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On July 2, 1868, when he was 21 years of age, Jacob married 19-year-old Louisa Finkenbiner (1849-1940), daughter of David and Susan (Snyder) Finkenbiner. Jacob was a jack of all trades -- a bridge builder and stonework contractor as well as a farmer and a butcher. The Index to Commissioners Journal of Wood County lists many contracts that Jacob and his brother in law, William J. Burditt, received over the years. The two men built simple-span structures over local creeks as well as large man-made ditches that drained surface water from the flat farm fields. These included bridges in the towns or townships of Tontogany, Freedom, Pemberville, Milton, Weston, Bloom, Jackson and Washington. The Index covers the years 1895 to 1901. Jacob was a member of the local school board. In 1886-1887, he and others voted for the “innovation” of acquiring “modern school furniture,” according to Beers’ 1897 Commemorative Historical and Biographical Record of Wood County. He
and Louisa resided next to his parents north of the village of Tontogany in Wood
County. In 1871, for the sum of $1,200, Jacob and William J. Burditt jointly
purchased a 20-acre farm belonging to Jacob’s father.
This farm appears in the 1871 landowner map of Wood County, and was next to the
farm of Emanuel H. Custer and his son Nevin J. Custer. (Emanuel was the father,
and Nevin the brother, of General Custer.) In fact, Jacob's sister Rebecca
is thought to have been a sweetheart of another Custer brother, Civil War hero
Thomas, who also was killed at the Battle of Little Big
Horn. Jacob's farm also is depicted Griffing Gordon’s 1886 Atlas of
Wood County, Ohio, There may have been friction between Jacob and his brother in law, William L. Jewell, after Jewell was named the legal guardian of Alpheus. In fact, Jacob once said that Jewell’s “reputation is bad. He is regarded as a trickster and so spoken of.” In the 1890s, Jacob’s widowed father came to live in their household, and may have remained there until his death in 1904.
Louisa outlived her husband by two decades, and resided with her son Hugh as well as "with her daughters in Haskins and vicinity." She passed away at age 90 in Bowling Green on
June
16, 1940, from the effects of a broken hip. Her death occurred just two days
after the birth of a great-grandson in the same hospital. The local newspaper said she had
been "affectionately known to citizens as 'Grandma Miner'."
Copyright © 2001-2003, 2006, 2010, 2022 Mark A. Miner |