I.J.P. Tessier

Israel J.P. Tessier was born in 1848 in Ontario, Canada. As a young man he moved to Ohio, where he learned the printer’s trade. He was an apprentice to a printer in Toledo for several years. While in Toledo, in 1867, he married Margaret Quigley. Eventually Mr. and Mrs. Tessier moved to Sandusky,  where he became foreman of the job department of the Sandusky Register. 

In 1885, I.J.P. Tessier was the president of the “Register Monumental Association.” The Association arranged the acquisition of a lot at Oakland Cemetery for graves for former employees of the Register. The buyers of the lot were I.F. Mack, John T. Mack, and C.C. Keech.

Sandusky Register Monument, Lot 87, Oakland Cemetery

In 1900, Mr. Tessier was elected to the position of Erie County Recorder, a position he held at the time of his death on April 13, 1905. He left behind a wife, four daughters and two sons. He was buried at Oakland Cemetery.

William Booth gave an oration at the funeral; it was published in the April 22, 1905 issue of the Sandusky Register. It read in part, 

“He was one of God’s noblest works – an honest man. Every day some man’s burden was made a little lighter by a kindly deed or an encouraging word. He loved to pluck the flowers of happiness that grew along life’s rugged pathway that others might catch and enjoy their beauty and fragrance. His words of cheer and commendation were not kept until the one for whom they were intended had passed away….”

Sandusky Register Monument at Oakland Cemetery

In Lot 1 of Block 87 is a monument dedicated to the employees of the Sandusky Register. The November 28, 1885 issue of the Register reports that the proprietors of the newspaper, I.F. and John T. Mack, along with C. C. Keech (the Register’s “Moral Editor”) purchased a lot in Oakland Cemetery. It was adjacent to the G.A.R. lot, in which many Erie County veterans are buried.  The article stated “This lot is a part and parcel of The Register plant, to be handed down to each successive proprietorship with the presses and type and machinery of the office.” The future monument at this cemetery plot was to be “a befitting stone to mark the spot of The Register dead in the long, long future.”

Officers of the “Register Monumental Association” were: President, I.J.P. Tessier; Secretary, W. I. Jackson, and Treasurer, C. C. Hand.  Register employees were to set aside 10 cents from each week’s paycheck, until enough funds were collected to purchase a suitable monument. An article in the November 18, 1959 Sandusky Register tells us that the marble monument was erected in 1887.  The carved likeness of a printer’s mallet and composing stick appear on the monument, above the inscription:  “The dead who lie here toiled for the world’s enlightenment. Erected 1887 by the Sandusky Register Monumental Association in memory of Register employees.”

The first burial in the Sandusky Register lot was Clarence M. Brockway, the former city editor of the Sandusky Register, who died of typhoid. He was buried in Oakland Cemetery on November 7, 1885. Several former employees are buried at this site. The monument, having been in Oakland Cemetery for over one hundred years, truly remains a lovely stone which honors the memory of many Sandusky Register employees.