Horatio and Sarah Louise Linn

Horatio M. Linn was born near Zanesville, Ohio in 1868. He attended college at Muskingum College and Ohio State University. By the late 1890s, he had become the principal of Sandusky High School. In 1900, Mr. Linn resigned as principal to become editor of the Sandusky Star newspaper. Later, Mr. Linn moved to Cleveland, Tennessee to become the editor and proprietor of the Cleveland Journal. In 1916 Mr. Linn moved his family back to Erie County and took up farming.

In 1902, Horatio M. Linn married Sarah Louise Ramsdell, the daughter of Horace Valentine Ramsdell. They had a family of two daughters and a son.

On February 13, 1921, Mr. Linn died at the Mayo Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota at the age of 51. His obituary appeared on the front page of his former newspaper, now called the Sandusky Star Journal. He was considered one of the area’s most prominent men, and his death came as a shock.

The family portrait below was taken, probably around 1910, by Edward H. Schlessman. The children and grandchildren of Horace V. Ramsdell are standing near the Ramsdell home in Bloomingville, which was built in 1832. More details about the history of the Ramsdell family are available online.

D. C. Richmond’s Justice of the Peace Docket, Perkins Township

Former Sandusky Library Board member, Mrs. Sakie Merz, donated her grandfather’s Justice of the Peace Docket to the historical collections of the Sandusky Library. The entries were recorded in the 1840s in Perkins Township of Erie County.

The first entry, dated November 18, 1844 was an assault and battery case. Horace J. Bell took an oath and stated that Thomas McGee unlawfully assaulted him. At first Mr. McGee pleaded Not Guilty, but later he pleaded Guilty and was fined six dollars.

The docket contains several other assault and battery cases, as well as cases dealing with perjury, attempted rape, and cases involving goods and chattel. Many lists of witnesses and bail payments are also on record in the Docket.

Half of the Mr. Richmond’s ledger contains the Minutes of the Proceedings of the 4^th Regiment, 2^nd Brigade, 11^th Division of the Ohio Militia, from 1838 through 1843.

Below is a page from the Militia Minutes which shows that William D. Lindsley was chosen to be the Colonel of the Militia, and H. J. Carpender selected as Lieutenant Colonel, on January 12, 1839.

David Chester Richmond was born in Connecticut on January 21, 1815. He moved to Erie County, Ohio in 1837, and married Sarah Burr in 1838. He died on February 17, 1888. Mr. Richmond was active in the Ohio State Board of Agriculture and the State Horticultural Society. He served in the Ohio General Assembly from 1872-1876. The Cyclopedia of American Horticulture concludes its biographical sketch about D. C. Richmond with this statement:  “Colonel Richmond was a conspicuous example of the influence which a man of ability and enthusiasm may exert in the uplifting of agricultural conditions in his neighborhood and in the states.”

Captain David H. James, Ohio 72nd Volunteer Infantry

David H. James was the son of Thomas and Frances James, early settlers of Bloomingville in Oxford Township of Erie County, Ohio. In the Fall of 1861, after civil war had broken out in the nation, he enlisted in Company G of the Ohio 72^nd Volunteer Infantry, reaching the rank of First Sergeant in his unit. He was discharged from the Army in August of 1862 on a Surgeon's Certificate of Disability. A Civil War pension card indicates that by May 28, 1863, he was considered an invalid.

After he had recovered, Sergeant James enlisted in Company G of the 145^th Ohio Infantry on May 12, 1864, and was named a Captain. He mustered out of the 145^th on August 24, 1864. Sadly, he died in early September of 1864, when he was not yet thirty years of age. Capt. James was buried in the Bloomingville Cemetery. 

Oxford Township Grange Hall in Bloomingville

Now a private residence, the Oxford Township Grange Hall was the center of community life for many years from the early 1900s until the 1980s. The building is located at the intersection of Taylor Road and Mason Road in Oxford Township of Erie County, Ohio.   Farming was the main occupation of residents of Oxford Township in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  In the picture above, from the 1910s, several individuals can be seen with their horses and buggies. 

Bloomingville is an unincorporated village in northern Oxford Township of Erie County. Hewson Peeke wrote in A Standard History of Erie County, Ohio, that the earliest settlers in Bloomingville arrived in 1810. Bloomingville was one of the largest towns in northern Ohio at that time, with a church, mill, school, inn, and post office established in that first decade. The Bank of Sandusky Bay was built in the village in 1816-1817, but it was not granted a charter.  The old brick bank building is pictured below.

Eleutheros Cooke and his family lived in the former bank building in 1819, and his son Pitt Cooke was born here. Andrew W. Prout lived here in the 1830s. (The building no longer stands.)  The Bloomingville Cemetery is located adjacent to the former Grange building, with burials dating back to the early 1800s.

You can read more about the history of Oxford Township in several histories of Erie County, Ohio, at the Sandusky Library. 

The historic marker at Bloomingville Cemetery gives a brief summary of the community's history

Family Portrait of the Ramsdell and Linn Families

In about 1910, a photograph of the Ramsdell and Linn families was taken by Sandusky photographer Edward H. Schlessman in Bloomingville, Ohio. The elderly man in the center of the picture is Horace Valentine Ramsdell. Horace V. Ramsdell was born in Bloomingville in 1842, one of twelve children born to Horace and Sarah Ramsdell. During the Civil War, Horace V. Ramsdell enlisted in Company G of the 101^st Ohio Volunteer Infantry when he was only nineteen years old. He was severely injured at the Battle of Stones River. He was shot twice on December 31, 1861. When the ambulance picked him up, the army surgeons thought he would never survive his wounds. After two months of nursing care, Horace did recover from his war injuries, though it took him a full year to completely recover. 

After the war, Horace V. Ramsdell took charge of the family farm in Oxford Township. For a brief time he worked in the fishing business, and went mining in the Black Hills district in the 1870s, but soon he returned home. Horace V. Ramsdell and his wife, the former Alma Louise Bardwell, were the parents of four children, one who died young. A biographical sketch about him is found in Hewson L. Peeke’s A Standard History of Erie County, Ohio. Mr. Peeke wrote: “A life that was significant of sturdy character, upright manhood, long-continued industry, patriotic service during the period which insured the integrity of the Union, and lasting esteem from family, friends and neighbors, was lived by the late Horace Valentine Ramsdell in Oxford Township.” On January 17, 1914, Horace V. Ramsdell died from heart failure. He was buried in the Bloomingville Cemetery. Mr. Ramsdell was survived by his wife, two daughters, one son, a brother and sister, and seven grandchildren.

Several family photographs from the Ramsdell and Linn families were bequeathed to the Sandusky Library by descendants of Horatio V. Ramsdell.

Pitt Cooke

Pitt Cooke was the son of Sandusky’s first lawyer, Eleutheros Cooke, and his wife, the former Martha Carswell. He was born on July 23, 1819 in Bloomingville, Ohio, in a building that had formerly served as the Bank of Sandusky Bay.  (The bank was never chartered.)

Pitt Cooke was educated at the Norwalk Academy, and he attended college at Kenyon College, where he studied law. After passing the bar, he practiced law in Sandusky, Ohio with Lucas Beecher. Later he was in the forwarding and commission business with William Townsend, until 1849 when Mr. Townsend died in the cholera epidemic. After the Civil War began, he moved east to assist his brother Jay Cooke a banker was a significant financier of the financier of the Union military effort during the Civil War. Pitt continued to work at the banking house of Jay Cooke and Company in New York until 1873, when he moved back to Sandusky, Ohio. An article in volume 17 of the Firelands Pioneer stated about Pitt Cooke, “Few men were more competent or active in business than Mr. Cooke, and as a companion and friend he was always genial and pleasant. He was a man of large heart and warm, generous impulses, and ever ready to assist to the extent of his ability those who were in need.”    After the death of both Mr. and Mrs. William Townsend in 1849, Mr. and Mrs. Pitt Cooke took in their orphaned children, who were the younger siblings of Mrs. Cooke, the former Mary Townsend.

On December 13, 1879, Pitt Cooke died at his residence on West Washington Street in Sandusky. He left behind his wife and six children. Funeral services for Pitt Cooke were held at the family residence with several members of the Episcopal clergy present, including Rev. L. S. Osborn and Rev. A. Nicholas of Sandusky; Dr. S.A. Bronson of Mansfield; and Rev. Samuel Marks of Huron. Pallbearers were: Judge E.B. Sadler, Judge Rush Sloane, R.B. Hubbard, A.H. Moss, C.C. Keech, W.T. West, W.A. Simpson, and S.S. Hosmer. He was buried in the family lot at Sandusky’s Oakland Cemetery. 

“Bells of Victory” Temperance Songs

The Good Templars had a lodge in Bloomingville, Ohio in the late 1800’s. The International Organisation of Good Templars was founded in the nineteenth century as a fraternal organization which promoted temperance. The Bloomingville Lodge was Number 156.

The Sandusky Register reported on December 11, 1894 that the Good Templars of Bloomingville were to hold a “Conundrum Supper” on December 13. A prize was to be awarded to the person who gave the correct answers to three conundrums.

“Bells of Victory” was a songbook written by J. H. Tenney and E. A. Hoffman. Here is a song from the “Bells of Victory” songbook: