William P. Chapman, Pioneer Settler of Sandusky

William Pendleton Chapman was born in 1808, the son of Timothy Chapman and Nancy Pendleton, who were natives of Rhode Island. In 1834, William P. Chapman married Eliza Cross Pendleton in New London, Connecticut. Shortly after they were married, Mr. and Mrs. Chapman moved to Sandusky, where Mr. Chapman was the proprietor of a forwarding and shipping business. By 1862, he was the treasurer of the Sandusky, Mansfield and Newark Railroad. His name was listed in a Railway Directory in 1862.

While serving as treasurer of the Sandusky, Mansfield and Newark Railroad, Mr. Chapman and his family were given several railroad passes from several different railroads.

       

Besides being a busy business man, Mr. Chapman was active in the Grace Episcopal Church, where he had served on the very first church vestry. When church records began being kept for Grace Episcopal Church, it was William P. Chapman who painstakingly wrote them by hand.

When the church celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 1885, Chapman, along with Rice Harper, wrote a history of the congregation, which was partially reprinted in Hewson Peeke’s A Standard History of Erie County, Ohio (Lewis Publishing Company, 1916.) 

By 1869 William P. Chapman had entered into the wholesale fish business with John Strickland. Mrs. Eliza Chapman died in 1891, and Mr. Chapman died in 1893. Both were buried in the family lot at Sandusky’s Oakland Cemetery. 

To learn more about William P. Chapman and his extended family, visit the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center, which holds letters from the Chapman and Pendleton families dating from 1843 to 1870.