Genealogy of Patty Rose
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| Notes for Amos DEWEES | ||||||||||
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Amos Dewese, a well known resident of Weston township, was born August 18, 1823, in Paris township, Stark county, Ohio, d. 3, 8, 1900. The first ancestor of the family of whom a record is given was Cornelius (great-great-grandfather.) His great-grandfather was Samuel Dewees, who lived in Berks county, Pa., and was a captain in the Revolutionary War. He had seven children: John, William, Elizabeth, Samuel, Powel, or Paul, Thomas, and David. His son Samuel served as drummer in the company his father commanded, and afterwards was commissioned a captain in the Pennsylvania troops and also served in the war of 1812. The vicissitudes of Mr. Dewese's early life were relieved by the sports of the hour, and he often engaged in the hunt and the chase, when heavy game was abundant in the Black Swamp. He was not content, however, and yearned to cast his fate among the possibilities of the far West. He had all the preparations made to take a western trip when his father went to Wood county, entered land, and prevailed upon him to do the same and remain with him. True to a strong impulse of family unity that has been handed down to the latest generation of the Dewees family, he allowed the parent's advice to prevail, and on March 1, 1851, he entered the land which formed a portion of his estate. On this he built a log house, and commenced to make general improvements, and for two years kept "bachelor's hall." On November 3, 1853, Mr. Dewese was united in marriage to Miss Sarah Green, who was born August 17, 1829, in Liverpool, England, and came to this country with her parents in 1834. A biography was published previous to his death. Children: William, George, Amos.[ref 95:142,153,171,177] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CENSUS: 1850 indexed for Milton OH, but not found 18 Jul 1860 Gilead, Wood OH census [ref 11:1053:94(262b)] 13 714 699 DEWESE, Amos 36 farmer 3000,1000 OH Sarah 31 England Wm. 4 OH Geo. 2 OH ORMFIELD, James 50 labor VT 1870 not found 1880 Weston, Wood OH census [ref 21:1078-232d] Amos DEUESE Self M Male W 56 OH Farmer PA PA Sarah DEUESE Wife M Female W 50 ENGLAND Keeping House ENGLAND ENGLAND William A. DEUESE Son S Male W 24 OH Farm Laborer OH ENGLAND George I. DEUESE Son S Male W 22 OH Farm Laborer OH ENGLAND Amos R. DEUESE Son S Male W 14 OH Farm Laborer OH ENGLAND Clara HUTCHINSON Niece S Female W 20 OH Keeping House OH OH - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Amos Dewese received but meagre school advantages before going to Wood county. The following article written by him for the "Western Herald" and published in 1883, gives some idea of his first experiences in Ohio: "As this is my fortieth anniversary in Wood county, I will, with your permission, give your readers a brief sketch of my first year of pioneer life in the county. I came here February 17, 1843. The snow was eighteen inches deep when I started from Hancock county, without one cent of money, a few clothes and a dry chunk of bread constituting my pack; my shoes were out at the toes, and I carried a few books. In the evening I crossed the line, and saw a hunter riding an old horse, to the tail of which was tied a large deer. I followed a trail and came to a Mr. Robbins', of Bloom township, where I stayed all night. Early next morning I started for Mr. Frankfanter's at Bloom Centre, found my old friend Joseph Shelia, and made my home with him, and went to chopping to get a pair of boots. Mr. S. and I rode through the woods to Risden and Rome, now Fostoria, for an axe. We found a few axes, but as they wouldn't trust either of us, we had to return without it. Then I went back to Hancock county, got my axe, and was rich. I took a job of a Mr. Buisey, to chop seven acres, for which lie gave me a rifle and some second-hand clothing. I finished the job on March 24, when the mercury was twenty degrees below zero that winter being still known as the hard winter. I began work for Mr. Solether April 1st, snow and ice on the ground and sleighing. He gave me a watch. While I was working there, a Mr. Jonathan Stull came into the clearing. He had a bag on his shoulder with a peck of ears of corn that he had got from a Mr. Daniel Mi1bourn. Mr. Stull was much depressed and discouraged on account of the terribly hard winter. We talked of Adventism, as the Millwrights said the end of the world was at hand. Mr. Stull said he prayed for it every day, as he had seen all the trouble he wanted to see. He said he had eight head of horses and all had died; twenty-eight head of cattle and two hundred and sixty head of hogs, and all were dead. I had to pass Mr. Stull's cabin often. He told me that he had been married twelve years and that they had ten children, all of whom were almost nude, not one had a full suit of clothes. They hadn't a bed or a window in the house. He was the owner of a three-quarter section of good land. There, said Mr. Stull, I have one peck of ears of corn in this sack, and when I take it home and grind it in the hand mill, and mix it with water, bake, and eat it, with my wife and ten children, God knows where the next will come from. They must starve. He wept like a child. Mr. Stull was founder of Jerry City. During my stay with Mr. Buisey I had to go to and from Shelia's. I had to pass a number of cabins, forsaken and uninhabited. They looked gloomy enough, surrounded by ice and water, and the dismal swamp. A number of wild hogs had taken possession of a new cabin which belonged to a Mr. John Ford. They had piled in on top of each other, and there perished from cold and hunger. When out hunting for coons and minks, whenever we found hogs, they were invariably dead. I next worked for Mr. Whitaker two weeks, and received $3.25 in June. Then I went to Milton Centre, and cleared five acres for James Hutchinson for a pair of two year old steers. In July, I went to James Bloom's, and worked for Bloom and Henderson Carothers; helped cut 45 acres of wheat, and cut and hauled in a hundred tons of tame prairie hay, for which I received one pair of boots and fifty cents in money-a sum total in money for the year, $3.75. In the beginning of the winter of the year 1843, I went to Ralph Keeler's to work for my board, and to go to school in the old log school house in Weston Mr. Keeler became sick, and as I had to take care of him and his stock, I lost the benefit of the school. I worked for him three months, for twenty-five dollars, to take my pay out of the store. I will attempt to describe the old Taylor school house. It was located in the back part of the lot now owned by Mr. Henry, on Main street; it was true pioneer in style, with puncheon floor, benches and desks made of the same; with round logs cut off with ribs, and weight poles to hold down the clapboards; windows with one row of glass, each eight by ten; writing desk, a punch-eon laid on pins driven in the wall. The teacher, Mr. James Osborn, of New York State, received twenty-five cents a day, or five dollars a month. The scholars were: Miss Mary Taylor, George Lewis, Thomas and William Taylor, Samuel McAtee, who lived with Andrew Moor-house; Olmstead, Amelia and Millicent Keeler. The teacher was paid by the parents, there being no school fund at that time. Mr. Taylor lost about forty-five head of cattle; Mr. Keeler, seventy-five head; while the Sargeants, Ellsworth, Saulsbury, and Green, lost about the same proportion during that winter never to be forgotten by the old settlers. Many had to move out of the Black Swamp before Spring. So ended my first year as a pioneer." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | ||||||||||
| Notes for Sarah GREEN | ||||||||||
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - CENSUS: 1850 not found 1860 Gilead OH, age 31 1870 not found 1880 Weston OH, age 50 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The following account of their silver wedding is taken from a Toledo paper: "At an early hour last evening, November 7, 1878, the many friends of Mr. and Mrs. Amos Dewese began to gather at their elegant residence, about two miles north of Weston, until from seventy to ninety guests had assembled, to participate in the festivities of the occasion, and to congratulate the happy couple upon the joyful return of the twenty-fifth anniversary of their wedding day. "After an hour and a-half spent in social greetings friendly congratulations, and kindly expressed wishes of future happiness for the bride and groom, the company assembled in the parlor, and Rev. M. L. Donaney invoked the blessing of God, and in a neat and appropriate speech in behalf of the donors presented to them the many beautiful gifts of their friends, to which Mr. Dewese responded with a greatful acknowledgement. After some good music and singing, the company gathered around the bountifully spread tables, and partook of a repast. "Honorable citizenship with financial independence has been the ambition of Mr. Dewese, and that this has been more than satisfied is easily learned in Wood county. There is no name in the county better known than his, nor is there a home more abundantly filled with the choicest products of the earth. The hospitality of the Dewese family is known far and near, and as agriculturists they are accepted authorities for miles around. Two of the sons live with their parents on the old homestead which is a palatial residence erected in 1877. The harmony that exists in the family is remarkable, the interest of one is the interest of all, and although each of the sons has an individual property of his own the main estate is held in common. The sons of Mr. Dewese received only a common school education, as did their father, but the breadth and scope of their reading, and their original manner of thinking made them among the best informed people of Wood county. As samples of physical manhood, these men have certainly no equal in any one family in the county, the father having the frame of a giant, and the smallest of the sons weighing two hundred pounds. Mr. Dewese was formerly a Republican, but he says he watched the evils of protection as they gradually gained a hold upon the country to the detriment of the agricultural masses, and asserted his right to think for himself, disavowed allegiance to the Republican party, and became a Democrat. Party organizations have tried to whip him back into the Republican ranks, but in vain, as he is firm in his belief that he is on the right side of the question." The following interesting story was told by the "Wood County Sentinel," May 23, 1878, and is reproduced as a reminder of how things were done in an early day: "We met our old friend, Amos Dewese, whom nearly everybody knows as an honest, thrifty farmer, here one day last week, and started to lecture him a little for not cutting away the trees a little more, so passers-by on the railroad could get a little better view of his new house over northeast of Weston, and which, by the way, is as fine a house as one often sees on a farm in any country. His explanation only brought new questions, and new questions only involved Amos in more elaborate replies, until he told us when and for what he came to Wood county, why he did not go away, and how he managed to stay as long as he has, and especially how he managed to be so contented and prosperous always, while many others are dissatisfied and always complaining of hard times. Mr. Dewese's experience in starting has been similar to that of many other farmers of Wood county. There are many lessons in the experience of these men that may be turned to profit, and a chapter now and then telling of the ways, manners, customs, trials, hardships, failures and successes of the old folks who have reared the present generation of boys and girls, young and middle-aged folks included, is we think, not amiss, but entirely proper, teaching us as they do lessons of self denial, courage, endurance and economy, all necessary adjuncts to success. Every person knows how much influence example exerts on all of us. If we see a wagon and horses pass across a muddy slough, or ford a river safely, we are encouraged to drive on and try it too. If they mire down, or go adrift, we are apt to turn back. We are all apt to gauge our ability to succeed by the measure of success some other person has met with in a like under-taking. 'I tell you what,' said Mr. Dewese, 'We saw pretty rough times in Wood county, even as late as when I came, which was during the hard winter of 1842 and 1843. The first work I did was to chop and clear seven acres of timber land in Bloom township, for which I was to receive three dollars and a-half per acre, and took my pay in trade. I got no money. The price for making rails was twenty-five cents per hundred, taking the timber from the stump.' Mr. Dewese says that one day while working for Mr. Solether, Jonathan Stull who then owned land where Jerry City now stands, came along, carrying a two bushel bag with about a peck of ear corn in it. Mr. Stull was very much depressed in spirits. The sect of believers known as Millerites were at that time predicting the destruction of the world, and Mr. Stull said for his part it would not be an unwelcome event to him. Said he, 'all of my horses have starved to death, all my cattle have starved to death, and all my hogs, 265 in number, have starved to death, and my wife and ten children are at home hungry, and all in the world I have to give them is the little bit of corn I can carry in this sack. Where the next morsel of food is to come from, or what is to keep us from following the fate of our poor starved animals, I know not.' Mr. Dewese says the snow was two feet deep that year in the woods in the middle of April. It was a hard winter, and those were times calculated to dishearten the bravest men. Amos says that he worked for Mr. Ed. Whitaker, who afterwards moved away, and got $3.25 cash, which with fifty cents he got from James Bloom for work, in all $3.75, was all the money he received for his whole year's work, and he worked hard, too. He took trade of all sorts, sometimes a rifle or suit of second-hand clothes, a cow, or a steer. Almost anything that was movable was counted currency in those days. About this time some old acquaintances moved into Milton township, and Amos went over there, and he and James Hutchinson took a contract to clear off sixty acres of timber on the tract of land in Henry township, since known as the Goit land, and part of which is now the home of J. J. Faylor, Esq. The place was then called the Callihan place. Callihan, who was from Washington county, Pa., was one of the builders of the old Perrysburg court house, after which he went out and bought land in Henry township. Dewese and Hutchinson were to receive one hundred and twenty acres of land as payment for their work. Hutchinson afterwards worked for our townman, Esquire Goit, for one year in Hancock county, and then went to Iowa, and became sheriff of the county where he located. Mr. Dewese says that while on this work the family where he made his home had to draw water four miles on a wooden sled for home use. They dipped it up from a sort of old well or sink-hole, which was covered with a thick green scum and literally alive with frogs which occasionally they would throw out. It was a time of drought, and all the wells had gone dry. As a natural consequence the whole family fell sick, and Amos had to take care of them and do the housework and washing. He took the clothing on a sled with a kettle and soap, and went to the old water hole, did the washing, dried the clothes, and then drove home. This was the way he earned his first piece of land which was worth $1.25 an acre. After-wards, Amos bought the John Lewis place, at Milton Centre, for $485, eighty acres. He got work whenever he could find it, and one fall he with another man cut 525 tons of prairie hay on the Wadsworth prairie for John McMahan, who was feeding a large drove of cattle, brought from the East by his brother Robert, now of Portage. Amos says he killed sixteen massasaugas in one day while he was on the job, and it did not seem a special good day for snakes either. He got disgusted with Wood county and the Lewis place, and after clearing a good sized field and setting an orchard of apple trees, he sold it for $250. It was about this time his father, who had a land warrant for services in the war of 1812, arrived in quest of government land, and with Mr. Alvin Clark and another man to show them, they took a look at the vacant land in the east part of Weston township. The old gentleman found land to suit him and bought, and afterwards persuaded Amos to in-vest his money in land adjoining. "It has been said that marriage is a sort of lottery. If this be true, Mr. Dewese's case is probably not an exception. Amos was something of a deer hunter, and one day, sometime after he had located on his new purchase, while he was out hunting, he accidentally blew the tube out of his rifle and went to a German gun and watch mender named Kock, who now lives in Toledo, to get a new tube fitted, and it was here he met Miss Green. Miss Green was one of a family of six or seven brothers and sisters of Scotch parentage, who settled in the west part of Plain township-a family of industrious, frugal, upright, thrifty people, who have contributed largely toward the development of the county under the most adverse circumstances. The marriage proved a happy one in its influences on both the contracting parties. Amos became more fixed and contented in his future home, and from a wild eighty acre tract of land he has added to and improved until he has now one hundred and ninety acres of land, mostly under a high state of cultivation. From a humble cabin of uncomfortably narrow limits, they have a fine large house of modern architecture and inner arrangements. Instead of a scanty supply of wild fruit they used to gather in the wild plum thickets and huckleberry ridges, they now have one of the finest orchards of choice fruit in the whole Maumee Valley, and Amos Dewese's apples and pears have drawn premiums when the whole state was competing for the prize. But we shall not for all these later successes in Amos' experience, award all the credit to himself, not by any means. He had a patient, faithful, persevering assistant in all he undertook. The tidy, well kept house, the healthy, well trained, beautiful children, the kitchen, garden, the flowers and shrubs, as well as the handsome rolls of fine butter that would always bring a little higher price in the market than anybody's else-all these things have contributed to the profits of that farm and to the happiness and contentment of the family, and if we were called upon today to make a division of their property, worth say $20,000, we would first deduct $200, the price of the original eighty acres of land which Amos owned before lie met the Scotch girl at the gunsmith's, and then we would divide the balance equally between them, and if Amos found any fault, it would be because he had not given his wife enough. ' But,' said Mr. D., ' After all the up-hill times I had, I must say that poverty is sometimes a blessing to a young man. If I had had plenty of money I would have been as apt perhaps to have spent it, and in doing so might have contracted fast habits and given way to an inclination to habits of ease and idleness. You see when I had only $3.75 cash in the whole year, I had not much to spare for cigars, whisky, billiards, theatres and the like.' Poverty is not entirely a misfortune to a young man. But, as we have said at the outset, this is only a similar experience to that of many, in fact the majority of the older residents of the county. It is a hard and not an enviable or desirable way to commence in the world. Still these experiences of the old folks prove that with 'clear grit' as Davy Crocket used to say, and industry, a man can overcome almost any obstacle, and above all that we should never become discouraged." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | ||||||||||
| Last Modified 18 Dec 2004 | Created 4 Jan 2005 |