Deerfield Twp. -
JACOB AND MARY (JACKSON) LE FEVRE,
Oxford. These two settlers were among the earliest and
most useful of the pioneer settlers of Ohio; both were born
in Frederick Co., Md.; Mr. LeFevre, Feb. 14, 1785,
and Mrs. Le Fevre, Dec. 24, 1784; the father of the
latter was Henry Jackson, who was born and educated
in London, England; her mother, Rebecca Pope Jackson,
was born in Maryland, of French parents, who, during the
persecution of the Huguenots by the Roman Catholics, were
driven from a happy and prosperous home in their
beloved France, to the strange and wild lands of America;
they chose exile, rather than disloyalty to conscience and
religious belief. Jacob Le Fevre claims a
similar interest in the Reformation; his mother was German
and his father a Frenchman and a Huguenot; in the history of
the French Reformation, the name Le Fevre is an
honored one among the Protestant heroes. Our subjects
were married May 1, 1804, and, in the spring of 1807, with
their oldest child, Mary, aged 1 year, they emigrated
to Ohio. They came in wagons to Pittsburgh, and from
there to Cincinnati in flat boat, which they sold in the
latter town for $10, the purchaser using it for a dwelling
house, as was the custom. Mr. Le Fevre was
offered land at a very low price in the vicinity of
Cincinnati, but he would not purchase it because it seemed
so worthless for farming purposes. He came out with
his family to the southern part of Warren County; he bought
land adjoining that on which Socialville was afterward
built, three miles south of the present town of Mason, and
known as the Thompson land. He finally owned
200 acres in all, and here they lived happily and
prosperously for thirty years, until Mr. Le Fevre's
death, in 1837. Mr. Le Fevre and family were
most earnest and active supporters of church, school and
every worthy enterprise. With money and labor, they
helped to build the old Presbyterian Church at Pisgah, and
assisted greatly in supporting its religious services
afterwards. Among the ministers who preached at Pisgah
at that early day were Rev. Peter Monfort, Dr. Lyman
Beecher, Dr. Henry Little, Rev. Benjamin Graves, Rev. Andrew
Morrison and other home missionary workers. Mr.
and Mr. LeFevre were actively interested in the cause of
education. Before the time of the free school system,
they took a prominent part in organizing and supporting
subscription schools. They raised ten children, four
sons and six daughters, all of whom have filled useful
positions in life; these children all lived to raise
families of their own, but two of the sons and four of the
daughters are now dead. The names of the ten children,
with their husbands and wives, are as follows: Mary
and Jane Baxter, Matilda and Josephus Dodds,
Elias and Henrietta Ingersoll, Catherine and Gilbert Barton,
Henry and Ellen Monfort, Rebecca and Thomas Moore, Mercy and
Nimrod Duvall, Sarah and Milton Coulson, Jacob and Elizabeth
Belch and Nimrod and Rebecca Tobias. Their
mother, Mrs. Mary Jackson Le Fevre, is still living,
and is now (1881) in her 97th year. She enjoys good
health and the use of all her faculties, except that of
hearing. She remembers quite distinctly the events of
her pioneer life; among her early neighbors in Deerfield
Township were John Wylie, David Slayback, Nimrod Duvall,
Abraham Probasco, Roland Kendall, Zebulon Eynons, Nicholas
Dawson, Ezekiel Blue, Jacob Hercules, Isaac Phillips, Daniel
Stout, Ezra Van Fossen and others. After many
years of toil and hardship as a pioneer, Mrs. Le Fevre
is now taking life easily; she is making her home at present
with her daughter, at Oxford, Ohio. She has fifty-one
grandchildren living and a number who have died. She
has about 300 descendants altogether. A great many of
these took a loyal and active part in the civil war; some
arose to places of eminence, and some sacrificed their lives
in the noble work of defending our flag and nation.
The offspring of such ancestors as are herein mentioned
should indeed be loyal to the truth, always and everywhere,
that they may honor and carry out their teachings of those
ancestors who toiled and suffered so nobly for the cause of
right.
Source: History of Wayne Co., Ohio - Publ. Chicago: W. H.
Beers & Co., 1882 - Page 980 |
Franklin Twp. -
RANSOM S. LOCKWOOD, Justice of the
Peace, Franklin; son of John and Phoebe (Seeley) Lockwood,
was born in Union Village, Warren County, Feb. 13, 1810.
His father was a carpenter and millwright, and built the
first frame house in Union Village, which still stands,
opposite the church. His parents were of the Shaker
belief; this sect at that time owned 5,000 acres of land in
that vicinity, and were like a little empire; they had no
schoolhouses, and would not allow their children to attend
the district schools, so our subject never received a day's
learning inside a schoolhouse; in fact, when he attained his
8th year, his education was ended; when 12 years old,
he went to learn the tailor's trade, at which he worked
winters till 1833, laying brick during the summers; he then
went to Springfield on foot, with a companion by the name of
Farr; here they engaged in making clay smoking pipes;
they made about fifteen thousand, then gave it up, and he
went to Minktown and worked at the tailor's trade with a
Mr. Stephenson one year; he then went to Waynesville and
worked at his trade till 1835, when he came to Franklin and
engaged as journeyman tailor for Moses McPheeters
till the time of Mr. McPheeters' death, which
occurred in 1837, when himself and Gabriel Scharf
took the business, which they carried on nearly ten years.
In 1846, he was elected Justice of the Peace, which office
he has since filled, and is probably the oldest in the
county. He was married, in Franklin, in 1840, to
Hannah Ross; they have four children - Laura; Ross,
now in the dentist profession, office adjoining his
father's; Hope, a telegraph operator in Cincinnati;
and Clara. He owns a fine brick residence on
Center street, below Sixth, which he built in 1849; he also
owns a fine block, corner Center and Fifth streets, where
his office is located.
Source: History of Wayne Co., Ohio - Publ. Chicago: W. H.
Beers & Co., 1882 - Page 807 |
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