original constitution of Illinois, and a large emigration being settled here from slave-holding States, it very nearly succeeded. It would be useless to say that Mr. Ames was active on the side of freedom. From St. Clair he removed to Adams county, in 1823, and from Adams to what is now Mason county, in 1836, or five years before the survey of Mason county. During his residence in Adams county he acquired a knowledge of the Indian tongue, one of the necessities of that day. In 1829, he run a flatboat, loaded with produce, to New Orleans, and his curiosity excited him to attend the slave marts in the southern cities. His strong anti-slavery sentiments here became stronger, if possible, than before, from his observation of the actual working of the system. His home has been in Mason county since 1836, but in the anti-slavery organization, since 1829. He married, in 1833, to Elmira, daughter of Deacon Jones, the proprietor of the city of Canton, Illinois. He served in the Black Hawk war, first as a private, in Capt. G. W. Flood's company, and then as a Lieutenant, in the company of Capt. Pierce of Col. Fray's noted regiment. He now resides near Topeka, Ill., on a farm, which has been his avocation most of his life. He became a member of the Congregational Church, in Quincy, Illinois, in 1831, is now with the Methodist Episcopal Church, in his vicinity, an honored member, and to the wisdom of his councils and experience, many have applied and been benefited. No eulogy or fulsome praise is necessary to comment the rigid anti-slavery sentiments of the subject of this sketch, in view of circumstances like the following, which came under the writer's immediate observation: In 1852, five fugitives from bondage were seized at Sandusky, Ohio, without color of law, when a Mr. Rush R. Sloan appeared as their counsel. They were discharged, and fled to Canada. Their southern masters sued Mr. Sloan for defending his clients, in a United States Court, and he was compelled to pay, in costs and damages, over five thousand dollars, for simply doing a professional duty to these poor, distressed negroes, fleeing for liberty. The great injustice done him had its effect to rouse the people of northern Ohio to a knowledge of their degradation to the slave power, and bore good fruit in the cause of universal liberty.

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