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Ohio Genealogy Trails |
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Columbiana County Biographies
Judge Thayer Melvin There have been, and are yet, natural lawyers and jurists as there are natural musicians and natural artists. Judge Melvin was a natural born jurist. He was born at Fairview, Hancock County, Virginia, in 1837, and received a fair English education in the common and high schools of his native and adjoining counties to begin with, and later by study and careful reading of good books he became a really accomplished scholar and litterateur, and a man of broad and general knowledge. At the age of seventeen years he began the systematic study of the law in his home town, which was the seat of justice of the county at that time, and was furnished books and was counseled by the lawyers of the town. He had a strong, clear mind, and was remarkably industrious. Later he went to New Lisbon, Ohio, where he remained for something like a year, and was tutored by a friend who took a special interest in his advancement, so that in 1853, at the age of eighteen, he passed the required examination, and was admitted to the Bar of Hancock County. During his minority, in 1855, he was elected Prosecuting Attorney of Hancock County. Our present statute prohibits one from receiving license as an attorney at law until he is twenty-one years of age, and it is also mandatory that no man is eligible to hold an office of any kind until he is full twenty-one. We believe these prohibitions existed at that time. If they did it is apparent that no one paid any attention to them, and consequently Judge Melvin was allowed to begin, what turned out to be, a distinguished professional career at least three years ahead of time. Any way "he made good," but it could not be "put over" in these times. In 1856 and in 1860 he was elected and re-elected to the same office, notwithstanding the fact that in 1857 he had moved his residence to Wheeling, Ohio County, where he had associated himself in the practice of the law with Joseph H. Pendleton, a prominent lawyer of that period. The Civil War came on about this time and young Melvin promptly volunteered to defend the flag as a private soldier in Company F, 1st Regiment, West Virginia Volunteer Infantry. In a very short time he was commissioned an Assistant Adjutant-General of Volunteers, and served in that capacity until the close of the war, when he was honorably discharged. He located in Wellsburg, Brooke County, and resumed the practice of his profession. In 1866 he was again elected Prosecuting Attorney of Hancock County. He was Attorney-General of West Virginia from January 1, 1867, to July 1, 1869, when he resigned to accept the office of Circuit Judge of the First Judicial District of the State, to which he had been appointed by the Governor to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Judge E. H. Caldwell. This was the beginning of the career of one of the ablest and most upright Judges the State of West Virginia has ever produced. Tiring of the "wool sack," however, he resigned from the Bench after serving ably for years, in November, 1881, and returned to the practice in the City of Wheeling until the death of Judge Joseph R. Paull, when he was appointed by Governor Atkinson to fill the unexpired term of the deceased Judge. When his term expired he was elected for another term of eight years without opposition, and died from apoplexy before the term expired. He was a Whig prior to the Civil War, but after the "cruel war was over " he became a Republican, and remained such until his death, but was never a strenuous partisan. In the discharge of his judicial duties he knew no party or creed. He sought only to be just and fair, and rarely, if ever, failed in deciding right. It was a rare occurrence for one of his decisions to be reversed by the Appellate Court. Furthermore he was one of the most courteous, urbane of men, and was at all times absolutely honest and sincere. He died in the City of Wheeling where he had spent the greater part of a long and useful life, mourned by all the people who admired his manly and noble character. He never married. [Bench and bar of West Virginia edited by George Wesley Atkinson, 1919 - Transcribed by AFOFG]
John Williams Barnaby, the subject of this sketch, was born at Westville, Columbiana County, Ohio. He was educated in the common schools and at Mt. Union College. His parents were Quakers, and they came from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to Ohio, in 1837, and located in the eastern part of Stark County. Mr. Barnaby is a bookkeeper by profession, and he has always been a republican in politics. In 1879 he was elected recorder of Stark County, and re-elected, thus serving six years in that office. During the war of the rebellion he served three years as a sergeant in the One Hundred and Fifteenth Regiment O. V. I., and was discharged with an honorable record. He was deputy treasurer for Stark County from 1886 to 1890, and in 1892 he was appointed cashier in the state treasurer's department, where he remained until January 1896. He was appointed a clerk in the adjutant-general's office, by General Axline, June 3, 1896. The maiden name of Mr. Barnaby's wife was Miss Emma K. London, whose father was born in London, England. They have four children, three daughter and one son. Mr. Barnaby is a member of Canton Post, G. A. R., and of Buckeye Lodge, No. 11, K of P. Canton.
Jones, Catlet, born in Virginia, about 1750, accompanied Daniel Boone to Kentucky, and was one of the twelve settlers who rescued Boone's daughter, who had been captured by the Indians, and while guarding the "corn-patch" with Boone was severely wounded. After serving through-out the revolution, he joined the Society of Friends, became a preacher, and in 1801 emigrated to Ohio. He died in Columbiana County, Ohio, in 1829
Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography, p.313
Godlove Conradt, native of Wurtemburg, Germany, and son of Henry and Catherine Conradt, was born on the 10th day of July, 1834. When four years of age he was brought by his parents to the United States, and from 1840 until 1845 lived in Springfield, Columbiana County, Ohio. The family moved to Miami County, Indiana, the latter year, and settled in Peru, where the father for a number of years carried on a successful tannery business. The parents both departed this life in the year 1870. Godlove Conradt received in the common schools a practical education, and at an early age learned the tanning trade, which he followed until his twentieth year. He then engaged in the mercantile business, opening a leather and shoe-findings store in Peru, which he carried on in connection with the tannery, operating the latter with encouraging success until 1884. In addition to his private enterprises, Mr. Conradt has at different times been called to fill positions of trust, the first of which was that of Township Clerk, to which he was elected in 1860. He was subsequently chosen a member of the City School Board, the duties of which position he discharged in a manner highly satisfactory to all concerned for a period of nine years. In his business ventures Mr. Conradt has been successful, and at this time, in addition to other property, owns a valuable tract of 200 acres of land in Deer Creek township. On the 27th day of December, 1857, he married Miss Mary Smith, daughter of Christopher Smith, of Germany, a marriage blessed with the birth of four children, three of whom, Matilda, Fred and Albert, are living. Mr. Conradt is liberal in his political views in State and National affairs, voting the principles of the Democratic party, and in local matters voting for the man best qualified for the position. Mrs. Conradt is a member of the Lutheran Church of Peru.
Contributed by Barb Zigenmeyer
Ananias Harman is a native of Columbiana County, Ohio, where he was born, March 1, 1847, being the second child and oldest son of Jacob and Sarah (Seitner) Harman, of German descent, both natives of Pennsylvania. They emigrated from Ohio to Indiana and Miami County in 1847, settling in Perry Township, of which they ever afterwards continued residents. The former died about 1870. Our subject remained at home and assisted his parents on the farm until he attained his majority. He received a limited education, such as the facilities of those days afforded. His father was a carpenter by trade and Ananias followed in his footsteps, learning that trade, at which he worked about three years, when he engaged in farming, which he has since made his occupation. June 22, 1873, his marriage with Susanna Miles was solemnized, and to their union two children have been born, viz: Minnie S., born February 11, 1876, and Earl Andrew, born March 17. 1883. Mrs. Harman is a daughter of Jacob and Catharine (Swank) Wiles. In his vocation of farming he has been very successful. He now owns a fine farm of 151 acres handsomely improved. He and wife are members of the Church of God. In politics he is a Democrat.
Contributed by Barb Zigenmeyer
Isaiah Seidner, one of the prominent citizens of Allen Township, was born in Columbiana County (now Mahoning County), Ohio, December 20, 1838. He was the youngest son in a family of eleven children born to Jacob and Elizabeth (Rummel) Seidner, with whom he came to this county in 1856. They located on the farm where Isaiah now resides. There the father and mother spent the rest of their lives, their respective deaths occurring May 18, 1858, and in 1859. Our subject spent his boyhood and youth working on his father's farm. During winter he attended the district school, in which he received a common school education. At the age of twenty-one he took up the vocation of a teacher, and this has been his winter's employment ever since. He is now teaching his twenty-seventh winter term, having missed but one since he began. In this capacity he has had marked success, as is shown by the fact that all of his teaching has been confined to a comparatively few school districts. Though many improvements have been made in the system of education since he entered upon the teachers' career, he has studied privately and thus kept fully abreast of the tide of advancement, and he now ranks among the best teachers in the county. His vacations have been spent chiefly superintending his farm, though he has given some attention to the carpenter's trade. October 21, 1860, he was married to Julia Ann Landis, daughter of Benjamin and Mary (Messinger) Landis, both natives of Pennsylvania. She was born in Wayne County, Ohio, August 7, 1838. Their marriage has been blessed by the birth of but one child, Mary A., born February 7, 1862. Mr. Seidner and daughter are members of the M. EA Church. The wife and mother is a member of the Church of God. Politically Mr. Seidner is a Republican. He has a beautiful home and a handsome little farm, fitted up with good fences and buildings, making it a very desirable location. He is an industrious farmer, an energetic and successful teacher, and a worthy and honorable citizen.
Contributed by Barb Zigenmeyer
Brown, Mrs. Martha McClellan, born near Baltimore, Md., 16th April, 1838. On her father's side she is descended from the McClellans, Covenanters of Scotland, and on the mother's side from the old Maryland families of Manypenny and Hight. She was married in her twentieth year to Rev. W. K. Brown, of the Pittsburgh Methodist Episcopal Conference In the fall of 1860 Mrs. M. McClellan Brown entered the Pittsburgh Female College, and in 1862 was graduated. In 1866 Mrs. Brown, owing to the unexpected death of the principal of the public schools in the county-seat of Columbiana county, Ohio, where her husband had been appointed pastor, was engaged as associate principal with him. In 1867 she was elected to a place in the executive committee of Ohio Good Templary, and immediately founded the temperance lecture system. In 1868 she took editorial charge of the Republican newspaper of Alliance, Ohio. Julius A. Spencer, of Cleveland, secretary of Ohio Good Templary in 1868, proposed to Mrs. Brown the formation of an independent political party, and she extended her hand to assist him. The question being further discussed, Mrs. Brown's husband required that, before his wife should unite in the movement for a new party, there must be an agreement to place woman on an equal status with man. Mr. Spencer finally agreed that woman should have equal status in the new party, and that a plank asserting this fact should be inserted in the platform, provided they were not expected to discuss that issue before the people. The Prohibition party was organized in Ohio early in the following year, 1869. In 1870 Mr. Brown purchased the political newspaper of which his wife w as editor, and for years that paper was made the vehicle of vigorous warfare against the liquor traffic. In 1872 Mrs. Brown was elected a delegate of Good Templary to Great Britain. Very shortly thereafter she was called to the headship of the order in the State of Ohio. When Mrs. Brown appeared upon the platform in Scotland and England in 1873, audiences of from 5,000 to 10,000 greeted the American temperance woman, and her title of Grand Chief Templar of Ohio was a passport to recognitions of royalty, even so far remote as Milan, Italy. She was elected at the State Grand Lodge of Ohio, held in Columbus in 1873, to succeed herself in the office she held. In her capacity of Chief Templar she issued an order in January, 1874, for a day of fasting and prayer in the three-hundred lodges of Ohio under her jurisdiction, and encouraged that all ministers of religion favorable to the order and the cause of temperance be invited to unite with the Good Templars. Finding that the women who had become active in the out-door work of the crusade were not satisfied to enter the Good Templar lodges, Mrs. Brown, at the suggestion of her husband, prepared a plan for the organization of crusaders in a national society without pass-words or symbols, under which plan open religious temperance meetings and work should be prosecuted, women being the chief instruments of such work. She afterwards was chiefly instrumental in gathering the women in the first national convention in Cleveland, Ohio, where she largely assisted in developing her plan, which was made the basis ot the permanent organization of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Just after the founding of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in August, 1874, Mrs. Brown was elected Right Grand Vice-Templar of the International Order of Good Templars, in Boston, Mass. In 1876 Mrs. Brown objected to the attitude of the majority of the Right Grand Lodge of Good Templars in rejecting lodges of colored people, and so withdrew and united with the English delegates. After ten years of separation the two bodies adjusted their issue by providing for regular lodges of colored people, and were reunited in 1886, at Saratoga, N. Y. In 1877, after repeated personal efforts with leading Republican officials, State and National, had failed to secure any actual, or even fairly promised political, antagonisms of the liquor interests, Mrs. Brown went to New York City and assumed the management of the newly organized National Prohibition Alliance. In October, 1881, Mrs. Brown gathered through personal letters, special circulars and press notices a large national conference of leading Prohibitionists and reformers in the Central Methodist Episcopal Church, New York City. Before that conference she made one of her most impassioned appeals for unity among temperance workers, whereby the National Prohibition Alliance was led to unite formally with the Prohibition Reform party. The success of the New York conference led to a similar conference in Chicago the following year, August, 1882, which was arranged for by Mrs. Brown, and which was more successful than the one held in New York. Many of the old leaders of the Prohibition Reform party were induced to attend' the Chicago conference. At that conference Miss Frances E. Willard and her immediate following of Home Protectionists and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union were brought into the Prohibition party, besides many local organizations of temperance workers. Mrs. Brown thereupon dropped the non-partisan National Prohibition Alliance, believing that it had served its purpose. In the summer of 1882 Dr. and Mrs. Brown were elected to the presidency and vice-presidency of the Cincinnati Wesleyan College. The entire management of the institution has since devolved upon them, Mrs. Brown holding a professorship as well as the vice-presidency of the college. Among others she has received the degrees of Ph. D. and LL. D.
(American Women Fifteen Hundred Biographies Vol 1 Publ. 1897 Transcribed by Marla Snow)
Hon. Otis R. Hale
Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in 1873, Mr. Hale is a son of Capt. Hiel Hale, a native of Columbiana county, Ohio. The family has long been represented in America, and the great-great-grandfather served his country with courage and distinction in the Revolutionary war. The grandfather, Nathan S., who subsequently died in Arizona, was a native of Columbiana county, Ohio, and was an industrious tiller of the soil during the greater part of his life. Captain Hale was a prominent man in whatever locality he chanced to live, and after removing to Arizona was a participator in the most substantial effort for the territory's growth. In Ohio he conducted large farming interests, but changed his residence to Iowa in 1850. During the first three months of the Civil war he served in the First Iowa Infantry, and was after that captain of Company D, Twelfth Iowa Infantry. Upon being captured at Pittsburg he suffered the confinement and horrors of Libby prison for eight months, and was paroled in 1864. The local political affairs of his locality in Iowa were materially advanced by his services in several important offices, among which was the position of sheriff of Linn county, which he held for two terms. For six years he was city marshal of Cedar Rapids, and for five years was the deputy warden of the Iowa state penitentiary at Fort Madison. From the latter position he was forced to resign because of ill health, and in search of a change of climate and occupation he came to Arizona in 1882. At the present time he is engaged in mining, and resides in the old and historically interesting town of Tucson. His ability was recognized by his fellow townsmen, who elected him to the nineteenth general assembly, during the sessions of which he served on several important committees, and ably represented the interests of Yuma county. He is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic.
The mother of O. R. Hale was formerly Sarah M. Dawley, who was born in Indiana, and subsequently removed with her parents to Iowa. She is the mother of two children, of whom O. R. is the younger. Albert Hale is a locomotive engineer with the Southern Pacific Railroad. The youth of O. R. Hale was an industrious one, and at a very early age he faced the problem of self-support. When but nine years of age he moved with his father to Tucson, and at the age of fourteen his education in the public schools was interrupted by his apprenticeship in the machine shops of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Following the four years spent in the shops, he worked as a machinist" in different eastern cities for a couple of years, and upon returning was with the same railroad company until his resignation in 1899. At this time he built a machine shop on Tenth street, Tucson, and, in partnership with Mr. Myrick, conducted a well-drilling and general machine plant under the firm name of Myrick & Hale. The firm are among the large business concerns in the city, and are experts in their particular line, and particularly "efficient deep well drillers. So large is the demand for their services that they keep two drills in operation the greater part of the time.
In 1898 Mr. Hale was nominated on the Republican ticket for the legislature, and elected by a good majority. He served on the judiciary committee and was chairman of the library committee, and of several others of equal importance. He was instrumental in securing the passage of the bill providing the appropriation for the University of Arizona, the money to be paid in regular yearly installments, and to be used in maintaining the highest possible management of the institution. He has served also as a member of the territorial central committee. Fraternally he is associated with the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, and belongs to the club maintained by the order. He is a member of The International Association of Machinists.
Source: Portrait and Biographical Record of Arizona Contributed by Barb Zigenmeyer
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