Union County, Ohio Biographies Project - George B. Hamilton

GEORGE B. HAMILTON

    George B. Hamilton, a farmer, was born in Muskingum County, Ohio, February 12, 1833, and is a son Rev. William and Lydia (Springer) Hamilton, the former of English and Scotch, the latter of Swiss descent.  His parents came to Union County, April 8, 1838, and settled on the farm and built the house where their son, George, now resides.  Mr. Hamilton was educated in a log schoolhouse in Claibourne Township, where he applied himself with such diligence as enabled him in after years to teach.  Being one of those persons who are ever in the process of education, whether in the school-room, on the farm, or in business, he has obtained such a practical education as enables him to be of great public usefulness wherever placed.  Indeed, few men, with even better advantages, have equal ability with him to make an intelligent, off-hand address, on any subject or occasion, that may interest the better class of people in the community.  In consequence of this, he has been variously intrusted with public offices and interests in the township and county in which he lives.  But having little or no desire for public life or honors, he has, by preference, devoted himself to farming, as his life's work.  In this he has had such success as gives him a handsome home farm of 386 acres, besides other lands and village property.  On November 19, 1857, he married Marian Hamilton, a native of Scotland, where her ancestry connected her with John Knox and the Reformation - daughter of Rev. William and Marian Hamilton, Sr., her father being of identically the same name as her husband's father, but without kinship between them; and to make the seeming identity more striking, both fathers were ministers in the same State-Ohio, of the same denomination- Methodist Protestant Church, and still further, both had sons named John and William.  The married life of Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton has been, at all times, most happy, and resulted in three children, two daughters, Clara A. and Marian G., and one son, George H., the oldest of whom, Clara, is now attending the Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware.  Mrs. Hamilton was blessed with a brilliant mind, a retentive memory, and a keen perception of the beautiful in literature and morals, and with such intellectual equipment, she was ever able to, make home attractive and happy, and to impart to her children a rich heritage of this character.  Nor did she lavish her gifts on home alone, but was an ornament to the society in which she moved, and was a useful and active member of the Methodist Protestant Church, to which she belonged from the age of fourteen years till her death, October 18, 1882, a period of about thirty-three years.  Mr. Hamilton is also a member of the same church, having joined it in his boyhood.  Besides being a most active and zealous member of the local church at Richwood, he is one of the most prominent laymen of his denomination in Ohio, having been repeatedly a, delegate to the Ohio Annual Conference, and twice a lay representative to the General Conference.  In addition to giving hearty support to the local and general interests of his church, Mr. Hamilton has a quiet mode of benevolence, the details of which are scarcely known to any but himself and his God.  With an eye upon superficials alone, your informant feels that he risks nothing as to fact, when he intimates that many are the poor who have been his beneficiaries, in various ways adapted to their relief, including not a few who could tell of their mortgages, which were about to be foreclosed, with certain loss of their hard earnings, and which have quietly found their way into his hands, to await a slow redemption, as circumstances might necessitate, sometimes keeping him out of his returns for years, and although many hundred dollars have been freely given to relieve the needs of others, prosperity follows, and peace and plenty are found in his happy home.