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OHIO GENEALOGY EXPRESS
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CLERMONT COUNTY, OHIO
BIOGRAPHIES
SOURCE: HISTORY OF
CLERMONT AND BROWN COUNTIES, OHIO
— VOLUME II —
1913 |
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MR.
PAUL A. PATHE is pre-eminently a business
man, and one who has wielded a wide influence in the
business circles of Clermont county, Ohio. His
methods are intensely preactical and his life of activity
ahs been rewarded with a measure of prosperity that
classes him among the foremost of substantial men of the
community. His success is undoubtedly due to his
wide experience and strict attention to business.
The Pathe family was originally from Germany
where Adolph, the father of Paul A., of this
mention, was born in 1815, and reared to young manhood
with a university education at Berlin. His parents
were people of quality. He took a prominent part in
the insurrection of Palatinate and Baden in 1848, the
failure of which gave to this country Carl Schurz
and many other distinguished German-Americans, and which
also obliged Adolph Pathe to immigrate to America.
All the property he owned that he could not convert into
cash was confiscated.
Sometime after arriving in this country he associated
himself with the then famous Doctor Munde, who
conducted what was known as a cold water cure
establishment or sanitarium at Northampton, Mass., and
which was patronized by the well-to-do people of that
time. Mr. Pathe was the active manager of the
establishment and succeeded in this position a man who a
few years later became a National character - Henry
Wirtz, superintendent of Andersonville prison during
the Civil war.
Adolph Pathe was a scholarly man, his knowledge
being very diversified. Music, language and
chemistry were his special branches, but he was more or
less familiar with other branches of science and art.
In his spare time he made many musical compositions,
principally for the piano, many of which he was induced to
have copyrighted and published. He settled in
Haverhill, Mass., in 1855, and was there united in
marriage to Miss Ellen M. Smith, a native of
Vermont, whose family was of Staffordshire, England,
descent.
Paul A. Pathe, the first
born of this marriage, pursued his education in the common
schools of Haverhill, Mass., following which he attended
the Franklin Academy, of Dover, N. H. After
his schooling was completed Mr. Pathe
began his business career in the shoe business in
Newburyport, Mass., in 1879, remaining with the same firm
for nearly fourteen years. During this period he
served several terms of office in the different branches
of the Newburyport city government, and was also prominent
in political and fraternal circles. He then
moved to New York City, where he was manager of a shoe
factory for several years.
Mr. Pathe came to Clermont county, Ohio,
in 1896, where he purchased a large interest in a shoe
manufacturing plant at Bethel, and became secretary and
superintendent of the company. The plant employed
about eighty persons in the beginning, which number has
sine been increased to more than two hundred employes
under his management, and paying a high rate of wages,
many of his employes owning their own homes. The
company is known as the Cincinnati Shoe Company. Mr.
Pathe became president in 1908, and his son,
Paul A., Jr., is now secretary and superintendent.
Besides the plant at Bethel, the company has a plant at
Georgetown, Brown county, Ohio, which employs at present
nearly one hundred people, having been in operation less
than two years at this writing. The buildings of
both plants are substantially made of brick and are
splendidly equipped. They send shoes all over the
country, and their worth is proven by the large demand for
the output of these factories.
The great event in the live of Mr. Paul A. Pathe
occurred in 1878, when he was united in marriage to
Miss Harriet Elizabeth Rogers, a daughter of
Tristram Gould Rogers, of Byfield, Mass., and Nancy
Towle (Dow) Rogers, of Seabrook, N. H. Mrs.
Pathe's mother was a first cousin to the American
statesman, Hon. Caleb Cushing, of Massachusetts,
attorney-general in the cabinet of President Pierce,
at also the first United States minister and
plenipotentiary to the courts of China and Spain.
Mrs. Rogers's father, Captain Daniel Dow, and
Mr. Cushing's mother, Lydia Dow, were
brother and sister. Charles Nelson Rogers, a
brother of Mrs. Pathe, was a Civil war veteran, who
died at Fortress Monroe.
One son and one daughter have blessed the union of
Mr. and Mrs. Pathe. The daughter, Bertha M.,
died when a few years old. The son, Paul A., Jr.,
was born in Newburyport, Mass., in 1884, and came with his
parents to Clermont county some seventeen years since.
He married Miss Jennie Scott Cook, a graduate of
Wooster University. They are parents of one son,
Laurence Weissmann, who was born at Bethel in 1912.
Paul A. Pathe, Jr., is an independent Republican,
and has satisfactorily filled the office of mayor of the
town in which he resides; he is also a member of the
Masonic order.
Mr. Paul A. Pathe is an independent Democrat,
and has served in several local public offices but is not
an office seeker. He is a member of the fraternal
order of Knights of Pythias, and is a past chancellor of
the organization; and was also for several years a
director in the First National Bank of Bethel. He is
also a member of the Business Men's Club of Cincinnati.
He is broad-minded and liberal in his views on all
questions. and numbers his friends among all classes.
There is perhaps no other man in the town who has been a
greater benefit, commercially and socially, than has our
subject.
The home and home life of Mr. and Mrs. Pathe is
ideal, having rich simplicity and charming hospitality.
Mrs. Pathe is a lady of high intelligence and one
whom to know is a pleasure and privilege. She is
thoroughly domestic in her tastes and her home is the best
evidence of this pre-eminent virtue. |
PRATHER
FAMILY. The Prathers came from
Sheffield, England. Such is the family tradition. They
were settled in Western Maryland, however, not long after
1700. The last sale of lands conducted by Lord
Baltimore, Proprietor of Maryland, was made at the
home of Col. Thomas Prather, in Frederick county,
Maryland, November 9, 1767. In 1756 "Major
Prather" commanded one hundred and fifty men in the
Indian wars in Western Maryland. In 1758, "Lieutenant
Prather" and two privates of the Maryland troops were
killed by the Indians near Fort Duquesne.
James Prather was a lieutenant, and
Thomas Prather a colonel of Maryland troops in
the Continental Army during the Revolution. They were both
from Frederick county, and were active members of various
Frederick county committees organized to carry on the war.
These and other annals of the family in Maryland are found
in "Scharff s History of Maryland," and "Scharff's
History of Western Maryland." The Ohio Prathers
removed from Frederick county, Maryland, to Fleming
county, Kentucky, soon after the Revolution, but crossed
to the north bank of the Ohio into Clermont county, about
1790, three brothers, Enos Prather,
Erasmus Prather and John Garrett
Prather, originally locating in Clermont county;
but Enos Prather removed to Piketon, in the
Scioto Valley, not far from Chillicothe, about the year
1797, where some of his descendants still reside.
John Garrett Prather built what was afterwards
known as the "Chilo House," on the banks of the river at
the upper end of Chilo, about 1802, and also subdivided an
addition to the village. His first wife was a Phillips,
whom he married in Maryland, and who bore him two
children, but died shortly after they settled in Ohio. He
afterwards married Mary Ann Fee, a
widow, whose maiden name was Sargent, and whose
brother, James Sargent, was a member of the
first Constitutional convention of Ohio. By his second
wife, John Garrett Prather had eleven
children. Through these he has a very numerous line of
descendants. To this branch belonged James
Prather, the captain of the "Magnolia," and who lost
his life when that fine steamboat was destroyed by an
explosion about 1870. John O. Prather, James
Prather, Samuel Prather, Ignatius
Prather, Silas Prather, Joshua
Prather, Walter Prather, Wesley
Prather, Nelly Ann Wall,
Nancy Slye, Susannah Owens,
Amelia Tucker, and Mary Ann
Molen were the children of this original John
Garrett Prather. Nelly Ann
Wall was the grandmother of James Wall,
now of Batavia, and also of William Walker
Smith, now in the diplomatic service and stationed
at Constantinople. Griffith Prather, long a
leading business man of St. Louis, Mo., and for eight
years Democratic National committeeman for the State of
Missouri, was a grandson of this original John
Garrett Prather; his father being Wesley
Prather, who was also the father of Edward G.
Prather, late of Chilo, Ohio, and grandfather of
Miss Leona Prather, now of Cincinnati. Mary
Ann Molen was the wife of Capt. Grafton Molen,
a prominent steamboat captain of the early days.
Erasmus Prather, brother of the original John
Garrett Prather, settled on the hill about half way
between Chilo and Felicity. His wife was
Elizabeth McKibben, of Scotch-Irish ancestry.
Their children were Joseph Prather, Samuel Garret
Prather, Erasmus Prather, Nancy, Susannah and Louie
A. Prather, Elizabeth Slye (wife of Esquire
John Slye, of Lindale), Sarah Wedding and
Mary Lanham. Of these, Joseph Prather
married Sarah McKinney, September 16, 1824, and to
them were born Erasmus Jackson Prather, Joseph S.
Prather, Wesley Washington Prather, John Garrett Prather
(the second), Enos D. Prather, Ellen Goslin,
wife of Peter Goslin, Mary Goslin, wife of James
J. Goslin, and Caroline Wedding, wife of
William Wedding. The McKinneys are of Scotch
descent.
This second John Garrett Prather, son of
Joseph and Sarah McKinney Prather, was born in
1833, and resided all his life in and about Chilo,
Clermont county, Ohio, where he died in 1891. His
first wife was Susannah Muir, who died in 1856.
His second wife was Eliza J. Shinkle, and the third
Emily Dillon. By his first wife he had a son,
John Seuvetus Prather, who was killed at New
Orleans in 1896. His second wife, Eliza J.
Shinkle Prather, born him three daughters and one son,
Mrs. Florence Richey of Felicity, Mrs. Mattie
Terry of Covington, Ky., Mrs. Jennie Riley of
Independence, Ky., and William Walter Prather, the
attorney of Cincinnati. William Walter Prather
graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Science at
the Northern Indiana Normal School in 1881, and received
the degree of Bachelor of Law at the Cincinnati Law
College in 1884. He was elected probate judge of
Clermont county on the Republican ticket, in 1884, at the
age of twenty-six. He declined a second nomination,
and has since been in active and successful practice of
the law in Clermont and Hamilton counties. His
offices are in Cincinnati, where he now resides.
William Walter Prather married Margaret Cornelia
Bicking, a daughter of Joseph Bicking,
of Batavia, formerly county treasurer. Their
daughter, Florence Prather, graduated from Vassar
College in 1908.
The Clermont Shinkles are descended from John
Karl Schinkle, who emigrated from Edenkoben on the
Rhine, and came over on the "Snow Ketty" in 1737.
The Bickings came from Pennsylvania, where they
were paper makers at Downingtown, near Philadelphia during
the Revolution, and where a cousin, Samuel P. Bicking &
Brothers, still operate several paper mills.
By his third wife, Emily Dillon, John
Garrett Prather the second, had three
children, Zelia, now deceased; Joseph D.,
now living in Evansville, Ind., and Homer, residing
in Los Angeles, Cal. |
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