Henry Clay Strong, Soldier and Businessman

Henry Clay Strong was born on October 4, 1841 to Lyman and Calista (Nims) Strong. During the Civil War, he served for a three month term with Company B of the 88th Ohio Infantry. After that term was up, he joined Company D of Hoffman’s Battalion, later known as the 128th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, where he was appointed second sergeant. While serving in the 128th Infantry, he became commissary sergeant, and later served as first lieutenant and regimental quartermaster. For a time he was commander of Company G. 

He married Mary Harper, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Rice Harper, in 1865. Mr. and Mrs. Strong had a son named Harper Lyman Strong in 1880, but the child died in 1881. In 1909, Mr. and Mrs. Strong legally adopted William Henry Spencer, a son of Mary Harper Strong’s sister; he went by the name William Henry Spencer-Strong after the adoption.

After the war ended, Mr. Strong was appointed paymaster for the Sandusky, Dayton & Cincinnati Railroad. In the late 1860s and 1870s, he was a salesman for a wholesale lumber house in Sandusky. By 1874, he had moved to Newark, Ohio, where he was in a partnership with John Fleck in the wholesale grocery business. 

In 1897, Mr. Strong moved back to Sandusky, where he was one of the organizers of the Ohio Motor Company, which did business at the southeast corner of East Water and Perry Streets. The company made small engines for stationary power purposes, from the end of the 1890s until 1920. 

On June 12, 1918, Henry Clay Strong passed away following complications from surgery. He was buried in the family lot in Oakland Cemetery. Both Henry and Mary Strong had family ties to pioneer residents of Erie and Huron Counties. Read more about the early residents of the Firelands area in books, historical journals and newspapers at the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center.