Eighth Generation
4805. Arthur Henry THRASHER was born on 19 March 1819 in Deerfield, Rockingham, New Hampshire.79 He died on 9 December 1864 at the age of 45 in Geauga County, Ohio.79 Cause of death was consumption. Taken from History of Geauga Co., IH, p. 337-340, published 1880:
ARTHUR HENRY THRASHER:
The Thrashers, father and son, were most decided men. The name Thrasher has a decided sound. They came from New Hampshire, which, from the number of her population, has produced more remarkable men than any other part of the Republic. Men have to be uncommon to live there. Winter rules half the year, and the whole of the years must be given to a ceaseless struggle for life, in which the feeble perish young, if the feeble are ever born there. Dr. Jacob Thrasher, the father of Arthur, was a cousin of the Websters, Daniel and Exekiel, on the mothers's side, through whom the brains must have come. He was a remarkable man, standing six feet, spare, bony, erect, well made, with a magnificent head all forward of and above the ears -- a man of rare dignity of bearing, of classical education, rare intellect, keen, subtle, caustic, endowed with great wit and pitiless sarcasm. After his arrival in Troy, though bred to medicine, which he had abandoned, he was much employed in the trial of cases before magistrates. Without knowledge of law, his sagacity, knowledge of men, wit and sarcasm, made him formidable as an irregular practitioner.
The Hon. A. G. Riddle, from whose sketch in the Williams' history this has been condensed, writes of him as having a a large fund of practical information-tested, distilled, and used until seemed veritable wisdom, and with readiness, tact, and ability, his conversation, interpersed with anecdotes, and keeness of wit, was rarely equaled.
He was poor, had convivial habits, tried cases, gave Riddle, then a young lawyer, much valuable advice and suggestion, and was always to him an enigma of human character, conduct and fortune.
Arthur's mother was a Branscomb, a respectable New Hampshire family. He was named for her only brother. That Arthur was a lawyer of ability, and was several times a member of the New Hampshire legislature.
Arthur H. was born at Deerfield, New Hampshire, March 19, 1819. In his infancy the family moved to Crown Point, Essex county, New York, and when he was twelve years old came to Troy. He was at school in Parkman, and later, occupied an otherwise deserted log cabin, subsisting himself, by the aid of his brothers and sisters, in Troy, under the tuition of the late B. F. Abel, esq., an accomplished teacher, and one of the most amiable of men. Here he was deep in the classics.
I also hear of him in school at Delaware, Ohio, of his teaching for short periods. His father seems to have early left him to himself, probably about all he could do for him; and to one of the nature, character, and aspirations of young Arthur, this could be done with absolute safety. Emulous, pure-hearted, patient, hopeful, docile, but high-spirited and proud, an early death or honorable success invariably attends such youths. Under the difficulties surrounding him he made his way-may have matured slowly. So much the better in the long arduous struggle of life. At ten, fifteen, or twenty-five, no man can, with any certainty, forecast the five or six great men of forty years hence-perhaps not one of the five hundred extraodinary, or even of the one thousand distinquished of that future. His grasp of a knotty point, a problem, was that of a vice. He held it till he extracted its secret, till it dissolved to simples in his hand.
In 1844 he entered the law office of Hitchcock & Wilder as a student of law. After a few months he went to southern Indiana and taught school. Here, with a brother, he purchased a drove of swine, which they took to New Orleans. It proved a bad speculation. He, however, managed to return to law, and was admitted to the bar in 1848. For the ensuing two years he made Troy his headquarters, attended to cases before magistrates, and appeared in some trials at Ravenna and Chardon.
In 1850, on the removal of A. G. Riddle to Cleveland, at his request, Mr. Thrasher bacame a member of the firm of Phelps, Riddle & Thrasher; and Thrasher, Durfee & Hathaway, practicing in Geauga and Lake, with excursions into Ashtabula and Portage. He lived in Chardon until his death, which occurred December 9, 1864, at the early age of forty-five.
Mr. Thrasher never held an office, never sought one. He was thorough lawyer. It opened a field of labor which enlisted all his powers; its successes gratified his ambition, its emoluments gave him the means of liberal living, and, with his care, would have produced affluence. The firm of which he first become a member had one side, usually the plaintiffs, of quite all the cases in Geauga, and a fair pactice in Lake.
Mr. Thrasher's ability and industry, with the aid of Mr. Riddle in trials, kept up and rather increased it, especially in Lake. His application approached the wonderful. He thoroughly mastered the law. That which he once secured he always retained. No hint of fact or law was lost on him. As fast as means permitted he added to the library, and his books were implements of warfare, not embellishmets to attract or please the eye. The practice of law with him was a constant conflict. The declaration was a declaration of war, --instant, relentless, and without quarter or cessation; always pushed to extremity, never abandoned till the end was reached; ever renewed till the last honable expedient was exhasuted. His client was his friend, brother, himself. His cause, his cause; his feelings, his feelings; his opponents, his advocate's enemy. He supplimented the knowledge and zeal of the lawyer with the interst, zeal, and animosity of the party. While this secures the utmost fidelity, the most untiring, persistent attention and labor, the brain is sometimes too heated, and the mists of passion obscure the vision. The dager is, your opponent becomes your enemy, ---never can become your client. There never was a safer man to entrust a case to than Arthur H. Thrasher. No man ever dreamed of corrupting him. "The cause he knew not, he searched out," literally. If law then was in all the books that would help him, his counsel would certainly find and bring it forward. If a man in the world knew a thing which which would aid him, his counsel would surely have him at the trial; and all that could be done in the way of preparation, care and industry, a high degree of ability in the trial and presentation of the case, without regard to the amount involved or time consumed in the trial, were certain to be well and thouroughly done. jThe danger was overwork, too great care. He usually knew exactly what the witnesses on his side knew, and all they knew. He was often exacting as to the precise form of the words they should use, and he returned again and again to the point, often when unimportant, until he had it as he wished it; or, as sometimes happpened, in the forgetfulness, perversity, or anger of the witness, he was foiled altoghether. As a lawyer, Mr. Thrasher ranked high. Time, growth, industry, talents, are all requisite to produce a lawyer. These would certainly have conducted him to the very foremost rank.
As an advocate, a speaker, he was strong, clear, argumentative, and forcible; was without imagination or fancy; was always too intensely in earnest to indulge the vein of pleasant humor which would make him a delighful companion. His speeches at times might have been improved in method, and quite as effective if of diminished length. Sometimes after a masterly presentation of his case, in the fear that he had omitted something, or had not produced it in its strength, he returned to different parts of it, at the hazard of weakening or confusing the effort as a whole. He had many of the advantages of a good speaker, --a fine, well-knit, tall, slender form; open, frank, manly face (resembling his mother's race, I am told); aquiline features; dark, fine eyes; glossy wavy black hair, carefully arranged; and dressed with a neatness and style of costume unusual in a village, and which sometimes provoked the comment of the rustic. One of the most honorable and high-minded of men, he thought well of himself, though not too well. Modest he was, but he knew he was every inch a man, and always dressed and bore himself as became a man, and the thorough gentleman that he was.
No man at the head of a large practice, which he pursued with the methods and industry of Mr. Thrasher, could long survive. though with a fine physique, pure, temperate, blameless life, the man who should have gone on to the head of his profession, ruled on the supreme court bench of his State, presided as her chief magistrate, or wiser still, have remained in private practice, so labored in it as to sap the foundatioons and conditions of life itself, and die at the immature age of forty-five, distinquished in the small circle of two or three counties, and great only in possibility.
Among the cases of local celebrity which connect themselves with Mr. Thrasher's name are those of Lampson vs. Pool, of Troy, all about a yearling steer which both claimed. It was rutted, had it tail cut in due form in the spring, and turned away with the herd on the rich Cuyahoga bottoms. In autumn it had waxed fat and kicked. Pool secured it; was sued by Lampson. It was worth seven dollars, cost a thousand, divided a township, illutrated a principle in the supreme court, and the folly of the law as men appeal to it, and added much to Mr. Thrasher's reputation, who finally won it.
Then there was the case of Bosley vs. Spencer, for flowing water back onto his water-wheel, in South Thompson, which his side gained, mainly through his efforts. Tucker and Tucker, all about a puddle of water. The Tuckers, of Chardon, brothers, of narrow, stong, unyielding qualities, were at feud. There was an intermittent little brook meandering, when it could run, through a field of Hosea Tucker. At one point, on the line between them, a sup of it could at times be had, in an angle of the line fence on Orrin Tucker's side. Orrin had plenty of other water; could use this, when there was any, for stock. Hosea put in a stout fence at that point, which cut Orrin off. Orrin put a suit to him,straightway; employed able counsel. Thrasher & Co. defended. Five years the war lasted. Orrin was beaten finally, and ruined, and Dr. Thrasher uttered an epigram on the poor old mother of these sons.
Who in Geauga and Lake does not remember Mrs. Fuller's case against Hezekiah Cole, for breach of marriage promise, and everthing else, tried the last of many times at Painesville, in February, 1861? Thrasher made the case, in a way. He resurrected the facts, and witnesses, too, and finally secured a verdict, though others aided in the trial.
I need only mention the case of Ohio vs. Cole, for poisoning his wife. In this case Thrasher literally created the defense. He did very much to educate the medical witnesses, whose testimony was effectively used. It is true that on the final trial Ranney and Laban Sherman made the speeches, but Thrasher was the life,brain, and spirit of the remarkable and successful defense. Indeed, so intense and long-continued were his labors and anxiety in this case, that I have always attributed the ruin of his own health to it. Cole's whole life was not worth the idlest moment of the brave spirit that dimmed its own earthly day for him.
Let it not be suspected for a moment that Mr. Thrasher's enemies even ever accused him of shap practice, or the use of unfair or dishonorable means, in any of those ardently pursued cases. His warfare was open, frank, and most honorable.
On the nineteenth of December, 1850, Mr Thrasher joined in marriage with Miss Mary A. Meriam, daughter of M. D. Meriam, esq., of Buron, and granddaughter of the late Johnson F. Welton. Of attractive person, carefully educated, and very pleaasing manners, devoted, and womanly, she brought to him the contrasts and counterparts without which even devoted, untiring love may fail to secure rational happiness.
Of earnest and sincere convictions and reverent nature, Mr. Thrasher had always treated the subject of religion with respect. A year or two before his death he felt constrained to openly acknowledge his deepened convictions, and became an active member of an orgainzed body of orthodox christians. He was of the advanced on the subject of slavery, and hehind none in ardent patriotism. In his early years at the bar the intensity of his advocacy made him some enemies. As he advance in years, he softened somewhat the ardor of his invective. He came finally to understand that his opponents were not all totally depraved, and his clients and witnesses not monoplists of truth and virtue. All the world finally came to see the integrity and purity of his life; that his faults sprang wholly from his zeal for what to him was the cause of justice and truth; and they felt and acknowledged the essential manliness, strength, and force of his character, and regaded him accordingly. daily was he growing iin the esteem, confidence, and respect of his fellow. More and more was it seen and felt that he was a strong, brave, pure man--one to be trusted and confided in, --and he was rapidly reaching his proper place in the regards of all. In his own circle, by his own fireside, with his kin and friends, he was always the truest, tenderest, and most thoughful of men.
My hand lingers tenderly and lovingly over this sketch. I am loath to finish and leave it. I know it will have the tribute of my tears. He was one of the most cherished of my manhood's friends. When I clasped his hand in mine I knew that its pulse was absolute truth--that his instincts were loyal, and his spirit high and pure.
Of his marriage was born a son, Albert J., May 3, 1858. He has the manly figure and bearing, with the mentality, of his father; the blonde complexion, blue eyes, pleasing face, and sparkling manner of his mother. Thus far he has not developed the bodily vigor and hardihood which permits the devotion to study he would so much desire. That will come in time. He is an ofject of much interest to the wide circle of his father's friends. With his mother, whose life of pure widowhood is one of devotion to him, he finds his home, with her parents, at their pleasant retreat in Burton.
______________________________________________________________________ ______________ Bet. 1850 - 1854, Prosecuting Attorney, Geauga County, Ohio, History of Geauga County, Ohio 1880
______________________________________________________________________ ______________ The following is a memoir written by A. J. Thrasher, son of Arthur Henry Thrasher:
"According to the records at hand, my father, Arthur Henry Thrasher, was born at Deerfield, New Hampshire, in the year of our Lord 1819, and the 19th day of March, and this birth-place must have been dear to him for when I was but five years old I remember he made a trip back there and brought home pieces of the old red cedar shingles with which his home had ben covered.
"He was a man of indomitable will and of boundless energy, but handicapped by ill health. In his day the way to be healthy was not so well known as it is today and he did many things which he supposed would help him, which really did him harm. I have heard that grandfather Jacob Thrasher wanted him to be a farmer, but that father had other ambitions which led to strained relations between father and son, and finally Arthur struck out for himself and became a lawyer. Previous to this, however, he had studied in the schools which the locality of Troy afforded, had taught in these same schools, and had made various business trips with cattle and hogs in company with his brothers. One of these trips took him to New Orleans via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers with a boat-load of hogs, and then Uncle Cullen entrusted to his care his young and fragile wife, whom we all knew and loved as Aunt Isabella, and her little baby boy, today the oldest Thrasher of us all, Jake L. they were carefully conveyeed up the Ohio to Mariette, thence by way of the Muskingum River to Zaneswille, by canal to Warren, and then by ox-teams and lumber wagon over the stumps and roots to the old Thrasher Home at Troy. Aunt Isabella has told me many times of this to her, awful journey, and how solicitious father was as to her welfare.
"After his marriage to my mother December 19, 1850, he moved to Chardon and became associated in the law business with the legal lights which at that time adorned the bar of Geauga Co. Twenty years ago I got used to having the older lawyers say, "I was a partner of your father's at one time." There were Raney, Riddle, Durfee, Hathaway, Steveson, Canfield, Smith, and a host of good men who trained with my father in those stirring days, and of them all only Judge Smith (Stewart's father) is left to tell the story.
"Father resembled Uncle Jim more than any of the other brothers and I think he loved him best. Uncle Jim was the baby and pet and father wanted him to come to Chardon and study law in his office, a vocation in which he would certainly have succeeded as he had a good legal mind. Father's love of family was unusually strong and he stayed by his friends, fighting for them to the last ditch. It was said of him that he fought for his clients as he would for himself making their enemies his, and leaving no stone unturned which by any possibility could inure to their advantage.
"He was a strong supporter of Lincoln and defended at great personal inconvenience a colored man who had been captured in Oberlin and was about to be returned to slavery. His health not permitting him to go to the front in the War of the Rebellion, he devoted himself to speaking for the cause of Freedom, and was, I believe, an enlisting officer.
"The old Clinton Air Line R.R. tracel of which can still be seen in Troy, Aurora, and Hudson, was started about 1859. It was connected with it; but somehow father obtained on a judgment from this Road a lot of old two-wheeled dump carts, work harnesses, and some old horses and mules. My earliest recollections are of a back-yard full of these carts and a barn full of harnesses, while the painful duty of pasturing this multitude of browbates fell on Uncle Cullen.
"But "everything comes to him who waits". The War came as, Uncle Sam needed just these things to build fortifications, the horses and mules were in good fettle from their long summer on good pasture and the whole outfit was closed out to the government at a big price.
"After Uncle Otis' death, father had two of his boys up ot Chardon to live with us. One I remember was Charlie. Father was a stern disciplinarian and told Charlie not to draw me on the stonewalk on my little sled, but I coaxed Charlie to do it, with the result that Charlie got a horse whipping while I stood by to get the beneift by proxy. Next day Charlie ran away home, but father went after him and brought him back; but I have always felt that I owed Charlie an apology for that licking, as I was half to blame or more myself.
"Had it no been for my father's determination I would not be here today. He had waited long for a child, my mother being 34 years old when I was born, and then I was to all appearances dead, but father would not have it that way. He took me from the doctors and carried me to the kitchen where by vigorous slaps and blowing he finally got a little breath into me and he launched into the world a puny sickly infant whose first few years were full of pain and trouble, and who even yet cannot fathom the reason for his being.
"Like all the Thrashers, he could not resist his joke. One time he brought me a little ax and said as he gave it to me, "Now chop into the bedroom door the first thing you do." I took this for a command and started, and if my mother had not interferred the joke would have been on him.
"One of the last things I remember of him was at the election of Abraham Lincoln the second tiem. Father was on what proved to be his death bed, racked with pain, for he had cattarrh of the bowels which at times caused him to suffer excruciatingly. His partners, Duffee and Steverson, came over to see if he could go to vote. Certainly he could: so a carriage was brought and Mr. Durfee and he and I were taken to the old town hall, which stood about where the courthouse now stands in Chardon. I can remember every word that was said, how father demanded that the ballot box be brought out to him and how they told him a new law prevented that. Then he said, "I will go in" and supported by Durfee and Stevenson and followed by myself up the walk and surrounded by his neighbors and shrouded by the dark cold November atmosphere, suggestive of the pall of death, this man, who possessed a soul full of love for all mankind and a will which nothing could break, went into the voting place and cast his last vote for Abraham Lincoln and the cause he loved.
"Then a little later on the morning of Devemeber 4, 1864, came his death accompanied by great suffering. He was surrounded by his family and friends and although I was in another part of the house, I heard the commotion and hurried to his bedside, where Mr. Durfen held me up to see him. I think he knew me and tried to speak to me. Then the funeral accompanied by all the pomp and ceremony which goes with the I.O.O.Y.? lodge and the honor due the mayor of a city, for that was the position he occupied at his death.
"Before closing this sketch which I wish I had the skill to make a tribute of love, I would like to call attention, even though it be a repetition, to some of my father's most pronounced characteristics. He was true to his friends even though he suffered loss thereby. At one time when a friend was sent back from the front during the war with a cloud upon his discharge, and though repeatedly asked to do so the representative at that time from Lake, Geauga, and Ashtabula in Washington refused to interest himself to the clearing up of the trouble, father finally went to Washington himself at his own expense, hunted up the records and vindicated the man completely.
"The most notorious case with which father was connected was the Cole case. He defended Cole, who it wa alleged poisoned to death his wife in a very scientific and accomplished manner. Father became interested in the case because the man was ignorant and friendless. He studied chemistry to become familiar with the action of drugs. He examined and coached witnesses as if they were to play on the stage; even the dresses they were to wear and the attitudes they were to assume were directed by him. The first trial occurred in Chardon and I have heard how when Riddle, who prosecuted, made his speech a friend stopping at our house came home in tears and said that Arthur hadn't a chance in the world, that the man was as guilty as Hell itself. But this same person came back the next day after listening to father's plea for defence with tears of joy and declared that the man was alright and as good as free, that Arthur had explained it all to his entire satisfaction.
"The trial resulted in a disagreement and was continued in Ashtabula Co, when another disagreement let the man go free. But the strain attendant upon this trial together with my father's weak constitution was really the cause of his death.
"He possessed in a marked degree the generous spirit and boundless hospitality which seems to be the heritage of all those bearing the Thrasher blood. He was hampered in his study of the law by his lack of early discipline and education, and to overcome this he had to do double work late in life. Judge Glidden of Warren told me that he was the hardest working man he ever saw. Had his strength been equal to his ambition, he would have climbed to the highest round of life's ladder. As it was, during his short life, for he died at 45 years of age, he made an honorable place for himself among the . . . (the last line is missing from the paper.) Arthur Henry THRASHER and Mary Arnilla MERRIAM [or MERRIMAN] were married on 19 December 1850 in Geauga County, Ohio.79 Mary Arnilla MERRIAM [or MERRIMAN] was born on 28 November 1823 in Connecticut.79 She died on 9 July 1899 at the age of 75.79 She died of cancer. According to the 1880 Census of Burton, Geauga Co., Indiana:
Mary A. Thrasher is 56, widowed, born in Connecticut, keeping house, both parents born in Connecticut. She is living in the home of her parents, Mathew D. and Emeline E. Merriam. Also living there is Mary's son, Albert J. Thrasher, age 22, born in Ohio, Merchant, father born in New Hampshire and mother born in Connecticut. |