PEOPLE ASSOCIATED WITH SETTLING JOHN MARSHALL’S ESTATE

 

From The Centennial History of Lancaster, Ohio, and Lancaster People by C. M. L. Wiseman.  Trauger & Company, Columbus, Ohio, 1898.  Lancaster Public Library: 977.158/W13.

 

GENERAL PHILEMON BEECHER

[born 1765]

 

General Beecher came to Lancaster from Litchfield, Conn., in 1801, and opened a law office on what is now the Rising Corner.  In 1803 he was elected a member of the Ohio Legislature.  In the year 1818 he was elected a member of Congress, in which capacity he served ten years.  General Beecher was an able man and a good lawyer and one whose integrity was never questioned.  He was the leading lawyer of the Lancaster Bar for twenty-five years.  It was in his office that Thomas Ewing studied law.  He was a Major-General of the Ohio Militia.  His wife was a daughter of Neil Gillespie, of Brownsville, Pa.  She came to Lancaster on a visit to her sister Mrs. Hugh Boyle; [26] while here Philemon Beecher made her acquaintance and they soon were married.  One of his daughters married Henry Stanbery, the other Philadelphius Van Trump, both of whom became distinguished citizens of Lancaster.  General Beecher was highly esteemed, and the pioneers who have come down to us all speak well of him.  He died in the year 1839, at the age of sixty-four years (pages 25-26).

 

 

ELNATHAN SCHOFIELD

[born 1772]      

 

Mr. Schofield received a good education in his native state, Connecticut, and came to Lancaster in the year 1802.  He was by profession a surveyor, and while here was occasionally engaged in that occupation.  Soon after his arrival here he opened a dry goods store, and for three years John Matthews was his partner.  Matthews then retired and Schofield continued the business on his own account until the year 1818. John Creed, then a young man, was clerk for Matthews and Schofield.  In the year 1805 Schofield was elected County Surveyor and Justice of the Peace; he served with distinction several terms in both branches of the Ohio Legislature.  During the administration of John Quincy Adams he was postmaster of Lancaster.  He was the personal friend of Henry Clay; often met him in Lancaster and assisted in entertaining him at a public dinner in 1825.  For at least two terms he was an associate Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Fair- [31] field County.  He was the father-in-law of John T. Brassee and James R. Stanbery.  He and John Graham and E. B. Merwin married sisters, young ladies by the name of Reed, who had come out from Baltimore, Md.  He built one ol the first good brick dwellings in Lancaster, corner of Columbus and Main Streets.  The builder was Henry Miers, Sr.  Mr. Schofield was one of the noble band of great and good men, pioneers of Lancaster.  He died suddenly in 1841.  He was found in the public road a corpse, having fallen from his horse on his way from his farm to town; his age was sixty-nine years.  The late Gilbert Outcalt, of Cincinnati, and the late David Colerick, of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, were clerks in the post office during Schofield’s term (pages 30-31).

 

 

HUGH BOYLE     

 

Hugh Boyle, brother-in-law of General Beecher, and father-in-law of Thomas Ewing, was appointed Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas in 1803 and served as such until 1833 [page 23].

 

[ADD PAGES 28-29]

 

 

SAMUEL COATES

 

Samuel Coates, Sr., and Samuel Coates, Jr., erected the first cabin in the new town in 1800.  It stood on the alley on a lot fronting on Front street, between Main and Chestnut.  The Coateses—father and son—were from the city of Leeds, in England, where they had been engaged in business, but, failing, came to the / United States.  In 1799 a mail rout was established along Zane’s trace, and the elder Coates was appointed postmaster at the crossings of the Hockhocking, so called and generally known to the settlers . . . The elder Coates held the post office until 1807 or 8, when he departed this life, and the son succeeded to the office and held it until about the year 1814 (pages 38-39).